Crimson Desert Guide

How to get diving gear without the pre-order bonus in Charting the Unknown

Didn't pre-order Charting the Unknown? Diving gear isn't pre-order only. Buy the breathing device blueprint with relics, craft it at a workbench, then upgrade.

Items · Updated

Steps

  1. Pioneer Auronui Island in A Wider World. Follow the introductory ocean questline, A Wider World, until you pioneer the island south of Hernand, Auronui Island. A Relic Exchange shop run by an archaeologist named Reyard opens next to the little port you set up there.
  2. Collect a few Ancient Relics. Relics are the currency for diving gear. You get them from chests in underwater ruins and caves, from freeing islands and from ocean bosses. The first blueprint only costs 3.
  3. Buy Blueprint: Explorer's Breathing Device from Reyard. It costs 3 Ancient Relics. Read the blueprint from your inventory to learn it. The crafting materials are 10 Shiny Ore and 5 Azurite.
  4. Craft it at a workbench. This is a workbench item, not a Kuku pot recipe. Your camp has one near the furniture vendor, but its icon only shows on the map once you've walked right up to it.
  5. Equip it and dive. The breathing device goes in your backpack slot. It raises your maximum breath and swim speed without swapping out your armor.
  6. Upgrade at Demeniss Port later. Sulivan's Relic Exchange at Demeniss Port sells finished Marine Charter's diving helm, suit, gloves and boots for 5 to 7 relics each, plus Blueprint: Propulsion Breathing Device for 30 relics. The propulsion device lets you speed along underwater while holding sprint.

The problem: you want to explore underwater in Charting the Unknown, but every guide tells you to claim the diving suit from the Add-ons menu, and that suit was a pre-order bonus. Without it, your breath runs out almost as soon as you go under.

The answer: the pre-order suit is just one option. You can buy and craft diving gear in the game with Ancient Relics, the currency you find at sea. The cheapest and most useful first piece is the Explorer’s Breathing Device, a backpack you craft yourself. Players in the Steam thread recommended starting with it, and one came back to say they’d crafted it on that advice. Another player said the backpack alone gives you plenty of air, especially with the air bubbles scattered around underwater.

Where to buy the blueprint

Once you’ve pioneered your first island, Auronui Island south of Hernand, during the A Wider World questline, a Relic Exchange shop opens by the port you’ve just set up. The archaeologist who runs it, Reyard, sells Blueprint: Explorer’s Breathing Device for 3 Ancient Relics. If you got stuck on that mission, see our guide to the island pioneering mission stuck at 100%.

Reyard also sells Charter Assistant’s diving helm and suit blueprints. The game databases describe that gear as diving suits for your pet, not for you, so don’t spend your first relics on them by mistake.

Crafting it

The blueprint needs 10 Shiny Ore and 5 Azurite. One player said they picked up Shiny Ore from the boxes floating in the sea while sailing.

This one confused a lot of people in the thread, so to be clear: you craft it at a workbench, not in the Kuku pot. Your camp has one near the furniture vendor. The workbench icon only shows on your map after you’ve walked right up to it. One player had played for 100 hours without ever seeing it.

Getting more relics

Game Rant and Mobalytics list the same main sources of Ancient Relics:

  • Chests in underwater ruins, caves and on the sea floor
  • Freeing islands by clearing hostile strongholds
  • Ocean bosses, which drop the most

Dive near the surface with the backpack first and loot the shallow chests. That gets you the relics for the bigger upgrades.

Upgrades at Demeniss Port

Sulivan’s Relic Exchange at Demeniss Port, a short walk inland from the waterfront, has the next tier of gear:

Item Cost
Marine Charter’s Diving Helm or Light Diving Helm 5 relics
Marine Charter’s Diving Suit or Light Diving Suit 7 relics
Marine Charter’s Diving Gloves or Light Diving Gloves 5 relics
Marine Charter’s Diving Boots or Light Diving Boots 5 relics
Blueprint: Propulsion Breathing Device 30 relics

The propulsion device is an upgrade of the Explorer’s Breathing Device, and you need one to craft it. It gives you more breath and lets you speed along underwater while holding sprint, which uses stamina. The gaming.tools database says Sulivan restocks every 7 days.

Pre-ordered but your diving gear vanished?

If you did claim the pre-order suit and pieces of it seem to have disappeared, check the helmet and other armor filter icons in your inventory before anything else. One player on Steam found their missing items sorted under there. Another lost the suit after a crash and couldn’t get it back except by starting a new game, which hands out the DLC suit again. That’s a lot to redo, so check your inventory carefully first.

For everything else the expansion adds, see what Charting the Unknown includes and how to unlock it.

Sources

This guide summarizes answers from these community threads. Credit goes to the players who worked it out.