Crimson Desert female character creation mod

Divisive yet successful open-world fantasy game Crimson Desert notably does not come with a character creator. The game casts you as male hero Kliff and that’s mostly who you are, besides some shorter stints as the characters Damiane and Oongka. You can change Kliff’s hair and beard and tattoos later in the game, but you can’t change his appearance structurally, or his gender. Until now, that is.

What the game lacks the modding community provides, and the “Character Creator – Female” mod on Nexus Mods adds exactly what it suggests: a female playable character with lots of customisation options. Specifically, that’s 98 different face presets and 159 different hairstyles, which is more hairstyles than I believed existed in the real world. And they’re accessed – once the mod is installed on PC – by visiting the barber in your Greymane settlement, once you’ve unlocked it.

Armour has been adjusted to better fit a feminine frame as well, and you can pair the mod with the Kliff Female Voice to complete the new look. What’s more, future plans for the mod include adding male character customisation and additional player races such as orc and goblin, which sounds fun.

This isn’t the first Crimson Desert mod that’s allowed us to play persistently as a female character, mind you. As you may or may not know, there are sections in Crimson Desert where we play as the female character Damiane, and modders have used this as the basis for swapping us from Kliff to Damiane more permanently. Beware, though, there are not-safe-for-work variants of this out there, because of course there are.

The decision not to include character customisation in Crimson Desert was always strange when compared to Pearl Abyss’s other big game, the MMO Black Desert Online, which was famed back in 2016 for its impressive and attractive character creation tools. It’s a decision that’s left many fans scratching their heads about why it was done. “Would have been 100 percent more interesting with a character creator,” writes one of these fans, Tom VinPrice, in a Reddit thread about the female character creator mod. “You’re right that it’s baffling they didn’t include one, but so were a lot of other design choices they’ve since fixed.

“Hopefully they at least add the ability to create your own version of Kliff or something, similar to how customizable male Shepard can be in Mass Effect. Crazy they really thought that after making probably one of the best character creators ever in their previous game that they then had the idea to force us all to play as Temu Jon Snow in their next game.”

Crimson Desert was released at the end of March amidst huge expectations, but struggled to convince everyone. “A vast world and even vaster array of MMO-like activities mix with glittering fidelity in Crimson Desert, but what good is it without much character, texture or charm?” we wondered in our three-star Crimson Desert review. Nevertheless, Crimson Desert has sold well, notching up 4m sales as of 19th March, and the figure three weeks later ought to be notably higher.

If you’re playing Crimson Desert, don’t forget that we have guides to help you along. Of particular help are the Ancient Ruins and Desert Strongboxes guides, because they point out where in the vast open-world they are, and how to open or solve them.