There’s nothing like a good boss battle, and Crimson Desert certainly has quite a few to speak of. While there is a significant difficulty curve to some of the main story bosses, when it comes to optional fights, some of them can be more puzzles than they are full on mechanical-heavy endeavors.
The Queen Stoneback Crab certainly falls into this category, as, while it certainly will charge at you and try to kill you, it’s much slower moving and gives a lot of opportunity to figure out just hwo to beat it. With that said, it’s not made immediately clear how to take this overgrown crustacean down, but thankfully there are a couple of methods we know of to ensure it falls within a matter of minutes.
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Locating the Queen Stoneback Crab
Located in the center of Queen’s Lake, you will first need to grab the almost automatic quest. This will be immediately picked up upon entering the small settlement to the west of the lake where you will meet lost Greymane Diederik. He will lead you to the lake where you will come across this rather large crab.
This can be found all the way to the east of the map, north of Beardtree Gorge and south of the Crimson Desert itself.
How to Beat the Queen Stoneback Crab
Phase 1
If you have played Shadow of the Colossus in the past, you’ll feel right at home with the Queen Stoneback fight. This is because, at least for the first phase, you will be climbing onto the back of this colossal beast and hanging on for dear life. The only downside is that your stamina runs out much quicker than in Team Ico’s iconic game, so you will need to manage your resources a bit better.
With that said, make sure you have a pickaxe at the ready. While on top of the back of the crab, you will see various mining opportunities. You normally wouldn’t bother considering you’re in the middle of a fight, but it’s crucial to break up these small chunks of resources to reveal what’s underneath.
When you break the stones, it will reveal a large green glowing weakspot. Unequip your pickaxe and equip your one-handed sword. At this point, grab on for dear life and crawl to the glowing weakpoint. You will have two options: stab it with R1/RB or stab it with R2/RT.
If you do the former, it will do absolutely nothing other than wear down the stagger bar below its health bar, which is essentially worthless in this fight. Instead, charge up a nice R2/RT “Pull” strike and let it go. This will do an immense amount of damage to the crab.
Once the weakpoint disappears, you must go mining on the back of the crab once more and find another weakpoint to deal damage until two bars are depleted.
Phase 2
Now that you have brought the crab’s health down to little or nothing, there is only one thing left to do: destroy the jars on its back. Even though there’s no real good indication why these jars play a significant role, it’s now your job to destroy them.
There are a couple of ways to go about destroying them. If you have explosive arrows, you can take care of them very quickly with one clean shot from a distance, or you can continue whacking away at it.
The easiest and most efficient way to destroy the jars, though, is using your Force Palm strike. This can be while standing on the back of the crab, but we found it even more useful when jumping and hitting it while in midair to avoid being launched off.
After a couple of Force Palm strikes, the Queen’s HP should be depleted fully, and you can go back to Diederik to reclaim your friendship, but not before mining all the very valuable resources around the area.
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Released
March 19, 2026
ESRB
Mature 17+ / Blood, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Strong Language
Developer(s)
Pearl Abyss
Publisher(s)
Pearl Abyss
Number of Players
Single-player