The last two patches for Crimson Desert have been a bit on the quiet side in terms of content, adding cross-save and fixing several bugs. Which is perfectly fine – the development team doesn’t always have to drop massive overhauls, dozens of new armor sets, and so on. What’s next, anyway? A complete overhaul of the trading system?
Oh. Oh no.
A new update is now live, and if it wasn’t obvious, this is aimed squarely at almost every aspect of trading. What are some of the most noteworthy aspects? Is it finally time to engage in the real endgame (besides fashion, re-blockades, and Hard mode), which even the most hardcore fan admitted was kind of underdeveloped for a long time? Let’s dive into everything, starting with…
133 New Trading Posts
Ever noticed how few and far between trading posts could feel at times? Update 1.16 solves that problem by adding 133 of them. Yes, 133. They won’t all be available at the start – many are tied to completing quests – but others will naturally appear as you progress through the story (so finally a reason to leave Hernand). If you’ve been thinking that Pailune could use a dedicated Trading Post, especially considering how prominent a city it is, then voila.
Trading Post Revamps and Improvements
All these new Trading Posts would be pointless if the system remained the same, though. Thankfully, the developer has implemented some much-needed changes and improvements. For starters, the overall profit from trading has increased, making it more worthwhile to engage in. Furthermore, Royal Trading Posts have seen their trade good prices quadrupled, making them a prime destination if you have the right stock.
The types and quantities of trade goods available at Posts have also been adjusted, and selling an excessive amount at a single place will cause prices to change. And if you’re wondering about the point of selling to places difficult to reach by wagon, especially when nearby locations were already good enough, the former now offers higher profits. There’s never been a better time to engage in a cross-region road trip. But what about amateur traders who always found themselves getting lost?
Wagon Routes on the Minimap
That’s right – wagon routes are now showcased on the minimap, making it easier than ever to keep track of where you need to go next. It may seem like a small thing, especially with all the other navigation tools available. However, it goes a long way toward ensuring that you really can’t get lost when trying to sell those Packaged Jades or Ceremonial Swords to different regions.
New Wagon Workshops and Functions
To make things even better, all wagon workshops now function as Trading Posts, allowing you to package and load trade goods when nothing else is available. This probably wouldn’t have worked in the base game because there weren’t many wagon workshops to begin with, so the developer has added seven more to the world. You can find them in Hernand, Urdavah, Varnia, Tommaso, Pailune, Delesyia and Demeniss, ensuring you’re never too far from a workshop.
Trade Tab on the World Map
With the incentive to travel to remote places and sell the trade goods they so desperately need – for a tidy profit, no less – how do you go about finding these places? Why, with the Trade tab on the World Map screen.
It now displays all the Trading Posts, including those of the royal variety and even wagon workshops. By checking the details of a specific Post, you can now see the market prices for trade goods. There are even filters to sort desired trade goods, so you’ll know which places are selling exactly what you want, maximizing the “buy low, sell high” philosophy all the more.
Oh, and it’s also possible to check wagon routes from the Trade tab as well, if you really want to know how far away that destination is. If you get lost at this point, well, we don’t really know what to tell you.
New Trade Goods and Stack Limits
To cater to veteran traders and mix up the market, the latest patch introduces 24 new high-value trade goods alongside four new regular types. It’s also possible to now shift trade goods between your wagon and horse directly, and when packing them, they now stack up to 10 or 100, depending largely on their price. And if you’re someone who always picked up trade goods while exploring, thinking to leave them for another time, those stacks have also increased up to five or 50 per slot in your inventory. If that wasn’t enough, you can now sell a single trade good.
Dude, Where’s My Wagon
As a side note for Royal Trading Posts: Oftentimes, delivering trade goods would cause your wagon to disappear. Not the nicest thing, especially considering your service, but Version 1.16 has seemingly addressed this, and it should no longer happen. A fantastic change overall – yet “should” is the key word here. Some players have reported the issue persisting, leaving them without a wagon, so keep that in mind if it happens to you.
Price Tendency
It’s always nice to find features that weren’t specified in the patch notes, and price tendency definitely stands out. When viewing trade goods at a Post, you’ll see specific graphs which show the trend of their prices. This allows for planning ahead of time and accounting for any potential fluctuations that could occur. A small addition but significant all the same.
Updated Ray Generation and FSR 4.1 on RDNA 3 GPUs
Would it be a hefty new patch without some new graphical features? Probably not, but Version 1.16 offers a bit more than usual. Besides updating AMD FSR’s SDK to 2.3.0 on PC, there’s now support for FSR 4.1 on the Radeon RX 7000 Series of GPUs, thus improving image quality and performance. Ray Regeneration has also been updated to reduce flickering on the edges of window frames and other boundaries, which should mean fewer headaches when navigating building interiors or your own house. An issue in certain places that caused distant objects to not be visible has also thankfully been fixed.
All the Best to All the Rest
Even if none of this convinced you to give trading a try, the latest update is full of lots of other much-needed fixes. For those who think explosives are the best martial art throughout Pywel, they can now stack up to ten and be designed to quick slots. Certain situations where a visual effect made it tough to see an enemy’s weakness have been fixed, alongside a bug that made memory fragment locations not appear when Blinding Flash was used. And for all those who specced into Silver acquisition for their Abyss Gear but saw no gains when opening Copper Pouches, that’s also been fixed. And if you’ve been wondering why the Fallen Abyss would ascend, despite the deactivation of its circuit, that should no longer happen.
There’s still more to come for Crimson Desert, including those long-awaited story improvements, and who knows? We may even see a tease for the upcoming DLC at some point. Until then, the wave of post-launch support continues, and we’re eager to see what else the development team has planned. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll get a vacation before the year is out.
