Dragons Dogma Dark Arisen Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen. Getting started 101 and "did you know's?"

Introduction

This guide is spoiler-free. It will not mention specific quests or rewards. I try to be as vague as possible when it comes to anything even related to spoilers. Most things covered in this guide is unkown facts and things that could be good to know.

With Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen being released for PC, the game is bound to have both new and inexperienced players, as well as old and experienced ones picking the game up.

Dragon's Dogma is a simple game from the outside - But if you dig a bit deeper, you'll find a very in-depth system that you might not have been expecting when you first looked at the game.

My aim with this thread is to share with you all what I have discovered for myself, and what I have learned from others. Here's a list of quirks and good things to know before you get into the game!

Character Creation

When you have played through the tutorial, you'll enter the character creation screen.

You'll first notice your characters weight and height being displayed. Many people don't take much note of this, other than it simply being statistics with no other purpose than to inform you about the size of your character. This is wrong, as both height and weight will impact your character's performance in the game.

Weight

Your weight will affect quite a few things. Stamina restoration, your movement and climbing speed, your knockback resistance and your maximum encumbrance. Your stamina gain per level is also affected by your weight. For each weight class above Medium (70-89 Kgs) your character gains 20 more base stamina upon creation and each weight class below Medium, your character will gain 20 less stamina upon creation. The weight classes are the following:

SS: Under 50 Kgs.

Movement speed: Very Quick.

Stamina Restoration: 18 Secs.

Knockback Resistance: Very Small.

S: 50 - 69 Kgs.

Movement speed: Quick.

Stamina Restoration: 19 Secs.

Knockback Resistance: Small.

M: 70 - 89 Kgs.

Movement speed: Moderate.

Stamina Restoration: 25 Secs.

Knockback Resistance: Moderate.

L: 90 -109 Kgs.

Movement speed: Slow.

Stamina Restoration: 29 Secs.

Knockback Resistance: High.

LL: Over 109 Kgs.

Movement speed: Very Slow.

Stamina Restoration: 34 Secs.

Knockback Resistance: Very HighYour stamina consumption will go up by 5% for every weight class below Medium, and will go down by 5% for every weight class above Medium. It will also affect other things not noted by numbers. Such as:

Heavier characters are able to activate pressure plates faster.

Heavier (and larger) characters have a bigger hitbox compared to lighter (and smaller) ones.

Heavier characters will have it easier to grapple. Flying enemies will also struggle to fly away with you on top of them.

Lighter characters have a smaller hitbox compared to heavier (and larger) characters.

Lighter characters also climb faster, as they are more nimble than heavier (and larger) characters.

Height

Your character height will also affect a certain amount of things, such as walking and running speed (not sprinting), your weapon reach and accessibility to small places.

In the game, there exists small tunnels, which you will only be able to enter if your character has a height of 150 Cm or less.

Small characters also have it a lot easier walking in-between the legs of large monsters and creatures.

Weapons actually scale with your character height. Which means that taller characters have a longer reach with their weapons compared to small characters.

Taller characters can wade out farther into the water without being drenched.

Taller characters have an easier time to reach high ledges. If you're too small, there's even ledges you won't be able to reach.

The camera is positioned relative to how tall your character is. Tall characters will percieve the world from a higher perspective, while shorter characters will percieve the world from a lower perspective.

A little something people miss

In character creation, during certain sections, you are promted to click a certain button (Square for playstation users, or X for Xbox users) to reveal more customization options.

This text is something that appears below the actual window, in a faint and pulsating text.

Many people seem to have completely missed this option.

Some of the options available are things such as:

Having two different colored eyes.

Adjusting your head size.

Adjusting brow position, along with brow color.

Adjusting your mouth position.

Adjusting your ear position.

Adjusting beard options and facial hair color.

Adjusting makeup color.Some of these options will also be displayed under "Edit Features" > "Color Adjustment". But some won't.

Difficulty And Game Modes

Upon starting the game, you'll notice that you have several options.

