Best Skills in Crimson Desert to unlock early

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Best skills
Unlocking skills with Abyss Artifacts
Learning skills from NPCs

The best skills in Crimson Desert are something you'll have to choose carefully, as your abilities and powers, bought with Abyss Artifacts (and occasionally learned by observing other characters perform certain skills) are essential to progress and even to solving certain puzzles and abilities. Below we'll cover all the different skills in Crimson Desert that you can learn, cover which ones are best to get early for each character, and what you need to know about learning skills as a system in Crimson Desert.

Best skills in Crimson Desert for every character

Below we've listed all the best skills for you to prioritize first in your playthrough, broken down by each of the Crimson Desert characters and the skill trees that they're under.

KLIFF
- Stamina (Blue)
  - Armed Combat: Considering that most of what you do in Crimson Desert is sword combat, levelling up basic damage and sword skills is essential. Put loads of points into this.
  - Grappling/ Lariat: This slam move is great against groups, doing major AOE damage and destroying nearby structures too.
  - Turning Slash Expertise: Levelling up your most powerful attack is great against bosses, especially in the period after finishers where they're still recovering.
- Spirit (Green)
  - Force Palm / Expertise: The optimum strategy against bosses is to stun them for finishers, and Force Palm upgrades make that far easier.
  - Focus / Focused Insight: This upgrade lets you parry enemies while in Focus mode, which gives you incredibly easier counters against bosses and can be used infinitely. It's kind of broken.
  - Keen Senses / Dodge: A timed dodge makes you far more effective in combat against all enemy types.
  - Nature's Echo / Echoing Forward Slash: Power up your heavy attacks for even more damage? Yes please.
- Health (Red)
  - Axiom Force / Aerial Swing: It takes some practice and a lot of stamina to get right, but this power and the Aerial Maneuver ability make platforming and climbing much easier.
DAMIANE
- Stamina (Blue)
  - Shield Toss / Expertise: Damiane thrives against groups, and her bouncing shield is her greatest strength. Double down on it early.
  - Piercing Light / Rend Armor: Damiane's stab moves are really good, so enhancing them to the max is worth doing,
  - Smiting Bolt / Sure Hit: Damiane's heavy attack is strong, but granting it guaranteed accuracy will do a lot to ensure steady damage output.
- Spirit (Green)
  - Shield Sentinel: A passive drone that supports you with its own attacks is a really strong buff, especially as it requires very little from you.
  - Flurry of Kicks: This heavy barrage is really good for setting enemies up for finishers or driving back regular foes.
- Health (Red)
  - Skystep: A basic upgrade to Damiane's platforming that's more of a requirement than a real buff.
OONGKA
- Stamina (Blue)
  - Rampage / Sure Hit: Oongka's strongest moves need to guarantee landing to keep up the assault, so this accuracy buff helps with that.
  - Armed Combat / Dual Wielding Mastery: Oongka's most powerful when dual-wielding the biggest Crimson Desert weapons, so make sure that you're leaning into that build with this potent upgrade.
  - Quaking Fury / Rend Armor: Another great boss-killing attack, this one shatters through defenses for maximum impact.
- Spirit (Green)
  - Explosive Strike: A devastating attack that's something of a boss-killer. Worth investing in all the way.
- Health (Red)
  - Vertical Flight: If you've unlocked Oongka's jetpack, this makes it far easier to control.

The other important thing to remember while playing Crimson Desert is to periodically invest in your core Stamina, Health and Spirit stats, ideally at a rate of raising them all by one at least every couple of in-game chapters. You'll also want to double-check abilities to see how much Stamina and Spirit they cost to use, as it's entirely possible to buy an ability like the Axiom Force Aerial Swing, but be unable to use it because it costs more Stamina than your current maximum.

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How to get Abyss Artifacts to unlock skills

Most abilities and skills you unlock along the way are bought with Abyss Artifacts, items you can find in any of the following ways:

Mission completion. Many missions have Abyss Artifacts as rewards. You'll be told in advance if they are the reward for doing so.
XP gain in combat. As you defeat enemies, you'll fill the curved yellow bar next to the minimap. When that maxes out, you'll get an Abyss Artifact and it resets.
Sealed Abyss Artifact challenges. Around the world you'll find Sealed Abyss Artifacts (marked as purple cubes on the mini-map). When you pick one up, you'll get a unique challenge. Complete it, and you'll get a reward, which is usually a regular Abyss Artifact.
Abyss Cresets. These are usually unlocked through puzzles like the Crimson Desert Dragon's Stone Chamber, and double also as fast travel points.
Purchased from merchants. Occasionally merchants will sell Abyss Artifacts in small quantities, such as the network of Witches that can also install the Crimson Desert Abyss Gears in your weapons.

How to learn skills from NPCs and enemies

At certain times in the game you'll be able to watch NPCs perform skills to learn them for yourself for free, without requiring an Abyss Artifact. This could be from enemies performing certain attacks with which they try to hit you, or it could be friendly NPCs performing actions that you can mimic.

To watch and learn skills is an automatic process. All you need to do is stand close enough to the NPC and the screen will go blue when they're performing the skill, along with a meter building in the top-left corner of the screen. Depending on the skill, you may need to watch them perform it multiple times to learn it yourself.

Keep in mind that no skill is gated behind this experience completely. If you kill a boss before learning the skill from them, there will be other opportunities to buy or learn it later, even if it takes a while. I've seen multiple bosses perform the "Multishot" skill, for example.