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10 tips you should know before playing Dragon's Dogma 2

I made the dumb decisions so you don't have to.

Josh Broadwell

March 21, 2024 9:43 PM

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A Dragon’s Dogma 2 beginner’s guide is almost essential, as Capcom’s massive RPG leaves so much for you to discover without much help along the way. It's easy to miss everything from major questlines to simple exploration features that make life easier. That's why we put together this DD2 tips guide. We made the awful decisions and dumb mistakes first, so you don't have to.

Talk to everyone. A lot

Talking to everyone sounds like generic instruction manual advice, but it’s actually the most important thing you’ll do in Dragon’s Dogma 2. Almost no quest is marked on the map before you start it, and NPCs have no name labels until you speak with them. Few in number are the quests where a character will approach you and give you a task unbidden, so if you want to see everything Dragon’s Dogma 2 has to offer – and you do – you best start talking.

It’s worth chatting up people when you revisit an area as well. Some people only have quests for you at certain times of day or after you complete tasks elsewhere.

Don’t get too attached to your Pawns…

Pawns are your loyal allies and support you in all things, but they are, essentially, just pawns. You might recruit a handy mage or an ace fighter in your first few hours, and they’ll work just fine Eventually, though, you may notice their behaviors get in the way, or maybe you need different vocations that complement a new vocation.

It’s okay to ditch Pawns that aren’t your main Pawn. Once you find a Pawn you want to recruit, you’ll have the option to send off another Pawn with a gift and a parting rating so other players know whether they’re worth recruiting. Since you can’t change your recruitable Pawns’ vocation or alter their skills, you should plan on swapping them out pretty regularly as you encounter new and more difficult challenges on your journey.

…But don’t blow your Rift Crystals without thinking

Saving your Rift Crystals, or RC, is a smart idea, though. Stronger Pawns cost more crystals, and the currency has other uses as well. Pawn Emporiums sell unique cosmetics with certain elemental or debilitation resistances attached to them, and, more importantly, you can buy items that let you change your main Pawn’s personality. Say you start as a fighter with a main Pawn as a mage who hangs back to stay safe. That’s fine while it lasts, but if you swap roles and make them a fighter while you play as a sorcerer, that’s not going to do you much good.

You really should explore

Most of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s best equipment and quests are off the beaten path. That’s true for pretty much every open-world game, but DD2 is happy to just let you miss whole storylines and important items if you don’t take the time to explore caves, look for hidden areas, or generally just wander off the road when you’re in the wild.

Take notes IRL

Dragon’s Dogma 2’s quest tracker only includes a small handful of details, which seems like more than enough – for the game’s first five minutes. Quests start getting more complex once you reach Vermund’s capitol. Characters mention important details in passing conversations, sometimes even before a quest begins. Questgivers tell you where to find certain items, and their hints don’t get logged in the quest tracker. Sometimes, you’ll even end up with incorrect or contradictory information from characters who provide misleading information.

Taking notes outside the game is essential in these cases, especially if you end up with multiple overlapping quests, like Dragon’s Dogma 2 enjoys throwing at you.

Camp often

Assuming you’re not running short on time for a quest or about to let some of your valuable consumables go sour, you should stop at campsites whenever your health gets low. The maximum amount of health you can restore lessens the longer you journey without resting, so it ends up becoming a necessity during long periods of exploration. 

The good thing is that camping won’t permanently consume your camp supplies. It’s a handy little fact that Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t tell you, which led to me wasting gold and inventory space on every time I found a new camp pack and thought it was essential. You’ll pick the supplies back up when you set off again – well, unless you get attacked and somehow lose your supplies in the process. Make sure to clear the surrounding areas of enemies.

Experiment with vocations

You may feel tempted to stick with your starting vocation, and you can definitely do that for most of the game, if you want. However, swapping jobs and reaching at least vocation rank five or higher in them is a wise idea, since you can unlock their augmentations. Augmentations are passive abilities that you can equip even after changing vocations, and while some of them are situational – the Archer’s radiance skill that reduces lamp oil use, for example – others are more useful and lead to stronger builds for other classes.

Store your materials

Don’t be like me and hoard stuff with no plan. Plants, fruits, and meats eventually go rotten after about a day or two of in-game time, and while you can combine them with other materials, the result is just another rotten item. When you store items at an inn, they stay suspended in that moment and won’t spoil, no matter how long until you use them. It’s much cheaper to make your own medicines and concoctions with plants you find in the wild, so get in the habit of dropping off your unused items when you visit a town.

Water isn’t always the enemy

The Brine is Dragon’s Dogma 2’s way of keeping you out of the water. If you enter water that’s too deep to stand in, a mass of red tentacles swarms around you and pulls you under. The key is “water that’s too deep to stand in,” though. Some rivers are shallow enough that you can wade through them, and even though the Brine tries dragging you down, you can often hop through the water and reach the other side safely.

It doesn’t work every time, but it’s a handy and risk-free way to get to hard-to-reach places, since you don’t lose HP from the Brine. Tell your Pawns to wait while you test this, though. The Brine kills them permanently.

Save in the wild

Dragon’s Dogma 2’s autosave pops up every time you look sideways in a town, but it’s happy to take long naps while you’re exploring the wilderness. I made the mistake of exploring after a campout and then making some inadvisable decisions during a battle with a minotaur, decisions I’d have thought twice about if I didn’t assume the autosave was actually functioning. It was not, so I lost about 30 minutes of progress and some pretty slick gear.

The short version: Save before doing stupid things and save frequently when you’re not in town.

Don’t be stingy

If you give a gift to someone, make sure it counts. Don’t offload your garbage or fork over a slab of meat or some random plant you found. If there’s a non-Pawn character you can give a gift to, chances are, they’re important for some quest or other later down the line. Giving them something they like raises your affinity with them, and you usually need higher affinity to start or proceed in a quest.

Don’t hand over a gift the first time you have the option to, though. Your logbook will register non-Pawn NPCs after you speak with them, and it includes brief, vague descriptions of the gifts they like. Sure, “fancy things” is a pretty broad category, but it’s something to work with, at least.

If you're looking for more Dragon's Dogma 2 help, head over to our best Pawn vocations guide and take a gander at where to find Ulrika.

Josh Broadwell

Contributing Editor

Josh is a freelance writer and reporter who specializes in guides, reviews, and whatever else he can convince someone to commission. You may have seen him on NPR, IGN, Polygon, or VG 24/7 or on Twitter, shouting about Trails. When he isn’t working, you’ll likely find him outside with his Belgian Malinois and Australian Shepherd or curled up with an RPG of some description.