Much like its design philosophy, Crimson Desert’s marketing strategy was, essentially, “yes to all of it.” Before release, its absurd density of seemingly mismatched features made for baffling yet fascinating trailer footage, particularly Kliff’s apparent capability of turning bears, wolves, dodo birds, dinosaurs, and dragons into domesticated mounts.
Prospective players were understandably very excited about the menagerie of mountable monsters. Since Crimson Desert’s launch last week, however, those countless Kliffs have realized with growing dismay that they don’t get to keep all its more exotic mounts.
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Unfortunately, any time Kliff gets to ride something more interesting than the humble equine, it’s a temporary privilege. Bears, for example, can only be ridden for a brief time after defeating them in combat, and will turn hostile as soon as you dismount. Similarly, the dodo-like kuku bird can only be mounted temporarily after unkukuing its rider.
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Kliff’s dragon, meanwhile, is a late game quest reward, and even then can only be summoned once an hour for a few minutes of aerial firespewing. Otherwise, if you ride any non-horse creature to a stable, you’ll find the caretakers unwilling to accept your would-be companion as a permanent mount.
Given that a bear is universally cooler to ride than a horse, players are, understandably, pretty miffed to find that their dreams of riding around on things with crueler diets than oats have been denied. I’ve rarely seen such unified heartbreak from a new player base: I’ve currently got 7 tabs open collecting threads from the Crimson Desert subreddit where users are begging Pearl Abyss to rethink its fantasy mount tightfistedness.
“It’s a solo game, who am I hurting if I put the bear in the stables?” asks redditor WanderingMustache. “Or if I want to ride the dragon for 2 hours straight?”
While I suspect WanderingMustache hasn’t fully thought through the ramifications of putting a bear where horses live, they make a good point: While the combat capabilities of the temporary beast mounts might have been a player balance issue in an MMO like Pearl Abyss’ Black Desert, who’s left at a disadvantage with someone enjoying bear cavalry privileges in a singleplayer game? Aside from the stable hands?
Given the widespread dissatisfaction of the horsebound masses, it wouldn’t surprise me to see some of these mounts eventually become permanent—even if they lose some of their combat utility in the process. In the meantime, players will have to comfort themselves with the knowledge that it’s better to have ridden a bear and lost than never to have ridden a bear at all.
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