Crimson Desert Guide

How to get animals to your Howling Hill camp ranch faster

Walking goats back to the Greymane ranch is slow. Hold the animal and ride your horse, ride cows home, use the right booth, or buy livestock from Ben.

Mechanics · Updated

Steps

  1. Catch an animal close to camp. Wild goats roam the hills just east and southeast of the Greymane Camp on Howling Hill. They're free to take, so you won't be stealing, and they're only a short ride from the ranch. Pick an adult. A baby has to grow up before it produces anything.
  2. Hold it and ride your horse. Once the goat is over Kliff's shoulder, call your horse and mount up. You don't load the goat onto the horse. Kliff just keeps holding it while you ride.
  3. Ride big animals home on their own back. Cows give you a Ride prompt instead of a Carry prompt. Hop on and ride the cow straight to camp. Don't get off on the way, or it runs away.
  4. Go straight into the right-hand booth. At the ranch, walk the animal into the right-hand booth. The left booth butchers and the middle one sells. A short cutscene means the animal is registered. If you drop it in the fenced pasture instead, it wanders off.
  5. Skip the trip by buying from Ben. Talk to Ben, the rancher at camp, and choose Buy Livestock. Animals you buy go straight into the pen. Raise Trust to 100 with Ben for pigs, with Ibano for goats, with Bremer for calves and with Willian for lambs.

The problem: Ben wants livestock for the ranch at the Greymane Camp, and carrying a goat back on foot takes ages. Then it sometimes doesn’t even count when you get there.

The short answer: you don’t have to walk. Hold the goat and call your horse, and Kliff rides home with it over his shoulder. Cows you ride home directly. Then walk the animal into the right-hand booth so it actually registers. Once you’ve built some Trust, buying from Ben skips the trip entirely. When a player on the Steam forums complained they couldn’t use their horse for Ben’s goat, another player explained exactly this, and a walkthrough video and several guides show the same thing.

Ride, don’t walk

The ranch doesn’t ask you to load anything onto your horse. Grab an adult goat so it’s over Kliff’s shoulder, call your horse and get on. Kliff keeps the goat in his arms the whole ride, and you can see it working in a walkthrough video of Ben’s Request.

Bigger animals work differently. Run after a cow until you get a Ride prompt, and Kliff jumps on its back. Ride it all the way to the ranch. If you get off along the way, the cow bolts. Only cows with “Dairy” in their name can be registered. Plain wild cows can’t. The player who found a free herd of dairy cows near St. Halassius House of Healing confirmed this method in the same thread.

Catch them close to home

For goats, you hardly need to leave camp. Big herds of wild goats graze on the hills east and southeast of the Greymane Camp, above the pit with the Dragon’s Stone Chamber puzzle. Wild goats aren’t anyone’s property, so taking one isn’t stealing. Grab an adult: babies have to grow up before they give milk.

If you’ve repaired the camp’s Abyss Nexus, you can teleport home and head straight out to the herd for the next one. See Focused Force Palm not appearing for the skill you need to fix it.

Use the right booth, or the trip is wasted

The ranch has three booths, and only one registers animals:

  • Right booth: registers the animal. A short cutscene plays when it works.
  • Middle booth: sells it.
  • Left booth: butchers it.

Walk the animal into the right booth while you’re still holding it, or ride the cow in. Don’t drop it in the fenced pasture: it just runs off. If no cutscene plays, either the ranch doesn’t accept that kind of animal or your pen is full. The pen holds 25 animals, rising to 35 after the last camp upgrade.

Skip the trip: buy from Ben

The fastest way to stock the ranch is to never carry anything. Talk to Ben at the ranch and choose Buy Livestock. Animals you buy from him go straight into the pen.

At first Ben only sells chicks. To unlock more, raise these NPCs’ Trust to 100 with gifts. Coin pouches and money bags work on all of them:

  • Ben himself: baby pigs.
  • Ibano at Capra Pasture: baby goats.
  • Bremer: calves. He’s at Muckroot Ranch in the daytime and outside the Hernand tavern in the evening.
  • Willian, the boy at Bloomwood Ranch: lambs.

You only need to do this once per animal. Everything Ben sells starts as a young animal, so feed them in the pen and they’ll grow up. Patch 1.04.00 also added livestock vendors across Pywel that sell cows, pigs, goats, sheep, ducks and chickens.

What doesn’t work

  • One animal per trip. There’s no confirmed way to load several animals onto your horse or wagon. One player saw a video where somebody tried with a wagon and the sheep ended up on its roof.
  • Not every animal rides with you. Players report you can’t mount your horse while holding a pig or a small animal that Kliff carries in his arms rather than over his shoulder. For pigs, buying from Ben is much quicker.
  • Fast travel. A player on the Steam forums notes that you can’t teleport while carrying a bounty target or a medium or large animal, so plan on riding.

Still setting up the camp? See Commotion at Howling Hill for how comrade dispatches work. If you want something friendlier than a goat following you around, see how to get the Phoenix pet.

Sources

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