How to steal items and commit crimes in Crimson Desert

Crimson Desert has some safeguards in place to prevent you from accidentally stealing things, which is a good job considering all the items littered everywhere. If you do want to commit crimes and get your sticky fingers all over other people’s stuff, though, here’s how it works.

First, you need a mask. These can be found on bandit corpses and other random locations, but you can also purchase one from any Back Alley Shop for ten bronze coins. There’s one Back Alley Shop on the eastern road next to Hernand, on the west side of the river, right next to the Livestock Black Market.

Once wearing a mask, you’re able to pick up any item — even if it belongs to someone else.

Any item you steal will net you negative faction reputation with whatever faction the item belonged to, whether you get caught or not. As soon as you steal something, a red ring appears around you on the map — this is a ping for the game to check if anyone witnessed you.

If there’s no one around, you will just take the reputation loss. If there’s a civilian in sight, they’ll run to tell a guard, but you can escape the red zone before they grass you up to nullify it. If you are spotted and caught, you can end up with hefty fines and even jail time.

Despite the reputation loss, it’s often worth checking if items are worth stealing when you’re left in a posh mansion on your own. Everything from jewellery boxes to paintings can be nabbed and sold, which is especially helpful in the early game where money is hard to come by.

You can also poach animals by picking them up and carrying them to the Livestock Black Market for some extra coin.

Whenever you want to be careful, simply unequip your mask and you won’t accidentally pick anything up that isn’t fair game. Wearing a mask also allows you to attack NPCs so make sure to take it off using the left D-pad radial when exploring a city.

You can also get in trouble for vandalism if you ride through fences and smash stuff up in view of anyone, so don’t do that.

Another illicit activity is wagon theft. If you get any wagon, you can drive it to the wagon depot of a wagon fence to sell it. You can find a wagon fence east of Hernand, on the road leading south of Halssius Apothecary.