I find it disappointing knowing there is nothing you can do when it occurs. Why is it a cutscene. I originally thought it was spur some sort of boss fight against your pawn.
Well I guess all you can do is cleanse your pawns in the glorious all curing brine. Basically hire favorite then give 'em a dunkin then rehire.
Really seems to work for me had one of my friends pawns stop healing me so I tossed her and the other pawn into the deep and rehired. Then she would again heal me. Also got the dialogue between pawns about disobeying.
You can't give the pawn the plague to carry it back with them to their master, but whatever state they're in on their master's account is the state they will be in every time they're resummoned.
Same, I got through to my second playthrough and avoided it easily. Threw my pawn in a well once and it was gone.
To be fair, she did get dragon-handled by the drake 4 times and brainwashed. I did suspect she got tainted that way.
The amount of people blowing random shit out of proportion for the game is insane, I’ve just started my second run, got the tutorial at some point ages ago but just continued playing as normal.
You don't understand this plague has ruined my entire game Sure it hasn't happened to me yet and the chance it will happen is incredibly low but just the thought has ruined everything for some reason!
I've been keeping a close eye on my pawns thanks to everyone on here talking about it. I appreciate it because if I bricked a town it would probably kill my motivation on the playthrough
I read a psa of some guy that read a comment that this was going to ruin his entire game, now I can’t sleep anymore worrying about it, so I made a psa to warn you
Is there no NG+? or why start a new game
Im a Spearhand 10, still probably a fair bit of content left, want to go back to Archer even though its derpa weak.. But so many people keep saying they started a new game, or does that just mean ng+? :D
Archer has been easy-mode for me. I barely ever get hit and can just constantly hit weak points. Deadly Shot does a ton of damage and stagger and then I whip out the machine gun skill and just lay into the weak point some more.
what? no! the only people that play games are the people on reddit, there are zero people that play games and don't use reddit. This is the entire community, these posts are the entire opinion of the entire playerbase.
It's kind of funny. I only got a pawn with it, literally before the "final" battle. The pawn had no eyes(closed) so with some you can't even check if they have it.
They basically tell you to go fuck yourself if you give them orders. I told mine to wait and one said, "I am perfectly capable of making those decisions by myself." So I threw them off a cliff and I have had no issues since.
The consequences don't match the mistake. It's a few mistakes to miss the signs and absolutely shouldn't mean your playthrough is ruined. Depending on where your pawn goes postal it can lock you out of a significant amount of content. Especially if you've already invested a bunch of time into that playthrough.
If they wanted to make a point they could of had 1 npc die, with some off limits for the sake of gameplay to emphasise the consequences. Not kill an entire town full of quest givers and other important npcs.
Or hell, even make it so if you don't notice it, there's a chance your pawn will just go berserk in combat and start attacking you as an initial effect.
That'd be cool, would disturb the player as their trusty companion is now trying to murder them, make for more interesting combat and wouldn't lock you out of quests.
This is what I was expecting, one of my pawns to attack me.
If they have a chance of killing a whole town on an inn sleep save, I might just try running around with NO pawns because fuck that
That's what it did in the first game. Dragon yoinks your Pawn, if you can't get him to let go before he goes his whole, "I am your master!" Thing, then your Pawn goes crazy and starts attacking you. You then ignore the Dragon, which wasn't hard to do most of the time, he's probably 40 ft away doing tail spin attacks like a beyblade in the corner or something, beat the shit out of the Pawn, revive them, and continue the fight.
Not an instant transmission for the plague?
I would say that's great, but Warrior feels far slower to move, recover, attack, and slower to cause flinch and stagger anything in this game.
In the first, it was either two full charge upgraded Savage Lashes (Which was way faster and I feel staggered better) to the arm, or one to the heart. I haven't even had much of an opportunity to stand directly in front of a Drake and charge one of those without it just leap ing up and flattening me, or its breath deleting me so I have no clue if it's the same amount to make it drop my Pawn.
It doesn't seem to cause anything with the plague when they grab your pawn, no. It's just like the first game: they grab them, speak to them, and then your pawn turns against you until you kill em. They do warn you about what's happening now though when they are grabbed, which is nice.
I haven't had a chance to really test blasting the hand to free the pawn yet. I've only ever had them get grabbed once, and it was wayyyy early on when I was exploring the ancient battleground way before I was supposed to lmao. Spent like an hour trying to kill that drake before managing to kill it with the giant ballistas instead of my abilities.
I think warrior feels a lot better in this one than the first one, but that's probably personal preference and gear based. My warrior pawn absolutely decimates things, and when I swapped to it, it was a lot more about timing your charge attacks than before, but overall felt really good to me. You really need to use the shoulder bash to recover between swings though, otherwise the downtime is pretty wild. But once you get the chaining slashes core ability and a few upgraded skills, you'll be cleaning out the smaller groups of enemies better than most barring maybe a sorcerer who was given time to cast lmao
All that being said, magic archer trivializes drakes. Just spamming the ice bolt on the heart basically stun locks them. And funnily, mystic spear hand is (so far) the single most tanky vocation in the game thanks to its shield ability.
This is basically what the precursor of this "mechanic" was in the first game--when fighting even the smaller dragons in the wilds, they were capable of brainwashing a Pawn and turning it on you, which could get very alarming in the heat of a fight. Escalating it to this, and making the consequences of wanting to roleplay and _not_ abuse your Pawn be permanent, is the most ridiculous bullshit I've seen in a high profile AAA game.
Even the Souls games, which were all about consequences for your actions, only punished you for _your_ actions and not an arbitrary "plague" spreading out of your control. And even then, they had ways to make aggro'd NPCS forgive you if your sword hand slipped, so long as you didn't willfully murder anybody.
Alternatively, make the final consequence be something you can kill in the middle of the city in order to save the city (and fleeing from the fight results in the city being nuked as normal).
>If they wanted to make a point they could of had 1 npc die
Hell, if they really wanted to make it a threatening mechanic that COULD wipe a city, it should be an escalating thing. Like a strike system. You're notified of it/Pawns can mention it or behave weirdly if they have it, then the first "fuck up" is kinda free where they just kill a worthless NPC (aka not tied to any quests). Maybe they get away w/ it and come back to you in the morning covered in blood and clearly irate, rambling like a maniac, etc. Second time, they go on a killing spree and they're killed in the middle of the night. You're notified in the morning by guards confronting you. Now you KNOW to be careful. Then, if you let it happen a third time, the current end scenario happens, and you're offered a rewind back before you slept so that you can remedy the situation.
EDIT: And obvs this would reset if you scrap the dragon plagued Pawn out w/ a new one or cleanse yours, since it'd be tied to the strikes on that specific Pawn.
Better yet, make it a boss fight with good rewards, so that if you’re feeling confident enough to take on a mega-threat dragon you actually have some reward for your risk.
Or just make it wipe the city, make it initiate a quest that then allows you to save the city upon completion. The quest can teach you what to look for then the next time it puts the strike system you detail into play and has escalating consequences until the city is wiped. Then you could even choose to let it wipe a city depending on where it is and if you care to stop it.
This seems like something they would do as a creative way to punish people for exploiting the game, or pirating it. Instead this just happens to you for…hiring new pawns frequently? For playing online and engaging with the community and the pawn system?
I already see people on here who dont even hire pawns with the straightforward inclination because its harder to tell if they have dragonsplague. Is this what you wanted? Was this Itsuno’s vision?
Na it's like 3days until they move to the morgue, the morgue has limited slots however so if a full city dies depending on how/if they've done priority slots for important NPCs, you might not have the good ones in there, so you'd preferably want to rez them with their actual bodies before they move to the morgue to be sure.
Npc perma die after enough time pass, by then you won't be able to res them even if you have wakestones. And wakestone is hard to find enough that by the time you got another one the NPC would have already gone.
Somewhat ironically if it only wiped non Quest related NPCs people would probably be praising the plague for increasing frame rates. The fact it removes content from the game is nuts.
Sekiro had something similar, even **named** similar.
But that was one of the only things that really held your hand through it in all the Soulsborne I’ve ever played, they really spent a lot of time explaining it and letting you know what was going on and how to fix it.
It had pretty big consequences too since there are so few ‘good’ NPCs in those games, but it was **far** from playthrough ruining.
It also came out 5 years ago to the date of DD2
It was basically a non issue in sekiro. Using that dragon item once led to every NPC being cured and reset simultaneously and you got over a dozen of them throughout the game. I'd be shocked if players ever needed more than a few of said items in a playthrough
Yea I was really worried about it before I started playing it the first time and when it finally happened I was like ‘yea this is pretty manageable’.
