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Things to Do First
Dragon’s Dogma 2 presents you with an incredible amount of freedom right from the beginning of the game. Along with that freedom, though, comes a few critical things that you can miss very early on. And without unlimited fast travel, you want to knock these things out early so you don’t have to come back for them later. With that said, here are more than 15 things to do first in Dragon’s Dogma 2 – recommendations on what to do up to the point where you reach Vernworth for the first time.
Things to Do First in Dragon's Dogma 2
- Make a Pawn (Well)
- Summon More Pawns
- Equip Your Character With Early Gear
- Try All Starting Vocations
- Find Beren
- Pick Up a Free Camping Kit
- Find Trysha
- Explore the Waterfall Cave (If You Dare)
- Collect Golden Beetles
- Help Flora in Melve
- Head to the Inn in Melve
- Find a Special Pawn
- Tasks on The Road to Vernworth
- First Time in Vernworth Tasks
Make a Pawn (Well)
We’re starting off with character creation because what your character looks like actually matters in Dragon’s Dogma 2. If you’re unfamiliar, your Pawn will be hired by other players to use in their own games, and when they come back, they’ll come bearing Rift Crystals and a gift, if you’re lucky.
Rift Crystals are useful because they allow you to summon pawns that are a higher level than you, which makes them a big help in tough fights. So, to that end, spend some extra time with the character creator making a pawn that is appealing for others to hire – whether that means making something that looks really good, really bad. You could even design them to be based on a popular character in video games or pop culture.
Summon More Pawns
After you create your own Pawn, make sure that you don’t move on without summoning your other two pawns. To do this, you’ll have to use a Riftstone, which allows you to visit the Rift – the place where you’ll be looking for Pawns to summon.
Later on, you can, and should, be pickier about which pawns you take. You can do that by sorting Pawns by level, vocation, and all other criteria that allow you to tailor-make your party for whatever it is you’re trying to do. But for now, don’t worry about it too much and just try to find a nice balance of vocations.
Equip Your Character With Early Gear
When you begin the game, you basically start with rags and whatever your starting weapon is for your vocation. While you won’t be able to do much about the starter weapon for now, you can at least improve your gear.
Complete the first sidequest at the Borderwatch Outpost that involves saving a green soldier from a pack of harpies and you should have enough money to equip yourself with some basic armor. Try to equip your main pawn with better gear as well. If you need extra money, you can sell some copper ore found in the tents, and a Jasper from the Saurian eggs outside.
Try All Starting Vocations
Dragon’s Dogma 2 has four starting vocations, and once you've unlocked them, you can switch between them at any vocation guild for free. There’s a vocation guild in the Borderland Campground, the game's first real settlement. This means that you can unlock and switch between Fighter, Thief, Archer, and Mage in the starting area.
You should use this early-game outpost to take your time and test out each vocation before following the main quest and moving on to more dangerous areas. You need 100 Discipline points to unlock each vocation, but that’s easy to gain by simply defeating goblins, wolves, and other weak enemies in the nearby forests.
Nearly every settlement with an inn contains a vocation guild, so don’t be afraid to test out classes that look interesting to you. Passive skills, called augments, can be shared between each vocation once unlocked, so even if you level up a vocation that you don’t end up liking, you can equip its useful augments to a vocation you do enjoy using
Find Beren
Before you continue with the main quest, venture off the beaten path to find Beren. He’s a Beastren with a questline involving bringing him weapons. It’s a questline you’ll want to follow, and it's a bit of a pain to backtrack here, so you might as well pick it up while you’re in the area. This’ll also give you the chance to gain some much-needed early levels wrecking a few goblins.
Pick Up a Free Camping Kit
Camping Kits are essential items for exploration that allow you to rest while out in the wilderness at a campsite. And by the way, you need to rest, as using healing items will not recover the loss gauge. Each time you die or take damage, you'll lose some of your max HP bar until you rest.
You can Camping Kits as often as you want, so long as monsters don’t attack your campsite when you rest. Make sure that campsites are clear of monsters and other enemies before resting.
