Crimson Desert camp funds have never been in higher demand. The game’s first story DLC, Charting the Unknown, launched on October 29, and players have already found its most expensive goal: a huge pirate ship priced at 6 million camp funds.
The DLC brings ship exploration to Pywel, and owning your own vessel is the big draw. The catch is the price tag, which has sent the community straight back to the grind and kicked off a wave of money-making tips.
Charting the Unknown ship prices
The DLC adds three ships, and the price gap between them is huge:
- Small ship: 40,000 camp funds
- Medium ship: 1.2 million camp funds
- Large ship: 6 million camp funds
The small ship is easy to afford for anyone who has spent time building up their camp. The medium ship is a real investment. The large ship costs five times as much as the medium one, which is why players are now comparing notes on the fastest way to earn camp funds.
Best ways to earn Crimson Desert camp funds
These are the money-making methods players recommend most:
- Church donations: investing in churches boosts resource production across your holdings, so every donation keeps paying you back.
- Dispatch missions: sending your people out on missions brings in steady returns while you explore, fight or sail.
- Gold bar heists in Demeniss: stealing gold bars is risky, but it is one of the quickest ways to make a big jump in funds.
- Businesses: sawmills and similar ventures earn passive income over time with very little effort once they are running.
One player says a single shop earns them 1 million camp funds a day. If that holds up, the large ship is less than a week of income away. We haven’t been able to confirm that figure, and results will depend heavily on how far your camp has progressed.
If you’re still building up your base, our Greymane Camp wiki page covers the camp itself and is a good place to start.
Passive income vs active farming
The methods above fall into two groups. Church donations, businesses and dispatch missions are passive: you set them up once and they keep earning while you play. Heists are active: they pay well, but only while you are doing them, and they come with risk.
Passive income wins over time. Every hour you spend exploring, fighting or sailing is an hour your sawmills and dispatch missions keep making Crimson Desert camp funds in the background. Active farming is better for short bursts, when you are just short of a purchase and want it now.
Our advice: invest first, buy later
For most players, the safest plan is to put early profits into passive income before chasing the big ship. Spending your first million on a sawmill or shop upgrade feels slow, but it pays for itself and saves you a lot of grinding later. Dispatch missions are worth running all the time, since they cost you nothing while you play.
A simple order that works for most camps:
- Buy the small ship early so you can start exploring the new content
- Put your next profits into businesses and church donations
- Keep dispatch missions running at all times
- Use heists to close the final gap before buying the medium or large ship
This way you are never stuck on land while you save, and your income keeps growing as you go.
Is the DLC bringing players back?
Big content drops usually pull lapsed players back in, and Charting the Unknown looks like no exception. You can follow how the DLC is affecting the game’s player numbers on our Crimson Desert Steam charts, and see how it stacks up against other big releases on our most played Steam games list. If you haven’t picked up the game yet, you can find Crimson Desert on Steam.
