First paid DLC lands
Crimson Desert has a new reason to sail back to Pywel. Charting the Unknown, the game’s first paid DLC, went live on 29 October 2026, and Pearl Abyss’s launch notice also points console players to a 5-hour free trial of the base game for anyone still on the fence.
Where it is available, and how you buy it
Pearl Abyss lists the DLC on Steam, the PlayStation Store, the Xbox Store and the Epic Games Store, and its launch notice adds that it is now on the Mac App Store too. The Mac version may arrive slightly later than the other platforms, and the studio points players to the patch notes for the current status. In the game, you buy it from the “Buy DLC” menu on the title screen. Pearl Abyss also says to update to the latest game version first so the base game and the DLC work as intended.
On Steam the DLC requires the base game, Crimson Desert Enhanced. The Steam page’s Windows minimum specs are a Ryzen 5 2600X or Core i5-8500, 16 GB of RAM, a GTX 1060 or RX 5500 XT, 50 GB of storage and an SSD.
What Charting the Unknown adds
The headline feature is the sea. According to Pearl Abyss, Kliff, Oongka and Damiane can now dive underwater to find ruins, treasure chests, new creatures and mounts, and you can build a ship and sail the Great Ocean of Pywel. The Steam page describes new islands off the coast and sunken ruins to explore. Staying under the surface uses up breath, so the studio suggests gear such as a diving suit.
- Three new storylines, one each for Kliff, Oongka and Damiane, plus an ocean-focused story.
- Romance and festivals, with relationships that can lead to marriage and visitors to your Greymane Camp.
- Upgraded housing, which lets you build a house from the ground up.
- Greymane Castles: three castles you can claim and decorate.
- Management: rent and run businesses, from a restaurant in Vellua to a smithy at Zargan Tankworks.
- Garden of Trials: a combat challenge that has you face earlier bosses one after another, with special rewards.
Not everything is open from the start
Pearl Abyss says some features unlock only once prerequisites are met. The three character storylines start from the Journal menu after you finish the main story. The ocean storyline opens after you complete “Howling Hill”, and building your own ship needs a related questline, which appears once your Greymane Camp is set up there. The upgraded housing system needs the camp and Luke’s Request, under the “Grounds of the Sunrise” faction quest. Garden of Trials opens after you clear the main questline.
We think that is worth knowing before you buy. This is an add-on for players who have already got well into the game, not a fresh start. If you are mid-story, expect to finish some of the main quests first.
The free trial, and what it leaves out
The trial runs for 5 hours and covers the Crimson Desert Enhanced base game. It is open to PlayStation Plus Premium and Deluxe subscribers on PlayStation, and to all players on Xbox. If you buy the full game during or after the trial, your progress carries over. It does not include Charting the Unknown, and it is limited to one use per account: once the 5 hours are played, it ends and cannot be restarted.
| Platform | Who can use the trial | Available until |
|---|---|---|
| PlayStation | PS Plus Premium and Deluxe subscribers | 29 October 2027 |
| Xbox | All players | 7 January 2027 |
The Xbox window is much shorter than the PlayStation one, so Xbox players who want to try it should not leave it long. We like the move: a free trial costs nothing, and the carry-over means those five hours are not wasted if you do buy. We have also covered the boss saying critics didn’t get enough time, and letting people judge the game for themselves is a sensible call.
Our take
On paper, the pitch is clear: a bigger world to travel across, more to do between fights, and a boss challenge for people who like to test themselves. The trial only covers the base game, so the best use of it is to see whether Pywel suits you before you think about the add-on. Other games have also been sorting out their post-launch content lately, such as The Blood of Dawnwalker’s first big update, and this is a similar moment for Crimson Desert.