Namely New Game, Load Game, Hard Mode and after having created a save, Speed Mode will also be accessible from the main menu of the game.

You can also change the difficulty from within the game itself, but be warned:

If you have started a game on Normal difficulty and you change it to Hard Mode, all your quest progression will be reset, though you will keep all your rewards, levels and items.

If you initially started the game on Hard Mode, changing the difficulty to Normal will NOT reset your quest progression and you can keep playing from where you left off, however, you are now unable to claim the end-game rewards that you would have gained if you had completed the game on Hard Mode.

Hard Mode

Hard mode is pretty self-explanatory, but lets go through the different changes and what this will mean for your experience.

Hard Mode is a tougher experience for the player that is a bit of risk and reward. Thought many people believe the reward is greater than the risk, at least later on in the game.

In hard mode:

Enemy damage is doubled, though enemy health remains the same.

A few monster spawns will contain 1-3 more of their kind.

The player's stamina usage is accelerated. (Does not affect Pawns)

The gold drop-rate is increased several times, rewarding you with tons of gold upon looting.

Experience points are doubled, along with discipline points, which are used to buy skills for your vocation.

Rift Crystal earnings from Pawns you have rented are increased by double the rate. Meaning that if you're using someone elses Pawns, they will be rewarded with twice the amount. This is not a rental fee you as the player have to pay for though.

Upon completing the game on Hard Mode, the player is rewarded with some unique items. I will not mention the what these are.. Reap the unknown rewards!

Speed Run Mode

Speed Run is a time challenge mode, where you simply put try to beat the game as fast as you possibly could.

You can use a previous save game to initiate this mode, in which all of your current equipment, skills and character development will be loaded as well. You will start the game from the beginning in speed run mode. A few restrictions and limitations exist here. Some of which are:

A timer will be displayed, counting up when ever you are in control of the game. This timer will pause when ever a cutscene is playing, when you pause the game, when you are in the inventory menu and when you are inside a Rift Stone to hire pawns.

When you are renting pawns, only the pre-built offline pawns created by Capcom are available. Online pawns created by players are not accessible.

Saving the game is not possible in Speed Run Mode. You must complete the game from start to finish. Sleeping in an inn will not save the game either.

Speed Run is a self-contained mode. None of the items you use or gain in this mode will be transferred to your main save game. Experience points, discipline points, levels gained or gold earned will not carry over either.

The reward for completeing the Speed Run Mode is the only items that will be carried over to your main game save file. The rewards shall remain a mystery until you have unlocked them yourself!

WARNING:

Once a Speed Run is completed, and the rewards transferred to your main save game, the game is essentially overwriting some information on your main save file. This will affect the game in the sense that a Hard Mode save will be turned into a Normal Mode save, hence making you ineligible to claim the Hard Mode rewards. This means that if you would like to play the game on Hard Mode and claim the Hard Mode rewards, you'll have to change the difficulity of your save file back to Hard Mode from Normal Mode, which will reset all your quest progress back to the start of the game. Your equipment, gold, levels and character progression will remain.

I personally recommend that if you would like to play Hard Mode, that you first finish the game and start New Game Plus before you try out the speedrun mode.

New Game Plus/Load Cleared Game

New Game Plus, commonly known as NG+ is a game mode that will be unlocked after completing the main game. This will appear as "Load Cleared Game" in the main menu. Do not click New Game to start this mode. Upon starting New Game Plus (or Load Cleared Game), your story will reset. But you will keep all your character progression, level, gold and equipment. Your pawn will also retain theirs. Some changed are made to the game. Here is a list of them:

Enemy difficulity and rewards will remain the game.

A few new quests will become available in the form of Creature Elimination quests, offering a substantial amount of gold as rewards.

Information regarding how many times you have finished the game will be displayed under the History section, in the Pause Screen.

Adventuring

During your adventures, you'll be rewarded for looking around and exploring. There are tons of hidden loot and interesting locations away from the beaten path. There are also quests that you'll need to find yourself.

