Crimson Desert's first paid expansion, Charting the Unknown, has been out since Thursday evening, and Pearl Abyss has spent the weekend patching it. In about 38 hours, the studio has posted the full 2.04.00 patch notes plus three hotfix notes, the latest being 2.04.03 on Halloween morning. If you just got your ship in the water, or you are stuck on a pioneering mission that refuses to finish, this is where things stand right now.
We covered what the DLC adds and which story quests you need before you start in our Charting the Unknown launch preview. This piece is the follow-up. It walks through the real 2.04.00 patch notes, including several base game changes that got buried under the ships and the marriage system, then covers what each hotfix fixed and what is still broken according to Pearl Abyss's own known issues list.
Charting the Unknown Is Live: Platforms, Mac and the Free Trial
Pearl Abyss's launch notice went up at 22:00 UTC on October 29, which was 5:00 PM CT on Thursday. The 2.04.00 patch went live at the same time on Steam (PC and Mac), PlayStation, Xbox and Epic Games Store. The DLC itself is listed at $24.99 on the Steam store page.
Mac players got a pleasant surprise. Before launch, Pearl Abyss had said the DLC would not be on the Mac App Store at release. The launch notice now says Charting the Unknown is available on the Mac App Store, with the caveat that the Mac App Store patch can arrive a little later than on other platforms. Every patch note this week still lists the Mac App Store as "in progress," so check your version before you sail.
There is also a one-time pain for Mac owners. The 2.04.00 notes say that because of technical changes to the Mac build, players on Steam (Mac) and the Mac App Store must download the full-size game package once. Plan for that if you are on a capped connection.
Two other availability details from Pearl Abyss's notices:
- Free trial of the base game. A 5-hour trial of Crimson Desert Enhanced is available to PlayStation Plus Premium and Deluxe subscribers until October 29, 2027, and to all Xbox players until January 7, 2027. It is one use per account, it cannot be restarted once your 5 hours run out, and it does not include Charting the Unknown content.
- Saudi Arabia. A separate notice on October 30 thanked GMEDIA for its review and said availability details for Saudi Arabia are coming per platform. If you are there and the store page is still missing, that is the reason.
Every Patch So Far at a Glance
Here is the full sequence with times converted to Central. Pearl Abyss stamped the first two hotfix notices with the same time, so treat that timestamp as approximate.
One odd detail in the first hotfix note: Pearl Abyss says the game version still shows 2.04.00 after installing it, but the fixes are applied. The displayed version catches up with later patches. So if your title screen showed 2.04.00 on Friday, you were not necessarily out of date.
What 2.04.00 Adds: The DLC Content
The DLC portion of the notes is long, so here is the part that matters for actually playing it, grouped the way Pearl Abyss grouped it.
New Story Quests for All Three Characters
Kliff, Oongka and Damiane each get one personal quest. They show up in the Journal after you complete Journey's End from the main story. Pearl Abyss teases "an ominous presence in the desert," "a dangerous political conflict," "a journey beyond time" and "an ancient secret beneath the waves," without saying which belongs to whom. We will leave the spoilers to the game.
The Ocean, Diving and Ships
The headline feature is the sea. The new quest A Wider World starts after you finish Howling Hill and expand your Greymane camp past a certain level. From there:
- Breath gauge. Diving now uses a breath meter. You raise its cap by refining your diving suit, and new food items restore breath temporarily.
- A.T.A.G underwater. New equipment lets the A.T.A.G work underwater once equipped.
- Ships are a new mount. You can build one through a dispatch mission or buy one from fleetmasters around Pywel. Fleetmasters in Demeniss and Delesyia also sell parts for customizing them.
- Maritime trading. Ships can run trade routes, and new trade goods were added for sea trade. The map now shows trade routes at all times.
- Underwater mounts. Depending on the type, you either subdue or feed them to build Trust, then register them once Trust is high enough.
- Pioneering islands. Several uncharted islands can be claimed through new missions.
- Treasure maps. Multiple maps point to hidden treasure across the world.