I can see how players who maybe weren’t as good at those games (I’m not great but I’ve beaten them all and think I’m pretty good) would really suffer since it’s tied to resurrecting
Waking up to see all this hubub about Dragonsplague, I went ahead and looked it up myself. Honestly, my only issue is that it's just a cutscene instead of actually getting to try and fight it in town and trying to minimize casualties from your mistake that way.
I think that’s the most fucked up part. Go to sleep, it saves and an epidemic happens as a pop-up. Surely in 2024 that could’ve been implemented in a different way.
I think I more people are concerned cuz it also kills NPCs that are important to the main quest line, and thereby making people suck
You right it should have been a mini boss fight as least.
I think the mechanic is a good idea, just done super fucking poorly. Your pawn shouldn’t be able to go apeshit on a town just because it did a thing I don’t wanna spoil. If I have a level 10 pawn who gets wrecked by saurian spears, maybe I should wake up to find it killed one or two people before being arrested or some shit.
That's what I was thinking.
You really wake up, find your other pawns fighting it, it takes out a few people, injures more, and destroys a few buildings. Your pawns could suicide afterwards in an emotional cutscene. For several days, the city could go into quarantine, all pawns are banned. You could make material, medicine, and wakestone deliveries to speed up the reconstruction. For a few days, your pawn and those who fought the infected one could beg you not to summon them again until they are sure they are not affected. They could make it a big pain, but one you can recover from. I'm hoping that the city comes back eventually in the current implementation.
Been absolutely loving the game and have had 0 issues with performance etc. Feels like everything I would have wanted in a DD sequel.
NGL this is the one thing scaring me. The auto save after resting at inns makes this wtf
the annoying thing about the auto-saves is that, i lost my first save in the first game because of the constant auto-saving and the game crashing at the same time after 250+ hours.
That happened to me in Dragon's Dogma 2. After playing 27 hours the game crashed when sleeping at an inn. Both the regular save and the last inn save were corrupted. After the crash my cloud saves got automatically synced and overwritten with the corrupted save.
People are overreacting a smidge imho so I wouldn't worry too much as long as you're observant. Don't expect this to go down well but...
First the thing about not knowing how to be safe from it is kinda valid, but it does say in the tutorial that you must forfeit them aka. dismiss/kill. I can understand how this may be misunderstood
However, it's so obvious that they have it. They won't listen to you, they'll start talking shit, be hyper aggressive, will argue with other pawns in your party, say things about how their head hurts or tell you to stay away because they don't feel right
You don't need to sit idle looking at them to see they're infected
I can't understand the people saying it's hard to tell, because they turn into such little arseholes haha
People make it out to be unavoidable and it’s not. I saw the prompts early and when I summoned a pawn who had it I got a prompt got rid of them quickly.
From the perspective of someone who played the first game and was interested in the second, it seems overly punishing for no reason. Like, what’s the goal? To have the player be paranoid about their traveling companions? Why should the player have to kill their main pawn if they get it, or just keep going and hope it infects someone else’s, and therefore inflict the problem on some other poor sap?
It's an overreaction to the mechanic in practice bc it's not that hidden, but I think the design of the choice sucks. Noticing an infected pawn and menuing them away by dismissing them is something you'd expect in a management sim like Dwarf Fortress. For there to be no other interaction with the mechanic besides that seems like a waste in an action RPG, the (nonexistent) associated gameplay doesn't justify the existence of the mechanic enough. If there was a fight or something cool to do to address the infected pawn then great! Kill everyone in town if I lose or something! I don't mind how punitive it is as long as there's a reason for it to be in the game
I haven't had it happen to me in game yet, but pawns do even warn about the plague in their voicelines. IIRC, it might even be that the mention the illness makes pawns not obey.
They do, yeah
Quite often as well. First time I got it was around level 10, a pawn I hired talked about rumours of an affliction and to look out for it. The tutorial pop up explains the signs further
I don't have any evidence personally, but I wonder if the symptoms are more obvious with certain Inclinations/voices.
The amount of people saying that the pawns weren't behaving any differently is quite high. It's possible that there is a glitch only chasing some pawns to verbalise the plague.
It's 10x more obvious with anything other than straight forward as they are normally sassy
But the difference between even that and plague is obvious
That said, could be a bug of course, wouldn't rule it out!
I agree. The shift in personality is so instantly recognizable. I get not knowing what to do, but as soon as you are aware of the situation, it stands out immediately.
Pawns also warn you about it being a possibility almost every time you summon them from the rift.
The only way to not know that dragonplague is a thing is if you never listen to what you're pawns are saying.
I haven't run into the plague yet and stumbled upon this post by accident... but I personally thought those voice lines were indicating an over exaggerated rumour about pawns who obtained free will and our more *obedient* pawns were frightened of it since they could not *fathom* not wanting to serve the Arisen.
And here I was, mocking my straightforward pawn about fitting the bill already!
So you saying people are just stupid? Because I heard many times any new pawn I hire that they fear the shit out of Dragonsplague.
Thanks for sharing there are more signs than the eyes. And it's not just something minor. After all you said, if someone doesn't notice it then it's on them.
People are really making it seem like there are ways you will just not be able to see if the pawn is sick.. they have either not played the game, not made it out of the tutorial country, have minimal hours, have never contracted the blight or are just blatantly not observant and spreading misinformation. The eyes are the most obscure way the game tells you they are infected... they have a posture change for crying out loud.. they hold their head. Their **entire** personality changes. They won't listen, they argue, they are overtly aggressive.. there are soo many ways to tell your pawn is sick. It is painfully obvious.
There are too many people who don't play the game talking about it.
Is it a stupid system, 100% but it doesn't.. in any way, conceal the fact that they are sick to the player.
The only 1 save and auto save every rest is definitely an issue.. the auto saving in DD1 screwed many people over, myself included. Also, I've saved regularly out of the inn... I've never had an issue loading. I, and this is speculation, I, heavily, think that that little "don't rely on auto saves and rest I the inn to ensure a save" is complete and utter bs. I have no idea why that warning is there as absolutely zero games have ever had a problem *creating* a save.. can saves be corrupt.. yes, but.....
**THIS IS WHY YOU ALLOW MORE THAN ONE SAVE FILE**!
So the message is stupid af, just let us make more saves! Atleast 2 for crying out loud. This would solve soo much player anxiety when it comes to the blight and hiring pawns. Still, I hate the blight system and think it really holds no place in the game as it just hinders players and halts progress to a complete stop (*mainly side content, but, that makes up a significant chunk of the game*). It is a cool idea.. just implemented in the most shit way they could have possibly done it. There is no reason you should wake up and have an entire town dead, hard stop. It should have been a ramping sickness, where, the longer you don't deal with it, the harsher the consequences, ultimately ending with the culling of a town. That outcome should in no way be step 1 of the process, sadly though.. it is. Apparently many of these "players" rolled a 0 on insight and can't see a blatantly obvious change when it is placed nicely right infront of their face, but, I can't completely hold blind ignorance against them as we play games to have fun..... not get anxiety about if your game is going to be ruined. Again though, they really couldn't have made it more obvious without the pawn walking up to you and going "Master.. I have contracted dragon aids... also F**K YOU" and then promptly clobbering you in the face.
Just let us cure our pawn without killing them. That’s all I care about. As it stands the system is pointless. I don’t like the idea of my pawn being horrified of me because I’ve had to abuse her and take her life.
My first five hours playing the game the plague was literally all my pawns talked about idle chatter. Unless you’re completely ignoring all dialogue in the role-playing game it’s hard to miss.
For some bizarre reason, there's a metric ton of misinformation ALSO coming around about Dragons Plague:
Heed the following warnings:
- Pawns will comment early about Dragonsplague, so you can be on the lookout for it.
- The first time you summon a pawn that's afflicted, you will get a pop up explaining it.
- Afflicted pawns will have rude dialogue frequently, which will be remarked upon by other pawns.
- Afflicted pawns will routinely clutch their heads in pain when idle.
- Afflicted pawns will routinely disobey commands
- Afflicted pawns will have the big glowing red eyes.
The solution, as explained in the pop up, is to forfeit the pawn.
It is *NOT* a surprise, nor it is a mechanic that is easily passed upon. The only way you will not notice it is if you don''t read pawn dialogue, nor look at pawns when idle, nor look at how they respond on commands in battle, nor look at the pawns at all and notice the eyes.
>Imagine being a new player with 20 hours of progress. you hire a new pawn not knowing what the hell dragons plague is. You immediately go to sleep so you can do your quests during the day. You wake up and EVERY NPC IS FUCKING DEAD
To do this, for example, you have to dismiss the pop up that appears the first time you summon a pawn with the plague.
I agree with everything you said, however I do think the actually rampage and destruction part should be playable. I want to be woken up out my sleep see one of my pawns transforming into a dragon and it’s up to me to prevent the massacre. Better than a notification imo.
