Crimson Desert Guide

Can't place furniture after Free Construction? Press F to switch modes

Built a custom house with Free Construction and can't find your furniture? It's a separate mode. Press F on PC, or Start on controller, to switch to furniture.

Mechanics · Updated

Steps

  1. Save before you rebuild. Switching your house to a Free Construction layout takes down the old house, and any furniture you'd placed goes back into your inventory. Make a manual save first and leave room in your inventory.
  2. Open house editing as usual. Go to your house and open Home Decoration. Free Construction is under Layout, and it only works once you've finished Luke's Request and set up camp at Howling Hill.
  3. Switch from building to furniture. While you're looking at the building pieces (floors, walls, windows), press F on PC. That swaps the menu to the furniture in your inventory. On controller, one player said pressing Start in editing mode does the same thing.
  4. Show everything you own. In the placement list, set the filter at the bottom to All, then tab through the categories. Your chests, beds and other furniture are in there.
  5. Update to 2.04.06 if the editor misbehaves. Hotfix 2.04.06 on November 4 fixed a black screen when entering Free Construction and occasional crashes when walking up to a house built with it.

The problem: you used the new Free Construction mode from Charting the Unknown to build your own house. The walls are up, but there’s no button for furniture. The editor only shows floors, walls and windows, and the beds and chests from your old house seem to have vanished.

The fix: furniture is a separate mode inside the same editor, and the game doesn’t make that clear. On PC, while the building pieces are showing, press F to switch to the furniture in your inventory. It’s the marked answer on the Steam thread. Another player with the same problem replied that F did it, and said it’s confusing because the screen looks like a list of options when it’s really furniture mode. In a second thread, someone said Start switches to furniture placement on controller.

Where your old furniture went

When you switch your house to a Free Construction layout, the game warns that changing the layout will retrieve all installed furniture. DPJ’s walkthrough video shows everything from the old house going into your inventory. So it isn’t gone, just packed away. In the placement list, set the filter at the bottom to All and tab through the categories to find it.

If it’s still missing, check your storage too. One player on Steam said reset furniture ends up there. Not everyone found theirs, though. One player couldn’t find a noble bed or kitchen items in their storage or their inventory, and the Steam thread about missing furniture still has no answer. That’s another reason to save before you rebuild.

Before you start building

  • You need the unlock. Free Construction is under Home Decoration > Layout and needs Luke’s Request (a Greymane faction quest under Grounds of the Sunrise) plus your camp at Howling Hill, according to the 2.04.00 patch notes.
  • It costs camp provisions. Walls, floors and other pieces are paid for with camp provisions. DPJ found that deleting pieces after you’ve confirmed the build didn’t give the provisions back.
  • Save first. It’s easy to undo a mistake by reloading.

Black screen or crash in the editor

Hotfix 2.04.06 on November 4 fixed two housing bugs: the screen staying black when you open Free Construction, and the game sometimes crashing when you walk up to a house built with it. Update the game if you’ve run into either one.

For everything else the expansion adds, see the Charting the Unknown overview. Also see Commotion at Howling Hill: how to dispatch a comrade.

Video walkthrough

Video: How To Build CUSTOM HOUSES Guide in Crimson Desert Charting The Unknown DLC Update (Custom Builds) by DPJ on YouTube. Played on controller. Furniture placement starts at about 13:40.

Sources

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