Before you get too deep into Dragon Age: The Veilguard, there are some quick tips on how to play that it's worth knowing about. Although The Veilguard really holds your hand at times, some aspects of it are underexplained or are just unusual and unexpected for an RPG, like the freeform fashion approach.
Several members of the PC Gamer team have been sinking hours into The Veilguard already, so we've rounded up all the little missable features and pieces of advice that we wish we'd known right away.
1. You can wear any armor
The tyranny of class-based armor is over. Mages can wear heavy armor and warriors can swan about in long, flowing robes. The stats probably aren't going to be what you're looking for, but that's not always true. In the Spellblade speciality, there's a skill that gives you some nice buffs for being a magic-slinger decked out in medium armor. And if it's just the look you're interested in, and not the stat benefits, you can always just select the armor's appearance via the mirror in your room, regardless of what you're actually wearing.
2. Fiddle with the wayfinding settings
Aside from fashion, one of the best customization options in The Veilguard is for wayfinding—all those parts of the interface on screen showing you where to go. You can turn off, on, and otherwise adjust the visibility of objective markers, directional clues, your quest log, and the minimap, too. Turning everything off entirely makes for a much better way to explore all of The Veilguard's maps. For the most part you won't find yourself getting too lost without it but you can set both the objective marker and directional hints to show for a short or long period on pulse (a button press), so you can get a quick reminder on where you're headed before it fades away again.
3. You can knock enemies off ledges (it's just tricky)
There's no specific button prompt for kicking enemies off ledges in The Veilguard but you can still topple them off of things to remove them from the fight. It's a bit fiddly to achieve on purpose, but chaining together a combo of strikes into an enemy with their back against a ledge can sometimes create a knockback effect that shoves them off. You should definitely be using it to your advantage in places like Weisshaupt or the rooftops of Treviso to cut down on enemies in the fight.
4. You can flirt with whoever you want, it's fine
If you just can't choose which one of the Veilguard romance options you want to go with, don't be shy about just flirting with everyone. Unlike past Dragon Age games where you can sometimes wind up walking backwards into a romance unintentionally, The Veilguard will check and double check with you that you actually want to be in a relationship with someone. You can express interest in multiple people at once and won't be asked to commit to just one until act three, so flirt it up through the middle of the game if you so choose.
5. Smash crates up
It's pretty exhausting to clear out all of the clutter in the environment (there's a lot of it), but it's worth keeping an eye out for clumps of boxes. Not only will they helpfully give you materials like hardwood, they'll also often give you common valuables—which will stack up to gold over time and, considering everything in the game costs gold, it's worth getting into this habit early.
6. Rook has treasure radar
Once the game opens up and you're able to explore zones freely, you'll find there's loads of treasure out there. A lot of chests you'll run into just by wandering around and filling out your minimap, but some are rather less obvious. The good news is that Rook has a secret weapon: a treasure radar that, weirdly, the game never seems to tell you about. While exploring, just look for a flashing treasure chest icon above the minimap—when it appears, treasure is nearby, and it even flashes more quickly the closer you get. If it's not obvious where the chest is, look for any interactive elements or puzzles nearby that might reveal it.
7. Don't forget to use your dagger runes
While absolutely the most fiddly part of The Veilguard's build system, these things are actually genuinely quite powerful—each provides a passive, but they also have really strong active abilities that can cover for your weaknesses. For example, the Besiege rune is great for Slayer warriors, because it lets you punch through barriers with your normal attacks.
It took me ages to realize this—but you can also swap between your three active runes in combat to fit the situation. On keyboard and mouse, press tab and then C to cycle through them. On a controller, this is RB and then left on the D-pad.
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