Crimson Desert key locations

Crimson Desert key - Kliff opening a door — (Image credit: Pearl Abyss)

Tracking down key locations in Crimson Desert is vital if you're looking to steal items of value, or even open a safe like the Hernand Castle Strongbox, since this is located behind a locked door. Rather than finding specific keys for specific doors, Crimson Desert has a generic system where you can use any key for any lock, provided it's not a specific named one—this only seems to apply to quest-related doors.

For everything else you can use a generic key item, so gaining access to most locations is simply a matter of grabbing some of these. Below, I'll explain the best places to acquire keys, plus some other details to bear in mind.

How to get keys in Crimson Desert

Crimson Desert key location — The best way to get keys is to buy them from a Back Alley Shop (Image credit: Pearl Abyss)

As mentioned, you can use the key item in Crimson Desert to unlock any generic door—often whether you want to or not thanks to its somewhat borked implementation—and there are a few places you can get them at the start of the game:

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You can buy three keys from the Back Alley Shop in Hernand. Head east out of Hernand, past the model castle on the left, and then take a left down the track to find the vendor. These are periodically restocked.
You can loot keys randomly from dead bandits.
You can steal one key in the Church of Hernand if you turn right down the corridor when you enter and look to your right for it on top of a cabinet.
You can steal another key from Oakenshield Manor in Hernand. Enter through the main doors, head right into the room with the staircase and look at the cabinet straight ahead.

Remember, you'll need a mask to steal items like those last two keys listed above, but you can also buy one of these from the Back Alley Shop. There's also a Back Alley Shop just south of St. Halssius's House of Healing, a way to the east of Hernand, and he sells three additional keys. You can also purchase Prison Keys from these shops or loot them from bandits.

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Crimson Desert key in a shop — They are relatively cheap to buy(Image credit: Pearl Abyss)

Crimson Desert's key and lock system is a bit annoying in that any locked door you walk into automatically opens if you have a key in your inventory, which consumes it, and the game has a lot of locked doors that often lead to nothing of value. With that in mind, I'd leave those above keys intentionally unstolen until you have a specific door you want to open.

Sean's first PC games were Full Throttle and Total Annihilation and his taste has stayed much the same since. When not scouring games for secrets or bashing his head against puzzles, you'll find him revisiting old Total War campaigns, agonizing over his Destiny 2 fit, or still trying to finish the Horus Heresy. Sean has also written for EDGE, Eurogamer, PCGamesN, Wireframe, EGMNOW, and Inverse.

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