While Crimson Desert has a huge variety in Abyss Gears, their uses and limitations are also varied enough to warrant a tier list. Now, to be fair, there isn’t much labor lost in using the underwhelming ones. They can all be slotted in and out for free, so course-correction is flexible.
The real reason you should look at a list is to get a sense of what’s out there, and what’s a potentially big upgrade that you may have missed.
Before we proceed, I’ll have to add a couple disclaimers. Firstly, I will mainly go over the Skill-modifying Abyss Gears. Those that just add stats certainly have their uses, but I’ll focus more on the unique ones with special effects.
The second one is the typical tier list disclaimer that also applies to Abyss Gear. Ultimately, the rule of cool applies in Crimson Desert. Ater you’ve reached the final pips of gear refinement, special Abyss Gears have enough legroom for your subjective preference.
Best and worst Abyss Gears in Crimson Desert (tier list)
For this, I’ll categorize the Abyss Gears between S, A, B, and C tiers. There’s no “D-tier” here, because even the most underwhelming Skill-modifying ones have some uses. That being said, there’s some general (non-Skill) Abyss Gears that you should avoid, and I’ll go over those after I break down this tier list.
All Skill-modifying Abyss Gears tier list
The general idea is that those at the top-tier are the best of their kind, and foundational to the most powerful builds in Crimson Desert. Meanwhile, as you go lower, things start becoming more stiuational, and those at C-tier can be too weak to justify taking up a slot.
Now, as with any tier list, there are edge-cases and nuances with some Abyss Gears, so I’ll go over them as I explain each tier below. Since almost all of them are Skill-aligned, here’s some legends just in case:
- Light attack Abyss Gears = Triggered either by jump + attack, or every fourth attack, or attacking right after dodging.
- Heavy attack spam Abyss Gears = Trigger on every heavy attack, called “Forward Slash” in-game
- Turning Slash = Triggers on LMB + RMB (PC)
- Spinning Slash = Triggers on Shift + LMB
- Evasive Slash = Dodge + Attack simultaneously
- Dodge = Only triggers if through the Evasive Roll Skill (dodge after taking damage)
- Stab = Requires either a sprinting stab, charged stab, or roll into stab
- Unarmed Strike = Triggers after the end of the unarmed strike combo
- Parry Abyss Gears = Triggers after successfully parrying, including parries assisted by Focus
- Grappling Abyss Gears = Triggers after doing a Lariat or Clothesline takedown
- Finisher Abyss Gears = Trigger on doing a finisher, which is when you do an elaborate execution animation and gain i-frames
- Imbuement Abyss Gears are automatically triggered by Imbuing a Skill with that Element (you need both the Abyss Gear, the required investment into Imbue Element, as well as access to that specific Element in Crimson Desert)
S-tier Abyss Gears
If you haven’t tried things under this tier, you are missing out on the most broken Abyss Gear interactions on Crimson Desert (or in one case an overlooked unique use-case). Some of these are actually easy to come by on the critical path (like Crow’s Pursuit). Yes, the game can hand you the best-in-slot options just like that.
- Momentum: This is technically not like the other ones mentioned here, because it changes stats rather than add any unique special effect on a Skill. However, this is one that you don’t want to skip. Momentum boosts damage of all Turning Slash and Turning Slash-modifying special Abyss Gear abilities by 33%. This Skill is de-facto the best one in Crimson Desert due to high damage, i-frames while winding it up, high stagger, and even further boosts from Imbuements. Get it from the Stag Lord helm and put it on your own every playthrough.
- Shadow Claws (Heavy Attack spam): Adds a series of claw attacks that overlays on top of your heavy attack. If all three hits the same enemy (which is possible with many bosses), this is the highest raw DPS increase out of any Abyss Gear in Crimson Desert.
- Crow’s Pursuit (Heavy Attack spam): Throws out a series of tracking crows that either hit a secondary target, or just come back on your current target if there’s nothing else to hit. High stagger, decent damage, and accurate tracking makes it good for some extra damage against hoards as well as building up boss stun-meter.
- Groundsurge (Turning Slash): Here, we have arguably the best Turning Slash Abyss Gear in Crimson Desert. Groundsurge creates a long fissure ahead of you, which hits all enemies for some damage, and then re-triggers to explode briefly afterwards for another tick of damage plus stagger. On bosses, this builds up the stun meter fast and does a hefty chunk of direct damage.
- Parting Gift (Dodge): This creates two bomblets that deal deceptively high damage when they detonate. Against a full battalion of soliders or in a high-density enemy camp, you can take damage on purpose to trigger these, and often find them killing a few grunt enemies with the explosion. You can stick this one on your boots, and basically have one free extra way to deal with crowds. The only downside is that you can indeed take self-damage from these.
