10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started ‘Dragon Age: The Veilguard’

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is out now, a return to BioWare’s famous series after a decade. It’s gotten solid enough reviews from critics, but now in the hands of fans, we’ll see what everyone makes of it.

I’ve put 65 hours and a full playthrough into this game, thanks to my review copy, and I think I have some advice to share about my journey along the way. I liked that the game went blind, although there are a few important things that I think you should know before you start. Here are ten things I wish I knew when I started Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

1) You want more skill points than you are think – I know the game makes it seem like you want to specialize in only one kind of fighting style, but there are fifty character levels and even more skill points with wolf puzzles on the map. As such, I focused on poison blades for my Rogue at the end, while I say between my equipment and skill points to become a killer archer as well. You can only choose one full specialization, but you can still become strong in other areas as well.

2) Vendor shops are an extremely important source of loot – Obviously, the biggest source of loot will be the 140 or so chests scattered around the map, but when you’re searching for “dupes” to unlock rarity levels and perks, you really, really have to keep checking in with reputation vendors as you level up the factions as they will often have the exact item you are looking for to boost your build. Oh, and remember to sell junk to vendors as it boosts your rep as well.

3) Respect everyone, at all times – Dragon Age this time essentially giving you total freedom. You can honor all of your skill points at any time at no cost. But previously you can also respect your entire companion skill tree, and I often kept changing their “focused” skills (you can fully max out of two of them by the end) to match my own build or the team synergy I was trying to make.

4) Match the right kind of primers and detonations – Speaking of matching, it’s not just that you have a character with a primer and another with a detonator, there are different types. So for example, a character would have to apply the Overwhelmed debuff on an enemy as a primer to be detonated by another character who can detonate Overwhelmed enemies. A character detonating Sundered enemies won’t work, so check.

5) If Combat is a melee, you are probably underleveled or undergeared – I’ve seen people complain about combat where you feel weak or like enemies are way too full of health. Not to say “you’re playing the game wrong”, but you’re probably playing the game wrong. Some bosses you encounter you will actually have to come back to later unless you want to spend 35 minutes lowering their health. Normal fights against enemies shouldn’t be a huge pain. You need to both level up with skill points, but more importantly, start putting together an actual build, making sure to use gear with unlocked perks, but also things that synergistically work together. This will become more and more coherent over time.

6) Don’t go crazy over some unreachable chests – This drove me insane a few times as sometimes it will seem like it’s impossible to reach a chest on the map. Sometimes it is impossible. If a chest puzzle seems too hard to believe, there are actually cases where either A) you simply have to go further into the level and you can come back, or B) you might have to come back later when a path opens up opt for another quest. This might only happen 5-10% of the time, but it does happen.

7) Return often to the lighthouse for big character moments – Check out the lighthouse periodically and go to both “time running out” rooms and “yellow exclamation mark bubble” areas. Exclamation marks themselves are quests, but the others can be fun conversations with your teammates, or often your teammates talking to each other.

8) Collect literally everything – I kind of don’t like the large amount of crap that’s scattered on the ground here, but you need to use it to level up vendors, upgrade your enchanter, and upgrade your equipment. If you don’t get the vast majority of it, you can run out quite easily.

9) Don’t forget to cast spells and keep casting spells – Enchanting a piece of gear is free, and it’s a really big boost to your character overall when you do it across all your gear. My reminder here is to both do it in the first place, but also remember to keep doing it if you change your equipment.

10) Do the loyalty quests – This one might be pretty obvious to BioWare fans, but if you want your teammates to live through…whatever comes, throwing them into the fire without confirming their loyalty to you can end badly. If you don’t care, so be it! But many of these quests are good in their own right.

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