Crimson Desert Now Lets You Ride Lions, Tigers, and Bears

One of the loudest complaints when Crimson Desert launched was that you could tame a bear, ride it into battle, and then watch it vanish like it never happened. Trailers had shown off lions and wolves as rideable companions, so when the actual game treated them as temporary taxi services, players felt cheated. Patch 1.06.00 fixes that in a big way: lions, tigers, bears, wolves, boars, deer, mountain goats, kuku birds, iguanas, raptors, and camels can all now be registered as permanent special mounts.

Pearl Abyss explains that ferocious animals can be tamed by subduing and feeding them, while certain species require unique methods. I fully expect the lion taming process to be significantly more involved than befriending a deer, and honestly, it should be. The payoff of riding a lion across Pywel needs to feel earned. Combined with the five legendary mounts the studio added a few weeks after launch (White Bear, Silver Fang, Snowwhite Deer, Rock Tusk Warthog, and Icicle Edge Alpine Ibex), the mount roster is now massive, and every one of them is yours to keep.

This is exactly the kind of update that makes Pearl Abyss's post-launch approach so effective. The studio's PR and marketing director Will Powers has said none of the game's updates were pre-planned, with changes iterated in real time based on player feedback. That's not just PR speak here; you can trace a direct line from launch-week complaints about temporary mounts to the five legendary mounts added shortly after, and now to this full roster of 12 new special mounts. Steam reviews have climbed from Mixed at launch to Very Positive, sitting at 86 percent positive according to multiple reports. Pearl Abyss earned that the hard way.

Beyond the Mounts

The patch isn't just about animals. A new Extraction feature lets you recover materials used to refine equipment by visiting a smithy. You can revert gear back to its base refinement level, recovering 100% of special materials like Artifacts and Aeserion's Scales, and roughly 70% of common materials like iron ore and bloodstones. For anyone who's dumped resources into a weapon they've since replaced, this is a lifeline. Late-game gear progression in these kinds of RPGs can feel punishing when you realize you've invested everything into the wrong piece; Extraction doesn't eliminate that risk, but it softens the blow considerably.

There's also a new Sigil of Valor item, purchasable from the Secret Shop NPC in Pororin, that makes your pet dogs attack enemies when equipped. Oongka gets new unarmed combat skills. Swords now have visible sheaths, with a toggle if you prefer the old look. And Pearl Abyss added a claw machine to the Laughing Marionette circus area, because apparently no open-world RPG is complete without one. The claw machine drops 12 types of lighting items, a chair, special headgear, Abyss Artifacts, and Abyss Gears. Quality-of-life improvements round things out too, including Clean All, Butcher All, and Obtain All Seeds batch commands for inventory management, plus a Night Tone Mode that softens colors and brightens dark areas for players who prefer exploring at night.

What stands out to me about Crimson Desert's post-launch run isn't any single patch; it's the pace. Pearl Abyss blew through a roadmap that was supposed to stretch to June in a matter of weeks, and it keeps adding features that weren't on that roadmap at all. As IGN noted, Pearl Abyss's experience running weekly updates for Black Desert Online for over a decade is clearly informing how it supports Crimson Desert. The difference is that this is a single-player game getting MMO-level post-launch attention, which is something you almost never see.

I covered the 1.06.00 patch notes in full earlier today, but the mount changes deserve their own spotlight because they represent something bigger than a bullet point. Pearl Abyss listened, moved fast, and delivered the version of the feature players wanted from day one. Over 70 additional fixes to UI, graphics, localization, and controls ship alongside s, all available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.