In this Dragon’s Dogma 2 Pawn Guide, we’ll be talking about everything you could possibly know about Pawns in Dragon’s Dogma 2. We’re going to cover specializations, inclinations, romance, skills, commands, everything. If you’ve been wanting to know good information regarding pawns, we’ll be talking about it in this article. We’ll be discussing Pawns in-depth, so you can be able to use them optimally in your Dragon’s Dogma 2 playthrough.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 Pawn Guide – Pawns
Pawns in Dragon’s Dogma 2 will be your companion throughout the whole game. You will have a main pawn which you can fully customize from the appearance, down to their vocation and personality. You can hire a maximum of 3 pawns, excluding your main pawn. Your pawns will be able to call out crucial information about the enemies, support you in combat, and also play a part in the main storyline. Your pawns will be a huge part of your adventure, as they will accompany you in combat and in exploration.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 Pawn Guide – Inclinations
Inclinations are your pawn’s behavior. You can choose between four inclinations during character creation. These are: kindhearted, calm, simple, and straightforward.
Calm is a type of personality for your pawn that’s going to make them tidy with their inventory. They’ll dispose items that don’t seem useful, like rotten food, and also prevent you from eating things like that. Calm pawns also tend to play more defensively in combat and are more inclined to use ranged attacks. This means that this inclination will be good on ranged vocations such as a mage or an archer.
Kindhearted pawns are very friendly, prioritizing aiding and saving allies in combat. For instance, if one of your other pawns is downed, they might carry them over to you. This is very good on mage pawns, as they are inclined to heal their party. You can also put it on vocations you think might you want to be a support for your party.
Simple is an inclination that makes a pawn want to explore areas. They’ll be gathering items, hand you things they find, craft curatives and implements that can help you. It’s really good too have one in your party, especially if you don’t like picking up all the loot off of bodies after combat.
A straightforward inclination is more of a blunt and outspoken pawn. Someone who’s going to say what they’re thinking, but also keeping an eye out for enemies during combat. They also tend to head straight into combat, going all out offensively. This would be a really good inclination for thieves, fighters, warriors, or even sorcerers. It’s good to have at least one straightforward pawn in your party, so you should be looking for that in your pawns.
If you are not happy with the choice of inclination for your pawn, you can buy an incense from the Guild Vendor over at Vernworth Pawn Guild. This will change your main pawn’s inclination over to the type of incense you buy, which will cost 2000 Rift Crystals. After buying the incense, you can set-up a campsite and give it to your main pawn. You cannot change the inclination of pawns that you hire, so you should always consider a pawn’s inclination before hiring them.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 Pawn Guide – Specializations
Pawn Specializations is a new feature in Dragon’s Dogma 2. They are skills that can only be acquired by your Main Pawn, allowing them to act independently. This means that it will have both benefits and consequences depending on which specialization your Main Pawn has. These inclinations are: Aphonite, Chirurgeon, Forager, Hawker, Logistician, and Woodland Wordsmith. You can get these specializations by finding the tomes respective to them, and making your Main Pawn consume it. Doing this also overrides the current specialization of your main pawn, so you can change it whenever you want. You can get these tomes as quest rewards or gaining favor with NPCs. You can look on the wiki if you want to see the exact NPCs or locations you can get the tomes from.
The Logistician specialization allows your pawn to optimize loot in your inventory. They will also combine and craft items for you to lighten up your load. It’s random when they do this, so it can either be beneficial or bad depending on its timing. In my opinion, this isn’t that great of a specialization because it can end up harming you early on in the game. Later on in the game, with having plenty of loot, this might come in handy as your pawn will reorganize things in your inventory to make things easier.
Chirurgeon allows your pawn to heal you and your other pawns with curatives. If you give them healing consumables, they will use them on you and your party whenever you need healing. This is kind of a double-edged sword like Logistician. If you have a mage in your party healing you, then you might not want your pawn to use curatives when it’s not necessary. I don’t find this specialization great, but it’s not terrible to have if you have a mage as your main pawn.
Woodland Wordsmith allows your pawn to translate the Elvish language for you. You’ll be able to understand what the vendors and NPCs are saying in Sacred Arbor. This is only useful if you’re buying items or upgrading gear at the blacksmith. Otherwise, it isn’t really that useful. If you put this on your pawn, it’s going to be more likely that they’ll get hired because they’ll be at the Sacred Arbor part of the game.
Hawker is a specialization in which your pawn will offer to sell your things when you are heavy. When you’re camping, you can talk to them so that they will clear out almost everything in your inventory while giving you gold for it. This is a specialization you have to be careful in, because you might accidentally sell items you don’t want to sell. It won’t sell your equipment and camping kit, but they might sell your potions, curatives, and ammunitions. This can be good early on, as you can offload items without running back to town.
Forager, in my opinion, is arguably the best specialization for pawns. You’re going to at least want one pawn with this in your party. This specialization highlights materials needed to upgrade your equipment. If you can’t see materials being highlighted for your equipment, that means you haven’t upgraded your gear at least once because your first upgrade on all gear only costs gold. This is very handy as it can prevent you from going outside the game to look up where to find upgrade materials.
The Aphonite specialization prevents your pawn from talking. If your pawn bothers you with their voice lines, or if you don’t like the amount of banter they have, you can use this specialization. You can use this if you’re getting annoyed by them, so that you won’t have to hear their bantering.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 Pawn Guide – Quests and Quest Information
You can set quests for your pawn at any of the major riftstones that are usually found in major towns. You’re going to interact with the riftstone to set-up an objective and reward for your pawn. The reward could be an item, upgrade materials, or even getting an achievement. You can set this up as a trading system, so make sure you take advantage of this mechanic if you really need to obtain a specific item.
