The most counterintuitive fact about the Patch 1.18 research cost change is this: it’s not a nerf, and it’s not a quality-of-life tweak. It’s a quiet declaration that the silver economy in Crimson Desert had broken, and the developers decided to make your camp the new center of gravity for progression. If you’ve been hoarding silver bars for research, you’ve been playing the wrong game since launch. Patch 1.18 corrects that.
The update, rolling out now across Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and the Epic Games Store, changes the resource required for research from silvers to camp funds. That’s a one-sentence summary. The reality is more layered. Every research station in the game now draws from your camp’s treasury instead of your personal wallet. The Mac App Store build is still in progress, but every other platform already has the change live.
This guide breaks down what the change actually means, how to adapt your resource strategy, and what else in the patch deserves your attention.
What Exactly Changed?
The patch notes say only this: “Changed the resource required for research from silvers to camp funds.” No numbers. No exchange rate. No explanation of how camp funds are calculated or refreshed.
That brevity is telling. The developers are treating this as a backend economic correction rather than a feature announcement. But for players, the practical effect is immediate: if you try to start a research project now, the prompt will ask for camp funds, not silver. If you have zero camp funds sitting in your treasury, the research doesn’t begin.
The YouTuber covering the patch noted that “the silver economy was becoming kind of crazy with how many gold bars you could just farm up.” That’s the understatement of the season. The previous system let players accumulate massive silver reserves, then dump those reserves into research without engaging with the camp system at all. The camp was decorative. The research tree was a silver sink. Patch 1.18 fuses those two systems together.
Why Camp Funds Instead of Silver?
The designers at Pearl Abyss are making a deliberate statement. Camp funds are earned through camp operations, worker assignments, and trade routes that feed your base. Silver, by contrast, comes from killing mobs, selling loot, and completing quests — activities that have nothing to do with your settlement.
By decoupling research from silver, the developers are forcing a choice. You can still farm silver for gear, consumables, and trading. But if you want to advance your knowledge tree, you need to build a functioning camp economy. That means assigning workers, managing resources, and trading smart. The camp is no longer a cosmetic add-on.
This is also a long-term anti-inflation measure. The patch fixes an exploit where high-value trade goods could be stacked and loaded in quantities up to 100. Players were loading cargo with items worth two or three gold bars each, stacking those items to 100, and generating absurd profits. The research cost change and this stacking fix are two sides of the same coin: the developers are cutting off both the source of excess silver and the sink that made silver feel mandatory.
How to Stockpile Camp Funds Fast
The most direct answer to the main question — how do you change research costs to camp funds — is that you don’t. The patch does it globally. The real question is how to keep your research projects rolling under the new system.
Start by checking your camp treasury. The funds there now determine what you can research. If you’ve neglected your camp, expect a hard stop on research until you build up reserves.
Send workers on resource-gathering missions immediately. Camp funds accrue from production, not from idle time. Assigning workers to timber, ore, and agriculture cycles generates the raw materials that convert into camp value. If you have multiple worker slots unused, fill them now.
Trade routes matter more than ever. The same high-value trade goods that were previously abused for silver are now indirectly feeding your camp’s economy. Sell those goods through your camp’s trading network rather than at local merchants. The camp takes a cut, but that cut becomes research fuel.
Check the daily life quests in the new Quests knowledge category. The patch added a full quest hierarchy under Knowledge, including Daily Life Quests. These are likely the fastest repeatable source of camp funds. The 8 sub-categories are Main Quests, Faction Quests, Investigation Quests, Research Quests, Daily Life Quests, Guide, Archive Records, and Constellations. If you have completed quests in these categories already, certain knowledge entries unlock retroactively — which means camp fund payouts from those quests may have already been credited.
The New Lock-On Camera System
The research cost change is the biggest economic shift, but the control changes affect every combat encounter. Lock-on camera rotation now has three settings instead of two: Manual, Semi-auto, and Auto.
Manual is the old “enabled” setting. You rotate the camera freely with the right stick or mouse while staying locked onto a target. This is the default for players who like to keep situational awareness during melee fights.
Semi-auto is the new middle ground. It lets you rotate the camera within a limited range while locked on. The lock-on box stays on the enemy, but your camera drifts a few degrees before stopping. In practice, this feels like a soft constraint: you can peek around your target without fully breaking the lock.
Auto is the old “disabled” setting. The camera stays glued to the enemy. You cannot rotate it at all. This is for players who never touch the right stick during fights and prefer the game to handle all camera movement.
For ranged combat, the patch also fixes an issue where you couldn’t lock onto targets with a ranged weapon while riding a mount. Combined with the camera options, mounted combat is now more playable.
The Rest of the Patch: Hidden Gems
The patch notes list dozens of fixes, but several stand out for how they improve daily play.
The stable change is quiet but welcome. Horse gear can now be equipped directly at the stable, which means you no longer need to return to an inventory screen to swap saddles, stirrups, or armor. For players who maintain multiple mounts, this saves time and reduces menu fatigue.
The kiln repair quest in Chapter 4, “The Price of Knowledge > Mysterious Pot > Kiln Repair at the Kilnden Workshop,” now lets you reattach broken kiln pieces using “Force Current.” Previously, you had to climb the kilns and use a downward force palm. The new method is smoother and less frustrating.
Animal knowledge collection was improved significantly. Instead of killing animals to learn about them, you can pick them up. That’s a direct quality-of-life improvement for anyone working through the knowledge system who felt guilty slaughtering every creature they encountered.
The map UI now distinguishes areas revealed by ringing a bell from areas explored directly. This is a small visual update, but it changes how you plan exploration. Bell-revealed areas show a different tint. If you’re checking whether you’ve physically walked through a region, you’ll know immediately.
The fix for NPCs in blockaded areas prevents a specific immersion-breaking bug. Regular NPCs would sometimes spawn behind barricades or blocked passages, making them unreachable. That’s cleaned up.
Workers now function properly after loading a save file. That might not sound exciting, but for anyone who lost hours of camp production to a save-load loop, it’s the quiet hero of the patch.
Performance and Graphics Fixes
Low-end graphics cards get attention in this patch. The bug where rendering appeared corrupted when FSR Frame Generation or XeSS Frame Generation was enabled on cards like the GTX 1060 has been fixed. The camera jitter in low-FPS conditions is also addressed. Indoor lighting instability, another long-standing complaint, is patched out.
If you run older hardware, this patch is worth installing for the stability improvements alone. Frame generation features on unsupported cards caused visual artifacts during busy scenes. That should stop now.
Localization and Voice-Over Fixes
Localization errors were fixed across all languages. That is a general note, but one specific fix matters for players who skip cutscenes: the voice-over for a help pop-up would play at increased speed while fast-forwarding through a cutscene. That issue is resolved.
Another fix: the game would occasionally return to the title screen when reviving at a revival point.
That was a brutal bug that disconnected players from the action at the worst possible moment. It’s gone.
Where to Go From Here
The Mac App Store version still hasn’t received the patch. If you’re on that platform, you’ll have to wait. Every other platform is live.
This patch shifts where you spend your time. Research projects pull from camp funds, so building a self-sustaining camp is no longer optional. The silver grind still matters for gear and trading, but camp management is now a progression requirement, not a side activity. If you have been ignoring your workers and trade routes, Patch 1.18 will force you to pay attention. The single most important takeaway: log in, check your camp treasury, and get those workers moving before you queue up your next research project. The old ways of funding research with silver are gone, and the camp is now the true currency of knowledge.