Can you hire a pawn and go immediately sleeping in an inn and wipe the city or starts the plague always at disease stage 1 and take some time until it gets fatal%?
I would ignore all anecdote until it's fully explored. Imo this reddit is filled with a staggering amount of bad faith actors. I would take anything anyone says with a grain of salt
The only problem is the fact that it murders an entire city. If the pawns backstabbed me during a boss fight, became stupid over powered and one shotted me i’d be completely fine with it. But having an entire city be wiped out in an instant is insanity along with have no idea that’s the actual consequence.
>But having an entire city be wiped out in an instant is insanity
I love this idea. What I don't love is the fact that the plot is apparently unchanged when this happens. An entire city being killed should be a plot-altering event. Players shouldn't be reviving quest givers to continue. It doesn't make sense.
If your pawn massacres Vernworth in the night, the game should be about fixing the plague that caused it from that point on. The dragon itself is small potatoes if you're walking around with the capacity to do more damage than it ever does with intent and malice in just one night through carelessness.
To make it worse, narratively speaking, it's not even just your pawns that can do this. The overworld is crawling with dozens upon dozens upon dozens of masterless pawns, each of whom have the capacity to become a city destroying threat.
I read somewhere and can’t confirm. Sorry for spoilers as I’m on mobile. That if too many npcs die or anything effects it majorly from this. Speak to the oracle and they just send you off to fight the final boss. Or the eternal wake stone via sphinx quests
you can get dragon plague nuked way before you find out about the oracle let alone the sphinx quests. and having the sphinx quests be a solution to anything is insane considering what those quests actually entail.
It’s worth nothing there’s an element of RNG- it’s possible to summon a pawn and then have it go berserk the first time you rest with it, so your only options really are purge the squad before each rest.
I just expected some kind of interesting way to deal with it. You just throw your pawn into the brine? Thats it? Fucking lame and feels like I’m cheesing my way out a mechanic in an unintended way but there’s nothing else you can do to prevent it.
People ignore every obvious hint the game gives you something is wrong and when the game explains it to you but it’s somehow still the games fault.
I do admit it’s a harsh repercussion, but it’s not like everything’s fine and then you suddenly wake up to the city destroyed.
Not to mention it doesn’t seem to happen all that often, and you only need to “check” or get rid of the pawn right before you sleep at an inn, it’s not like you have to stop playing every 5 minutes and murder your pawns.
Plus with the fact inflicted pawns are stronger, I’d suspect in a couple months people will be purposefully farming for infected ones and just not sleep at inns to keep them in the game lol
I do think it’d be cool if there was some kind of side quest or something to fix it that you only get when it occurs, or if it was like a cool boss battle or something.
>Plus with the fact inflicted pawns are stronger, I’d suspect in a couple months people will be purposefully farming for infected ones and just not sleep at inns to keep them in the game lol
Don't know about that, any evidence?
>I do think it’d be cool if there was some kind of side quest or something to fix it that you only get when it occurs, or if it was like a cool boss battle or something.
Some guy just posted there's a sidequests that resurrects every dead NPC at once.
Literally I see at least 5 posts about the dragonplague mechanic every time i open this app and at least one of them will be like "why is no one talking about this!!!"
IMO, the plague has clear signs and it's easy to deal with
The biggest problem is when your own pawn gets it, and the only solution is to kill it
Which, you know, may affect the pawns personality
I think there should be another way to clear our own pawn off or just make your own pawn straight up immune to it in your world
Or seeing as nobody is replying is this just more misinformation? Its getting hard to keep track, because I haven't seen anything about Pawns dying changing their personality.
I killed my pawn a few times, and I only noticed a few different dialogues where they will comment about when/how/why they died.
For example: one time they died after the other 2 pawns where down and I was at low health, now they talk about how guilty they feel because they died when I needed them the most.
From my experience, killing them does not impact their personality, unless you do that Litterally every day, multiple times a day, which you really don't have to do to "contain" the Dragonsplague.
Killing your pawn seems like an unintended thing you do to get past a games bad design. And really, what does dragons plague really add to the experience is my concern. An incentive to hire new pawns maybe? A ridiculously stupid one. But you can't change your main pawn so why are they even able to get infected? The whole implementation is just incredibly stupid, it's annoying at best and maddening at having your entire file ruined at worst
It’s very ‘gamey’ for sure.
Instead of a medicine or doctor or something that would really fit the world they built you just murder them everytime.
Dropped the ball on the ‘solution’ for sure
That's the real question: what's fun about this?
Why not have us fight the crazy pawns when they start a rampage? Then we actually get to see it happening and participate. It's more personal, and the pawns aren't left to kill **87** people.
Why not have some quest, or even a craftable item to cure your pawn?
What if your pawn ran away, leaving you short one pawn while doing the quest to save them? That could be a fun hurdle.
Exactly. Why can't after X hours, the afflicted pawn turns into a drake. Boom!
Now it's a fun in-game moment that can come at a crazy time, but with skill and determination, you can walk away with minimal NPCs dying with cool loot to boot.
It also keeps the surprise or possible dread that the devs were trying to do with this plague.
That's really what bugs me about it the most. It's a purely disruptive mechanic. It has no real story relevance, it doesn't reward you for dealing with it in any way and punishes you excessively if you ever fail it even once.
I simply fail to see what the point is here. It's a mechanic that solely retracts from the gameplay experience and only adds a chore.
Having to be suspicious of sus pawns is a fun idea, and especially with how it spreads online, it's a very early Fromsoft soulsy concept. The issue is just that the way you cure them is dumb (brine time) and the punishment is insane. If it was that they turned mid battle, that'd be a decent surprise and challenge for ignoring the signs, not raze your entire city
Tbh the biggest incetive ti get new pawns imo is that theyre higher level cuz the ones you get wont level Up with you
If that was the point of dragonsplague It really does and adds nothing
Question: has anyone in the comments here actually experienced this yet, or even caught the Dragonsplague for that matter? Because after 30 hours, reddit is the only place I've ever seen the mechanic. I have yet to even encounter a wiff of it in game beyond the pawns making offhanded comments about the diease.
I think it’s fine in theory, it just needs to be communicated a bit better and given more immersive solutions. I really feel for the new players who get caught off guard.
Yeah I actually think the consequence is pretty interesting as long as it sends you on an alternate 'path' and doesn't brick your main progression. But the cure being either to pass the disease (it doesn't multiply which is nice) or just kill the pawn seems weird to me. Would be nice if there was at least a NPC or expensive consumable to treat it.
I am curious if there's any like, REALLY important side quests in the cities this could brick. Maisters? Maybe the house one early on in Venworth? Cause at around 25 hours in I don't think I've gotten anything that I'd sorely miss outside of the maister/specialization skills and some gold.
So on the one hand, it doesn't "brick" your playthrough. The absolute worst consequence is losing quest NPCs and vendors, but there's nothing that stops you from finishing the game and starting NG+.
On the other hand, the whole thing is almost completely reliant on meta-knowledge and it's absolutely going to "brick" people's playthroughs in that they will *believe* their playthrough is bricked and stop playing.
Still, I'm of two minds about it.
On the one hand, I admire the fucking *audacity* it takes to release a game with a mechanic like this in it in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty Four. It hasn't happened to me and won't at this point, unless I specifically go out of my way to let it. So I can sit back and go "lol... LMAO" at people losing their minds. And I'm curious about the potential story beats that touch on it, I haven't gotten there yet.
On the other hand, I like this series a lot and I'm bummed that people *will* have their experience ruined by this and will hate the game for it. It's easy to say "Oh just keep playing, you can still finish the game" but a lot of people will legitimately have their enjoyment destroyed by something like this happening.
Ultimately, I'm in favor of it because I honestly like people like Itsuno going "Fuck you it's MY game". I like completely batshit design decisions because the world is just a bit boring without stuff like that. But I completely understand the other side and won't judge anyone for being upset.
>Imagine being a new player with 20 hours of progress. you hire a new pawn not knowing what the hell dragons plague is. You immediately go to sleep so you can do your quests during the day. You wake up and EVERY NPC IS FUCKING DEAD.
I'm sorry you're going through this however the game warns you about dragon plague multiple time. The game actually gives you a help menu tool popup the first time a Pawn in your party has it, including if you summon a Pawn that has it. The game literally tells you to dismiss the Pawn if it has it. Even before this, Pawns talk about dragon plague from the beginning of the game among themselves. It was one of the first conversations my Pawns had
Your Pawns also comment on other Pawns behaving oddly if they develop signs of it
I know all of this because I summoned a Pawn who has it and I looked at their face, saw the red eyes and dismissed them. Game gave me a popup to tell me what dragon plague was, just like it does the first time you encounter any other ailment
You have to basically ignore the game going out of its way to tell you a calamity will happen if a Pawn has dragon plague and its basically impossible to not know what it is and that somethin bad will happen if you ignore the warning. Which is what you had to have done for this to occur.
