How to hire and use pawns in Dragon’s Dogma 2

Pawns in Dragon’s Dogma 2 are interdimensional helpers who serve the Arisen — your character. You’ll have a main pawn who’s always with you plus two other hired pawns. Pawns aren’t fixtures in your party, though, and you’ll find yourself swapping out the hired pawns constantly.

Our Dragon’s Dogma 2 beginner’s guide to pawns will help you understand how the pawn system works, how to use your pawns, and how to find the best pawns for your party.

Pawns can have the same vocations you can. At the start of the game, you’ll see Fighters, Archers, Mages, and Thieves. Each vocation has its strengths and weaknesses, and a well-rounded party can make all the difference in Dragon’s Dogma 2 combat.

You should make sure your main pawn is a different vocation than the one you’re playing. (Close-quarters vocations, like Thief, complement ranged ones, like Archer.) For a truly versatile party, you should ensure every pawn you hire is different than the two vocations you’ve chosen for yourself and your main pawn.

As you play through Dragon’s Dogma 2, you’ll likely end up unlocking not just all four starting vocations but up to six additional ones. Pawns are good at their jobs, so you can actually learn how best to play the other vocations by watching them fight. The pawns you can hire will even start to rock the locked vocations, like Warrior and Sorcerer — even before you’ve unlocked them.

Hired pawns don’t level up while traveling with you (your main pawn does, though), so you’ll be swapping them out pretty constantly. But since some pawns can help with your quests, you can also hire pawns specifically to lead you through objectives.

In the Rift at a riftstone, tab over to the Specialization/Quest option. Now, when you look at a pawn, you’ll see information about their Specialization, Quest Guide, and Pawn Quest on the panel above their head. Quest Guide is the one you’re interested in — it’ll either say “None” or “Yes.” “None” means they can’t help you, while “Yes” means they’ll guide you to the next step (at least) in your quest.

You can even change your current priority quest while in the Rift to see your options.

Pawns are very knowledgeable about the world, it’s true. But you know what else pawns are? Strong.

If you’re having a hard time in Dragon’s Dogma 2 — either with a specific boss or just in general — you might want to consider hiring a high level pawn. Pawns that are your level or lower cost zero Rift Crystals (RC), but you can also spend RC to hire pawns that are higher level than you.

These high-level pawns have not only seen a lot of the world (meaning they have a lot of info to share with you), they’re also really powerful in battle. They probably have better gear than most other pawns, and they likely have stronger skills. But most importantly, they just have higher stats than the free pawns you could pick up.

No pawn is going to drop in and one-shot a dragon for you (at least, we haven’t been fortunate enough to find a pawn like that yet), but investing in a better pawn is a simple way to ease the difficulty of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s encounters.

As you explore the world of Dragon’s Dogma 2, you’ll find broken riftstones. Interacting with them will repair them and let you hire pawns. These forgotten riftstones all have a specific criteria for the pawns you can hire there — things like their inclination, appearance, and pawn quests.

In Vernworth, the Grand Riftstone has an option in its menu to “view linked riftstones.” This displays all the forgotten riftstones you’ve found and lets you filter the pawns.

Your inventory size (your max encumbrance) in a word, sucks. And your gear — armor and weapons — counts toward your encumbrance even when you’re wearing it, so you’re going to be limited in what you can pick up. It’s still a good idea to grab pretty much everything you can. You’ll use monster parts to upgrade your gear and fruits and herbs for healing.

When your pack gets full and you become heavy, unload some of that stuff onto your pawns. In your inventory, select an item, and choose “Give.” That drops the item into their inventory.

Fighters tend to have the highest carrying capacity, so load them up with the heaviest stuff like camping kits and extra weapons.

Dismissing a pawn means they take their inventory with them — and you can’t get it back. This is a problem if you, like we said above, use pawns to take all your extra junk.

Before you dismiss a pawn, make sure to check their inventory. Either head to an inn and dump their stuff into your storage or just spread it across the other pawns temporarily.

Picking up a bunch of resources so you can buy and upgrade your gear is critical in Dragon’s Dogma 2. Your main pawn needs the same level of attention.

Make sure you’re regularly enhancing the weapons and armor of your main pawn. This will not only allow them to help you more effectively — keeping them alive during big fights and ensuring they deal decent damage — but it’ll also make them more desirable to other Dragon’s Dogma 2 players who might want to hire them.

When you rest in a bed, you’ll get a summary of everything your main pawn has done out in the world(s) since your last rest. This is where you’ll see who your pawn has adventured with, what rewards they have for you, and what kinds of monsters they’ve killed. And once you’ve finished looking over the summary, you can set up a new quest for their next adventure.

Let’s say you want to increase your pawn’s Cyclops Clobberer badge, making them more effective in combat against cyclopes (which is the plural of cyclops, apparently). Set up your pawn with a cyclops hunt quest and offer something desirable as a reward, like gold. Chances are, an Arisen going on a cyclops hunt will grab your pawn to help them out so they can fulfill the quest and earn a payday. Or, if you’re just looking for some RC, set a really simple quest for your pawn and offer a decent reward. An Arisen might grab a lower level pawn if they come with a guaranteed bonus.

Doing this not only benefits you and your pawn — by increasing their badges and earning you RC — it also benefits the Dragon’s Dogma 2 community!

The pawns you travel with — both your main pawn and the pawns you hire — tend to be pretty talkative. A lot of what they say is filler, but sometimes they’ll point out resources nearby.

When they do that, a crystal icon will appear on your mini map. That crystal icon could mean anything from fruits to ore to just a body you didn’t loot.

They’ll also call out ladders, treasure chests, and caves from time to time.

More importantly, some pawns have information about quests you’re working on. When this happens, you can hit the “Go!” pawn command (up on the D-pad), and they’ll take the lead. Their icon on the mini map becomes a hand and they’ll take the lead so you can follow them to the next objective.

As strong as they are, your pawns can fall in battle (or by literally falling off a cliff). When a pawn’s health hits zero, they fall down and are immobile. Their icon on your minimap will change to a skull; on PlayStation 5, you’ll get an audio alert from your controller that, for no reasonable rationale whatsoever, you can’t disable.

If (when) this happens, approach them and hold the button to revive them. They’ll pop back up with the same amount of health that you have.

If you don’t get to them in time, they’ll be lost and removed from your party (and you’ll lose whatever was in their inventory — see above). Those pawns can’t be retrieved. If your main pawn is the one that falls, they’ll still disappear, but they’ll be summoned again the next time you touch a riftstone.

Getting started in Dragon’s Dogma 2? Check out our beginners guide, and read our explainers on what vocation to pick, how to fast travel, and how to increase inventory size.