Pearl Abyss has made no secret of the fact that Crimson Desert is a massive game. The devs have openly touted the title’s wealth of content and showcased its vast open world on multiple occasions. They’ve even provided details on the exact number of factions and bosses that you’ll encounter in Pywel. This naturally leads to the question: how long will it take to beat Crimson Desert?
Given the marketing emphasis on the sheer volume of content, you can safely look forward to sinking dozens of hours into the title. But if you’re looking for exact figures, here’s Crimson Desert’s total runtime based on everything we know so far.
Crimson Desert Gameplay Length and Total Hours
As confirmed by Pearl Abyss, Crimson Desert will take around 50 hours to beat, rising to 80+ hours if you’re going for the completionist route. This information comes from a popular ResetEra post containing the cliff notes from Pearl Abyss’s IR session at Kiwoom Corp Day in September 2024.
More recently, a content creator named Revenant revealed his impressions of the game, stating that he’s still in the first region of the Crimson Desert map after 50 hours. Based on these details, here’s how long the game’s playthrough should take:
| Main Story | 50 hours |
| Main Story + Side Quests | 80 hours |
| Completionst | 80-100 hours |
While these how long to beat estimates are based on credible information, we recommend taking them with a grain of salt since the game is yet to be released. That being said, it’s unlikely that the final runtime will be lighter than 50 hours, especially when you account for this volume of content:
- 110 Factions
- 430 ‘Adventures’
- 76 Bosses
- 467 NPCs
- 573 Territories
- 29 Mounts
On top of this, you’ve got missile-firing mechs, a gigantic open world, and three playable characters in Crimson Desert. Needless to say, the action-adventure title is going to dominate your schedule for the foreseeable future.
And that covers how long it takes to beat Crimson Desert. We’ll be sure to update this article with our own playthrough statistics once the game is out. In the meantime, make sure you’re ready for launch by checking out our Crimson Desert pre-load guide.
How long does it take to beat Crimson Desert?
It’ll take around 50 hours to complete the main story in Crimson Desert, rising to 80 hours if you want to engage in side content.
How many side activities are there in Crimson Desert?
While the official figure is unclear, the devs confirmed that Crimson Desert has 430 ‘adventures.’ The term likely refers to side distractions, such as quests, camp clearing missions, puzzles, side bosses, and more.
