Crimson Moon Beginner Guide: Your First Hunt, Step by Step

What kind of game this is

ProbablyMonsters calls Crimson Moon a “high renaissance action-adventure RPG” built around “savage, replayable runs”. In practice it is a roguelite loop wrapped around soulslike melee: you prepare in a hub, deploy into one district of the fallen city of Gildenarch, fight through it, and either kill the boss at the end or run out of lives. Either way you come back to the hub, and either way you keep your experience points.

One day after launch, 90.9% of Steam players had finished the Prologue and 49.2% had cleared the first district. The gap between those numbers is what this guide is about.

Step 1 — Get through the Prologue without judging the game

The Prologue mission is a scripted opening that ends in a boss fight. Several Steam reviewers note that it drops you in “without half the tools you’d normally have”, and the achievement for it unlocks “in death or victory” — you are meant to be able to lose it. Learn two things here and nothing else: parry timing (just before the hit lands) and that red-aura attacks cannot be parried, only dodged. The full control table is on the combat and controls page.

Step 2 — Learn the hub in one lap

You wake in the Sanctus Clypeus, the Order’s cathedral. Four characters matter:

• Gallant Alexander at the War Table gives missions and bounties.
• Gajov, the vampire blacksmith, forges and upgrades gear (unlocks at level 2).
• Mereda, the archivist, trades lore scrolls for permanent Boon unlocks (Boons from level 4).
• Lotte, the merchant, sells consumables and throwables (unlocks at level 2).

The Loadout Station at the portal is where you pick your nine pieces of gear, two consumables and your Angel. Details on the hub page.

Step 3 — Understand what a run is

From the War Table you choose a mission and a difficulty (six levels; the difficulty locks until the run’s final boss dies). Inside, the district is cut into sections by Nexus Gates — living doorways that open when you complete an objective, usually killing everything nearby. Every gate offers three Boons; you keep one for the rest of the run. Kill the boss at the end and the mission is complete.

You have a life pool, not a single life. Dying spends a life; when the pool is empty the run ends. The pool grows with your level (extra lives at 2, 5, 8 and 11). How runs and deaths work in full is on the runs page.

Step 4 — Stop looking for an inventory

There is none during a hunt. When you pick up a weapon or armor piece it goes straight onto your character and the old piece drops on the floor. This is deliberate: the support team describes it as “fast, improvisational, no menu-fiddling”. The decision you make dozens of times per run is simply “is this better than what I am holding, right now”.

Back at the hub, anything you carried through a Nexus Gate or to the end of the mission can be purified, which adds it permanently to your Armory at Common tier. That is the entire long-term progression: find, purify, upgrade at Gajov, equip next time. The loadout and purification page walks through it.

Step 5 — Build around one status effect

There are no classes. A build is your gear, the Weapon Arts on it, the Boons you pick, and your Angel. The Boon list is heavily weighted toward four status effects — Bleed, Burning, Frost and Rage — so the simplest early plan is: take the weapon whose Art applies one of those, then pick every Boon that mentions the same effect. The builds page sorts all 91 Boons by family.

Step 6 — Use Angel Ascension as a boss button

Parries fill the Ascension meter a little; executing a staggered Elite fills up to half a stage. When you transform you get a power and defence boost, a full cleanse of debuffs, and your Weapon Arts become Angel abilities. Bank it for the final encounter. The second Angel, Sunder, unlocks at level 5.

The rules the support team writes down

1. Light attacks are for poking and repositioning and can be cancelled into a dodge or parry; heavy attacks are “big commitments with big pay offs”, hold to charge.
2. Sprint into an attack and it becomes a lunge.
3. Dodging too much drains stamina and can dodge you into an attack; a failed parry costs the hit and stamina.
4. You keep all XP from a failed mission; you lose bonus XP, some Souls, un-gated loot and consumables.
5. Higher difficulty means higher-rarity drops. If you cannot clear, lower it, upgrade, climb back.
6. Co-op is optional and scales the enemies up, not down.

What to do at each early level

The complete table is on the level unlocks page.

Known launch problems to expect

PC keybinding and mouse sensitivity cannot be changed yet — ProbablyMonsters says a first keybinding implementation ships “this week” (statement dated 1 September 2026). Saves can be lost when the game updates; a fix is in Hotfix 1.0.1. The full list is on the known issues page.