Spend your early levels in Crimson Desert getting more health and stamina instead of fun new skills that you can get for free

One of my favourite things about Crimson Desert is its massive skill tree, filled with meaningful upgrades like new attacks, combos, and even enhanced uses for your magic powers. There are no boring +5 attack nodes to be found at all.

Unfortunately, I’m here to tell you that you’re best off spending your first few Abyss Artifact level-ups on upgrading your base stamina and health, instead of fun new toys.

Firstly, after dying and coming back to life, Kliff isn’t exactly in the best physical state—he’s a little out of breath, so you have very little stamina to play with. Stamina is obviously used to run, climb, and fly, so increasing it gives you much more freedom when exploring. And trust me, you’ll appreciate the improvement when you can actually fly across a gap without falling to your death.

Secondly, and arguably the most important, is how health and stamina play into combat. Of course, increasing your health lets you take more hits before you die. That’s handy in standard fights against bandits, but where it really comes in clutch is against early bosses like Marnie’s Excavatron, Hornsplitter, and Reed Devil. They’re tough, which surprised me coming from the developers behind Black Desert Online, where you’re usually wiping out enemies like it’s a Warriors game.

You also use stamina to block enemy attacks (perfect block counterattacks are really strong) and perform all your special moves. Shield-charging enemies, whirlwind spins, that sort of thing—all the fun stuff that you can start using more often once you’ve actually got some stamina to play with. For example, Swift Stab costs 50 stamina, Charge eats 30 stamina per second, and Spinning Slash needs 30 stamina. They’re not cheap to pull off, so making elaborate, flashy combos isn’t possible without a little extra—not least because you often need to block a follow-up attack.

Plus, it’s also more cost-effective for your precious Abyss Artifacts early on since you can ‘Observe and learn‘ many of the starting skills anyhow. A little exploration will help you unlock some of the best skills for free while sinking your Artifacts into upgrading Kliff’s base stats instead. It’s a win-win. Remember you can also respec your skill trees if you do regret any Abyss Artifacts you’ve spent, though.