Completing the main story of Crimson Desert is no small feat. With its sprawling open world and engrossing narrative, many players may wonder, "What’s next?" For those who have seen the credits roll on this massive adventure, there’s still plenty left to discover and achieve. Here’s a detailed look at the activities awaiting you in the game's endgame content.

Epilog Quests: Wrapping Up the Main Story

Once you’ve finished Crimson Desert’s main quest and reached the credits, the game places you back into the open world. The first thing to look out for is the epilog questline. These quests focus on revisiting the characters and locations you encountered during the story.

While the epilog primarily involves traveling and engaging in dialogue to trigger cutscenes, it serves as a satisfying way to tie up loose ends and offers a sense of closure to your journey. Completing these missions is straightforward and will help you check off those last few green markers in your journal, providing a nice capstone to your main story adventure.

Will You Unlock New Game Plus or Additional Content?

Unlike some RPGs, Crimson Desert does not include a New Game Plus mode, increased difficulty settings, or special endgame boss fights unlocked after completing the epilog. While this might disappoint some players, it’s worth noting that the vast world of Crimson Desert holds many optional activities, regions, factions, and quests you may not have tackled during your initial playthrough.

Exploring the Open World

With the main story completed, you gain full access to Crimson Desert’s enormous map, and better yet, you'll now have a powerful dragon mount to help you navigate it. Flying over vast regions on your dragon, dealing fiery destruction from above, and liberating areas from hostile factions becomes a key aspect of the endgame experience. This helps streamline exploration and adds a fresh layer of fun to clearing areas you may have missed.

Unlocking Inaccessible Areas

By the time you’ve wrapped up the main quest, all mandatory abilities needed for solving puzzles or accessing certain areas are unlocked. The result? A completely unhindered opportunity to explore every corner of the map. Many regions, puzzles, and even factions remain optional during the primary questline, so now’s the time to go back and uncover what you missed.

Faction Quests and Secondary Missions

Another substantial endgame feature is the faction quests. Throughout your journey, you likely formed alliances with various groups, such as the Greymanes or other powerful political houses. These factions offer missions that typically revolve around their goals:

• For the Greymanes, you’ll focus on helping your allies and improving their camp, a significant resource hub.
• Missions with politicians and aristocratic factions often involve tasks like apprehending criminals or delivering supplies.

While some of these quests may feel repetitive, others are more robust, taking you through ancient ruins or having you battle mystical forces on behalf of a witch. Completing faction quests also gives you the opportunity to engage with Crimson Desert’s richly detailed settlements and characters, adding further depth to your experience.

Challenges and Optional Bosses

If you’re someone who loves checklist-style gameplay, the “Challenges” tab in your journal will keep you busy. The exploration section of this tab is a particular highlight, encouraging you to tackle major puzzles, hunt for abyss artifacts, and engage in battles with optional bosses hidden across the map.

Abyss Artifacts

Abyss artifacts are essential for leveling up your abilities in Crimson Desert. These valuable items can be found by completing challenges and locating sealed artifacts scattered across the map. Using your mini-map will help you locate these items, often hidden in shrines or other landmarks.

Mastery Feats

Other challenges test your skill at the game’s mechanics. These include lighter activities like competing in arm-wrestling tournaments across different towns or attempting to catch rare birds in the wild. These feats are a fun way to delve deeper into Crimson Desert’s world and gameplay systems.

Liberate Regions from Enemy Factions

A popular open-world activity, liberating regions dominated by enemy factions is another major endgame pursuit. These red-marked areas on the map often overlap with faction quests and challenges, presenting you with dynamic scenarios:

• Clearing regions organically boosts your reputation with allied factions.
• Combat-heavy zones provide action-packed gameplay, with most concluding in an optional boss fight.

For players who enjoy the "Far Cry"-style gameplay of systematically reclaiming the map, this activity offers extended replayability.

What Sets Crimson Desert Apart

One of Crimson Desert’s defining strengths is its commitment to letting players chart their own course. Whether you prefer storytelling, puzzle-solving, or combat, the game allows you to approach its systems and world at your own pace. The lack of New Game Plus or a classic postgame structure highlights its focus on exploration and discovery. Instead of resetting the experience in a higher difficulty mode, you’re encouraged to explore what you missed while enjoying your newfound freedom, powered by a dragon companion.

Final Thoughts

Although Crimson Desert doesn’t introduce significant content after completing the main story, the beauty of its world ensures there’s still plenty to see and do. Whether you’re diving into faction quests, unlocking challenges, or liberating enemy-held regions, the game offers a satisfying variety of activities. With a massive map, optional content, and unique mechanics like dragon mounts, the endgame is what you make of it. So lace up your boots, take to the skies on your dragon, and dive back into Crimson Desert.