How to win at arm wrestling in Crimson Desert

You’ll first try arm wrestling in Crimson Desert during the Chapter 1 main quest in which you arrive in Hernand. Where Rumors Gather sees you head into the tavern to try and track down info about your scattered Greymane comrades, and I guess the best way to do that is try some random-ass minigame? Priorities, Kliff.

The minigame itself is fairly straightforward, provided you’re a proficient button-basher, but here’s a rundown of how it works so you can keep progressing the Chapter 1 quest to clean a chimney and head to Hernand Castle.

How to win at arm wrestling in Crimson Desert

Arm wrestling is comparatively easy as Crimson Desert’s minigames go, at least more so than working out how to fish anyway. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Once the countdown ends, tap E (or whatever the controller prompt it) as fast as you can, gradually filling the icon of the clenched fists with red
2. Occasionally, to throw you off, a quicktime event will trigger. An arrow will spin around a circle and you’ll have to press R (or, again, whatever the controller prompt is) when it’s hovering over the white section
3. After the quicktime event, go back to tapping E to progress as much as you can before the next quicktime event

When you fill the icon fully with red, you’ll slam their hand down and win the match. Essentially, it’s just a button-bashing minigame with a quicktime event thrown in, though Crimson Desert’s quicktime events are a bit borked. There’s one in battles later where a soldier will tackle and punch you in the face repeatedly, and the only way out is to hit a weirdly tough quicktime.

By the way, when I beat all the arm wrestlers in the tavern, I completed the Hero’s Handshake I challenge and got an Abyss Artifact, so it’s worse defeating them all if you can.