These usually are quite pricey, but you can find one for free along the path to Melve by stopping by the campsite on the way there from the Borderland Outpost. The Camping Kit is directly east of the outpost, at the Borderland Campground. These kits can also be found at other campsites if you’re lucky, so you don't need to waste gold buying one at the Borderland Outpost at the beginning of the game. Be careful about picking up more than one of these – they weigh a ton. Pass them off to your pawn if they’re weighing you down too much, as being in a heavy weight class will dramatically affect your stamina management. This is much less of a concern on pawns.
Find Trysha
Along the same path as Beren, if you follow the trail up the mountain (potentially putting yourself in the path of a Cyclops), eventually you should also come to a little cabin that houses Trysha – a young girl eager to learn magic. She’ll be turned down by her grandmother, and it may initially seem like there’s nothing to do here.
Do a lap around the area and come back, and you’ll get a sidequest that will have you keeping an eye out for various tomes that you can bring back to Trysha whenever you’re back in the area. We honestly don’t know where this quest leads, but it sounds promising. Also, don’t forget to pick up the Seeker Token that’s all the way up the hill near Trysha’s house.
Explore the Waterfall Cave (If You Dare)
If you’re feeling confident and want to challenge yourself right away, you could make for the Waterfall Cave just to the northeast of the Borderwatch Outpost. Be warned, you’re going to have to deal with a ton of Saurians here, and they’re very tough if you or your pawns don’t have Ice spells like Frigor, Ice Boon, or Hagol.
We strongly recommend making a trip to the Riftstone and finding pawns with those skills equipped, or you’ll have a rough time. Still, the trip is worth it, as there is great loot here, including a Ferrystone, which will come in handy as a method of fast travel later. Also, if you’re really looking for a challenge, there are two bosses here that will certainly provide that for you. We won’t spoil which ones.
Collect Golden Trove Beetles
You may have come across them already, perhaps finding one that we may have missed, but you should know that these golden trove beetles are one of two main collectibles in Dragon’s Dogma 2 – the other being Seeker’s Tokens.
On your way to Melve, you’ll find one right here just outside the city’s walls. Make sure to use them in the tools menu of your inventory to get the benefit of expanding your inventory ever so slightly. They add up, trust us.
Help Flora in Melve
Once you follow the main questline to the first actual proper town of Melve, you should do a couple of things. First, Accept the Medicament Predicament quest for the young girl named Flora in front of the apothecary. Complete this quest early on in the game to get a reward when you reach the first major settlement, Vernworth. Flora asks you to either purchase or craft fruit roborant. It’s easier to purchase the item from the apothecary she’s standing next to, but to save money, you can combine dried fruit and greenwarish to create what you need.
She'll give you your first ring, and the girl’s grandfather rewards you with the Chirurgeon specialization for your pawn, along with a discount at his store in the capital, Vernworth. This specialization allows your main pawn to use healing items on other party members, which means they could save your life – or the life of another party member – if you’re just a bit slow in a dangerous situation. This also gives you a reason to offload some of your healing and status-curing items onto your pawn.
Head to the Inn in Melve
Next, head to the inn, which also doubles as a vocation guild. Here you can buy new skills for your vocation and equip them. Make sure you do the same for your pawn as well. Note that you can unlock a new vocation, even if you don’t intend to use it right away. Unlocking a vocation gives you the gear for that vocation as well, which you can either sell, or store for later.
Make a stop by the apothecary to purchase a new weapon for yourself if you’ve got the extra gold. And, finally, speak to Lennhart before you leave to take on a quick quest involving throwing explosive barrels into a Saurian nest. It’s easy XP.
Find a Special Pawn
As you get back on track with the main quest following Gregor, you can find a special Forgotten Riftstone that will allow you to summon a much higher-level pawn without having to spend any Rift Crystals. As you’re traveling, keep an eye out for a large rock on the right side of the path when following Gregor. A pawn may point out that it can be destroyed.
Destroy the rock, follow the trail, and then carefully drop down and head over to the left where you should be able to drop down again and activate the broken riftstone.
Tasks on The Road to Vernworth
As you follow Gregor to Vernworth, there are a couple of things to make sure you snag along the way. First, there’s another Golden Beetle up the ramp to the left as you enter the checkpoint. There’s also another camping kit that you should definitely pick up if you didn’t get the first one, and then, make camp to ready yourself for the rest of the trip. Right across from the campsite, quickly cross the river to find a chest with a wakestone shard.
