Jump to content
Please support IVG when you shop at Amazon

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

Karooo

By Karooo,
in Games

Recommended Posts

kemosabe Contributor

kemosabe

Posted
Posted

Few things u need to know.

> You will have to create a pawn in the beginning, choose his/her vacation(class) the opposite of urs. If u select fighter make pawn as mage. Assassin class is best imo.

> Customize ur pawn regularly and give items for them to use. Along with main pawn u can choose 2 more pawns but can't upgrade them. So change those pawns reguraly to match ur level.

> Pawns annoy u saying crap during missions. So disable that if u don't want that feature.

> In the beining do the quests in the moining, its time consuming to travel around the world during nights. Also carry lantrans during nights or when u go into dungeons. They r very important.

> Apparantly PC version will have plenty portcrystals. They enable fast travel so use them form the beginning.

 

Game explains everything neatly. Even inventory is easy to manage. Play it on normal, hard mode is a real drag.

 

 

 

If you're familiar with the RPG universe, then this game has almost all the common aspects you can find in most games. I'll list a few things which helped me in the beginning:

 

Gran Soren Exploration - Gran Soren is the capital city in the main game. It houses most of the shops and NPCs. Be sure to explore all it's areas to find out where everyone is located, as you'll be frequently visiting this place. You'll reach this place very early in the game, so best familiarize yourself with it.

 

Vocation selection - Simply put, vocation is your class. Pick anyone you want depending on your play-style. However, once you hit level 10, you'll have the option to select hybrid vocations and this is when things start to get interesting. It's a vocation which blends 2 different classes to form a unique class. For instance, in the above video that I posted, you can witness a hybrid class called 'Mystic Knight'. It's a combination of skills from a Mage and a Fighter. So if you like playing as a mage but crave for some melee combat too then you know your hybrid vocation. Don't shy away from trying out any and every vocation the game has to offer. Every class has something different to offer and your stat growth is also governed by the class you use.

 

Pawn (to the rescue!) - One of the most brilliant and creative additions this game has brought in the RPG arena. Pawn can be your biggest asset at the start of the game and also a life saver (literally!). It's your NPC assistant who has a mind of it's own. You'll have the option to select your main pawn who you can customize as you wish and 2 others who you can either chose from the game world randomly or hire from the Dragon's Dogma online Pawn community. Make full use of these pawns as they can get you out of tricky situations. Be sure to take a mage/sorcerer pawn with you as they have healing skills which will help you a lot in tough battles. Your pawn can't revive you if you fall, but you can revive them. Your main pawn gains world knowledge the more you bring him/her along with you on your quests. This would help in their understanding of how to deal with enemies and the navigation of the game world. This directly translates into them providing you tips if you're stuck on a fight or left stranded somewhere.

 

Lantern is your friend - Night venturing in this game is dark; awfully dark. So always carry a lantern with a good amount of oil stocked in your inventory, if you choose to explore at night. Also be cautions that some enemies would only appear at night time and would beat the crap out of you. So always be on guard.

 

Manual Save - I can't stress this enough; Keep saving manually. There are auto save points, but they are random and unpredictable. Since the travel system in this game (on the consoles) was very rigid, an untimely death would send you back to the beginning. Manual saving ensures you resume from the same point.

 

Don't be afraid to run away - You may feel the need to be a masochistic hero all the time, but don't push yourself in this game. At lower levels, some of the peasant looking bandits will pummel you to death, or an ogre or a cyclops. Heck, even a Goblin is no exception. Don't underestimate anything. If you venture into an unknown area where you don't think you're doing enough damage, get the f*ck out of there and come back later.

 

Fast Travel - Right, so this was a much debated topic when the original game first released. The fast travel in this game is largely dependent on the placement of port crystals and the use of ferry stones. Port crystals are obtained during your normal play-through and these can be placed on any open ground in the game world for you to fast travel to that spot. A ferry stone is to be used to port yourself from one port crystal to another location. I'm not sure how they have changed this on the PC version, but in the console version, we could only place 10 port crystals at any given time. So we had to choose our locations wisely. A ferry stone costs 1k gold for direct purchase. However, there was a bonus gift called the 'Eternal ferrystone' on the console version for the people who already had the original game and re-purchased Dark Arisen. This ferrystone had unlimited use. I hope it's directly accessible in the PC version as it would make your travel extremely cheaper.

 

Online pawn community - Probably the best part of this game. No, it's not multiplayer co-op. But this allows your main pawn to be hired by other people and vice versa. This is the reason who you need to get your pawn in shape. A well developed pawn has a lot of chance to be hired by other people to assist them in their quest. When they release your pawn, they have the option to provide it with a gift. Now this can be anything from a shitty material from the inventory to a shiny new piece of gear/loot, depending on the person hiring your pawn.