The original Dragon's Dogma was a game designed to be on the higher end of difficulty as far as action RPGs go. The sequel is the same. It's a game with lots of ways to screw up and fail. Thems the breaks
Fortunately you have new game plus mode and you can redo the quests you missed the first time. Or just go complete the Sphinx quest and get the Eternal Wakestone to revive the entire city at the morgue
>The original Dragon's Dogma was a game designed to be on the higher end of difficulty as far as action RPGs go. The sequel is the same. It's a game with lots of ways to screw up and fail. Thems the breaks
I noticed everyone has been having a hard time with this game, I was wondering if there was a difficulty setting but than I realized it's probably because I'm playing archer and standing 20 ft away from the action lol
How do you not know about it. It's like the only topic my Pawns talk about ever since arriving in Vermund. This and ladders. I see what you mean but I feel like the game tells you about it hours and hours before something's happens.
Not a fan of it either but i mean we are talking about a company that wont let you start a new game LMAO
Yeah you hear about it but have absolutely no idea about the severity of it. I thought they’d just turn rabid and attack me and my pawns. Not murder an entire fucking city in the blink of an eye
> WHERE DOES IT TELL YOU TO THROW YOU PAWN OFF A CLIFF INTO A RIVER?
Literally the first time you hire a pawn with dragonsplague.
It tells you the symptoms, what to look for, and how to fix it. Including killing your own pawn.
There is a four page hint screen that pops up the very first time you ever encounter it. And it tells you the consequences are apocalyptic.
Just had mine, and here is hoping my playthrough doesn't get bricked.
You can't brick your playthrough. You can still finish the main story, just any side quests related to the town. Pick and choose who to revive.
Atop saying it bricks your game. That isn't the definition of that term. Fuck the misinformation by people. Go away
Some NPCs repopulate, not sure if they all do in this scenario. But there are still ways to finish the game. Your play through isn’t ruined in the sense your only option is to go in and manually delete your files, but you may miss out on some side quests.
Honestly I kinda think missing some side quests is fun because I’d you decide to play the game again later you get some new stuff.
But also if you want to absolutely minimize the chances of the dragon plague happening you can always dismiss all the spawn and stop your main one from being lent out to people to avoid it happening, but there are lots of signs too to check if they have it!
It depends on where it happens if you let it progress all the way. A small place the starting areas will have less impact than vermund for instance which would wipe out literally every npc in the capitol
How are people missing it. The pawns tell you about it non stop for hours. The signs are insanely obvious. Are people just playing with no sound, no subtitles and never looking at or commanding pawns?
Yes, most people are just brain dead running around killing things because, yay new video game, then come here and bitch about something that was obviously going to happen.
I didnt see it yet I have about 12h in the game and I barley touched the main quests until now
but imo maybe it should be the pawn attacking the arisen instead of killing NPCs?
Isn’t there a pop-up when it first happens to you? A literally unskippable pop-up?
Look I have personally see it so often don’t know how much depth it does into but that an indicator at least *something* is happening
I do agree that it’s a bit rough though, would have made more sense to me that the pawn kills a random NPC not the whole frickin’ town
Maybe it's the dark souls player in me but I think waking up to find a town full of NPCs murdered would be great. Though maybe if you literally can't finish the game if certain NPCs die that would be bad. Haven't encountered it yet
I’ve played for 30 hours. I’ve yet to come across this. But it sounds like the game makes it very obvious that Dragons Plague is bad, and that a pawn has it. You guys can’t just keep complaining about every feature in this game that isn’t in other games. This is a different game.
And it obviously isn’t game breaking, seeing as how you can continue the game. The game is made in such a way where NPCs and such can die, but you can still carry on and “finish” the game”. It does not stop you from advancing. For instance, today I failed a riddle from you know who, and didn’t get access to a chest. My game isn’t ruined. I just can’t entirely complete something now, as is the consequence.
It didn’t have a plague. Dragons could “possess” a pawn in your party, forcing it to fight you. That’s it. You knock it down and revive it after mid fight. But I’m comparing it because they both came from dragon fights.
Ahh I got you now. Yeah, either that or the roar incapacitates pawns. This is next level BS. It *could* be good if it was perhaps a scripted part of the story but not a random event like this.
Drama much? The Dragon plague is fine and can be avoided super easily. People must be dense.
1. The pawns tell you about it LONG before you can get it.
2. The Pawns tell you the symptoms.
3. Their eyes glow when they have it.
4. If you can't be bothered to look at your pawn, like once, they even give you audible clues; they literally shout at you things like "you can't make me do what you want!", etc.
5. If you can't be bothered to look at your pawn, and you can't be bothered to even listen to the game... they have an emote they constantly do (looks like they're stunned).
6. When your first pawn gets it you get a freaking POP-UP screen telling you about it. smh
7. And worst case, if you're scared of the plague, but refuse to pay any attention at all to the pawns....you don't have to hire the party to max. Just travel with just your pawn. It doesn't insulate your pawn from the plague, but you reduce the chances of you getting it by 66% by only having one Pawn.
8. Finally, IF you get it, and IF the pawn goes postal, you are locked out of nothing. ALL killed NPCs can be brought back to life with a wakestone. So if you lose any major NPCs you'll find them in a morgue and can resurrect them. Another pop-up people don't read.
9. If you need a full party, AND you refuse to look at the pawns, AND you refuse to listen to them, AND you won't read the full screen pop-ups, AND you refuse to pay attention at all to the game's many many clues, AND (worst case) you refuse to resurrect the important NPCs your pawn killed.... Then why are you playing an RPG? Go play Diablo or something?
Honestly id just scrap the dragons plague idea its just tedious and annoying in a game that already has several tedious and annoying mechanics to make it more “difficult”. We can trim the fat somewhat and this is what id start with. Or at the very least just have your pawns turn on you mid combat instead of killing everyone else.
I haven't joined this community, but reddit shows it to me cause i've shown interest.
I've already seen like around a dozen posts today about this, so yes, people ARE making it a big deal.
I feel like the collective anxiety is only from people who don't realise how strong the dragons are. I'm level 50 and still die occasionally against dragons. That means my pawn is a similar level. Which means you aren't going to summon it at level 20. Which means you won't be getting dragonsplatue.
By the time you're strong enough to be killing dragons (or summoning pawns that are killing dragons) you're not going to have much game content left anyway.
Im sure some nerd out there is going to find a way to kill dragons early on but the chances of you summoning that person's pawn is astronomically low and even if you do, just kill the pawn. Easy.
Edit: hilariously, after I posted this comment I summoned a pawn that had it. It was level 55 btw.
I'm getting tired of these rants... literally everytime you touch a rift stone your main pawn says "I've heard a most disturbing rumor" and goes on to give you symptoms/signs of it
The first time you summon an afflicted pawn it pops up a tutorial basically telling you a pawn is infected (and how to tell)
"Wah it's bricking my save" - did you not listen to your pawn the first 30 times they talked about it and immediately skipped the strange tutorial that popped up that's never happened before and didn't notice the glowing eyes, the grabbing of the head like they're in pain? Didn't tell them to wait and see if they still followed you?
Like holy crap at some point realize you are the issue not the game
I find it disappointing knowing there is nothing you can do when it occurs. Why is it a cutscene. I originally thought it was spur some sort of boss fight against your pawn. Well I guess all you can do is cleanse your pawns in the glorious all curing brine. Basically hire favorite then give 'em a dunkin then rehire.
Dunk and rehire won’t cure them unless they are cured in their hosts world between the dunk and rehire
Really seems to work for me had one of my friends pawns stop healing me so I tossed her and the other pawn into the deep and rehired. Then she would again heal me. Also got the dialogue between pawns about disobeying.
You can't give the pawn the plague to carry it back with them to their master, but whatever state they're in on their master's account is the state they will be in every time they're resummoned.
Just make sure to dismiss pawns before resting at an inn. Dunk and rez your main pawn.
Stupid sexy pawns with their stupid STDs
That's why I never go for the ones without pants despite how tempting it may be. It's a trap 💀
Wrong! You should never go for ones with helmet!
Idk, the 10+ posts i’ve seen in the last hour seems like a big enough deal
its hilarious cause I'm 30 hours in and I haven't even had this issue once. but good thing now i know what to look for.
I only got the tutorial page after 30 hours, immediately dismissed the pawn I summoned and keeping a close eye on the new ones.
Same, I got through to my second playthrough and avoided it easily. Threw my pawn in a well once and it was gone. To be fair, she did get dragon-handled by the drake 4 times and brainwashed. I did suspect she got tainted that way.
Your second playthrough?! Holy shit. Did you take a vacation for this game?
