After sinking countless hours into Dragon's Dogma 2 we're still discovering new things!
After 200 combined hours of playing Dragon’s Dogma 2, we’re still discovering new stuff. This isn’t about simple things like weapons we missed – these are major features, monsters and mechanics that slipped right past us while we explored every nook of Capcom’s extremely punishing action-RPG. And it isn’t even the difficulty that’s so cruel. It’s the simulation of the world and all the details that take you by surprise.
Your best friends can die randomly, you can lure lovers into slap fights, you can turn monster heads into living weapons, or you rob from everyone for items you can’t get anywhere else. Why steal when you can just bask in the glory of infinite gifts? There are so many ridiculous little ways to interact in Dragon’s Dogma 2, we had to share some of them with you. Here’s hoping you were just as clueless as us. Let’s dive into 10 things we had no idea were possible in Dragon’s Dogma 2.
We’re starting with something simple that should’ve been obvious but absolutely wasn’t. Some monsters never stop even after cutting their heads off – and clever players can use that feature to their advantage.
Monsters are more than hunting fodder in Dragon’s Dogma 2 – some monsters let you hack off the head and turn it into a deadly weapon. The most obvious of these is the Medusa, which we’ve talked about a lot before because it’s such an amazing feature. If you manage to hack off a pristine Medusa Head, you can use it to turn any monster into stone. It really serves no practical use, but it’s so fun – and actually pulling it off is ridiculously tough. Luckily, there’s an easier alternative that I had no idea existed until now.
Golems can also be used like weapons, but they’re more temporary. Instead of sticking a golem head in your inventory, you can drag it on the ground then aim it. The beam will continue to fire – you just have to knock the Golem down and it’ll break apart. We had no idea you could use their loose heads like this, and if they’re angry they’ll fire those killer beams even more often. There are so many more weird monster details we never knew – Medusas are so rare, there had to be a secret. But we never suspected there was a secret use for Golems all along.
Love can be a powerful thing. Affinity is an invisible stat in Dragon’s Dogma 2 that determines how much people like you – and everyone from major plot characters to seemingly random NPCs has affinity. You can boost affinity by giving gifts, and the easiest gifts to give are Wyrmslife Crystals. Everyone loves these things. Wyrmslife Crystals give plus 50 affinity to any NPC that gets them. Giving out a few crystals will max out affinity and turn those random NPCs into lifelong admirers.
And there are benefits to doing this. But we’re here to talk about the hilarious drawbacks. NPC admirers will appear at your simple house in Vernworth to fawn over the Arisen – they’ll start milling around almost immediately after reaching max affinity. And not everyone wants to be friends. If two romantic rivals are caught in your home at the same time, they’ll start brawling.
These brawls don’t stop either. Brawls break out only if your admirers are inside your house, so you’ll need to drag people inside – if one admirer is inside and another is nearby, they’ll bust through the door and start swinging. Boost the affinity of another nearby buddy and they’ll join in on the fist fighting. Get two people fighting and you’ll even unlock the ‘Plenty of Arisen to Go Round’ trophy, which is surprisingly difficult if you’re playing the game normally. It’s fun seeing the peasants fighting over you, so why not feed them all the Wyrmslife Crystals you can and enjoy the show.
We’ve all jumped on a Griffin to joyride, but there’s a different method of conveyance that’s incredibly useful for reaching normally impossible-to-reach areas. Griffins are a great ride because they’re huge, and typically they’ll fly back to their nest in the region. Each region has a Griffin nest and they’re full of loot. One of the nests has a free Portcrystal, so that’s a required visit. And while Griffins do typically appear where they can find dead oxen – these things really like attacking oxcarts – they can’t be summoned freely. Harpies can be called down wherever you need them..
You’ll need the Harpysnare Smoke Beacon. This rare item can be purchased from the merchant Montgomery in Checkpoint Rest Town for 3,000 gold – and the description is deceptive. It sounds like an item used to catch nearby Harpies and make them easier to defeat. No, that’s totally wrong. What the snares actually do is summon a harpy specifically made to ride.
Place a Harpysnare Smoke Beacon somewhere with a far chest or ravine you want to cross, then jump and grab the harpy. Harpies are a little like gliders, you can aim them in any direction and slowly move through the air. It costs stamina but as long as you have stamina healing items you can stay in the air indefinitely. Who knew harpies could be so useful?
