Crimson Desert House Building: Free Construction Guide

House building in Crimson Desert means the Free Construction mode added by the Charting the Unknown DLC: once you have set up the Greymane camp at Howling Hill and finished Luke's Request in the Grounds of the Sunrise faction quests, you open Home Decoration, then Layout, then Free Construction, and place walls, windows, doors, stairs and roofs yourself. Before the DLC you could only pick from four preset house types and furnish them. Below is how to unlock building, what each piece costs, the storage furniture worth placing, and how the 17 residences and the castles fit in, as of November 2026.

We checked this against Pearl Abyss's patch notes (1.04.00, 1.12.00 and 2.04.00 through 2.04.08), the official Charting the Unknown feature overview, and housing guides from games.gg and Beebom in November 2026.

How Housing Worked Before the Expansion

Every save already has a home. games.gg explains that once the Greymane camp is running at Howling Hill, the original house sits east of camp, across the ravine and up toward the clifftops. Its door is unlocked, and at first it has three rooms with a table and a bed, which you can use to rest.

Free updates expanded that house in steps. Patch 1.04.00 added a Select House option with four layouts that unlock as the Greymane camp grows: Compact House, Standard House, Spacious House and Spacious Pailunese House. Patch 1.12.00 in June added decoration for the area outside your house, plus 58 new items such as fountains, wells, braziers, streetlights, carpets and hanging planters, crafted at the new Workstation and Loom. Those systems still exist, and they are all free. What the DLC adds is the ability to design the building itself.

Unlocking Free Construction

Pearl Abyss's 2.04.00 notes give the two requirements: complete Luke's Request, one of the Greymane faction quests under Grounds of the Sunrise, and set up the camp at Howling Hill. The October 20 feature overview confirms that meeting both gives you access to the regular and the upgraded housing systems. In order:

1. Finish the main story through Chapter 3. games.gg and Beebom both describe defeating the Hornsplitter at the end of Chapter 2, returning to Hernand City and speaking with Marquis Serkis, who grants you Howling Hill.
2. Establish the Greymane camp there. New faction quests appear in your journal.
3. Start Luke's Request in the Greymane group, find Luke at camp and decorate the old house the way he asks.
4. Enter your house, open Home Decoration, choose Layout, then Free Construction. On a controller, Beebom says Start opens building mode and R3 opens layout selection.

If you skipped side content earlier, it is worth knowing that Luke's Request sits alongside the other Grounds of the Sunrise quests rather than in the main story list, so look under the faction tab. One snag catches a lot of players: Luke cannot finish the conversation while he is away on a dispatch mission. If he is missing, wait for the mission to end and for him to return to camp. Beebom's guide calls the quest "Ned's Request" in its summary, but its own steps, games.gg and the patch notes all use Luke.

Building the Structure

Inside Free Construction, the Installables menu lists structural modules. Beebom lists walls, roofs, stairs and doors, and the patch notes describe designing the layout and placing structural elements such as walls and windows yourself. Two costs shape how you should work:

• Camp Provisions. games.gg says each installed module costs Camp Provisions, and removing or dismantling a module does not refund them. Sketch the layout first, then build.
• Unlocks. Not every module is available immediately. Each module's description says where to obtain it, and furniture shops sell books and blueprints that expand your options; Beebom says those books let you build styles such as manors and castles.

Patch 2.04.08 added a confirmation prompt before deleting a room in Free Construction, so accidental deletions are less likely than at launch. If you are short on Camp Provisions, the same currency pays for installables in leased businesses, and our Facility Tier guide explains how a running sawmill or restaurant feeds the camp's coffers.

Furniture That Actually Stores Things

Once the shell is done, you leave Free Construction and furnish rooms through Home Decoration. games.gg warns that ordinary cabinets and drawers sold as furniture are decorative only and cannot hold inventory. The pieces that do store items came with patch 1.04.00:

• Sturdy Gatherables Chest: 1,000 slots, bought from furniture shops. Materials inside can be used for crafting and refinement without carrying them.
• Kuku Cooler and Enhanced Kuku Cooler: 40 and 330 slots for food and ingredients, usable for cooking straight from storage. The basic one comes from a quest; the enhanced one is crafted.
• Collectibles Chest: 1,000 slots for quest items and crafting recipes, obtained through a quest.
• Wardrobe: 100 outfit slots each, with capacity rising per wardrobe placed up to 1,000.