When you reach the area called “Gathering of Beasts,” there are a ton of chests you can loot if you thoroughly explore the area. There are also a lot of enemies here, so don’t feel bad about moving on if you’re low on HP.
During the cyclops fight, you can throw a nearby barrel into the rocks damming up the river to flush the cyclops out with water, dramatically reducing his health and making this fight much easier.
After that fight, Gregor will take an oxcart the rest of the way and invite you to join him. It’s up to you, but we will say that the journey to Vernworth is pretty arduous if you decide against the oxcart, and it will be a while before you’re able to make use of things like the vocation guild, a weapon or item vendor, and an inn. So, as a gentle recommendation – get in the oxcart.
First Time in Vernworth
Visit the Vocation Guild
Not only will you be able to add new skills and change vocation if you so desire, but the vendor will also give you a quest to unlock both the Warrior and Sorcerer vocations, which you should do as soon as you can. But before you do, be sure to go through our next three entries in this list.
Accept Main Quests
Visit the tavern at night to meet with Brandt, who will be your go-to person for following the main quest line in Vernworth. He’ll have three quests for you, and you should pick them all up right away.
Don’t feel pressured to do them right away, but it’ll be good to have them in the quest log so that you can knock them out when you’re out of other things to do. You’ll want to do this before completing the Warrior/Sorcerer vocation quest because one of the main quests sends you to the same location.
Activate the Portcrystal
This is absolutely THE most important thing to do. Do not leave Vernworth without activating the Portcrystal, which is located right next to the back entrance of the Stardrop Inn. Portcrystals are landing spots for you once you’re able to fast-travel with Ferrystones. And speaking of Ferrystones, there are a few to find inside Vernworth.
Find some Ferrystones
We’re going to have a Ferrystone video that shows where to get a bunch of them in the early game, but for now, there are a couple you can find fairly easily right when you get to town. One can be found alongside a Seeker Token by getting on the roof of the inn, then jumping to the belltower.
Then, you can deliver that Seeker Token to the Vocation Guild to receive another Ferrystone. These stones are the only way to instantly fast travel to a location risk-free, so they’re very valuable. You can also buy them for 10,000 gold at most item shops, including Philbert’s Sundries in Vernworth.
Wander Around
As you’re wandering around Vernworth you’ll automatically be approached by several NPCs to either reward you for helping them out earlier – like Flora, who gives you an item that lets you set your first pawn specialization.
There’s also a young man who’s looking for someone to train under, allowing you to send him to Beren and progress that side quest. You should also make sure to chat with the elf in the market square to start his whole quest line. You can even find a place to rest for free by speaking to a woman named Mildred in the alley next to the Stardrop Inn. Speaking of Mildred...
Consider Buying a House
As an early player, inns are expensive – especially when you’d rather be spending gold on shiny new armor and weapons for you and your main pawn. Your first chance to become a homeowner comes when you reach the first major settlement, Vernworth.
Speak to a woman named Mildred in the alley next to the Stardrop Inn in Vernworth to get your own temporary home. She asks you to watch her house for a week while she goes on a trip, and it almost sounds like a scam. When Mildred returns, she’ll offer to sell you her house for 20,000 gold, giving you a permanent place to rest for free. After this purchase, you’ll no longer need to pay 2,000 gold to stay at the inn while in Vernworth. You can also access your storage here, and your main pawn will provide reports of their adventures with other Arisen after you rest, just like in a normal inn.
When you have a home, you should visit it regularly. People you meet and help along the way will leave gifts for you if they decide to visit while you’re away. They’ll give gifts like Ferrystones and Panaceas, which are extremely valuable.
Everything Else in Vernworth
Don’t forget to rest at the inn to make a permanent save point, and while you’re there, you can store all your unused materials, armor, weapons, and any other heavy items, so you’re not constantly overburdened.
You can also change your appearance at Clovis’s Barberie for a hefty price, change out your pawns at the Pawn Guild, board an oxcart to visit the Checkpoint Rest Town, and upgrade your gear at the armor and weapons shops. You can also choose to simply explore – run outside, choose a direction, and go.Note that this is by no means an exhaustive list of all the things you can, or should do first in Dragon’s Dogma 2. These are simply the ones that we happened come across on our first playthroughs. Keep an eye out, be curious, and above all else, have fun exploring this deep world.
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