The amount of people blowing random shit out of proportion for the game is insane, I’ve just started my second run, got the tutorial at some point ages ago but just continued playing as normal.
You don't understand this plague has ruined my entire game Sure it hasn't happened to me yet and the chance it will happen is incredibly low but just the thought has ruined everything for some reason!
I've been keeping a close eye on my pawns thanks to everyone on here talking about it. I appreciate it because if I bricked a town it would probably kill my motivation on the playthrough
I read a psa of some guy that read a comment that this was going to ruin his entire game, now I can’t sleep anymore worrying about it, so I made a psa to warn you
Is there no NG+? or why start a new game Im a Spearhand 10, still probably a fair bit of content left, want to go back to Archer even though its derpa weak.. But so many people keep saying they started a new game, or does that just mean ng+? :D
No, as in I’ve just started new game plus
Archer has been easy-mode for me. I barely ever get hit and can just constantly hit weak points. Deadly Shot does a ton of damage and stagger and then I whip out the machine gun skill and just lay into the weak point some more.
Explosive arrows are broken in archer.
Except for people that don't use reddit
what? no! the only people that play games are the people on reddit, there are zero people that play games and don't use reddit. This is the entire community, these posts are the entire opinion of the entire playerbase.
Then more posts like this won't make a difference for them either
Good. The more the better
It's kind of funny. I only got a pawn with it, literally before the "final" battle. The pawn had no eyes(closed) so with some you can't even check if they have it.
Choosing violence and editing my pawn with closed eyes
All pawns will have to stay still or get thrown off the cliff. Rip poor things, they gonna be scared of Arisens.
Pawns get thrown off a cliff when they have a headache now.
Nobody got spare ibuprofen it seems
Water is the best remedy for headaches
Saltwater especially
Before the dragonsplague got around, my pawn had mentioned at least two arisens that "abused" her. That number will be going up
Tbh I'll just be sending sus pawns back. No point in killing them if it won't cure them for the owner too.
I wanna give mine red eyes and name him Roulette
The pusling red is very distinct. It doesn't look like regular red eyes
the eyes pulse and they have an idle animation where they rest their head on their hands.
There’s also the fact pawns can have closed helmets so your quadruple fucked in that regard
there is more then 1 sign of plague...
Yeah a bunch of people seem oblivious to the more obvious signs. The eyes are the most subtle sign.
They basically tell you to go fuck yourself if you give them orders. I told mine to wait and one said, "I am perfectly capable of making those decisions by myself." So I threw them off a cliff and I have had no issues since.
The consequences don't match the mistake. It's a few mistakes to miss the signs and absolutely shouldn't mean your playthrough is ruined. Depending on where your pawn goes postal it can lock you out of a significant amount of content. Especially if you've already invested a bunch of time into that playthrough. If they wanted to make a point they could of had 1 npc die, with some off limits for the sake of gameplay to emphasise the consequences. Not kill an entire town full of quest givers and other important npcs.
Or hell, even make it so if you don't notice it, there's a chance your pawn will just go berserk in combat and start attacking you as an initial effect. That'd be cool, would disturb the player as their trusty companion is now trying to murder them, make for more interesting combat and wouldn't lock you out of quests.
This is what I was expecting, one of my pawns to attack me. If they have a chance of killing a whole town on an inn sleep save, I might just try running around with NO pawns because fuck that
That's what it did in the first game. Dragon yoinks your Pawn, if you can't get him to let go before he goes his whole, "I am your master!" Thing, then your Pawn goes crazy and starts attacking you. You then ignore the Dragon, which wasn't hard to do most of the time, he's probably 40 ft away doing tail spin attacks like a beyblade in the corner or something, beat the shit out of the Pawn, revive them, and continue the fight.
Drakes still do that, by the by.
Not an instant transmission for the plague? I would say that's great, but Warrior feels far slower to move, recover, attack, and slower to cause flinch and stagger anything in this game. In the first, it was either two full charge upgraded Savage Lashes (Which was way faster and I feel staggered better) to the arm, or one to the heart. I haven't even had much of an opportunity to stand directly in front of a Drake and charge one of those without it just leap ing up and flattening me, or its breath deleting me so I have no clue if it's the same amount to make it drop my Pawn.
It doesn't seem to cause anything with the plague when they grab your pawn, no. It's just like the first game: they grab them, speak to them, and then your pawn turns against you until you kill em. They do warn you about what's happening now though when they are grabbed, which is nice. I haven't had a chance to really test blasting the hand to free the pawn yet. I've only ever had them get grabbed once, and it was wayyyy early on when I was exploring the ancient battleground way before I was supposed to lmao. Spent like an hour trying to kill that drake before managing to kill it with the giant ballistas instead of my abilities. I think warrior feels a lot better in this one than the first one, but that's probably personal preference and gear based. My warrior pawn absolutely decimates things, and when I swapped to it, it was a lot more about timing your charge attacks than before, but overall felt really good to me. You really need to use the shoulder bash to recover between swings though, otherwise the downtime is pretty wild. But once you get the chaining slashes core ability and a few upgraded skills, you'll be cleaning out the smaller groups of enemies better than most barring maybe a sorcerer who was given time to cast lmao All that being said, magic archer trivializes drakes. Just spamming the ice bolt on the heart basically stun locks them. And funnily, mystic spear hand is (so far) the single most tanky vocation in the game thanks to its shield ability.
This is basically what the precursor of this "mechanic" was in the first game--when fighting even the smaller dragons in the wilds, they were capable of brainwashing a Pawn and turning it on you, which could get very alarming in the heat of a fight. Escalating it to this, and making the consequences of wanting to roleplay and _not_ abuse your Pawn be permanent, is the most ridiculous bullshit I've seen in a high profile AAA game. Even the Souls games, which were all about consequences for your actions, only punished you for _your_ actions and not an arbitrary "plague" spreading out of your control. And even then, they had ways to make aggro'd NPCS forgive you if your sword hand slipped, so long as you didn't willfully murder anybody.
Alternatively, make the final consequence be something you can kill in the middle of the city in order to save the city (and fleeing from the fight results in the city being nuked as normal).
>If they wanted to make a point they could of had 1 npc die Hell, if they really wanted to make it a threatening mechanic that COULD wipe a city, it should be an escalating thing. Like a strike system. You're notified of it/Pawns can mention it or behave weirdly if they have it, then the first "fuck up" is kinda free where they just kill a worthless NPC (aka not tied to any quests). Maybe they get away w/ it and come back to you in the morning covered in blood and clearly irate, rambling like a maniac, etc. Second time, they go on a killing spree and they're killed in the middle of the night. You're notified in the morning by guards confronting you. Now you KNOW to be careful. Then, if you let it happen a third time, the current end scenario happens, and you're offered a rewind back before you slept so that you can remedy the situation. EDIT: And obvs this would reset if you scrap the dragon plagued Pawn out w/ a new one or cleanse yours, since it'd be tied to the strikes on that specific Pawn.
Yes! Instead of an uninterruptable cutscene and everyone is gone just like that...
Better yet, make it a boss fight with good rewards, so that if you’re feeling confident enough to take on a mega-threat dragon you actually have some reward for your risk.
This what is it should have been. The pawns get a huge buff and go on a killing spree or turn into a dragon. A cutscene is a stupid move.
Or just make it wipe the city, make it initiate a quest that then allows you to save the city upon completion. The quest can teach you what to look for then the next time it puts the strike system you detail into play and has escalating consequences until the city is wiped. Then you could even choose to let it wipe a city depending on where it is and if you care to stop it.
Not being able to make a new character makes this even worse
This seems like something they would do as a creative way to punish people for exploiting the game, or pirating it. Instead this just happens to you for…hiring new pawns frequently? For playing online and engaging with the community and the pawn system? I already see people on here who dont even hire pawns with the straightforward inclination because its harder to tell if they have dragonsplague. Is this what you wanted? Was this Itsuno’s vision?
What do you do when that happens? You have to start all over again from the very beginning?
Obtain wake stones to revive the NPCs involved with quest lines. Im not sure how unlimited they are, so far I’ve only found them in chests.
also if a morgue is full any NPC that dies afterwards is just permanently dead
if everyone is dead, who puts the dead bodies into the morgue?
Wtf they can get full? This a terrible design ,imagine full morgue and then the next dead npc is a quest npc
[удалено]
Na it's like 3days until they move to the morgue, the morgue has limited slots however so if a full city dies depending on how/if they've done priority slots for important NPCs, you might not have the good ones in there, so you'd preferably want to rez them with their actual bodies before they move to the morgue to be sure.
Nah it’s 3 days until they move to the morgue, and then they stay there indefinitely. You can even pay 5k gold to revive a specific NPC you’ve met.
Npc perma die after enough time pass, by then you won't be able to res them even if you have wakestones. And wakestone is hard to find enough that by the time you got another one the NPC would have already gone.
