How long is Crimson Desert? Time to beat revealed

The time it takes to beat Crimson Desert is a fair amount - at least dozens of hours if you plan to beat the story and come out the other side. However, that number could reach the hundreds if you plan to comb all of Pywel and achieve 100% completion.

Essentially, the time it takes for you to beat Crimson Desert depends on your skill level and what kind of experience you want to have, but we've got the basics here, having completed the game ourselves.

How long is Crimson Desert?

Your time to beat Crimson Desert will vary depending on how long you want to play it, but most players will need between 60-90 hours for a proper playthrough, and potentially more. Here's how those numbers break down:

Just story/main campaign: 35-50 hours
Story + side content (standard playthrough): 60-90 hours
100% Completion: 140-200 hours

The variation for these numbers is due to the fact that Crimson Desert can be very difficult in places, especially boss fights and certain puzzles, where challenge can ramp up with warning. Skilled or lucky players might breeze through these encounters quickly, while other players could be stuck on them for hours.

Latest Videos From

Watch full video here:

For this reason, most players will have to engage with side content fairly frequently, or risk being underpowered or poorly prepared for the challenges on the critical path. Beyond that though, Crimson Desert is a huge game, with plenty of side quests, challenges, locations, secrets, and optional content to find, easily comparable to something like The Witcher 3. Players who want to exhaust Pywel for content will likely have to commit weeks, or even months of time to it.

If you want to get through the huge RPG as quickly as possible, you might want to use Crimson Desert fast travel, as well as our guides to completing the most difficult areas and puzzles. Just some examples are the Crimson Desert Ancient Ruins puzzle, and the Crimson Desert Abyss Cell puzzle.

CATEGORIES

Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and Very Tired Man with a BA from Brunel University, a Masters from Sussex University and a decade working in games journalism, often focused on guides coverage but also in reviews, features and news. His love of games is strongest when it comes to groundbreaking narratives like Disco Elysium, UnderTale and Baldur's Gate 3, as well as innovative or refined gameplay experiences like XCOM, Sifu, Arkham Asylum or Slay the Spire. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at Eurogamer, Gfinity, USgamer, SFX Magazine, RPS, Dicebreaker, VG247, and more.