14 beginner’s tips before you start Dragon’s Dogma 2

Dragon’s Dogma 2 resists you at every turn. Seemingly every mechanic in this sprawling RPG — from combat to exploration to the pawns who resolutely follow you around — is complex in a way that eludes quick explanation. Even the save system doesn’t make sense.

The upshot is that patience rewards you with knowledge here. We’ve collectively sunk dozens of hours into Dragon’s Dogma 2, and thus have plenty of wisdom to impart. What follows are 14 tips for beginners, consisting of everything we wished we knew before starting.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 only has one save file, and there’s no (official) way to start a new save. It autosaves often and you can save from the menu whenever you want. That’s all normal enough. Where it gets weird is when you die — like when you fall off a slightly too-high roof.

When your character dies, you’ve got two options: “load from last save” or “load from last inn rest.” Loading from the last save just backs you up a few minutes at most. Loading from the last inn rest, though, reverts you all the way back to the last time you paid to stay in an inn.

And then immediately autosaves over your file.

Treat “load from last inn rest” as a nuclear option when something goes horribly wrong or when you just need to back up a lot. Once you know how it works, though, you can treat inn saves as restore points for important decisions.

Since Dragon’s Dogma 2 only lets you maintain one save file, you’re locked into the character you create (or the one you import from the Dragon’s Dogma 2 Character Creator app). While you can change vocations or your appearance down the line — both for yourself and for you main pawn — doing either comes at a cost. And you cannot change between human and beastren after you make your selection.

At the start of Dragon’s Dogma 2, you’re prompted to select from one of four vocations: Fighter, Archer, Mage, and Thief. Your vocation is your character class, and determines a lot about what you can do — what weapons you can wield, what armor you can wear, and what combat skills you can use.

As you level up a vocation, you’ll earn augments for it. Once an augment is unlocked, you can then apply that augment to any vocation. Bear that in mind when choosing which vocation you’ll want to focus on leveling up first. (The Fighter, we’ll gently note, comes with augments to boost health and carrying capacity.)

Your journeys over the course of Dragon’s Dogma 2 will take you all across the map. And you’re going to walk for almost all of it. Yes, there are some fast travel options, but they’re pretty limited — ferrystones are expensive and only deliver you to a few portcrystals, and the few oxcarts that exist only travel during the day along set routes.

Walking isn’t the worst, though, and there’s plenty to do while you’re traveling like collecting resources, fighting monsters, or just exploring the map. That said…

Since you’re walking so much, it’s tempting to try to find a shortcut — or to just march in a straight line. That will get frustrating fast. You can’t climb or swim in Dragon’s Dogma 2 and it doesn’t take much for you to fall to your death, so cutting through the wilderness is a sure way to get dead.

Basically, the vast open world of Dragon’s Dogma 2 isn’t that vast and isn’t really that open. There’s plenty of opportunity to explore and you’ll do a lot of wandering, but you’re much better off (and safer) exploring along the roads. You’ll still encounter lots of monsters to slay and resources to collect, so you’re not really missing anything.

Some of the biggest enemies in Dragon’s Dogma 2 stand directly between you and where you’re trying to go. The good news is, most of the time, you don’t have to fight them. Big enemies will ignore you eventually if you simply... run past them. And if your pawns decide to engage, you can issue the “To me!” command to get them to follow you instead.

If you want to kill the giant enemy later on (for XP, for loot, or just for your pride), mark it on your map and come back later.

There are tons of items to pick up in Dragon’s Dogma 2, from monster teeth to apples. Most of these items are usable on their own with middling effects, but if you combine them with other items, you can create something even more useful.

For example, you can use a normal apple to heal you if you’re hurt. But if you combine that apple with a Greenwarish plant, you can make a Salubrious Draught (a much more powerful healing potion). Even better, you can combine two ripened apples into dried fruit, and then combine that dried fruit with that a Greenwarish to make a Fruit Roborant (an even more powerful healing item).