The only other useful creatures in Dragon’s Dogma 2 are the Cyclops. Knock these big boys over near a broken bridge and they’ll stretch right over it and create a makeshift crossing. Now that’s a fun little detail most of us missed. The chances of this happening are so rare, if you don’t explore everything and knock Cyclops down near every busted bridge you can find, you’ll miss this animation completely.
When you’re low on Wyrmslife Crystals, there’s another way to turn uncaring citizens into ride-or-die cultists for your Arisen. If you want to raise the affinity of everyone in town, you’ll want to use the local taverns. Go to the watering holes in Vernworth or Bakbattahl and start buying rounds. Do it enough and you’ll have an entire town’s worth of max affinity townsfolk ready to confess their undying love for you. The trick is to rest between each round. Wait a day and return to buy another round for the best possible effect. And if you own a house in either city, those new fans will leave a constant supply of gifts at you front door.
Gifts are only left at the common player housing in Vernworth or Bakbattahl – so there’s really no reason to make friends with random NPCs anywhere else. You can find bars in other settlements all over the map, but if they’re not going to give you anything, what’s the point? Set up a Portcrystal in both cities and fast-travel for an unlimited supply of random stuff you can sell..
Wait until night when the taverns are packed and you’ll get the most benefit from this trick. If there’s any specific NPCs you want to woo, you can literally pick them up and carry them to the tavern. Dropping NPCs off and buying rounds will add them to the pool of characters getting an affinity boost. Do this enough and you’ll easily unlock the ‘Philanthropist’ trophy by maxing out 10 characters. This has to be the fastest way – it’ll just cost a pile of coin to do it. Precisely 2,000 gold per round.
The rarest monster in Dragon’s Dogma 2 is also one of the most impressive. This headless knight appears only at night and near water or bridges – and even then, it’s so rare you can play for a hundred hours and still never spot him. That’s because the Dullhahan only appears at a very specific time of night. You’ll know a Dullahan is nearby if you enter a thick fog. When the Dullahan appears your lantern will go out. The Dullahan’s glowing severed head provides all the light you’ll need. The monster only appears near dawn and you’ll only have a few minutes to defeat it before the sun rises and it disappears.
The Dullahan is a powerful undead warrior that’s really unlike anything else in the game. It’s more like a Dark Souls boss than a Monster Hunter. It lumbers around while armed with a massive sword, teleporting behind your Arisen for a killer grab attack or summoning a swarm of magic missiles to track you down. There’s really nothing else like the Dullahan.
If you want an easier way to spot a Dullahan, complete the quest ‘Till Death Do Us Part’ – a Dullahan will always appear when you run off to save the husband. These elite enemies will also appear in the Unmoored World much more often. There is no day or night cycle in the postgame. Explore enough and you will run into one. If you go looking for Dullahan on the main map, you’re going to struggle finding even a single one. They’re only available to fight for a few minutes every in-game day and even then their appearance is totally random. If that isn’t just Dragon’s Dogma 2 in a nutshell, I don’t know what is.
Thieves aren’t just for stealing from monsters. While the Plunder skill description makes it sound like it’s only used for robbing from living enemies, you can also use it on – well, literally everyone. Every NPC in the game can be plundered and some of them carry useful items.
The Caged Magistrate main quest introduces you to Waldhar – you can steal a rare copy of Howling Blizzard from him. Another rare tome can be stolen from Elsa the Travelling Merchant in Battahl. You can rob Ibrahim the Forger in Checkpoint Rest Town for a free item called a Partcrystal, which we’ll talk about more later. Try robbing everyone you can for fun and profit – just beware, it lowers affinity and some NPCs will attack you on sight for stealing from them.
Stealing from monsters has a chance to give useful items, but robbing from townsfolk is so much easier. Steal from merchants most of all – they’re always carrying something to steal. You’ll also want to plunder from any party members or named characters that are actually important in the story. Who knows what valuables they could be carrying!
Wolves are like a bad itch you just can’t scratch. They’re always there, taunting you –biting you, attacking your caravan, generally being a nuisance. And we all took a long breath of relief after learning there’s a method for making groups of wolves so, so much easier to handle. We never even tried this trick until now, and on reflection, it should’ve been obvious. If you feed wolves meat, they’ll ignore you and go for the food first.
Any meat will do. Go to your inventory and choose to discard any type of beast meat that’s good for cooking. Dropping a meat will attract any nearby wolves and keep a handful of them busy. While they’re eating, you can pick them off and they won’t even fight back. You can even collect the meat again after taking out the wolves. A few wild animal bites aren’t going to scare off your Arisen. You can even use meat you harvested from other wolves. They’re cannibals!
