Playing Dragon Age can be overwhelming for some people, mainly due to having so many options to choose from. Which is totally understandable, you’re playing a new game and you want to make sure that you’re aware of all of the options before making any decisions. This list of tips and tricks should be sufficient enough to get you started and then some more.
Choosing Class
At the start, you’ll select a class for your character: Warrior, Mage, or Rogue. This choice is permanent and significantly influences your gameplay experience.
- Warriors are close combat with shields and melee weapons.
- Mages wield spells from a distance.
- Rogues are proficient in both melee and ranged.
As a professional wizard, picking Mage class was no-brainer for me. They have a lot of fire power which means they destroy enemies quicker but also in the most cases they tend to be squishier. In order to deal with that issue, you want to make sure that you keep an eye on your surroundings and always keep your distance from the enemies.
Skill Points and Specializations
As you progress deeper into the game, you’ll earn skill points to unlock new abilities. At level 20, you’ll be able to choose a specialization for your class, each offering unique ultimate abilities.
Fortunately, skill points can be redistributed at any time, allowing you to adapt your build to suit different challenges. So don’t be afraid to experiment and invest points wherever you want until you find the skills that you like the most or the ones you feel are most powerful.
Understand Enemy Defenses
In order to have an easier time playing the game, you’ll need a better understanding of your enemies. When in combat, pay close attention to enemies and their health bar and you’ll be able to determine how to deal with them.
For example: Enemies with yellow health bars means they are armored. Logicaly, you want to use armor-breaking attacks aka heavy-attacks. Or if the enemy has a blue health bar, that would indicate that they’re barrier-protected and the way you want to deal with them is with spells or ranged attacks. You get the gist of it.
For the boss fights you’ll need to have a different approach, pay close attention to their attacks, dodge and strike when you get the chance. With a couple tries you’ll be able to see the pattern of the attacks and you’ll be able to predict their moves.
Master Defense
Once you understand how to deal damage to each enemy, you’ll also need to know how to dodge/block their attacks. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be a real master of combat. Safe bet for you would be just to dodge every attack but where is the fun in that.
Pay close attention to attack indicators:
- Red Flashes: It means unblockable attacks, so you need to dodge them.
- White and Yellow Flashes: Indicate blockable attacks, and well-timed block during a yellow flash results in a perfect block, which repels nearby enemies.
Companions Relationships
Building relationships with your companions is a useful thing to do, especially if you want to use them in combat to help you. Make sure to interact with them and help them deal with the stuff they have going on in their lives.
Not only will you get a glimpse of what’s going on with them, which will bring you closer with them but also you’ll get a lot of juicy experience and skill points. On top of that, in most cases there’ll be some sweet weapon/armor upgrades for companions.
Inventory Management
Most of the players just dump everything they got at the first chance they get. There’s nothing wrong with that if you just rush through the story but if you want to make the most out of it, take a little more time to research where you can get the most of the items you’re selling. Which in the long run is going to help you a lot.
Explore Early and Explore A Lot
The Crossroads connects you to key locations across Thedas. Prioritizing exploration of these areas can provide valuable resources and insights early in your journey. Not only that, but make sure that every place you’re in to explore as much as you can. Those places are filled with side quests and a lot of hidden chests that will benefit you immensely. And if nothing, you want to make sure you unlock all of the fast travel points for faster gameplay later on.
Utilize Fast Travel
Like I’ve mentioned above, there’s a fast travel system implemented in the game and it would be a shame for you not to use it. Once you unlock as many as you can and familiarize yourself with maps, you’ll have such an easy time doing most of the quests. Which ultimately leads to you getting stronger.
Solve the Puzzles
Now, I’ve got to admit that most of the puzzles in Dragon Age: The Veilguard are rather tedious than challenging, so I understand if you’re reluctant to do them. One thing you should keep in mind before moving on is that in most cases there are juicy chests at the end. And if there are no chests then it’s either a health boost or in some cases you get skill points. It’s one of those things that really matters if you’re playing on harder difficulty.
Final Thoughts
If you do most of the things from this list, I promise you that you’ll have such a breeze playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard, no matter the difficulty. And if you’re interested in reading about my thoughts about the game and my experience playing it, you can do that here.
