Crimson Desert is finally out, and reviews are pretty mixed right now. I personally love the exploration, but the experience hasn’t been without frustration, especially with how obtuse it can be with puzzles and more. Anyways, one of the first puzzles you’ll stumble into is going to be in the quest “Abyss Without Balance“, which comes very early in the game.
Finishing this will give you the ability to fly, so it’s definitely worth doing before you get completely sidetracked by the open world. Read on to learn how you do the puzzle at the end, which has seemingly confused plenty of players!
Passing Through the Skygate
First, you’ll have to go through the skygate and properly align the device up ahead. This confused me for a second as I thought you had to keep rotating it, but it’s really as simple as keeping it in the correct alignment for a few seconds.
As the tooltip hinted at, use your Axiom Force on the orb attached to the alignment device. Rotate it until it starts glowing blue and emitting a bit of electricity. When this happens, hold it in that spot until the camera zooms out and a bridge made of floating platforms appears.
Activating the Abyss Nexus
After running and jumping your way through all the floating platforms, you’ll find a teleporter at the end. This will send you towards the Abyss Nexus ahead, which is where the first “real” puzzle will be.
Step on the platform and wait for it to start glowing before you proceed to the puzzle zone. Once you get the prompt that you’ve completed the “Activate the Abyss Nexus” part, head on down to the area with cubes illuminated by spotlights.
Removing the Wall Blocking the Floor
To remove the wall blocking the floor, you have to use your Axiom Force to grab the floating blue cube. Pull it towards the stone cube that has a spotlight pointed at it. As the blue cube comes closer, the stone one will open up, allowing you to push the energy source into it.
It can be a bit finicky, but once the blue cube is in place, the floor should open up. Jump down to start the next part of this puzzle. Make sure not to move the other blue cube on the other side!
Synthesizing the Abyss Cell
Your next task is to synthesize the Abyss cell, which is the floating computer chip-looking thing below. There will be a hologram nearby showing you where it should go and what you’re supposed to do next.
First, use your Axiom Force to push the cell in place. It doesn’t have to be perfectly aligned, it just has to be over the hologram on the wall. Once it’s close, you’ll get a prompt to hold “Observe“, which will teach you how to perform the Force Palm move.
Use Force Palm on the Abyss cell. This will insert the Abyss cell into the slot and power it up at the same time. This will play a cutscene as the device above starts turning on.
Activating the Abyss Power Supply
Finally, make your way back up. Use the pillars nearby and/or climb up out of the puzzle area. Head over to the activated device, which is now glowing orange. If you’re having trouble jumping up, remember that you can use precision jumps to get to higher ground. Kliff will grab on to the ledge if he has to.
As the quest tip says, you’ll have to hang on the middle of the powered device. Walk up to the glowing device and climb to its core. While hanging onto this part of the circle, charge a Force Palm and watch as your character jams their fist into the device to activate it.
This knocks you back down to the puzzle zone, so just climb back out as you did earlier. From this point on, the puzzle is now complete! All that’s left to do is to actually finish the quest.
You simply have to walk up to the Abyss artifact above to play another cutscene, where the woman you met earlier will arrive. After that, you’ll be taught how to fly as you free fall so far up that a map transition subtly plays along the way.
The game literally asks you to jump off the edge to teach you how to use this new ability, so enjoy the view and continue exploring the map once you’re back on the ground!
Any other puzzles you’re confused by? I might be able to help you out by writing about them as I play through Crimson Desert. I’ll be away for a week after publishing this though, so we’ll see what happens!