When Crimson Desert first came out, a great cry went up amongst the people: Why can’t I tame a bear and ride it? Honestly, deeply relatable. This is something I’ve been thinking about for many years, but it’s apparently ‘very dangerous’ and ‘illegal’ and ‘stop trying to put a saddle on that bear, Harvey’. I am constantly held back by societal convention.

At least in Crimson Desert I can finally realise my dreams. Developer Pearl Abyss did add legendary wolf and bear mounts, accessible via the completion of in-depth quest chains, or simply murdering said bear despite the fact it has cubs following it around. However, you couldn’t tame those wild animals for riding the same as with horses.

Well, that changes today. Per the recent patch notes, Pearl Abyss has made it so “certain animals can now be registered as special mounts after gaining their trust.” The full list includes:

• Bears
• Boars
• Wolves
• Deer
• Mountain Goats
• Kuku Birds
• Iguanas
• Raptors
• Camels
• Lions,
• Tigers.

For the most part, this involves increasing their trust level by feeding them meat (this also works on me), kinda like how you get a dog in Crimson Desert. though Pearl Abyss does note that some animals will “require unique methods to tame”.

In other, less exciting news, you can also now extract materials you used to upgrade your equipment in case you’d like to respec to something else—though only partially. You’ll get back all of your special materials, but only 70% of common materials such as “iron ore, copper ore, and bloodstones.”

This is a huge quality of life improvement, given how much of your time in Crimson Desert is spent mining, collecting, and gathering little gubbins to engage in one of several thousand systems that exist in this sprawling game.

Honestly, I’m still deeply impressed by Pearl Abyss’ tempo, here. It feels like every other week I’m learning about some entirely new feature, such as the recent inclusion of bird taming, that’s been worked into the game’s already overflowing DNA, though the studio’s marketing director says it’s business as usual for the ambitious dev.