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Crimson Desert has everything except a female protagonist, so modders added one with 98 face presets and 159 hair styles: "F*** John Desert"

Ashley Bardhan2026-04-08Open World Games
Crimson Desert has everything except a female protagonist, so modders added one with 98 face presets and 159 hair styles:

Crimson Desert has everything except a female protagonist, so modders added one with 98 face presets and 159 hair styles: "F*** John Desert"

News
By Ashley Bardhan published 8 April 2026

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Crimson Desert female protagonist mod shows a woman looking down
(Image credit: Pearl Abyss / Khione95 via NexusMods)
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Tired of looking at Crimson Desert protagonist Kliff's chiseled little snarl, modders have decided to give him a new face…and body. And probably a new outlook on life. They've made a character creator and transformed Kliff into the wild adventure game's first female protagonist.

Technically, Crimson Desert already had one. Developer Pearl Abyss eventually allows you to unlock and play as glamorous supporting character Damiane – but, as many annoyed fans have noticed, Damiane has many missing abilities compared to Kliff, making her impossible to use as a primary protagonist. So modders have taken control of the situation with the Character Creator – Female mod, which includes "98 face presets and 159 hair styles" according to its description.

The mod repurposes the barber, which lets you mildly change your appearance in Crimson Desert with tattoos and thick facial hair. That's decidedly less sexy than fans' Character Creator mod, which swaps the barber's beard options with beautiful lady faces. Creator Khione95 also says they've tailored Kliff's bulky Neanderthal armor into elegant drapes "adjusted to fit the female body."

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A woman in witchy garb surrounded by crows and dead trees in Crimson Desert

Unlike Kliff, Crimson Desert's existing female characters get lovely armor. (Image credit: Pearl Abyss)

Going forward, Khione95 plans to add more detailed customization options, like eyebrows and eyeliner, race options including Orc and Goblin, and "female animations," which hopefully includes Kliffina wagging her finger "no, no, no" if a player tries to take a weird screenshot. The mod also currently requires Ev3n5taR's Kliff Female Voice download, so you can hear Kliff sporadically muttering "all right" with a bit of a softer edge.

One Redditor quips in a related thread that it's "probably not a hard effort to replace" Kliff's original voice lines "considering 80% of them are some form of yes or aye."

"Fuck John Desert," decides another player. But don't condemn him too soon, as another Crimson Desert astutely comments in a reply with 245 upvotes, "We all know where this rabbit hole leads… when will we get big naturals for Kliff."

Big or small naturals, Kliff or no Kliff, seeing as Pearl Abyss presents Crimson Desert as an open-world fantasy you can bend to your liking, I'm surprised it doesn't feature a robust character creator with race and gender options to begin with.

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So I think the Character Creator – Female mod fits perfectly into Crimson Desert's creative gameplay. Plus, it's nice to see fans taking initiative in finally allowing the notoriously stoic blockhead Kliff to express himself – or, herself.

Crimson Desert players discover space travel, then find that space is strangely detailed for a game that isn't about space.

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Ashley Bardhan
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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