Another thing to talk about is quest objectives you’re trying to complete, and whether pawns have information about that quest. Pawns can gain information from being part of these quests in other worlds when they get summoned, learning about it. When you go to your quest menu, you’ll see a hand icon with a number. If the hand is blue, this means that your pawn has information. If it is orange with a number, 1 for example, it means that it’s the first hired pawn. When you equip a quest, this will change if certain pawns might not have information on the specific quest. You can use the “Go!” command on your pawn after you selected a quest, if they offer to help you in the quest. A downside is that they might try and run all the way towards the quest. If you have a vague idea on the quest’s location, you might want to use an oxcart instead of letting your pawn make you run all over the map.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 Pawn Guide – Pawn Commands
There are four commands for your pawns. These commands are: Wait, Come To Me, Help, and Go. You’re going to use these commands both inside and outside of combat a lot. For instance, if you’re outside of combat, you can use the “Help!” command to make your mage pawn heal you, or if you want to get buffed. If your pawns are fighting something, or if they’re stuck on the other side of a ravine, you can use the “Come To Me!” command so that your pawn will teleport to you. The “Go!” command is for the quest information as I mentioned before. They can also lead you to chests that they have seen. Lastly, if you want for your pawn to not interact with what you’re doing, you can use the “Wait!” command. This is a useful command if you don’t want your pawn attacking the wrong person in a quest. I would recommend dismissing them in that case, as your pawn might get impatient and follow you anyway.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 Pawn Guide – Pawn Romance
Affinity is a part of the romancing mechanism of Dragon’s Dogma 2. It can strengthen bonds and relationships between you and NPCs. This can also apply to pawns, as they can fall in love with you if you gain affinity with them. You can increase your affinity with your pawn by interacting with them. You can high-five them, go to hot springs, go to the barber, and other things. Going to the barber would give you the most affinity, but you probably won’t be doing that all the time. These actions have a 10-minute cooldown, so you can do this repeatedly until you gain enough affinity with them. You will lose affinity with your pawn if they die. Once you have a high enough affinity with your pawn, they’ll fall in love with you. This has an effect in the ending of the game, although not that big of an effect.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 Pawn Guide – Pawn Scars
Your pawn will gain scars over time as they die. Whether in combat, or they fall in the water or off a cliff, for any instance that they die. You might not want the look of those scars on your pawn. You can actually remove these scars by going to the hot springs in Geyser Hamlet over at Volcanic Island Camp. There will be an entrance fee of 100G. When you use it, your pawn’s scars will be cleared while also healing everyone in your party.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 Pawn Guide – Dragonsplague
Something to look out for in your pawns is Dragonsplague. Dragonsplague is a disease they can get which has no noticeable effects when you’re hiring them in the rift. You’ll see this effect when they go to your own world. Your main pawn can also get it, since pawns can pass it around to each other. You can notice it if your pawn is behaving weirdly after resting at an inn.
If one of your pawns have Dragonsplague, their eyes will gradually change to a reddish-purple color over time. They’ll also start to act weirdly like having headaches, they won’t follow your commands, or misbehave. These are telltale signs that something is off with your pawns. If you have hired pawns that are acting weirdly, you can dismiss them. However, if it’s your main pawn, you can throw them into the water then re-hire them at a pawn riftstone to get rid of it. Otherwise, if you rest at an inn and Dragonsplague has progressed far enough, it will massacre everyone in the area.
You should be on the lookout for these symptoms, as it’s not immediately obvious. If you see something fishy, you should dismiss those pawns or re-hire your main pawn.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 Pawn Guide – Augments and Skills
The augments will vary based on your pawn’s vocation. In general, there are some great augments for pawns you should be on the lookout for. The first would be Provocation. If you have tanks such as warriors in your party, you’ll be wanting this augment on your pawn. Try to find a pawn that has this augment, or you can put this on your main pawn if that’s their role. Perpetuation is great on pawns, since buffs will last longer on them. Vitality isn’t a bad one, as having increased maximum health makes your pawn more difficult to kill. I really like Constancy on pawns, as having knockdown resistance is generally good. Mettle and Apotropaism can be good as they’ll increase either the physical or magick defense of your pawn. If you’re trying to keep your pawns alive, these augments will be good.
As for skills, you can slot up to four skills on your pawn. They’ll try to use all of the skills you have slotted on them, and the effectiveness of these skills will vary based on their vocation. Keep in mind how your pawn is going to behave in combat, so you can see and adjust what they’re doing. For example, I have four buff spells on my mage pawn which they’ll cycle through regularly. Sometimes, it won’t be great as they’ll heal when they don’t need to, or they’ll buff me when I need healing. It’s not always going to be perfect, but you can reduce this by reducing the total number of skills they have. For example, you can slot only two powerful spells such as Meteoron and Maelstrom on your sorcerer. They can melt down tough enemies with this, but they’re less effective at regular combat. You should also factor in the Maister skills, as they will completely drain your character’s stamina when they use those skills. You’re going to decide if the trade-offs for having certain spells on your pawn will be worth having.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 Pawn Guide – Final Thoughts
I hope you have learned something from this in-depth guide, even if you know some of this already. There’s a lot of information out there on pawns, and we’re all learning new things about them. I wanted to wait until I have aggregated and tested a lot of information on pawns so that there are less speculations and more factual information. There’s more information out there regarding pawns in which we don’t know yet, so we should be on the lookout for those.
That concludes our article on Dragon’s Dogma 2 Ultimate Pawn Guide, and we have many others as well for you to check out. You can use the Dragon’s Dogma 2 Wiki as well if you have further questions.