 

Heed your pawns advise - A lot of hate is given to the pawn chatter, which is true to a good extent. However, they can offer you some good pointers on what techniques would work against certain enemies if you're stuck in a fight. For example, a cyclops weak spot is.....? Easy, it's eye. A pawn, while assisting in your fight, makes observations, learns of it's weakness and informs you about the same. They can also tell you if an enemy is weak to a certain attack like Hydra being weak to fire. So don't mute them out too early.

 

Bitterblack Isle - The Dark Arisen DLC expansion area. The holy (or rather unholy) grail of difficulty spike in this game. I won't spoil anything here, but do not and I repeat, DO NOT venture into this area until you have a good end game gear and/or have extreme patience. I'm serious, there are a lot of enemies that can practically one shot you to death (pun intended). This is also the place where you'll get the best possible loot in the game. It's hard as balls, but take it from me, you'll spend more time here than you'll ever do in the main game. It's extremely addictive. Take your time when you visit it.

 

Inventory management - This game does not offer unlimited inventory for your main character. So offload your undesired material at your resting Inn. You can also use your pawn as your pack mule. But don't overburden him/her or they will suffer with reduced movement speed and slow stamina regeneration.

 

Explore and then some more - I shouldn't be explaining this part. ;)

 

Side quests begone - The side quests in this game, for me, were utterly useless. Most of them are either quests akin to contracts in Witcher games or escort quests or find 'X' amount of 'X-rated' stuff kind of shite, which gets boring before you even know it. Sure they grant you some XP and gold (and some decent items at times), but honestly, you have much better ways of getting all those later (read: Bitterblack Isle exploration :D).

 

Multiple playthrough - Not really a beginners tip, but good to know information. You can try hard mode, speed run or simply try a new game plus. Hit level 200 on your character.

 

Patience - is a virtue and just the the Souls game, this game also demands a fair bit of it in the beginning. In fact, I think this required more patience than any soul game I have played.

 

Lastly, just enjoy the game. It's one of the last gems that Capcom was able to churn out before going full DmC on us. Good luck. :)

 

Nice tips by both of you, few questions -

 

1. Does enemies scale as per my player level?

2. Can I farm my hero and pawn (for credits, Exp and gear) ?

3. If someone hire my pawn (online) is there any assured benefits, like - gold,exp etc?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Ethan_Hunt Experienced

Ethan_Hunt

Posted
Posted

1. Does enemies scale as per my player level?

2. Can I farm my hero and pawn (for credits, Exp and gear) ?

3. If someone hire my pawn (online) is there any assured benefits, like - gold,exp etc?

 

1.) The enemies have a fixed level and there is no scaling. Unfortunately, the game won't reflect the enemy level.

 

2.) Yes you can. Your pawn and Arisen level simultaneously. I'll let you know great farming spots once you complete your first play through.

 

3.) Assured? No. It purely depends on the person hiring it. The only assured benefits are Rift Crystals, which is something you'll really need for hiring other pawns and most importantly, as a currency to purify Bitterblack Isle gear (top tier gear). Offline drop of Rift Crystals is really poor. So you'll have to be a part of the online community and pimp out your pawn. For me, I mostly needed Rift Crystals when I ventured online, then I had more than enough but ran out of Bitterblack level 3 gear to purify (:P). Some of the elite people will be extra gracious and send your pawn back with really good gifts. It's just a matter of requesting.

 

BTW, your pawn can be hired by multiple people at once. So it's not just restricted to one person at a time. They also gain world/enemy knowledge if people keep taking them on their quests and side quests.

 

On the consoles; you could hire a much higher level pawn for free, if the owner of the pawn is added in your friends list. If not, then the cost of Rift Crystals is very high, depending on the difference between your level and the pawn to be hired. Once you hit level 200, you can hire any pawn for free. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
kemosabe Contributor

kemosabe

Posted
Posted

 

1.) The enemies have a fixed level and there is no scaling. Unfortunately, the game won't reflect the enemy level.

 

2.) Yes you can. Your pawn and Arisen level simultaneously. I'll let you know great farming spots once you complete your first play through.

 

3.) Assured? No. It purely depends on the person hiring it. The only assured benefits are Rift Crystals, which is something you'll really need for hiring other pawns and most importantly, as a currency to purify Bitterblack Isle gear (top tier gear). Offline drop of Rift Crystals is really poor. So you'll have to be a part of the online community and pimp out your pawn. For me, I mostly needed Rift Crystals when I ventured online, then I had more than enough but ran out of Bitterblack level 3 gear to purify ( :P). Some of the elite people will be extra gracious and send your pawn back with really good gifts. It's just a matter of requesting.

 

BTW, your pawn can be hired by multiple people at once. So it's not just restricted to one person at a time. They also gain world/enemy knowledge if people keep taking them on their quests and side quests.

 

On the consoles; you could hire a much higher level pawn for free, if the owner of the pawn is added in your friends list. If not, then the cost of Rift Crystals is very high, depending on the difference between your level and the pawn to be hired. Once you hit level 200, you can hire any pawn for free. :)

 

Thanks a lot,,looking forward to this game

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...