How To Find & Mount A Dragon

!!!WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR CRIMSON DESERT!!!Dragons don’t appear in Crimson Desert until you’re well deep into the experience. Further, there are some serious limitations as to how and when you can summon a dragon, and they aren’t treated the same way as your regular mount.

Can You Mount A Dragon In Crimson Desert?

Dragons are definitely a part of the Crimson Desert experience, but they are not treated as your typical mounts. In fact, you won’t be able to find or mount a dragon until the later parts of the game, namely in Chapter 9 as part of the main story progression.

Further, the dragon mount is not a permanent fixture of your mount list, and after completing the main quest, you’ll only be able to summon them for a limtied time with a 50-minute cooldown timer.

Dragons and wyverns are found in Crimson Desert in the late-game, but cannot be added to your mount list as you would with horses. The first dragon, Blackstar, is part of the Shattered Stars quest in Chapter 9.

Where To Find & Mount A Dragon

In Chapter 9, players can find and mount the Blackstar dragon in the Shattered Stars questline. They’ll have to travel to the palace of Urdavah and tame the dragon following the in-game prompts that automatically trigger when entering the region.

You’ll need a high stamina level and a good understanding of how the Axiom grapple works, and will have to complete this to advance the main storyline. The Blackstar dragon won’t become a permanent summon option until after you complete Chapter 11.

Blackstar can shoot fireballs and has a lock-on function, and can burn targets at close range as well. Unfortunately, while extremely powerful, the dragon comes with a nearly 1-hour cooldown function, which is quite disappointing for many players considering it was a huge selling point in the marketing for the game.

Further, dragons and wyverns are not available to tame and mount in the same way that you would random horses in the game. If you were looking forward to flying around on dragons throughout the entire Crimson Desert experience, you’ll likely be pretty disappointed with the reality of the experience, though this could change at any point given how Pearl Abyss rolling out several updates in the game’s first week since launch.

Crimson Desert

Systems

7/10

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