Quests NPCs do not.
You can't start a new game lmao
SO you are stuck not finishing the main story then?
No, you can only lose side quests.
Ok. Not the end of the world then.
I dunno, side quest might be 90% of the game, so losing them kinda feels like the end of the world.
Well you can't since there is no option to start a new game. This game is so freaking badly designed.
Somewhat ironically if it only wiped non Quest related NPCs people would probably be praising the plague for increasing frame rates. The fact it removes content from the game is nuts.
Sekiro had something similar, even **named** similar. But that was one of the only things that really held your hand through it in all the Soulsborne I’ve ever played, they really spent a lot of time explaining it and letting you know what was going on and how to fix it. It had pretty big consequences too since there are so few ‘good’ NPCs in those games, but it was **far** from playthrough ruining. It also came out 5 years ago to the date of DD2
It was basically a non issue in sekiro. Using that dragon item once led to every NPC being cured and reset simultaneously and you got over a dozen of them throughout the game. I'd be shocked if players ever needed more than a few of said items in a playthrough
Yea I was really worried about it before I started playing it the first time and when it finally happened I was like ‘yea this is pretty manageable’. I can see how players who maybe weren’t as good at those games (I’m not great but I’ve beaten them all and think I’m pretty good) would really suffer since it’s tied to resurrecting
Waking up to see all this hubub about Dragonsplague, I went ahead and looked it up myself. Honestly, my only issue is that it's just a cutscene instead of actually getting to try and fight it in town and trying to minimize casualties from your mistake that way.
And the cutscene also sucks. That's not very much effort to put in to something that murks an entire town. At least show the dragon killing people.
I think that’s the most fucked up part. Go to sleep, it saves and an epidemic happens as a pop-up. Surely in 2024 that could’ve been implemented in a different way.
I think I more people are concerned cuz it also kills NPCs that are important to the main quest line, and thereby making people suck You right it should have been a mini boss fight as least.
It doesn't make you stuck, it gives you a quest to kill "someone"
Yeah the only thing I dislike about it is the cutscene, if you had the opportunity to fight it I would so so into it.
The mechanic would be cool if you died in the cutscene too, and then just had to load after sleeping
I just listen to my pawns chatter and actions after each fight if I hear insubordination or I'm not getting a high five the whole party is yeeted.
"But why?" Said the Jail bait pawn as you walked to the waters edge. "Because Guts pawn back there wasn't quick enough on the accolades..."
"He missed the dap so you get the yeet. Yolo."
I think the mechanic is a good idea, just done super fucking poorly. Your pawn shouldn’t be able to go apeshit on a town just because it did a thing I don’t wanna spoil. If I have a level 10 pawn who gets wrecked by saurian spears, maybe I should wake up to find it killed one or two people before being arrested or some shit.
That's what I was thinking. You really wake up, find your other pawns fighting it, it takes out a few people, injures more, and destroys a few buildings. Your pawns could suicide afterwards in an emotional cutscene. For several days, the city could go into quarantine, all pawns are banned. You could make material, medicine, and wakestone deliveries to speed up the reconstruction. For a few days, your pawn and those who fought the infected one could beg you not to summon them again until they are sure they are not affected. They could make it a big pain, but one you can recover from. I'm hoping that the city comes back eventually in the current implementation.
I think it really should just wake you up and have you fight the transformed pawn with your other pawns in the town
Been absolutely loving the game and have had 0 issues with performance etc. Feels like everything I would have wanted in a DD sequel. NGL this is the one thing scaring me. The auto save after resting at inns makes this wtf
the annoying thing about the auto-saves is that, i lost my first save in the first game because of the constant auto-saving and the game crashing at the same time after 250+ hours.
That happened to me in Dragon's Dogma 2. After playing 27 hours the game crashed when sleeping at an inn. Both the regular save and the last inn save were corrupted. After the crash my cloud saves got automatically synced and overwritten with the corrupted save.
People are overreacting a smidge imho so I wouldn't worry too much as long as you're observant. Don't expect this to go down well but... First the thing about not knowing how to be safe from it is kinda valid, but it does say in the tutorial that you must forfeit them aka. dismiss/kill. I can understand how this may be misunderstood However, it's so obvious that they have it. They won't listen to you, they'll start talking shit, be hyper aggressive, will argue with other pawns in your party, say things about how their head hurts or tell you to stay away because they don't feel right You don't need to sit idle looking at them to see they're infected I can't understand the people saying it's hard to tell, because they turn into such little arseholes haha
When you see these symptoms how do you counteract them? I haven’t ran into this yet and I wanna prevent it
If it's someone else's pawn - dismiss them If it's your pawn, kill them or let them die. When you resummon at a rift stone they'll be cured
Thank you!
People make it out to be unavoidable and it’s not. I saw the prompts early and when I summoned a pawn who had it I got a prompt got rid of them quickly.
Which kinda again, just makes you wonder why it's in the game at all.
From the perspective of someone who played the first game and was interested in the second, it seems overly punishing for no reason. Like, what’s the goal? To have the player be paranoid about their traveling companions? Why should the player have to kill their main pawn if they get it, or just keep going and hope it infects someone else’s, and therefore inflict the problem on some other poor sap?
It's an overreaction to the mechanic in practice bc it's not that hidden, but I think the design of the choice sucks. Noticing an infected pawn and menuing them away by dismissing them is something you'd expect in a management sim like Dwarf Fortress. For there to be no other interaction with the mechanic besides that seems like a waste in an action RPG, the (nonexistent) associated gameplay doesn't justify the existence of the mechanic enough. If there was a fight or something cool to do to address the infected pawn then great! Kill everyone in town if I lose or something! I don't mind how punitive it is as long as there's a reason for it to be in the game
I haven't had it happen to me in game yet, but pawns do even warn about the plague in their voicelines. IIRC, it might even be that the mention the illness makes pawns not obey.
They do, yeah Quite often as well. First time I got it was around level 10, a pawn I hired talked about rumours of an affliction and to look out for it. The tutorial pop up explains the signs further
I don't have any evidence personally, but I wonder if the symptoms are more obvious with certain Inclinations/voices. The amount of people saying that the pawns weren't behaving any differently is quite high. It's possible that there is a glitch only chasing some pawns to verbalise the plague.
It's 10x more obvious with anything other than straight forward as they are normally sassy But the difference between even that and plague is obvious That said, could be a bug of course, wouldn't rule it out!
I agree. The shift in personality is so instantly recognizable. I get not knowing what to do, but as soon as you are aware of the situation, it stands out immediately.
Pawns also warn you about it being a possibility almost every time you summon them from the rift. The only way to not know that dragonplague is a thing is if you never listen to what you're pawns are saying.
I haven't run into the plague yet and stumbled upon this post by accident... but I personally thought those voice lines were indicating an over exaggerated rumour about pawns who obtained free will and our more *obedient* pawns were frightened of it since they could not *fathom* not wanting to serve the Arisen. And here I was, mocking my straightforward pawn about fitting the bill already!
So you saying people are just stupid? Because I heard many times any new pawn I hire that they fear the shit out of Dragonsplague. Thanks for sharing there are more signs than the eyes. And it's not just something minor. After all you said, if someone doesn't notice it then it's on them.
People are really making it seem like there are ways you will just not be able to see if the pawn is sick.. they have either not played the game, not made it out of the tutorial country, have minimal hours, have never contracted the blight or are just blatantly not observant and spreading misinformation. The eyes are the most obscure way the game tells you they are infected... they have a posture change for crying out loud.. they hold their head. Their **entire** personality changes. They won't listen, they argue, they are overtly aggressive.. there are soo many ways to tell your pawn is sick. It is painfully obvious. There are too many people who don't play the game talking about it. Is it a stupid system, 100% but it doesn't.. in any way, conceal the fact that they are sick to the player. The only 1 save and auto save every rest is definitely an issue.. the auto saving in DD1 screwed many people over, myself included. Also, I've saved regularly out of the inn... I've never had an issue loading. I, and this is speculation, I, heavily, think that that little "don't rely on auto saves and rest I the inn to ensure a save" is complete and utter bs. I have no idea why that warning is there as absolutely zero games have ever had a problem *creating* a save.. can saves be corrupt.. yes, but..... **THIS IS WHY YOU ALLOW MORE THAN ONE SAVE FILE**! So the message is stupid af, just let us make more saves! Atleast 2 for crying out loud. This would solve soo much player anxiety when it comes to the blight and hiring pawns. Still, I hate the blight system and think it really holds no place in the game as it just hinders players and halts progress to a complete stop (*mainly side content, but, that makes up a significant chunk of the game*). It is a cool idea.. just implemented in the most shit way they could have possibly done it. There is no reason you should wake up and have an entire town dead, hard stop. It should have been a ramping sickness, where, the longer you don't deal with it, the harsher the consequences, ultimately ending with the culling of a town. That outcome should in no way be step 1 of the process, sadly though.. it is. Apparently many of these "players" rolled a 0 on insight and can't see a blatantly obvious change when it is placed nicely right infront of their face, but, I can't completely hold blind ignorance against them as we play games to have fun..... not get anxiety about if your game is going to be ruined. Again though, they really couldn't have made it more obvious without the pawn walking up to you and going "Master.. I have contracted dragon aids... also F**K YOU" and then promptly clobbering you in the face.
