The following section will detail important tips and information about the game.
When you begin the game it may seem overly complex, poorly implemented, and unfairly stacked against you. Whereas this is all true, the game does get easier with time and by the end, you will be overleveled passed the point of a reasonable challenge. This is thanks to the overreliance on numbered stats as opposed to player skill. Fortunately, this also has the benefit of putting players of all skill types on a more even playing field; meaning the platinum is very much obtainable if you are willing to put in the grind.
In the early game you will die to a hard sneeze but shrug off a meteor to the face by the final boss.
Because of this, it is suggested that you play the game on Easy. If you find it too easy for you, you are able to switch between the two difficulties in the options menu at any time withoutinvalidating any trophies.
The only trophy tied to difficulty is that you must beat the game on 'Hard Mode' which is confusingly not a difficulty, but instead, a brand new game mode that must be accessed through the main menu.
Disclaimer: There is contradicting information online about damage calculation, likely caused by damage being calculated differently across different updates and versions. Because of this, no one but the developers is fully aware of how damage is calculated. Below is an amalgamation of the different theories combined with my own personal experience and soft testing. Thismay not be 100% correct, but will at the very least give you a good idea of what to expect damage wise.
Unlike normal RPGs, "Dragon's Dogma" uses flat numbers and not percentages (though there are some percentage based modifiers) to calculate damage. For example, if you have a magickal attack of 300 and your opponent has a magickal defense of 270, then you will do a flat 30 damage per hit.
This can complicate things and make misleading multipliers. For example, you may see a creature take an extra 50% damage from holy attacks. When you actually attack using holy, you will likely see much more than 50% damage being done. What's happening is your extra 50% is being applied to your damage dealt as a whole. So using the example above, if you were doing 300 damage then you would now do 450 damage. But since the creature's defense still only subtracts the 270 damage, you are now inflicting a total of 180 damage. That is a whole 900% more damage!
Additionally, if you are doing 300 attack and the enemy has 299 defense, then you will only be doing a single point of damage. Then, if you increase your attack by 1, you will have doubled your damage inflicted on that one enemy. If you increase it by just 10 points, despite only being around 3% of your total attack you will now inflict 1000% damage to that monster.
As a summary: Damage Dealt(multiplier) - Enemy Defense = Damage Inflicted
You can have three pawns with you at any given time. One of your own creation that will follow you no matter what (unless you throw them off a cliff and leave him/her to die), and two that you can summon from other players online (or have randomly generated ones if playing offline) at a 'rift'. The pawns offered to you will either be at your same level and will be free to hire, or will be slightly above your level and cost 'rift crystals'.
If you have a friend who plays the game, you can use their pawns for free no matter what level they are.
Enemies in the game will have resistances to magickal and physical attacks, meaning you should have a good balance of magickal and physical based vocations. You should also make sure to have at least one long-range character to deal with flying enemies and targets above your shoulder height.
Every (workhorse) party should have:
- 1 - Mage to Heal
- 1 - Ranger/Long range Strider.
The rest beyond that is player choice, but do keep the above in mind.
Be aware:
Though rare, some enemies in the game, such as the golem have full magic invulnerability, making magic based vocations completely useless. The same is true for physical vocations.
How tall you are does not affect very much. Short characters can crawl in between certain bosses legs and through a handful off holes, but neither is very useful. Taller characters have an easier time climbing and generally walk faster, though not by much. Height is mainly an aesthetic preference.
Weight will affect your carry capacity and to a lesser extent your knockback resistance, movement speed, and stamina consumption. Generally, the thicker the better as the largest character can carry over twice as much as the smallest (and still be at 'Light-Average' while the former is over-encumbered). Whether you want to sacrifice double carry capacity for aesthetic will be up to you.
Only your own pawn will level up consistently. The two others (it is highly advised that you take the two extra available to you) will stay at the level they were at when you recruited them due to the reduced exp gain. Make sure, especially in the early levels, to swap them out when you level up to make sure they can keep up.
Early in the game, they will be borderline useless and force you to do much of the work, despite being underpowered. Later in the game when you finally have your own combat options, they will do everything for you outside of boss fights.
For every 'vacant pawn slot' that you have, you will gain 25% extra exp. You will also gain 1% exp for every level between you and a pawn you hire of a lower level than you. You will also lose 1% exp for every level between you and a pawn you hire at a higher level than you. Both these effects max out at 25% per pawn.
Gold is no scarcity in the game whereas items, however, can be. Luckily you can hold as many items as you want in your 'storage' accessed from any inn. Because of this is it highly advised you never sell anything and instead put it in your storage for potential later use.
Every time you are in a town, dump out your materials, extra weapons and armor, and any curatives and tools you don't think you'll need. This will keep you 'light' or even 'very light' depending on your character, as well as make sure you have a bountiful storage for later game use.
Keep your curatives away from pawns who will use them when a healing spell could be used instead. Also, to keep yourself light, load off all of your materials and extra weapons and armor to them to carry as they will keep pace no matter their speed.
Collect the 'Eternal Ferrystone' and the NPC costumes from your storage as soon as possible as these somewhat break the game and will be a major time saver throughout your playthrough.
Dragon's Dogma is a very, very dark game. It is highly advised that you turn the in-game brightness to maximum, and potentially adjust your own TV. You can buy lanterns in the game to make the general area around yourself (and your pawns should you give them one) brighter, but this causes some severe light-pollution that can make it even harder to make out anything in the distance.
The game operates under a single, solitary save file for the entirety of the game. Every mode and even the autosavewill share this one save file. To make it clear:
Any autosave will overwrite your one and only save fileeach and every time an autosave is triggered.
This also means you will not be able to keep multiple saves on your USB drive, meaning if you want to keep multiple backups, you will need to save them on a computer, keeping only one on your USB drive at a time.
Unfortunately, the official wiki, though an invaluable resource, is littered with vague, missing, or incorrect information. It seems that the PS4 version of Dark Arisen has quite a few odd changes that the Wiki has not tracked. This can lead to a lot of wasted time and confusion.
Because of this, if information becomes conflicted, you should use this guide firstand the wiki second, as this guide was created specifically for the PS4 version.
The following video will show you a method for gaining around 74 levels in about 30-50 minutes (depending on game familiarity). This may not be for everyone, but to give yourself an advantage and possibly complete the game on hard mode first (saving yourself a playthrough) you may want to consider it:
Video by Optinoob
