What does Crimson Desert update 1.18 do?

Version 1.18.00 is a bug-fix and quality-of-life patch with no new content. It adds a Quests category to the Knowledge menu, changes the map fog so explored and merely revealed areas look different, splits Lock-on Camera Rotation into three settings, and fixes graphics problems including FSR and XeSS frame generation corruption.

Which platforms is Crimson Desert 1.18 available on?

The patch is live on Steam for both PC and Mac, on PlayStation, on Xbox and on the Epic Games Store. Pearl Abyss says the Mac App Store version will follow later rather than releasing at the same time as the others.

Does update 1.18 add new Crimson Desert content?

No. Pearl Abyss describes 1.18.00 as bug fixes and stability improvements. There is no new region, quest line or boss. The closest thing to an addition is the new Quests knowledge category and its eight sub-categories, which reorganise information already in the game.

Why did my Crimson Desert research costs change?

Update 1.18 changed the resource required for research from silver to camp funds. That is an intentional balance change, not a bug, and it separates research spending from the general currency you use elsewhere in the game.

Does Crimson Desert 1.18 fix FSR frame generation?

Yes. The patch corrects rendering corruption that appeared when using FSR or XeSS frame generation on older graphics cards such as GTX 1060-class hardware. If you turned frame generation off because of visual artefacts, it is worth trying again after installing the update.

Crimson Desert Update 1.18: Quest Knowledge Tab and FSR Fixes

Which platforms get Crimson Desert update 1.18

The patch is out now on Steam for PC and Mac, PlayStation, Xbox and the Epic Games Store. Pearl Abyss lists the Mac App Store build as arriving later rather than alongside the rest, so if that is where you bought the game, you are waiting a little longer.

It arrived roughly nine days after version 1.17.00, keeping up the near-weekly cadence the studio has held since the game shipped. That pace is worth knowing if you are deciding whether to start a long session today: patches have been landing often, and this one carries a caveat below about saves.

The quest knowledge tab is the headline change

The most useful addition is a new Quests category in the Knowledge menu, broken into eight sub-categories: Main Quests, Faction Quests, Investigation Quests, Research Quests, Daily Life Quests, Guide, Archive Records and Constellations. Crimson Desert buries a lot of information in Knowledge entries, and until now quest material had no home of its own.

The map also reads differently. Regions where you have not yet interacted with the bell now sit under a darker fog, while regions where you have rung the bell but not walked the ground yourself get a lighter fog filter. In practice that means the map now distinguishes between "revealed" and "actually explored" instead of treating both the same way.

Economy and control changes

Research now costs camp funds, not silver. This decouples upgrade research from the currency you spend on everything else.
High-value trade goods can no longer be stacked and loaded in quantities up to 100, closing a route that made trading far more lucrative than intended.
Lock-on Camera Rotation now has three settings — Manual, which rotates freely; Semi-auto, which limits the range; and Auto, which does not rotate at all.
Horse gear can be equipped at the stable, rather than only through the inventory.
Ranged weapon lock-on while mounted has been fixed, along with quick slot arrow movement behaviour.

If you have been fighting the camera rather than the enemy, the lock-on rotation split is the setting to change first. Control-scheme fixes like these are the sort of thing that quietly decide whether a combat system feels fair — the same reason we keep a guide to fixing stick drift on a PS5 controller, since bad input reads as bad design.

Graphics fixes, including FSR and XeSS frame generation

Three graphics problems are addressed. Indoor lighting that destabilised in certain rooms has been corrected, camera jitter that appeared when frame rates dropped low has been reduced, and — the notable one for PC players — rendering corruption when using FSR or XeSS frame generation on older hardware such as GTX 1060-class cards has been fixed.

That last fix matters because upscaling and frame generation are now how a lot of people run demanding games on ageing GPUs, and corruption artefacts are the kind of bug that gets misread as a failing graphics card. If you want the wider context on where this technology is heading, our look at how NVIDIA's DLSS 5 uses generative AI in PC games covers the same ground from the other direction.

What else is in the patch

Beyond the headline items, Pearl Abyss lists roughly a dozen smaller fixes: crashes tied to revival points, merchants failing to appear at trading stalls, worker functionality problems, NPC placement errors, animation and equipment clipping, and assorted audio issues. Knowledge of certain animals can now be gained by picking them up rather than killing them, and several localisation errors across languages have been corrected. Mount ledge-crossing and window-climbing bugs are fixed too.

None of this is glamorous, but it is the shape most post-launch support takes — the same steady cadence we saw with Silent Hill 2's 1.07 patch on PS5 and PS5 Pro. If you would rather grind through the backlog undisturbed while you install it, here is how to appear offline on Steam.