Day and Night

Something that isn't highlighted to the extent I belive it should have been, is that the game has a day and night cycle. During the night, visibility will be severely reduced, requiring the use of lanterns, light spells and other light sources to travel comfortably.

During the nights, different encounters can be had with different enemies. I will not go into detail about these enemies how ever. Explore at night at your own peril!

Grappling and Climbing.

In Dragon's Dogma, grappling and climbing is a big deal.

You can climb on terrain, you can climb on certain enemies - Or you can grapple them!

Smaller enemies such as humanoids can be grappled. How ever, you can grapple someone in two different ways. One is by holding the grapple button, which will "disarm" and hold the arms of the enemy, exposing their undefended chest to your allies.

Another way to grapple someone is to double-click the grapple button. This will lift the enemy, if you are able to do so. Lifting an enemy in this way will enable you to move around with the enemy over your shoulder. Holding an enemy this way will also enable you to throw them!

Crafting

Did you know there's crafting in this game? Not many people think so initialy. But the game has a crafting system, which is based around the concept of using monster parts, ores and other materials to increase the stats of your equipment. Crafting is easy and not complex at all. Visit a blacksmith, click on Enhance and it will list all your available equipment. You can see how many times its been upgraded and wether or not an upgrade is available based on the materials you have in your inventory.

Using a pickaxe, you can mine ores for upgrading or selling.

How ever, if a pickaxe is not available, you can also use your weapon, if you are a Warrior, to bash at the ore deposit in order to spawn ores. Shooting an ore deposit with either of the spells Gicel or Frigor will also work!

Questing

Dragon's Dogma is a game with quite a few quests. Some of these are listed at the Inns and Taverns, on the notice boards. Others you have to find yourself. And many quests have to be found before you move on with the main questline; or they'll simply become unavailable for the rest of your playthrough. This means that certain side-quests will be lost to you until you go into New Game Plus, should you move the story forward without finding and completing them. Without spoiling too much, I advice you to travel back to Cassardis (the starting village) after your business is done in The Encampment.

Don't rush the main quest. You'll be missing out on a lot of things. Make sure to visit cities in between the main story quests.

Certain quests will have multiple solutions. Many of which the game won't even tell you about. Much is up to you to explore on your own :)

Inventory

The inventory system in Dragon's Dogma is probably one most people will first feel unfamiliar with, likewise with the equipment system for this sort of game. So lets talk a bit about that!

Dragon's Dogma actually has two different pause screens.

Pause Menu

The pause menu is where you can access general information, such as Save/Quit, History, Map, Status, Options, Share, Quests and Equipment.

Clicking Save/Quit will not actually Save and Quit. Instead you'll be given different options, such as Save and Continue, Save and Quit etc.

Equipment is where you can access equippable items. Such as weapons, head, torso, arms, legs, cape and rings. In Dragon's Dogma, there is actually two different types of equipment. Namely armor AND clothing. A lot of equipment is restricted to being used by certain vocations only. This will also be displayed with highlighted vocation symbols to the right.

When you hover above a piece of equipment, the game will display a text below, saying either "Clothing" or "Armor". You can wear both types at the same time, and they will give you different kind of stats and special qualities depending on the equipment. To the right of this, a section with vocation symbols will be visible.

Item Menu

The item menu is where you get to access your Curatites, Tools, Materials, Special and Other sections.

Here you'll be able to view the health, level and equipment burden of everyone in your party. You'll also be able to use items, and even trade items between pawns. This is easily done by selecting an item and then click the coresponding action.

New to the PC release is also the Hotkey function, where you simply hover above the indicated item, like a lantern or food item, then on your Numpad, press any number up to 5. The item will be marked with a small icon on the upper right corner of the item icon, and you can then activate this item in-game without having to open up the menu to do it from there.

Leveling Up

When you level in Dragon's Dogma, you'll have two different experience meters.