Housing, Castles and Business Management
Housing gets a real builder. After Luke's Request (a Greymane Faction quest under Grounds of the Sunrise) and setting up camp at Howling Hill, go to Home Decoration > Layout > Free Construction to lay out rooms and place walls and windows yourself.
Two decoratable castles were added: Drakesfall Castle (finish Journey's End and liberate the stronghold) and Flame Knight's Castle (finish Damiane's quest Politician and liberate the stronghold). Strongholds the Greymanes own now show in light blue on the map.
Liberated strongholds can also be rented out as businesses. You can run a restaurant, sawmill, smithy or tailor's shop, and there is a new Facilities tab on the map to manage them. The notes say facilities keep operating while you are away, special guests may visit, and there are rewards for completing the management content. Camp festivals bring in NPCs you already have trust with, speed up trust gains, and let you hire certain visitors as Honorary Greymanes for dispatch missions, with some features unavailable to them.
Romance and Marriage
There is a new extra layer of Trust. Use Interact > Flirt, then Gift or Chat, to raise it. Each type of interaction only raises it once a day per NPC, and once it reaches 100 you can propose. Some NPCs have special conditions. The notes flag that witches require finishing each witch's sanctum quest.
A few rules worth knowing before you commit:
- Flirting with an NPC as one character lowers their trust with your other two characters.
- After marriage, your spouse shows on the world map and minimap, can travel with you, and sometimes gives you gifts.
- You can change your spouse's appearance at barber shops, which were added to major cities and work regardless of camp.
- Breaking up is allowed, but the notes say it "comes at a cost," without spelling out what that cost is.
- 17 residences were added, built through dispatch missions. Once you designate one, your spouse lives there.
Garden of Trials and New Gear
Garden of Trials is the new combat challenge. It sits near the Axiom Archive Abyss, opens after Journey's End, and has 10 groups to clear. You can bring up to all three characters and pick the order they enter. When one falls, the next continues the fight. Food cannot be used for healing inside, and each group you clear enhances one of your existing skills, so it is worth doing even if you are not into boss rushes.
The DLC also adds new armor, weapons, mount and pet gear and Abyss gear, several new bosses (some rematchable with Memory Fragments), and a Relic Collector NPC who trades relics from exploration for items.
The Base Game Changes Hidden in 2.04.00
The second half of the notes applies to everyone who updated, DLC or not. These are easy to miss and some are big quality-of-life wins.
The Save File Warning
This is the one line everybody should read. Save files created while the DLC is installed cannot be loaded or used for cross-save in a game version that does not include the DLC. If you play on two platforms and only bought the DLC on one, keep that in mind before you overwrite a cross-save.
NPC Interaction and Trust
The NPC menu was reworked. Basic actions live under Interact, and there are now separate Chat and Gift options for regular NPCs. Chatting lets you share your Knowledge with NPCs to earn trust, new books help you learn residents' preferences, and the game now shows the cooldown before the same interaction can raise trust again.
Combat Tweaks
- The Counter attack has improved animation and effects.
- Oongka's Scatter Shot and Damiane's Shield Toss have shorter startup.
- Some illusions failing to charge in the Forgotten General fight were fixed.
- [Kliff] Aerial Swing can now be used while flying after connecting Axiom Force to terrain.
- New life skill tools usable in combat: Frying Pan, Ladle, Frying Pan Lid, Jar Lid and Kitchen Knife. Yes, you can fight with a frying pan now.
Map and UI
- Trade routes are always visible, and you can zoom the map out further.
- On controller, pressing L3 on the map jumps focus to your summoned horse, wagon, ship or Blackstar.
- New indicators show where each mount or pet can be summoned: mid-air, land or underwater.
- Region icons now change color by status: red for blockaded, light red for reconstructing, yellow for incident, grey for uncharted.
- The amount of fog cleared now depends on which mount you are using.