Try this trick enough and your Pawns will learn it too. Another trick Pawns will learn is pulling the armor off Cyclops – later in the game, those one-eyed monsters will cover themselves in armor. By grabbing and pulling you can remove the armor instead of breaking it, snapping the armor right off. Your Pawns will learn this too, ripping the armor off Cyclops heads and exposing that eye instead of painstakingly shattering every piece.
During the main story, you’ll encounter the Brothel in the Noble Quarter of Vernworth. The big question is – what is the purpose of this place? You can spend big money on courtesans that don’t really give you anything in return for all that money you pay them. There’s a quest-giving NPC, but the actual process of paying for prostitutes doesn’t really do anything. You’ll get a romantic cutscene that doesn’t show anything, and you’ll reappear at the foot of the bed after doing whatever dirty deeds you were up to when the screen went black. Well, it turns out there is a purpose for the Brothel. And you’ll never know it unless you look at your character’s Status menu.
Before you can get any benefits, you’ll need to get the Platinum Card. This can be purchased from the brothel after sleeping with the same attendant three times in a room – but the easier way is to just steal it. Use the Thief’s Plunder ability we talked about earlier on the innkeeper in Checkpoint Rest Town to get a free Platinum Card. That unlocks access to the Brothel and lets you hire the more expensive NPCs on the top floor.
So what does all this do? If you use any of the third-floor services, you’ll get an array of powerful buffs for your character. The session costs 30,000 gold and gives you a boost in attack power, recovery speed, defense, stamina and resistance. That’s all the buffs all at the same time. The price tag is unreasonably high but if you’re running around near the end of the game, this big buff to your Arisen’s ego can be everything you need to defeat the latest giant monster. If anything, this is a fun roleplaying feature now that I finally know why you’d want to drop all that money on a bunch of lame cutscenes. There is a purpose! Now we know!
One feature everyone already knows about is Ibrahim’s Scrap Store. This illicit goods vendor is located in the Checkpoint Rest Town and we’ve talked about him plenty of times before. You’ll want to use him to dupe items like Brant’s Jail Key or the Jadeite Orb to complete certain quests – but not all items can be copied. Some items come out weird, and those items sometimes have surprising alternate uses.
One of the weirdest we’ve found is if you try to copy the Portcrystal. Portcrystals are one of the most useful and rare items in the game – they’re like portable fast-travel points. But, they’re very limited. You won’t be able to just copy more. Try to copy one and you’ll spend a ton of coin on a useless forgery called the Partcrystal. Reading the description, you’ll see that the crystal is actually a container full of liquid.
And it isn’t any liquid. The Partcrystal is an Allheal Elixir – basically the best healing item in the game. They’ll replenish your health, stamina and cure all status effects. And while Partcrystals are a fun Easter egg, Ibrahim can also copy Allheal Elixirs for a fraction of the price of Partcrystals.
There’s one other set of items you’ll want to copy. Rare Tomes are extremely hard-to-find books that you’ll need to track down as part of a quest for the Wizard and Sorcerer Maisters. Each one wants books, but only one of the Maisters will only accept genuine copies. The Sorcerer Maister isn’t as discerning and he’ll accept forged copies. If you want to unlock the ultimate skill for both classes, that’s the easiest way to do it.
There’s a downside to being so popular. Your max affinity admirers love following you around, and they’ll make a dangerous trek to the Volcano Hotsprings in the far south just to hang with your naked Arisen. The Hotsprings is actually a great place to clean off dirt or permanently heal scars on your character, but if NPCs follow you here, they could be in big trouble.
The danger is obvious when you realize something – they have to WALK all the way back home after using the Hotspring. That means they have to cross multiple dangerous caverns and paths full of monsters. You can follow them all the way if you’re really patient, and you might need to if you want them to survive. There’s a high chance your buddies will die taking the marathon walk back with nothing to defend themselves.
And it’s a very long walking simulation too. It can take multiple in-game days for the NPC to return to their home city. If you haven’t unlocked the bridge to Volcano Island or the border, they’ll have to cross Drabnir’s Grotto and the entire nation of Battahl just to walk through another cave guarded by a Golem. And that isn’t even getting into the dozens of other monsters they’ll have to (slowly) walk past if they hope to make it home safely.
More often than not, you’ll find these NPCs in the morgue. If you’re wondering where your best friends went, you should probably take a trip to the Charnel House.