The expansion also brought new placeables for your home, including paths, trees, flowerbeds, cat watchtowers (sold by a new Cat Watchtower Merchant) and puppy cushions. For small decorations such as bowls, plates, lanterns and dolls, games.gg recommends Alden's Provisioner's Shop in Hernand Town, opposite the blacksmith.

Planning a Build That Survives Camp Changes

Your house is tied to the camp, and the camp keeps changing as the story moves on, so a little planning avoids rebuilding the same room twice. Pearl Abyss changed the rules in patch 1.04.00: expanding the camp no longer pulls furniture out of your house, but changing the house layout through housing mode still retrieves everything you placed. When you relocate the Greymane camp to Pailune, furniture placed in the house moves with it, and after that move you receive a Private Storage item to place through housing mode.

That suggests a sensible order of work:

1. Settle the shell first. Decide the layout in Free Construction before you hang a single planter, because a later layout change sends furniture back to storage.
2. Place storage next. Put the Gatherables Chest, coolers, Collectibles Chest and wardrobes where you will actually walk past them.
3. Decorate last. Use the retrieve-all function added in 1.04.00 if you need to clear a room quickly and start again.

Crafted decorations need the right tools. Patch 1.12.00 notes that Workstations are found in places such as the Greymane Camp and Timberham Sawmill, and Looms in places such as the Hernand Tailor's Shop. Carpets have their own decoration category since patch 1.10.00 and are sold at some dyehouses. Gathering those materials is the slow part of any big build, so keep a running list of what each planned piece needs before you start crafting.

Residences, Spouses and Castles

Charting the Unknown adds a total of 17 residences, built through dispatch missions. games.gg counts them as 15 new housing locations across Pywel on top of the original Howling Hill and Pailune homes, and says you clear any enemies at a site and then speak with Ross, the Base Camp Dispatch Coordinator, to send a party to build there. The map now shows which of Kliff, Oongka or Damiane owns each residence, and if you marry, your spouse lives in the residence you designate. Our romance and marriage guide covers that side of the system.

Spoiler warning for the next paragraph: it names late-game castles and the quests tied to them.

The 2.04.00 notes list two castles you can decorate: Drakesfall Castle, awarded after completing Journey's End and liberating the stronghold, and Flame Knight's Castle, awarded after Damiane's quest Politician and liberating its stronghold. Pearl Abyss's October 20 overview had said three castles would be claimable, so expect the third to be clarified in a future notice. Castle courtyards and interiors take unique objects and furnishings, and patch 2.04.08 fixed a crash when approaching a castle or management facility with a large amount of flooring placed.

Housing Bugs Fixed Since Launch

Free Construction had a bumpy first week. If you gave up on it in late October, these fixes are worth knowing:

• 2.04.00 hotfix: plants no longer appear to grow through housing, and placement no longer misaligns when your monitor and in-game resolutions differ.
• 2.04.06: fixed a black screen when entering Free Construction and occasional crashes when approaching a house built with it.
• 2.04.08: fixed houses disappearing in certain situations, indoor objects vanishing after Undo Changes, and housing mode moving you to a house in another location.

With those patched, the main risk left is your own budget. Big builds burn through Camp Provisions and Camp Funds alike, the same resources ships demand; our ship guide shows how quickly those costs climb if you are planning both.

Starting With More Resources

Large builds are mostly a resource problem: provisions for every module, coin for blueprints and books, and materials for crafted decorations. The store's Crimson Desert services hub groups everything it offers for the game, including Silver packs, a 100x single-resource top-up for whichever material is holding up a project, unlock bundles and finished saves. Each listing carries its own platform notes, and some saves are tied to one console, so read the page that matches how you play.

Start from the Crimson Desert services hub to compare them, and note which listings name your platform before you order anything for a build.

Frequently Asked Questions