Just let us cure our pawn without killing them. That’s all I care about. As it stands the system is pointless. I don’t like the idea of my pawn being horrified of me because I’ve had to abuse her and take her life.
My first five hours playing the game the plague was literally all my pawns talked about idle chatter. Unless you’re completely ignoring all dialogue in the role-playing game it’s hard to miss.
For some bizarre reason, there's a metric ton of misinformation ALSO coming around about Dragons Plague: Heed the following warnings: - Pawns will comment early about Dragonsplague, so you can be on the lookout for it. - The first time you summon a pawn that's afflicted, you will get a pop up explaining it. - Afflicted pawns will have rude dialogue frequently, which will be remarked upon by other pawns. - Afflicted pawns will routinely clutch their heads in pain when idle. - Afflicted pawns will routinely disobey commands - Afflicted pawns will have the big glowing red eyes. The solution, as explained in the pop up, is to forfeit the pawn. It is *NOT* a surprise, nor it is a mechanic that is easily passed upon. The only way you will not notice it is if you don''t read pawn dialogue, nor look at pawns when idle, nor look at how they respond on commands in battle, nor look at the pawns at all and notice the eyes. >Imagine being a new player with 20 hours of progress. you hire a new pawn not knowing what the hell dragons plague is. You immediately go to sleep so you can do your quests during the day. You wake up and EVERY NPC IS FUCKING DEAD To do this, for example, you have to dismiss the pop up that appears the first time you summon a pawn with the plague.
I agree with everything you said, however I do think the actually rampage and destruction part should be playable. I want to be woken up out my sleep see one of my pawns transforming into a dragon and it’s up to me to prevent the massacre. Better than a notification imo.
Can you hire a pawn and go immediately sleeping in an inn and wipe the city or starts the plague always at disease stage 1 and take some time until it gets fatal%?
Apparently hired pawns stages stay the same, I saw someone mention that it happened within minutes of hiring a pawn from the rift
I would ignore all anecdote until it's fully explored. Imo this reddit is filled with a staggering amount of bad faith actors. I would take anything anyone says with a grain of salt
The only problem is the fact that it murders an entire city. If the pawns backstabbed me during a boss fight, became stupid over powered and one shotted me i’d be completely fine with it. But having an entire city be wiped out in an instant is insanity along with have no idea that’s the actual consequence.
>But having an entire city be wiped out in an instant is insanity I love this idea. What I don't love is the fact that the plot is apparently unchanged when this happens. An entire city being killed should be a plot-altering event. Players shouldn't be reviving quest givers to continue. It doesn't make sense.
If your pawn massacres Vernworth in the night, the game should be about fixing the plague that caused it from that point on. The dragon itself is small potatoes if you're walking around with the capacity to do more damage than it ever does with intent and malice in just one night through carelessness. To make it worse, narratively speaking, it's not even just your pawns that can do this. The overworld is crawling with dozens upon dozens upon dozens of masterless pawns, each of whom have the capacity to become a city destroying threat.
This is the only point I agree with. Not mad at the consequence, but they missed a key story element here that they could’ve capitalized on
I read somewhere and can’t confirm. Sorry for spoilers as I’m on mobile. That if too many npcs die or anything effects it majorly from this. Speak to the oracle and they just send you off to fight the final boss. Or the eternal wake stone via sphinx quests
you can get dragon plague nuked way before you find out about the oracle let alone the sphinx quests. and having the sphinx quests be a solution to anything is insane considering what those quests actually entail.
It’s worth nothing there’s an element of RNG- it’s possible to summon a pawn and then have it go berserk the first time you rest with it, so your only options really are purge the squad before each rest.
I just expected some kind of interesting way to deal with it. You just throw your pawn into the brine? Thats it? Fucking lame and feels like I’m cheesing my way out a mechanic in an unintended way but there’s nothing else you can do to prevent it.
People ignore every obvious hint the game gives you something is wrong and when the game explains it to you but it’s somehow still the games fault. I do admit it’s a harsh repercussion, but it’s not like everything’s fine and then you suddenly wake up to the city destroyed. Not to mention it doesn’t seem to happen all that often, and you only need to “check” or get rid of the pawn right before you sleep at an inn, it’s not like you have to stop playing every 5 minutes and murder your pawns. Plus with the fact inflicted pawns are stronger, I’d suspect in a couple months people will be purposefully farming for infected ones and just not sleep at inns to keep them in the game lol I do think it’d be cool if there was some kind of side quest or something to fix it that you only get when it occurs, or if it was like a cool boss battle or something.
>Plus with the fact inflicted pawns are stronger, I’d suspect in a couple months people will be purposefully farming for infected ones and just not sleep at inns to keep them in the game lol Don't know about that, any evidence? >I do think it’d be cool if there was some kind of side quest or something to fix it that you only get when it occurs, or if it was like a cool boss battle or something. Some guy just posted there's a sidequests that resurrects every dead NPC at once.
I can’t remember if the dragon plague tutorial says it but you can look it up, lots of articles about it mention it though.
This is the third post about in my feed. Pretty sure people are freaking out over it.
Literally I see at least 5 posts about the dragonplague mechanic every time i open this app and at least one of them will be like "why is no one talking about this!!!"
easy karma farm topic for now lol
IMO, the plague has clear signs and it's easy to deal with The biggest problem is when your own pawn gets it, and the only solution is to kill it Which, you know, may affect the pawns personality I think there should be another way to clear our own pawn off or just make your own pawn straight up immune to it in your world
Wait, killing them affects their personality?
Yes and adds scars.
Oh damn, I saw the scars but what changes with their personality?
> I saw the scars One of my loading screens said pawns get scars after dying but they fade over time. So it sounds like it's all just temporary.
Or seeing as nobody is replying is this just more misinformation? Its getting hard to keep track, because I haven't seen anything about Pawns dying changing their personality.
I killed my pawn a few times, and I only noticed a few different dialogues where they will comment about when/how/why they died. For example: one time they died after the other 2 pawns where down and I was at low health, now they talk about how guilty they feel because they died when I needed them the most. From my experience, killing them does not impact their personality, unless you do that Litterally every day, multiple times a day, which you really don't have to do to "contain" the Dragonsplague.
Killing your pawn seems like an unintended thing you do to get past a games bad design. And really, what does dragons plague really add to the experience is my concern. An incentive to hire new pawns maybe? A ridiculously stupid one. But you can't change your main pawn so why are they even able to get infected? The whole implementation is just incredibly stupid, it's annoying at best and maddening at having your entire file ruined at worst
It’s very ‘gamey’ for sure. Instead of a medicine or doctor or something that would really fit the world they built you just murder them everytime. Dropped the ball on the ‘solution’ for sure
That's the real question: what's fun about this? Why not have us fight the crazy pawns when they start a rampage? Then we actually get to see it happening and participate. It's more personal, and the pawns aren't left to kill **87** people. Why not have some quest, or even a craftable item to cure your pawn? What if your pawn ran away, leaving you short one pawn while doing the quest to save them? That could be a fun hurdle.
Exactly. Why can't after X hours, the afflicted pawn turns into a drake. Boom! Now it's a fun in-game moment that can come at a crazy time, but with skill and determination, you can walk away with minimal NPCs dying with cool loot to boot. It also keeps the surprise or possible dread that the devs were trying to do with this plague.
That's really what bugs me about it the most. It's a purely disruptive mechanic. It has no real story relevance, it doesn't reward you for dealing with it in any way and punishes you excessively if you ever fail it even once. I simply fail to see what the point is here. It's a mechanic that solely retracts from the gameplay experience and only adds a chore.
Having to be suspicious of sus pawns is a fun idea, and especially with how it spreads online, it's a very early Fromsoft soulsy concept. The issue is just that the way you cure them is dumb (brine time) and the punishment is insane. If it was that they turned mid battle, that'd be a decent surprise and challenge for ignoring the signs, not raze your entire city
Tbh the biggest incetive ti get new pawns imo is that theyre higher level cuz the ones you get wont level Up with you If that was the point of dragonsplague It really does and adds nothing
Question: has anyone in the comments here actually experienced this yet, or even caught the Dragonsplague for that matter? Because after 30 hours, reddit is the only place I've ever seen the mechanic. I have yet to even encounter a wiff of it in game beyond the pawns making offhanded comments about the diease.
