Crimson Desert: Don’t Lose Your Balance Over This Quest

Crimson Desert kicks off its “Abyss Without Balance” quest by dropping players on a floating island, which is already a pretty bold way to say welcome to the neighborhood. From this precarious perch, the goal is to march over to the Axiom Archive and somehow restore balance to the Abyss, a task that sounds straightforward until the ground literally isn’t there anymore.

Floating Islands Require Grounded Patience

In Crimson Desert, there’s a bit of hopping across tiny floating platforms to follow something called the Ethereal Pathway, which is a test of patience all on its own. But then, why does using abilities like Axiom Force and Force Palm to lift random objects and light up lanterns feel like trying to assemble furniture with instructions in a foreign language?

A player first stumbles upon this whole mess in Chapter 1 during the main story bit titled “The First Encounter.” After waltzing through a shining gate in Hernand Castle, they find themselves on that aforementioned floating island with a locked Axiom Archive tower looming in front of them, all as part of a smaller task called “Polar Opposites.”

Axiom Force Makes A Terrible Assembly Manual

To even get inside, Crimson Desert players have to solve a little floor puzzle using that Axiom Force ability to grab and spin two round tiles sitting right in front of the door. A controller user might press and hold the left stick to aim, grab a tile, and then use the right stick to rotate it, while a mouse and keyboard player would use Tab to aim and the mouse to do the twisting.

Grabbing the tile on the right means snagging the outer part of the circle, which makes the lines pointing up and to the right turn blue, and the whole point is to connect that pipe system. That usually means giving that wheel a good 90-degree counterclockwise turn, then doing the same dance with the left one until everything links up nicely.

This Abyss Isn’t So Balanced After All

Once that puzzle is solved and the doors to the Axiom Archive swing open, a Crimson Desert character meets Alustin, who promptly asks for help restoring balance to the Abyss. The very first step involves heading behind the tower to open a skybridge by using Axiom Force on a little alignment device, which is just a small pillar with a round button begging to be turned.

After hearing a satisfying sizzling sound and seeing the stone give off a white, lightning-like glow, it’s time to let go and watch the skybridge form, leading the way to more floating islands. Jumping from platform to platform becomes the new norm, and if reaching the higher ones proves annoying, aiming those jumps with the left bumper on a controller, or Ctrl on a keyboard, helps a ton. At what seems like a dead end, waiting for a floating platform to arrive feels oddly like waiting for a bus that might just take a person to a higher island, where the next hurdle is removing a wall blocking the floor.

Force Palm Feels Like A Secret Handshake

Crimson Desert’s first proper Abyss puzzle at the end of the path throws a few tricks into the mix. Grabbing the blue cube floating in the center of the area with Axiom Force and dragging it to the deactivated lantern, that stone pillar, makes the floor vanish, which is usually a bad sign but apparently part of the plan.

Dropping down and grabbing a floating tile, then dragging it to a blue slot on the wall, creates an Abyss Cell even if it’s not perfectly placed at first. At this point, a shadowy figure shows up to teach Force Palm, a new ability that feels like a secret handshake nobody warned about. Using Force Palm on that tile on the wall combines the Abyss Cell, which finally starts to make the objective clear.

Skybridges Beat Traffic Any Day

Later, when the quest text tells a player to hang on the middle of the powered device, it means the large, circular doorway that’s just sitting there waiting. Climbing to the center and using Force Palm on it activates the whole thing, finally putting a bow on Crimson Desert’s “Abyss Without Balance” quest.

Finishing this whole ordeal, along with the follow-up task to speak with a woman in white, gets a player a faded abyss artifact for upgrading skills and a palmar pill that acts like a get-out-of-jail-free card for when they inevitably get knocked down.

Flight, or more of an enthusiastic glide, also unlocks, making the trip back to Hernand much less of a leap of faith. The Ethereal Pathway Abyss remains accessible anytime through fast travel for anyone who misses the chaos, offering more puzzles and skybridges to uncover.

How Crimson Desert Reinvents Platforming Puzzles

Crimson Desert throws a lot at a player right from the start, especially in a world as massive as Pywel. An interactive map can save hours of wandering in circles, while picking up life skills like fishing, logging, cooking, and mining turns out to be a surprisingly solid way to keep the coin purse full.

Between all the floating islands and reality-bending puzzles, having a few practical skills to fall back on in Crimson Desert makes the whole journey feel a little less like stumbling through the unknown and a little more like figuring out a beautifully complicated game. After all, anyone can restore balance to an abyss, but can they cook a decent meal while doing it?