For a while, playing as anyone other than Kliff in Crimson Desert felt like drawing the short straw. Pearl Abyss just changed that. Patch Update 1.13.00, which went live on July 3rd, 2026, hands the game’s secondary characters a real reason to exist beyond flavor — and it’s a bigger overhaul than the patch number suggests.
The headline change is access. Both Oongka and Damiane can now enter the Abyss, the endgame content zone previously gated in ways that made anyone outside the main roster feel like a spectator. That single tweak reshapes how players approach party composition, because these characters are no longer benchwarmers you tolerate for story beats.
Then there’s the gear. Kliff and Oongka each pick up 39 new pieces of equipment, a genuinely meaty haul that opens up new loadout experiments and build variety. Damiane’s allotment is more modest at 8 pieces of gear, but for a character who previously felt undercooked, even that is a meaningful step toward parity.
Cosmetics get some love too. Oongka can now equip most of the outfits that were previously locked to Kliff — a quality-of-life change that sounds trivial until you consider how much of an action-RPG’s identity lives in how your character looks while carving through enemies. Sharing the wardrobe means players who prefer Oongka no longer have to sacrifice style for preference.
Taken together, the update reads less like a routine maintenance drop and more like a deliberate rebalancing of who’s worth playing. Pearl Abyss has effectively told the community that its non-Kliff cast is no longer secondary in mechanics, only in narrative billing. That matters for a game built around varied combat encounters, where being locked to one viable character quietly narrows the experience.
- Patch: Update 1.13.00, released July 3rd, 2026
- Abyss access: now available to Oongka and Damiane
- New equipment: 39 pieces each for Kliff and Oongka, 8 for Damiane
- Outfits: Oongka can now wear most of Kliff’s previously exclusive outfits
The practical upshot is straightforward. If you’d written off Damiane or Oongka as narrative filler, this is the moment to revisit them. Full Abyss access plus fresh gear turns two also-rans into legitimate mains, and the shared outfit pool removes one of the pettier reasons players had to ignore them. It’s the kind of housekeeping that doesn’t grab trailers or headlines but quietly makes a big open-world action game feel more complete.
