Crimson Moon Builds — How ProbablyMonsters Designed the Gear System

Officially, every Nephilim equips a fixed loadout — no variation in slot count, no unlocking more later. The Aug 12 explainer states it plainly:

"Every Nephilim can equip nine pieces of gear: four pieces of armour, two trinkets, a one-handed weapon and shield and a two-handed weapon."— "How Builds Work in Crimson Moon," gid 1840944183774521, 2026-08-12

The same explainer rules out something a lot of action-RPGs lean on: there are "no traditional character classes." Whatever build identity exists here comes entirely from those nine gear pieces, not from a class pick at character creation.

• Gear slots (9) Confirmed (gid 1840944183774521)
• Character classes Confirmed (gid 1840944183774521) — none exist

Because ProbablyMonsters counted to nine instead of just naming loadout categories, the full slot list can be laid out exactly, no estimating required — this is the one part of the build system where a complete inventory already exists.

ProbablyMonsters lists these as one fixed loadout, not a choice between a one-handed-plus-shield build or a two-handed build — the explainer says "and," not "or." Which pieces belong to which armour set, and what any individual piece does, has not been published.

Third-party outlet reupload of a Crimson Moon gameplay-overview trailer, not our footage.

Official Builds Gameplay Overview TrailerUploaded by GameTrailers, not the developer's channel

Boons come attached to gear rather than being picked independently. The developer describes their range without naming any specific one: "Some Boons increase your damage. Others can debuff enemies, restore health, regenerate flasks, or reward aggressive play." Weapon Arts sit on individual weapons, and the one hard mechanical detail officials gave is that each has its own cooldown — no shared resource pool across weapons has been confirmed either way. Armour sets exist too: pieces "belonging to larger armour sets, allowing you to combine matching equipment," though which pieces belong to which set has not been published.

That distinction matters for how a build actually comes together. Boons aren't a skill tree — they ride along on whatever gear is equipped, so swapping a piece of armour can swap the Boon that comes with it. The developer's own examples span damage, debuffs, healing, flask regeneration, and reward for aggressive play, which is a wide enough spread that "Boon" reads more like a catch-all effect slot than a single stat bonus. Weapon Arts follow a different rule: they sit on the weapon itself, and the only mechanical detail officials have committed to is that each one tracks its own cooldown independently. Whether two Weapon Arts on the same loadout — say, one on the one-handed weapon and one on the two-handed weapon — draw from a shared global cooldown or run fully independently has not been confirmed either way, and we're not going to guess which.

• Boons List not public
• Weapon Arts List not public — cooldown mechanic confirmed
• Armour sets List not public
• "Celestial Transformation" / "Angel Power" Third-party claim, unverified

One competitor site, crimson-moon.wiki, describes an "evolving Celestial Transformation fuelled by a resource called Angel Power" tied to this system. We haven't found that phrase in any ProbablyMonsters explainer, press release, or Steam post we've archived — it may be a real mechanic under an unofficial name, or it may be that site's own framing of something else entirely. Until it turns up in an official source, or we see it first-hand, it stays flagged as a third-party claim, not something we list as fact.

Third-party outlet reupload of a Crimson Moon gameplay-overview trailer, not our footage.

Official Loot & Progression Gameplay Overview TrailerUploaded by IGN, not the developer's channel

Inside a run, temporary power comes from Nexus Gates: "you'll encounter Nexus Gates, where you'll choose between powerful temporary Boons that remain active for the rest of your run." The mechanic — choose one of several temporary Boons, mid-run — is confirmed; the pool of what can appear there is not. Angels are named alongside gear, Weapon Arts and Boons as one of the four pillars of a build, again without a published roster. The fights themselves take place inside Wards, a term the launch announcement uses directly ("take on the horrors waiting within its Wards") without naming any specific one yet.

A second competitor, crimsonmoons.wiki, puts a typical run at "15–45 minutes each." We haven't seen that range in an official ProbablyMonsters source, so it gets the same treatment as the Celestial Transformation claim above: worth knowing, not something we'll cite as our own measurement until we've timed a run first-hand.

What's still open is how Angels connect to the rest of the loop. Naming them alongside gear, Weapon Arts and Boons as one of four build pillars puts them on the same footing as equipment carried between runs, rather than a run-only pickup like a Nexus Gate Boon. But ProbablyMonsters hasn't said whether an Angel is chosen once per save, swapped between runs back at the hub, or unlocked progressively over time — and the four-pillar framing makes that assumption tempting enough that it's worth stating plainly: we don't know, and we're not filling the gap with a guess.

