Pearl Abyss has released patch 1.09 for Crimson Desert, which finally allows players to remap controls and adopt a whole host of little critters as pets.
Crimson Desert was already a contender for one of the biggest new games of 2026 when it launched – both in the sheer amount of things in it and popularity – but Pearl Abyss somehow decided that it could be even bigger. The studio has been updating its massively popular open-world game constantly since it launched back in March – and clearly someone on the dev team is really keen to get Kliff as many pets as possible.
In the last Crimson Desert patch, Pearl Abyss gave Kliff the ability to adopt a Baby Wyvern into his roster of pets, and with today's patch, the game has "added approximately 30 species of small animals that can be registered as pets." I haven't got around to playing Crimson Desert yet, but in my mind, I hope there is no cap on the amount of pets you can have, and that Kliff is able to form an army of critters. But if not, at least there's more variety. Another major addition listed by Pearl Abyss is that this patch "added animations for picking up and putting down certain pets," and suddenly I'm anticipating the game's transformation into a cozy farm sim.
Elsewhere, the game also added a personal favorite option of mine, the ability to remap controls. I'm sure the basic controls were good, given that I haven't seen complaints about it, but the option to change things up is always appreciated. And on top of these, there's a ton of fixes and tweaks that you'd expect from patch notes, including one clearly from whoever really likes the pets: "fixed an issue where bears would try to eat fish dropped on the ground but fail to do so."
I've already been putting off Crimson Desert because, frankly, it's too massive and I don't have the time between other games I'm super keen to play to really give it the time it deserves. But seeing how much the devs are updating and improving it, I'm actually glad I've been waiting.
