I watched a bulldog drag a cracked chest across a battlefield while I cursed at my overloaded inventory. For a beat, the dog had more useful hands than I did. If you’re anything like me, that moment sparks a single question: how do you make a furry companion actually work for you?
How pets work in Crimson Desert
On the street, a stray dog will sidle up and expect a scratch; in-game, that moment becomes a mechanical meter you can read.
I’ve played long enough to treat the pet system as a relationship tracker: trust starts at 0 and climbs to 100. The game currently offers two pet types you can register and keep in your roster: cats and dogs. The trust value is universal across both animals and determines whether they’ll become yours.
The trust meter is a pressure gauge on your relationship with animals. Petting and feeding raise trust; when it hits 100 you can claim the creature. You can stash up to 30 pets in total, but only one can be active while you’re roaming.
How do pets work in Crimson Desert?
Simple: you grow trust, then you claim. Dogs accept pet interaction; cats must be carried to start the carry/pet prompt. Each petting grants +5 trust and you can gain up to +25 trust per day from petting alone. That daily cap matters; it’s why feeding becomes your fastest route.
How to add more pets in Crimson Desert
At a vendor, you’ll see other players trade animal trinkets and talk about their stables; that chatter points to storage limits.
When an animal hits 100 trust, hold the selection button and choose Claim. That registers the cat or dog as yours. You can accumulate up to 30 pets in your collection, but remember: only one can be active at a time, so choose the one you want trailing you into battles and loot runs.
How do I claim a pet?
Reach 100 trust, hold the interact/selection button, and press Claim. I’ve tested this on both platforms where Crimson Desert lives—Steam community posts and YouTube guides from creators like Skill Up back up that process if you want a video reference.
How to use food to gain trust in Crimson Desert
At a market stall you see meat stacked in crates; those same ingredients are what will shorten your pickup time for new pets.
Petting has a daily cap, so food is the shortcut. You can feed a creature up to three times per day. Feeding values in the current build are:
- Tough Meat — feed to a dog for +10 trust
- Fine Meat — feed to a dog for +35 trust (single-day claim possible if used)
- Bird Meat — feed to a cat for +10 trust
- Fish — feed to a cat for +10 trust
- Milk — feed to a cat for +10 trust
Fine Meat bypasses the two-day rhythm by giving enough trust to claim in one day, but you’ll need to buy it from vendors in towns—check prices on the in-game vendor menus or community spreadsheets on Reddit to compare where it’s cheapest.
Can pets loot items automatically?
Yes. Active pets scavenge loot from defeated enemies automatically, and right now there’s no filter to restrict what they pick up. That means they’ll take everything they can carry, which is great for speed but terrible if you’re hoarding specific materials. Your pet acts as a magnet for loot—helpful, but indiscriminate.
Practical tip: use pets when you’re running general grind loops and disable them when you need precise drops. If you want community-tested strategies, search Moyens I/O and Steam forums or watch a short Twitch clip to see pets in action on live runs.
Between petting and food, you can claim a new companion roughly every two days if you stick to the daily caps; with Fine Meat you can speed that to a single day at vendor cost. I’d watch Pearl Abyss patch notes and Steam community threads for any changes to feeding caps or pet behavior because the system is still evolving—developers and creators on YouTube and Reddit often spot tweaks before they hit patch notes.
I’ve shown you how the mechanics move; how will you use a pet to tilt the game in your favor?