• Nexus Gates Mechanic confirmed (gid 1840944183774521) Pool not public
• Angels List not public
• Wards Term confirmed (gid 1842212951314181) List not public
• 2-player online co-op Confirmed (gid 1842212951314181)
• Run length Third-party claim (15–45 min), unverified

The hub between runs has an official name — Sanctus Clypeus — introduced in the Jul 30 explainer "Gameplay Explained: Welcome to Sanctus Clypeus." What exactly you can do there beyond staging a run has not been broken out into a separate confirmed list.

The name arrived thirteen days before "How Builds Work" — ProbablyMonsters treated the hub as worth its own dedicated announcement rather than a background detail folded into a build or combat explainer. That ordering is itself informative: the studio introduced where a run is prepared before it fully explained what a run is prepared with. What we still don't have is a rundown of hub-specific systems — vendors, currency sinks, cosmetic unlocks, anything a persistent hub between runs would typically carry — because the explainer that named Sanctus Clypeus focused on introducing the space, not cataloguing what's inside it.

• Hub name Confirmed (gid 1839676055885853) — official name

We are not going to publish a Boons list, a Weapon Arts list, an armour-set list, or an Angels roster by guessing from icons or datamined strings. ProbablyMonsters has described the mechanics in detail and has not published the contents. Until that changes — through an official source or our own first-hand play testing — this page states the mechanic and marks the list "not public," and nothing more.

The rule we're holding this page to is simple: if ProbablyMonsters or a Steam post from the developer said it, in words we can quote and link back to, it's marked confirmed. If a third-party wiki or outlet said it and we haven't independently verified it, it's labelled as their claim, not ours. If neither has happened, the entity gets a name and a "list not public" badge, and nothing more is added. That is slower than screenshotting a datamined string and writing a caption for it, but it means every line above this one is either a direct quote or an honest gap — and none of it will need a correction post once ProbablyMonsters actually publishes the full lists.

See how build-related complaints show up in player reviews →

Three days after launch, Team Metal published a post whose premise is worth reading before the rules underneath it. Part of what players have been filing as bugs, the developers say, is not broken:

"We've also noticed that some things being reported as bugs are actually game systems that we recognise aren't currently explained clearly enough in-game. That's on us to communicate better, and the team is looking at ways to make some of these systems clearer in future updates."— Team Metal, Steam announcement gid 1842846814441516 (Helpful Resources: Runs, Loadouts & Gear), 2026-09-04

That admission is the useful part. It means the two behaviours below aren't regressions waiting on a patch — they're the intended design, restated by the studio because the game itself doesn't explain them. Both land on the build system this page documents, so they belong here rather than on Known Issues.

The Loadout Station lock is run state, not a bug

The developers framed the first report as a question players were asking: "Why can't I change my Loadout between missions?" Their answer puts a number on the run structure for the first time:

"A full run consists of three missions followed by a World Boss. Returning to Sanctus Clypeus between those missions doesn't end your run, so the Loadout Station remains unavailable until you either complete the full run or die."— Team Metal, gid 1842846814441516, 2026-09-04

That's the first official count of what a run contains. It does not confirm the 15–45 minute figure the third-party wiki quoted higher up this page — the developers described the shape of a run, not its duration, and we still haven't timed one ourselves.

Purification unlocks at Common, Gajov raises the floor

The second clarification covers "Purification, gear rarity and upgrading equipment with Gajov." The developers flag one line as the thing to know first:

"Purifying an item permanently unlocks that item at Common quality, regardless of the quality you found it at."— Team Metal, gid 1842846814441516, 2026-09-04

Upgrading is the separate lever. In the developers' words it "permanently increases its minimum quality everywhere", and the post is explicit that the floor follows the item into loot tables, not just the Loadout screen: an item upgraded to Uncommon "will only appear at Uncommon quality or higher in future runs - whether you select it from your Loadout or find another one as loot from enemies or chests."

• Run structure (3 missions + World Boss) Confirmed (gid 1842846814441516)
• Loadout Station lock between missions Intended behaviour (gid 1842846814441516)
• Purification unlock quality Confirmed (gid 1842846814441516) — always Common
• Gajov upgrades Confirmed (gid 1842846814441516) — raises minimum quality
• Full quality ladder List not public
• Gajov's upgrade costs List not public

The gaps this post leaves are the same kind as the ones above. The developers named Common, Uncommon and Rare in passing while explaining something else; they didn't publish the full quality ladder, and they said nothing about what an upgrade costs or where Gajov's ceiling sits. Those stay unlisted here for the same reason the Boons roster does.

One last thing worth recording: for both systems the post links out to "How Do Runs Work" and "How Gear & Purification Work" on crimsonmoon.wiki.gg as the place to read more. That is the developer pointing at a wiki, which is a different thing from the developer writing it — which is why it stays marked unverified in the rail.