- Pillar of Wind (Wind Imbuement): This one is S-tier just for the utility. Pillar of Wind doesn’t deal much damage, but creates a vertical wind-drift which gives a huge elevation boost for free, and with some Gliding-related Skill unlocks, this is the easiest way to cover huge distances. This is arguably the most underrated movement tech in Crimson Desert.
- Volcanic Eruption (Fire Imbuement): Easily the best Imbuement-related Abyss Gear in the game right now. This one throws out giant meteors where your Skill lands, and these deal both tremendous damage and stagger. If you do it on the colossal enemies such that all four meteors land on them (easiet to execute with an Imbued arrow Skill), it might be the fastest way to stun them.
- Putrid Touch (Grapple): Does a poison explosion on your Lariat target that both deals higher than usual impact damage, plus some lingering poison damage over time. The impact itself is also the full Lariat area-of-effect, meaning you can Clotheline on an enemy clump to deal some good damage while staying mobile.
A-tier Abyss Gears
These ones aren’t quite top-of-the-line, but you I feel they pack enough punch or provide something unique enough to be food for thought.
At large, this tier has Abyss Gears that fall into one of two categories .
One, they’re strong, but still have some limitation that makes them lesser than S-tier material. Alterantively, they have great merit in uplifting the Skills they empower, but the Skills or triggering methods have limitations of thier own.
- Ator’s Orb (Heavy Attack spam): Ator Orb is stylistically very unique, and a perfect fit for someone trying to do a paladin or technomancer archetype in Crimson Desert. It creates hovering orbs after just swinging your heavy attack (without even hitting anything), and the lasers then shoot at enemies before they expire. However, its twofold problems are lackluster damage and the potential for its lasers to miss. It’s still at least A-tier because on bigger bosses, the lasers hit more reliably and deal a great deal of stun over time.
- Frost Spike (Turning Slash): This is similar to Groundsurge, and does an icy fissure instead. While the damage is slightly higher than Groundsurge (and among the highest), it doesn’t have the same amount of stagger. The big wind-up also means that Frost Spike can’t be spammed fast enough to freeze most bosses quickly. Overall, it’s good, but plays second fiddle of Groundsurge, which you can get much earlier in Crimson Desert.
- Greysoul Howling (Turning Slash): This spawns a phantom that does another Turning Slash. Unlike what you’d expect from the Echoing Strikes Skill, this does a significant amount of damage — the highest damage among all Turning Slash Abyss Gears, for that matter. The only issue is that it hits only one or two targets, so it’s not that ground-breaking against crowds. However, if you want some high Spirit-cost but high DPS Turning Slashes, Groundsurge + Greysoul Howling is objectively the best combo.
- Hound’s Claw (Spinning Slash): Whenever you do a Spinning Slash, a second sweep happens in a full circle around you. This has a large area of effect and surprisingly good damage. Despite no bleed effect like I hoped for, Hound’s Claw is one of the best pure mobbing tools at relatively sustainable Stamina cost. A potential issue or bug with this is that it disables follow-up Spinning Slash attacks if you got that Skill upgrade.
- Spirit’s Judgment (Evasive Slash): This is the only Evasive Slash Abyss Gear worth using in Crimson Desert. Whenever you do an Evasive Slash (dodge-attack), this brings down a giant spectral knight who slams down the target of your attack. It doesn’t do as much damage as the visuals would suggest, but it’s useful for going up against bosses that you need to kite. If you just spam this during an otherwise hard melee boss fight, it’s a slow but steady way to win.
- Ancient Wrath (Evasive Slash): Spawns some flame orbs when you do dodge-attack, which then seek out enemies and explode. In practice, this does about the same amount of damage and stun as Spirit’s Judgment, so I tried both in the same kite-and-dodge-attack spam build, and found the over damage lacking. I would only use one or the other, and even then, it’s not worth making a whole playstyle around because you dodge-attacks aren’t a foolproof way to kite.
- Shattering Frost (Ice Imbuement): Ice-Imbued skills do a pulse of ice damage, and freezes weaker enemies. While the damage is no match for Volcanic Eruption, the large impact area and high chance to freeze makes it a decent way to pull and kill crowds with one giant Shattering Frost + Turning Slash combo.
- Colossal Might (Grapple): This adds a high amount of raw damage (and even an explosion) to your Lariats and Clotheslines. If you want to do a RKO-outta-nowhere playstyle in Crimson Desert, this is probably the most fitting. The issue is that the damage seems to vary highly based on, oddly enough, the angle of the terrain. At its best, it’s outright better than Putrid Touch, but the consistency problem is still hard to shake.
B-tier Abyss Gears
B-tier Abyss Gears are what I’d call slottable in Crimson Desert. They do have their special effects that you can build around, but often this will be to more niche use-case and/or lower payoffs than the ones I’ve already talked about.
