TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 2,013
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
Kliff, stop. I'm warning you. Don't open it. NO. DON'T YOU DA-
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As a guide writer, I love it when a game has lots of locked doors. It's fun tracking down keys, cracking them open, and discovering what treasures are being kept within—or at least it is to me. Crimson Desert has some really great puzzles, whether you're out exploring the world, or trying to crack open a safe like the Hernand Castle Strongbox. One thing I don't like, though: the way Crimson Desert uses its keys.
There are many, many locked doors on the continent of Pywel, and rather than having a key for each individual one, you can get generic 'key' items which you can use with any locked door, except named ones that are sometimes part of quests. That's all fine and dandy. However, simply walking into a door will consume said key and unlock it.
Bear in mind, there's no way to tell whether a door is locked or not in Crimson Desert without first walking into it. "No **cking way" is how I reacted when I first realised this, before proceeding to reload a save and try it on a controller to check it wasn't a control scheme issue—you'll run into this a lot in Crimson Desert, especially on mouse and keyboard.
It wasn't. There's no way to tell if a door is unlocked before pushing it, and pushing it uses any key item you have if it is locked. It's also super sensitive. On at least two occasions I was walking down a corridor as Kliff, tilted to the side very slightly, and veered off course to unlock a door into some random pantry. Thanks buddy.
As far as I can tell, with almost 50 hours in the game as I write this, there isn't any item storage in the game that isn't on your person, either, so it's not like you can stow the key items somewhere else, find a door you want to unlock, and then bring one along. You can't store them on your horse either. It kind of makes sense when a portion of Crimson Desert's quests are about doing favors for townsfolk, which gets you more inventory space.
You could just discard the keys on the floor somewhere, though I can't guarantee they'd stay in the same place, and it'd be a big trek to get them each time. It's also not that keys are super rare—you can buy a few in each town and loot them randomly from bandits. It's more that when you actually need a key, you don't have any left because you used them on random doors into sheds and storerooms when you were ...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
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Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
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As a guide writer, I love it when a game has lots of locked doors. It's fun tracking down keys, cracking them open, and discovering what treasures are being kept within—or at least it is to me. Crimson Desert has some really great puzzles, whether you're out exploring the world, or trying to crack open a safe like the Hernand Castle Strongbox. One thing I don't like, though: the way Crimson Desert uses its keys.
There are many, many locked doors on the continent of Pywel, and rather than having a key for each individual one, you can get generic 'key' items which you can use with any locked door, except named ones that are sometimes part of quests. That's all fine and dandy. However, simply walking into a door will consume said key and unlock it.
Bear in mind, there's no way to tell whether a door is locked or not in Crimson Desert without first walking into it. "No **cking way" is how I reacted when I first realised this, before proceeding to reload a save and try it on a controller to check it wasn't a control scheme issue—you'll run into this a lot in Crimson Desert, especially on mouse and keyboard.
It wasn't. There's no way to tell if a door is unlocked before pushing it, and pushing it uses any key item you have if it is locked. It's also super sensitive. On at least two occasions I was walking down a corridor as Kliff, tilted to the side very slightly, and veered off course to unlock a door into some random pantry. Thanks buddy.
As far as I can tell, with almost 50 hours in the game as I write this, there isn't any item storage in the game that isn't on your person, either, so it's not like you can stow the key items somewhere else, find a door you want to unlock, and then bring one along. You can't store them on your horse either. It kind of makes sense when a portion of Crimson Desert's quests are about doing favors for townsfolk, which gets you more inventory space.
You could just discard the keys on the floor somewhere, though I can't guarantee they'd stay in the same place, and it'd be a big trek to get them each time. It's also not that keys are super rare—you can buy a few in each town and loot them randomly from bandits. It's more that when you actually need a key, you don't have any left because you used them on random doors into sheds and storerooms when you were ...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?