As a true role-playing game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard must naturally provide stylish armor, powerful jewelry, and the ability to skill your character. BioWare now gives insight into the talents of your character “Rook“ as well as your companions.
The most important things about your character:
- You always play a character named Rook in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. However, how he looks, to which race he belongs and what his background is is determined by you.
- You have three different classes with three subclasses available for your character. The specializations differ significantly from each other.
- The maximum level for Rook is level 50. Until then, you can level up and skill diligently, but with a few restrictions.
This is how looting and leveling work: Two things are crucial to determine how you play Rook: your class and talents, as well as the equipment you wear. Both can be adjusted as you wish in The Veilguard.
You will receive experience for leveling from all possible sources, but quests are supposed to be the most rewarding. When you level up, you can spend skill points:
- The skill tree consists of the main class’s tree and one for each specialization.
- You can select passive effects, active skills, and “traits” – traits are essentially combos that you unlock with the corresponding skill point.
- You can later improve the skills at the enchanter by adding certain effects or properties.
Your Rook can use three abilities and one ultimate ability. You can change the skills at your discretion as long as you are not in combat. There are some larger restrictions when it comes to loot:
- Each class has a main-hand and off-hand weapon as well as an alternative weapon (such as ranged).
- For armor, there is only a helmet and a chest piece to equip.
- In addition, there are 2 ring slots, one for a belt and one for an amulet, and later relics that grant you additional abilities.
You can loot equipment, quite classically, either directly as loot or buy it from merchants. A higher reputation with the respective merchant results in more shopping options. Whenever you find loot, its level is adapted to yours, by the way. This is supposed to avoid useless junk loot. Duplicated items merge and thus become a stronger item.
A developer explains the systems in detail in the video:
The companions level up faster than you – but not too far
In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, you have seven different companions, of which two can accompany you at the same time. Each companion has their own skill tree and equipment that you can manage.
Unlike Rook, the abilities are significantly more limited, and the skill tree is smaller. A companion also has less equipment options: one weapon, one off-hand or trinket, one armor piece, and one piece of jewelry.
However, companions level up faster than Rook. Each level-up gives a companion two skill points. They gain experience through quests, especially personal quests, and even through conversations with them. The more you interact with them, the better they become.
Unlike in well-known role-playing games like Baldur’s Gate 3 or in the previous installments of the Dragon Age series, you do not control the companions yourself, but only give them commands in combat. However, there is a pretty cool new mechanic: Preppers and Triggers.
As Rook, you can impose certain effects on opponents that serve as triggers. If the requirement is met, companions can activate a trigger and thus induce particularly powerful effects. The Veilguard will be released just in time for Halloween on October 31 for PC, PS5, and Xbox. Here you can learn more about the release: Dragon Age: The Veilguard – All about the release, release date, collector’s edition, factions, and companions