- Abyssal Rays (Light Attack) does a good amount of damage, but at such a short range that it often doesn’t land. Wind Slash has the opposite problem where it catches all enemies ahead of you, but doesn’t do a lot of damage. For these Light Attack Abyss Gears, the only good use case I’ve found is dual-wielding, and stacking a few of these on the off-hand weapon. If you then alternate between two Heavy Attacks and a Light Attack, you get some add-on damage at no extra stamina cost.
- Ancient Retribution (Spinning Slash): Adds some extra single-target damage to Spinning Slash by dropping projectiles on a target. In practice, the projectiles can miss, so it would have been a great Abyss Gear had this affected all enemies hit by Spinning Slash.
- Judgment of the Soul (Evasive Slash): This is the weakest of the three dodge-attack Abyss Gears in Crimson Desert. It spawns a charging spectral soldier who will sometimes miss, and when it does hit, it deals an underwhelming amount of damage.
- Howling of Chaos (Parry): Causes enemies to be stunned in a large area of effect when you successfully parry. If you are good at parrying (and like it enough to be a core part of your playstyle), this is quite good against crowds. However, it doesn’t work on all bosses, and therefore a bit more situational outside of the style points.
- Warden of Darkness (Finisher): Causes a quartet of spectral spears to shoot at four directions from where you execute an enemy with a finisher. This is just about the only finisher-related Abyss Gear worth using in Crimson Desert.
- Rising Torrent (Dodge): Causes a tiny geothermal leak to send enemies flying upwards. For the control and fun factor alone, this is one of those Abyss Gears you should try out at least once in Crimson Desert. However, Parting Gift could be killing enemies outright for the same cost, so this one isn’t remotely the best option.
- Storm Fang (Lightning Imbuement): Storm Fang is the lightning version of Shattering Frost, but the damage boost is so pitifully low for its cost that I would recommend just doing regular Lightning-Imbued Skills with no Abyss Gears. Only worthwhile if you really want to play a Lightning Paladin archetype visually.
- Ancient Recoking (Wind Imbuement): This one spawns a thick smokescreen on the area of impact. The game says it’s a “deadly vortex” to damage enemies, but in reality, it’s a token amount of damage. However, Ancient Reckoning could go from B-tier straight to S-tier depending on your build demands. If you really want to play a rogue in Crimson Desert, for example, Ancient Reckoning is essential, because the smokescreen actually opens enemies up to Assassination.
- The Showstopper and Karmic Pulse (Unarmed Attacks) are both only useful if you are playing an unarmed-only build in Crimson Desert. The former stuns enemies in a large area after a full unarmed attack chain, while the latter does a force-pulse that ocassionally clips more than one enemy. If you could combine both, though, unarmed attack spam might become fun, because neither of these two have any extra resource cost.
C-tier Abyss Gears
These are the most underwhelming Abyss Gears I found in my 250-hours-deep Crimson Desert experience.
There’s either objectively better options that do what they do, or in some cases, they just don’t pull enough weight. After all, Crimson Desert has a limited amount of Abyss Gear sockets, so each come with their baseline opportunity cost. Sadly, these ones don’t make the cut.
- Fullmoon Slash, Crescent Moon Slash, Halfmoon Slash (Light Attacks) are only worth using together on an off-hand weapon when you’re dual-wielding. However, any other playstyle and use case means you’re wasting your sockets by using these, because individually they might as well be doing nothing.
- Wound of Darkness (Turning Slash): For something that drops from one of the game’s toughest bosses in Crimson Desert (found in Sanctum of Absolution), the damage and area-of-effect of this Abyss Gear is pitiful. If you’re using this, I strongly recommend just putting it aside and using plain old Turning Slash without the extra Spirit cost.
- Dark Crescent (Spinning Slash): Adds a very low amount of single-target damage through an inky projectile at the end of your Spinning Slash. If you want a Spinning Slash Abyss Gear, just use Hound’s Claw, which is objectively better in every way.
- Crow Storm, Piercing Bloom, Queen’s Fang (Stab): The problem with these Abyss Gears is logistics. Stab is a great tool to deal with tanky targets in the early-game, but by the point you get these, charging up a Stab (or even roll-into-Stab which is a shortcut way to trigger these) are too much downtime for not enough payoff. Even Piercing Bloom, which is the most functional of the three, requires you to line up multiple targets in a straight line to get any mileage out of it, and there’s no group-up tools in Crimson Desert.
- Earthrending Strike (Parry): Successful parries do some additional damage to the parried target. Instead of using this Abyss Gear, you could just do a light-attack on the same target (who will conveniently be stunned from the parry) to the get potentially higher amount of damage.