Graphics Settings
PC players get a genuinely useful change: upscaling and frame generation can now be selected separately. Pearl Abyss's own example is pairing DLSS upscaling with FSR Frame Generation. That matters even more given the FSR4 rain bug in the known issues list below.
Smaller Changes Worth Knowing
- Item stack sizes were raised across the board.
- A dedicated insect storage box was added, along with three new legendary insects and sighting reports.
- You can change Greymanes' outfits at the Comrade Dispatch Tent for camp resources.
- Wagons can now take equipment, with new wagon-only gear and a new wainwright at the port.
- New house decorations include paths, trees, flowerbeds, cat watchtowers (from the new Cat Watchtower Merchant) and puppy cushions.
- Golden Apple Hedgehogs spawn less often.
- The Efficiency Abyss Gear changed from "n% chance to reduce crafting materials by 1" to "reduces materials consumed when crafting by n%." That is a straight buff to how predictable crafting costs are.
- Storing or withdrawing several non-stackable items at once now works properly instead of moving only one.
- Getting arrested on a wagon no longer drives you to prison on the wagon.
Hotfix 1: 2.04.00 All Platforms Hotfix
The first hotfix arrived the same evening and focused on things players hit immediately:
- Certain Ascend skills were not applying correctly. Fixed.
- [Damiane] Shield Toss could be spammed underwater. Fixed, so that cheese is gone.
- Glowing Seeds can now be taken out during combat.
- Ship camera fixes: distance no longer changes after aiming the ship cannon, and boarding no longer swings the camera awkwardly.
- Housing fixes for plants clipping through structures and for item placement drifting when your monitor resolution differs from the in-game resolution.
- Footsteps in Unfamiliar Lands can now start from its starting location.
- Kliff no longer respawns in an unreachable spot after certain desert deaths.
Hotfix 2: 2.04.02
Patch 2.04.02 was a bigger cleanup of the new systems:
- Spouses and comrades no longer follow you into the water, and spouses stop acting strangely in combat.
- Pirates no longer teleport when they fall into the water.
- Leviakan no longer stops moving in certain situations, and sea serpents actually attack you now.
- Some ships stayed stationary and some had no crew. Both fixed.
- Rewards for certain quests and challenges were not being granted. Fixed.
- Occasional crashes fixed.
- Management facility earnings could increase abnormally. Fixed. If you were farming that, it is closed.
- Waterfalls displayed incorrectly. Fixed.
- Oongka could turn invisible. Fixed.
- The pioneering system now pops a notification in the right-side menu when you enter a pioneerable area so you can start the mission directly.
- [AMD] Graphics errors on driver 26.10.1 fixed.
- Holding up your lantern while diving no longer blocks some interactions, and you can no longer catch fire and get locked out of boarding a ship.
Hotfix 3: 2.04.03 (Halloween Morning)
Patch 2.04.03 went up at 12:00 UTC on October 31, which is 7:00 AM CT. At posting it was live on Steam (PC and Mac), PlayStation and Epic, while Xbox and the Mac App Store were still in progress. The changes:
- Pioneering missions that could not be completed under certain conditions are fixed.
- Gift now lets you select multiple items and set a quantity for each, which makes building trust far less tedious.
- Items were being returned instead of delivered when using Gift. Fixed.
- Festival customer visit intervals no longer get longer at night.
- Flying pets follow properly again.
- Spouses now give gifts properly after marriage.
- Kliff's unlock conditions can be checked during certain quest steps again.
- Characters no longer turn transparent when switching in some cases.
- Character eyes were improved to look clearer.
- Underwater sound effects no longer play on the title screen and other dry places.
- The skills UI for characters you are not currently playing displays correctly.
- [Keyboard and mouse] Overlapping key guides during interactions fixed.
- Your character's arms no longer shake while facing an enemy.