All you need to do to combine anything in Dragon’s Dogma 2 is pop into your item menu and hit the button that says “combine.” Start doing this early on and make a habit of combining things together for healing draughts and stamina potions every time you rest at an inn.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 has a day-night cycle that lasts about 45 minutes. Time of day affects the monsters you encounter and the resources you can find. And the progression of time plays into some quests. More importantly, though, time affects the contents of your inventory — specifically, the fruits, vegetables, and meat in it.

When you pick up, say, an apple, your inventory will show an apple, then a ripened apple, and then a rotten apple over the course of a few days. Meat just swaps “ripened” with “aged.” (Storing food at an inn or one of your houses essentially serves as a fridge for your food, stopping the aging process.)

Ripened and aged foods are better — more effective in terms of perks like healing — than raw foods. When food becomes “rotten,” though, it’s no longer safe to eat (but you can turn a rotten meat and a rotten vegetable into lantern oil). As mentioned, combining ripened food can result in potent healing items.

At night, all the big, nasty creatures come out to fight you in Dragon’s Dogma 2. Ghosts, spectral skeletons, invisible goblins — the list goes on. The point is, the game will warn you early on that night time is dangerous. Listen to the game.

If you’re close to town and the sun starts getting low, that’s a sign that it’s time to turn around and sleep for the evening. And you can do that even if you’re in the middle of nowhere, thanks to the power of camping.

When you take damage in Dragon’s Dogma 2, it lowers your maximum health. Healing items won’t restore your health bar to normal levels. You’ll need to sleep — either at an inn or a campfire — for that.

Camping at a fire requires camping kits, which are both heavy to carry and limited in quantity. It’s still worth carting one around. Traveling reduced max health can quickly spell your doom. Save yourself the headache and camp out under the stars liberally.

Also, keep in mind that your pawns will learn more about the area of the world you’re in when you camp, making them more useful to you (and anyone who hires them).

Dragon’s Dogma 2 features winding paths and numerable forks in the road. Most cities additionally have two or three gates, and some caves even have two or more entrances.

In order to fill out your map and the world, make sure to explore as many routes as you can. Came to a certain quest marker from the west? Take the east path on your way back to town. This will potentially expose you to new treasures and side quests you’d otherwise miss by sticking to the same road. Just keep in mind that you can also run into monster dens you didn’t previously know about, so make sure you’re ready for a fight before heading into new territory.

The primary rare collectibles of Dragon’s Dogma 2 are lightly smoking discs called Seeker’s Tokens. You can find them everywhere, but they’re extremely hard to spot. Also, there are 240 of them. But the hunt isn’t fruitless. When you gather a certain number of Seeker’s Tokens, you can turn them into your local Vocation Guild for a reward.

The unofficial (and arguably much more useful) collectibles are Golden Trove Beetles. These bugs sit on tree trunks and increase your inventory size by 0.15 if you or your main pawn consume them. This is a slow but fairly effective way to increase your inventory size.

Wakestones are essentially 1UPs in Dragon’s Dogma 2. If you have one on-hand, you can consume it when you die to get back up to full health — even during the middle of a fight.

Though incredibly helpful, Wakestones are both rare and precious. Dragon’s Dogma 2 usually respawns you right before the fight that killed you, but during the more tedious battles, a Wakestone can be a huge time-saver.

You’ll need to combine three Wakestone Shards to create a full Wakestone. Try to be choosy about when you use these precious resources, as they’re best saved for long and very difficult fights.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is really good at shepherding you along to the next thing. Like a great Dungeon Master in D&D, it might put an enticing side quest in the same cave as your main quest, or you might encounter a villager on the road who needs an escort to their home town — which, as luck would have it, you already have a quest for.

This is part of the game’s charm, and what makes exploring its world feel both dynamic and lucrative. So feel free to let yourself wander and get distracted while you play. The game will find ways to refocus your attention on what matters. Go with the flow and you’ll eventually end up where you’re supposed to be.

Getting started in Dragon’s Dogma 2? See our guides on what vocation to pick, how to fast travel, and how to increase inventory size. Or you could check out our beginners guides to combat and the pawn system.