- Arrow Rain (Finisher): If you use this, get used to every arrow missing all enemies, even shooting into an enemy clump.
- Order From Above (Finisher): Unlike Arrow Rain, these will sometimes hit enemies, but the damage is so low that you’d much rather use Warden of Darkness.
- Slashing Reeds (Dodge): Does very little damage even to the weakest enemies. Simply use Parting Gift instead.
- Frost Hail (Ice Imbument) and Orbs of Lightning (Lightning Imbuement) present the same common problem of not doing enough to justify the much higher Spirit cost on your Imbued attacks.
- Kinetic Burst (Unarmed Attacks): This seems to be just a weaker variant of Karmic Pulse.
- Tempest of Destruction (Grapple): Much weaker than Putrid Touch or Colossal Might, which do the same job more efficiently.
Best non-Skill Abyss Gears you should use in Crimson Desert
Outside of Skill-based Abyss Gears, there’s a lot more to improve nearly every aspect of your characters. If you want a full breakdown of what’s available, here’s a full list of all Abyss Gears in Crimson Desert and how to get them.
If you’re just getting introduced to Abyss Gears in Crimson Desert (around Chapter 3-4 is where this should happen), here’s a non-exhaustive overview of things you want to hoard. The reason you want to hoard these is, of course, the fact that you can combine two of the same type to get higher-level variants.
- Momentum, as I’ve already mentioned before, is a must-have.
- Swift (Attack Speed Abyss Gears) are the most important ones to stack until you get about Lvl 11-12 of this stat (total active amount is viewable from your inventory screen). Attack Speed is universal, meaning any additional point you get from any equipped gear piece (or Swift) affects every weapon and Skill.
- Insight (Critical Rate) is the other stat you want to look into. Without getting into the math, Lvl 10 Critical Rate will improve your damage by roughly 20%. Meanwhile, the Attack stat itself does not give you flat damage increment, and as you near the endgame, additional points of Attack will have greatly diminished returns. Unlike Attack Speed, however, Critical Rate is a per-weapon stat, so look for weapons with base Critical Rate, and then use at least one Insight Lvl 3 for some good mileage.
- Relentless is essential for any dual-wielding build in Crimson Desert, and arguably even two-hander builds.
- Composure gives you passive Spirit regen. This stat is the hardest to get back unless you spam Focus-mode, which can really break up the flow of combat and (in my opinion) makes the game less fun. A great cheese strat I’ve found is using a secondary armor with three Composures stacked. I can quickly switch to it from the equipment Radial menu after I’ve spammed Turning Slash a bunch, and I get a few pips of Composure in a matter of seconds. However, just using one is a massive boost over the base Spirit regen too.
- Aegis gives you a Damage Reduction stat that’s multiplicative with damage reduction you get from Armor in Crimson Desert. To actually be durable, you should stack at least two of these over your Plate Armor.
- Gourmet Lvl 3 gives you a huge amount of bonus heal from cheap food, and I find it essenital to run at least one of these.
- Disarm can be triggered very consistently (even at just Lvl 1 Disarm) with a sword (maces and axes don’t work) and a small shield (like Kliff’s default Grey Wolf Shield). This is the best known way to farm other Abyss Gears in Crimson Desert, because you can get enemeis to drop their Abyss Gear-infused equipment in Frosthold Pass or Icewatch Altar.
- Flameward, Frostward, and Shockward can be greatly useful in specific areas, puzzles, and boss fights.
- Haste (Movement Speed) is another situational but overlooked Abyss Gear. With Lvl 10 Movement Speed, you’re fast enough to kite every enemy to oblivion, hit bosses and just walk back in time to avoid attacks without dodging, and even glide much faster.
- Ledgermain Lvl 3 vastly improves the Gold Bar farm via pickpokceting nobles.
Just to clarify again, this is not an exhaustive list of recommendations from every generic Abyss Gear. There’s some great ones that prove irreplaceable for a specific build, for example, Infinite Arrows (and its Greater variant) gives a lot of QoL to an archer build in Crimson Desert.
Abyss Gears you should avoid using
While nearly all lvl 3 Abyss Gears give you either universally useful or situational benefits, some are pure bait. I find it ill-advised to use the following ones:
- Spirit Trasnference and Stamina Transference are definitive placebo Abyss Gears. They are either bugged, or do so little that the effect is imperceptible. Drop these immediately.
- Fortification and Destruction give you very small flat amounts of Defense and Attack, and as you’re nearing the end-game, their actual effect isn’t worth wasting your Abyss sockets.
- Surge (Swim Speed) and Ascent (Climb Speed) are nearly useless. About every use case I can think of, simply bypassing them with various movement techs (Aerial Stab, Axiom Force grappling-hook) is more efficient.
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Edited by Sambit Pal