What Is Still Broken
Pearl Abyss keeps a known issues notice that it updated at 14:00 UTC on October 31 (9:00 AM CT). These are the entries that matter most for DLC players:
A few more on the list: underwater movement sounds are missing, the Camel Constellation and a blockaded stronghold sit in an unreachable area, fish caught in some areas cannot move, Greymane faction quests cannot progress while playing as Damiane or Oongka, NPCs needed for quests cannot ride with you on Legendary Animal mounts, and if Evasion Control is set to Hold the default Evasion key still works after rebinding. Mac players have a cursor offset problem when placing furniture at some resolutions and a colorblind filter that does not apply to the UI. On PlayStation, typing pet or horse names too fast on the virtual keyboard can freeze the screen, so type slowly.
Our Take After the First Weekend
Three hotfixes in under two days is a lot, but almost all of them target the new systems rather than core combat, which is the right order of priorities. The changes that will matter most over the next month are the multi-item Gift, the pioneering fix and the closed facility earnings exploit, because those decide how fast you can grind trust and money, and money is what pays for ship parts, residences and castle decorating.
If you have not started yet, our advice is simple. Make sure both the base game and the DLC are on the latest version (mismatches crash the game), finish Howling Hill and the camp expansion so A Wider World opens, and push through Journey's End if you have been putting it off, because the personal quests, Drakesfall Castle and Garden of Trials all sit behind it. Then get your diving suit refined early. Breath capacity is the real wall underwater.
If you play on more than one platform, think about the cross-save warning before you play the DLC on the platform where you own it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the latest Crimson Desert patch?
As of Saturday, October 31, the latest is 2.04.03, posted at 7:00 AM CT. It was live on Steam (PC and Mac), PlayStation and Epic at posting, with Xbox and the Mac App Store still rolling out. Before that came the 2.04.00 launch patch for Charting the Unknown and two hotfixes, the 2.04.00 All Platforms Hotfix and 2.04.02.
Why does my game still say 2.04.00 after updating?
Pearl Abyss said the first hotfix would keep displaying version 2.04.00 even after installation, with the fixes still applied. The displayed number updates correctly with later patches. If you are unsure, check your platform's update queue and make sure both the base game and DLC are fully updated.
When did Charting the Unknown come out?
It released on Thursday, October 29, 2026 at 5:00 PM CT (22:00 UTC) on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and Epic Games Store. Pearl Abyss's launch notice also confirmed it on the Mac App Store, though Mac App Store patches can arrive later than other platforms.
How much does Charting the Unknown cost?
The Steam DLC page lists it at $24.99. It requires Crimson Desert Enhanced. The free 5-hour trial on PlayStation Plus Premium and Deluxe and on Xbox covers only the base game, not the DLC.
How do I start the ocean content in Crimson Desert?
The ocean questline is A Wider World. It begins after you finish Howling Hill in the main story and expand your Greymane camp past a certain level. Ships can then be built through a dispatch mission or bought from fleetmasters around Pywel.
How do I get married in Crimson Desert?
Use Interact > Flirt, then Gift or Chat, to raise an NPC's extra Trust level. Each interaction type only raises it once per day per NPC. At 100 you can propose. Some NPCs have extra conditions, and witches require their sanctum quest. Flirting as one character lowers that NPC's trust with your other characters, so pick your partner with care.
Why can't I finish my pioneering mission?
Patch 2.04.03 fixed pioneering missions that could not be completed under certain conditions. If you are on Xbox or the Mac App Store, that patch was still in progress as of Saturday morning, so the fix may not have reached you yet. Patch 2.04.02 also added a notification when you enter a pioneerable area so you can start the mission directly.
Can I use my DLC save on a platform without the DLC?
No. According to the 2.04.00 notes, saves created while the DLC is installed cannot be loaded or used for cross-save in a version of the game that does not include the DLC.
What is the Garden of Trials?
It is a new combat challenge near the Axiom Archive Abyss that opens after Journey's End. It has 10 groups to beat, you can bring up to three characters in a chosen order, food cannot heal you inside, and each group you clear enhances one of your existing skills.
Is Damiane's End and Beginning quest bugged?
Yes, for some players. Pearl Abyss lists it as a known issue: the quest cannot progress if Journey's End was completed during a specific period. No fix date has been given yet.