One is for your actual level. The other one is for your Vocation level. Vocations are basicly like classes. You start the game with selecting one of three. Then later on, you can chose from a list of 9. Lets refer to these as Character Level and Vocation Level. You can change your vocation in inns and taverns when ever you want.

Now, when you gain a Character Level, your stats increase. But the way they increase is based on what Vocation you were when you leveled up. The fighting types get more HP, defense and attack per level, while the magic types get more magick attack and magic defense. The rougish types are somewhere in the middle ground, but getting a vast more amount of stamina.

You can also level up your Vocation Level. These will level up by the same means as Charater Level. Killing monsters. Aquiring a Vocation Level will not increase your stats in any way, as with gaining a Character Level. When you gain a Vocation Level, you'll gain access to new skills and augments. You spend Discipline to level these up and aquire them. You can do this at an inn or a tavern.

Augments

Augments is power ups that you will keep, even if you swap your class for another. So unlocking an Augment for a specific vocation, will also unlock that Augment for all your other vocations. For example:

Lets say you start out with your Vocation being fighter.

You'll level up a bit and eventually reach Rank 5 Fighter. This will unlock the Sinew augment. This augment will grant you energy to carry additional weight. You can purchase this with Discipline, then change your vocation if you so desire, and still select Sinew as one of your active augments.

You may only have 6 augments equipped and activated at a time. But you can change which ones you'd like to use at an inn or a tavern.

Did You Know's

This information isn't really hidden to you in the game, but it is never properly explained either.

Debilitations

If you step in too deep water, or if something throws a cask of water over you, you will become drenched. Your clothes will look soaked and water will be dripping from you. When you are drenched, you have reduced resistance towards electricity and cold, but increased resistance towards fire. Being drenched will temporarily quench your lantern if you had it equipped.

You can dry yourself by using a clean cloth, or drink any potion that cures some debilitations.

If someone should throw a flask of oil at you, and it breaks, or if you should be covered with oil by some other means, you become tarred. When you have the tarring status effect, your clothes will look soaked, but as if not by water, but by oil or tarr. When you are tarred, you take increased damage from fire based attacks, which will consume the tarring, but it will also set you on fire for a set amount of time. You can remove tarring by using an Absorbent Rag, or drinking any potion that cures some debilitations.

These are genereally speaking, de-buffs, called debilitations; and can likewise be applied to monsters and NPC's, as well as the player and the pawns. There exists more debilitations than just these, and many monsters react differently based on which one it has been afflicted with, or which one it has successfully afflicted you or your pawns with.

Consumables & Food

In Dragon's Dogma, you will sometimes find consumables, materials and food items. Many of these are time-sensitive, and as such can be either improved or ruined by time.

You can find out if an item is time-sensitive by looking at it in your inventory and clicking the "Swap Explanation" button.

Certain food items, such as Meat, first start to become sour. When they are sour, they grant the player additional stamina from consumption. You can also sell sour meats at a much higher price compared to normal meat.

Other food items such as fruit, will first turn moldy, increasing the amount of restoration they give as well as increasing the value that the fruit can be sold for.

Every time-sensitive item will eventually reach a point where it will rot. Many such items become poisonous to comsume, and some can even be used as ingredients to create poisons. Time-sensitive items that has become rotten has lost next to all value to a vendor.

Each time-sensitive item will go through a stage of normal > moldy/sour > rotten.

The "sweet spot" is when the item is moldy or sour. In Grasys the people seem to refer to these things as delicasies. Ageing food apparently adds very flavorable qualities to the food!

In Dragon's Dogma, there is an item called an Airtight Flask, in which you can store a single piece of time-sentitive material, freezing it in its current state. These flasks don't appear very often in the wilds though - But can be bought from certain shops.

Another way to store time-sensitive items is to put them in your storage. Your storage can be accessed trough various inns and taverns.

Final Words

I hope that this information provided some of you with some useful information! I want to thank everyone that helped me gather all this information! You guys are awesome :)

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=600973173

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen. Getting started 101 and "did you know's?"