How to get pets in Crimson Desert

Crimson Desert - Pet wearing armor.

Working out how to get a pet in Crimson Desert will likely be one of your first priorities when you step into Pywel. After all, you're immediately greeted by a friendly bulldog when Kliff wakes up on the riverbank. If you can't resist the urge to pet the little fella, you'll notice that doing so increases your trust with the animal.

Where there's trust, there's a pet system. When you travel to Fernand city a short while after, you'll begin encountering even more dogs and cats which you can befriend and turn into pets. First, though, you'll need to know how the process works.

How to get a pet in Crimson Desert

To turn an animal into your pet in Crimson Desert, you have to reach 100 trust with it. When you pick up a cat, say, and pet it, you'll see a little trust meter go up by +5 points on the left side of the screen.

"Well, why can't I just pet the cat 20 times?" I hear you ask. Besides stroking it to death, there's a limit on how much trust you can gain through specific activities per in-game day.

This works as follows:

• You can pet a cat or dog five times per in-game day at +5 trust per time, maxing out at +25
• You can feed a cat or dog three times per in-game day and that quality of the food changes how much trust you get. For example, feed a dog tough meat and you'll get +10, but feed it fine meat and you'll get +20 for the first one, so it's worth shelling out a little more

While dogs aren't very picky and will eat any meat, cats prefer milk. You can buy either at the Grocer's Shop or Butchery in Hernand, just south of the inn, though feel free to experiment with other foods too.

To feed an animal, go into your inventory and discard the food in-question, though be careful if there are other animals around, since they might potentially snaffle the grub instead.

If you can't make an animal your pet in a single day with petting and higher quality food, remember that you can pass time to get it done faster.

Once you reach 100 trust, put the animal down, if you're carrying it, and hold E to "Take in". The animal will become your pet and will now appear under the "Pets" section in the inventory menu.

Here are some basic rules for pets:

1. You can summon and unsummon them in the pet menu
2. They'll follow you while summoned but disappear when you ride your horse
3. Your pets will also hang out at your camp once you acquire it in Chapter 3
4. You can untie them in the pets menu which removes them as your pet
5. You can have up to 30 pets
6. Some pets, like dogs, will loot items for you while they're summoned

Safe with that knowledge, enjoy befriending every cat you come across in Fernand.

How to get pet armor in Crimson Desert

(Image credit: Pearl Abyss)

You can also buy armor for your pets in Crimson Desert. Once you unlock the ability to enter Florindale without getting sleep-darted by the forest guardians, you can find a pet tailor at the location above—presumably there are other pet tailors throughout the world, too, though I haven't found any yet. Once you've purchased your pet armor, you can equip it by:

1. Opening the inventory menu and selecting the pets section
2. Click on the pet you want to dress up and it'll show some slots at the bottom for their current equipment—these will be empty if you haven't given them anything yet
3. Select the armor in your inventory and press space (or A on controller) to equip

Armor is purely cosmetic since your pets don't really fight, but at least they'll look more at home on an adventure now, or when they're looting battlefield corpses.