Crimson Desert's quarry is giving players "PTSD," probably because they keep missing the key secret: "You don't need to kill hundreds of enemies"

Crimson Desert players keep hitting an early roadblock in the form of a bandit-infested quarry. The seemingly endless waves of enemies in Crimson Desert's Karin Quarry feel downright broken to some players, who are now debating whether the mission is terrible or simply badly explained – after all, there seems to be a shortcut to taking down the bandits in a hurry.

"I have PTSD after clearing the Quarry," as one big post on the Crimson Desert subreddit puts it, offering an image of a shaken Jon Snow as a metaphor for the ordeal. Another post puts it in more graphic terms: "Ok fucking how with the quarry? ?!? There's a BILLION enemies and random shit blows up when you hit it and kills you . This area is fucking pissing me off!!"

You'll see this kind of talk come up over and over again in the subreddit, as you can get the Karin Quarry quest pretty early in your playtime with Crimson Desert. That means loads of low-level players have ended up in an intense combat arena well before they're equipped for it, and because gamers are who they are – I'm no exception – they're banging their heads against the challenge rather than just coming back when they're stronger.

As our guides editor Joel has noted, each enemy defeated knocks down the progress bar for the mission by just a half-percent, so to complete the mission, you'd need to kill nearly 200 foes altogether. Your progress doesn't reset when you die, so you can complete the mission through pure attrition, as many players have, but apparently, there's a smarter option.

"You don't need to kill hundreds of enemies," Glittering-Lunch1778 reveals in a comment. "Just destroy the barracks and the other couple of structures listed on the objectives. Each one is an instant 33.3% off the bar of enemies defeated. I did run the gauntlet, though. I didn't find out the truth until I looked it up after. I was like 'there's no way that was how that was meant to be completed.' If it makes people feel better, we all came out the other side way better at combat."

Yeah, that does sound a whole lot better. This is the kind of thing you'd usually attribute to user error, but if that many players are all missing the relevant structures, I'm gonna say that the issue lies more with the game itself. Either way, consider this your PSA: if you stumble on Karin Quarry early in your time with Crimson Desert, fight smarter, not harder.

If you insist on doing it the hard way, check out our guide to the best weapons in Crimson Desert.