Crimson Desert's Charting the Unknown DLC is out now and takes you to sea

Crimson Desert's first paid expansion, Charting the Unknown, is out now. Pearl Abyss launched it simultaneously across every platform the game is on, at 3PM PDT / 6PM EDT on October 29, 2026.

It costs £19.99 / $24.99, and it's an expansion, not a standalone, so you'll need the base game. Pearl Abyss also says you need to have completed the main story quest to access all of the content, so if you haven't seen the credits yet, that's your homework.

The feature list is big: new stories, ocean and underwater exploration, romance and marriage, business management and expanded housing. Push Square says the base game's map becomes just a corner of the overall map once the DLC is installed, which is a wild thing to say about a game that was already huge.

There's also a secret, easily missable kraken encounter at the bottom of the ocean, according to a report relayed on Steam. Consider that your reason to go diving.

Then there are the ships. A rowboat runs 2,000 camp funds, the small ship 40,000 and the medium one 1.2 million. The biggest pirate ship costs 6 million, and Reddit has noticed. "I'm sorry 6 MILLION?!?!?!" read the title of one thread, which turned into a swap meet for money-making tips, including donating to church donation boxes for a bonus to camp resources gathered of up to +200%.

Early reception on Steam is good. The DLC sat at Mostly Positive after 250 reviews, with players praising Pearl Abyss for the year of free updates alongside this expansion. Some players are reporting a "game breaking bug" in the DLC's first quest, though.

It hasn't pulled a huge crowd back yet. Roughly 12 hours after launch, the game had a 24-hour peak of 16,955 concurrent Steam players per SteamDB, the report said, well short of its all-time high of 276,261. That report pointed to Phantom Blade Zero's big launch the same weekend as a likely factor.

Pearl Abyss recommends updating to the latest game version before you jump in so the base game and DLC work as intended.