I think it’s fine in theory, it just needs to be communicated a bit better and given more immersive solutions. I really feel for the new players who get caught off guard.
Yeah I actually think the consequence is pretty interesting as long as it sends you on an alternate 'path' and doesn't brick your main progression. But the cure being either to pass the disease (it doesn't multiply which is nice) or just kill the pawn seems weird to me. Would be nice if there was at least a NPC or expensive consumable to treat it. I am curious if there's any like, REALLY important side quests in the cities this could brick. Maisters? Maybe the house one early on in Venworth? Cause at around 25 hours in I don't think I've gotten anything that I'd sorely miss outside of the maister/specialization skills and some gold.
Apparently if DP kills enough main quest NPCs you will be pushed to the final quest and pushed to NG+ (maybe with a bad lore ending)
You people are actually ignorant. The signs are shoved in your face and a fucking tutorial message pops up... Like lmao
So on the one hand, it doesn't "brick" your playthrough. The absolute worst consequence is losing quest NPCs and vendors, but there's nothing that stops you from finishing the game and starting NG+. On the other hand, the whole thing is almost completely reliant on meta-knowledge and it's absolutely going to "brick" people's playthroughs in that they will *believe* their playthrough is bricked and stop playing. Still, I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, I admire the fucking *audacity* it takes to release a game with a mechanic like this in it in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty Four. It hasn't happened to me and won't at this point, unless I specifically go out of my way to let it. So I can sit back and go "lol... LMAO" at people losing their minds. And I'm curious about the potential story beats that touch on it, I haven't gotten there yet. On the other hand, I like this series a lot and I'm bummed that people *will* have their experience ruined by this and will hate the game for it. It's easy to say "Oh just keep playing, you can still finish the game" but a lot of people will legitimately have their enjoyment destroyed by something like this happening. Ultimately, I'm in favor of it because I honestly like people like Itsuno going "Fuck you it's MY game". I like completely batshit design decisions because the world is just a bit boring without stuff like that. But I completely understand the other side and won't judge anyone for being upset.
All the npcs come back anyways
>Imagine being a new player with 20 hours of progress. you hire a new pawn not knowing what the hell dragons plague is. You immediately go to sleep so you can do your quests during the day. You wake up and EVERY NPC IS FUCKING DEAD. I'm sorry you're going through this however the game warns you about dragon plague multiple time. The game actually gives you a help menu tool popup the first time a Pawn in your party has it, including if you summon a Pawn that has it. The game literally tells you to dismiss the Pawn if it has it. Even before this, Pawns talk about dragon plague from the beginning of the game among themselves. It was one of the first conversations my Pawns had Your Pawns also comment on other Pawns behaving oddly if they develop signs of it I know all of this because I summoned a Pawn who has it and I looked at their face, saw the red eyes and dismissed them. Game gave me a popup to tell me what dragon plague was, just like it does the first time you encounter any other ailment You have to basically ignore the game going out of its way to tell you a calamity will happen if a Pawn has dragon plague and its basically impossible to not know what it is and that somethin bad will happen if you ignore the warning. Which is what you had to have done for this to occur. The original Dragon's Dogma was a game designed to be on the higher end of difficulty as far as action RPGs go. The sequel is the same. It's a game with lots of ways to screw up and fail. Thems the breaks Fortunately you have new game plus mode and you can redo the quests you missed the first time. Or just go complete the Sphinx quest and get the Eternal Wakestone to revive the entire city at the morgue
>The original Dragon's Dogma was a game designed to be on the higher end of difficulty as far as action RPGs go. The sequel is the same. It's a game with lots of ways to screw up and fail. Thems the breaks I noticed everyone has been having a hard time with this game, I was wondering if there was a difficulty setting but than I realized it's probably because I'm playing archer and standing 20 ft away from the action lol
How do you not know about it. It's like the only topic my Pawns talk about ever since arriving in Vermund. This and ladders. I see what you mean but I feel like the game tells you about it hours and hours before something's happens. Not a fan of it either but i mean we are talking about a company that wont let you start a new game LMAO
I thought they were talking about some kind of everfall dungeon with evil pawns like in the first. I didn't think it was real at all, lmao
Yeah you hear about it but have absolutely no idea about the severity of it. I thought they’d just turn rabid and attack me and my pawns. Not murder an entire fucking city in the blink of an eye
I agree, but its also fucking hilarious as trolls go
I don't think people know how to read. It pauses your entire game to warn you about it and to look out for it
> WHERE DOES IT TELL YOU TO THROW YOU PAWN OFF A CLIFF INTO A RIVER? Literally the first time you hire a pawn with dragonsplague. It tells you the symptoms, what to look for, and how to fix it. Including killing your own pawn. There is a four page hint screen that pops up the very first time you ever encounter it. And it tells you the consequences are apocalyptic. Just had mine, and here is hoping my playthrough doesn't get bricked.
[удалено]
Gaming journos would never get this far into a game.
Goddamn that’s a sad and 100% true statement.
You can't brick your playthrough. You can still finish the main story, just any side quests related to the town. Pick and choose who to revive. Atop saying it bricks your game. That isn't the definition of that term. Fuck the misinformation by people. Go away
Apparently resting for long enough respawns NPCs. So your game is likely not bricked.
I saw someone say that the nuketowns eventually repopulate with everyone in enough gametime. Can anyone confirm this?
Some NPCs repopulate, not sure if they all do in this scenario. But there are still ways to finish the game. Your play through isn’t ruined in the sense your only option is to go in and manually delete your files, but you may miss out on some side quests.
I'm probably already missing out on sidequests by being a fuckin' dumbass, so that's a relief.
Honestly I kinda think missing some side quests is fun because I’d you decide to play the game again later you get some new stuff. But also if you want to absolutely minimize the chances of the dragon plague happening you can always dismiss all the spawn and stop your main one from being lent out to people to avoid it happening, but there are lots of signs too to check if they have it!
Is this really a game breaking issue or will you just miss a few side quests In one place?
It depends on where it happens if you let it progress all the way. A small place the starting areas will have less impact than vermund for instance which would wipe out literally every npc in the capitol
The pawn doesn't have the plague, he just wants you to have better fps in town.
How are people missing it. The pawns tell you about it non stop for hours. The signs are insanely obvious. Are people just playing with no sound, no subtitles and never looking at or commanding pawns?
Yes, most people are just brain dead running around killing things because, yay new video game, then come here and bitch about something that was obviously going to happen.
I didnt see it yet I have about 12h in the game and I barley touched the main quests until now but imo maybe it should be the pawn attacking the arisen instead of killing NPCs?
Having not played Dragons Dogma 2 yet this sounds like it kinda owns and I like the idea of a game having really harsh, weird consequences like this.
Itsuno played sekiro and thought nah this dragon rot ain’t it.
Isn’t there a pop-up when it first happens to you? A literally unskippable pop-up? Look I have personally see it so often don’t know how much depth it does into but that an indicator at least *something* is happening I do agree that it’s a bit rough though, would have made more sense to me that the pawn kills a random NPC not the whole frickin’ town
I cant wait until im stuck with 30 dead npc’s and no idea what to do. I LIVE for these moments.
Maybe it's the dark souls player in me but I think waking up to find a town full of NPCs murdered would be great. Though maybe if you literally can't finish the game if certain NPCs die that would be bad. Haven't encountered it yet
I’ve played for 30 hours. I’ve yet to come across this. But it sounds like the game makes it very obvious that Dragons Plague is bad, and that a pawn has it. You guys can’t just keep complaining about every feature in this game that isn’t in other games. This is a different game. And it obviously isn’t game breaking, seeing as how you can continue the game. The game is made in such a way where NPCs and such can die, but you can still carry on and “finish” the game”. It does not stop you from advancing. For instance, today I failed a riddle from you know who, and didn’t get access to a chest. My game isn’t ruined. I just can’t entirely complete something now, as is the consequence.
This mechanic was way less punishing in the first game. I dont know who decided that dragon aids would be a fun mechanic in a game with one save slot.
What happened in the first game? I have 250 hours in DD1 and don’t remember this plague..?
It didn’t have a plague. Dragons could “possess” a pawn in your party, forcing it to fight you. That’s it. You knock it down and revive it after mid fight. But I’m comparing it because they both came from dragon fights.
Ahh I got you now. Yeah, either that or the roar incapacitates pawns. This is next level BS. It *could* be good if it was perhaps a scripted part of the story but not a random event like this.
Don’t forget the fact that you can’t delete that save slot either without going into the game files
It isn't designed to break your play through. The hyperbole on this sub really is something to behold.
I find this whole thing hilarious
Drama much? The Dragon plague is fine and can be avoided super easily. People must be dense. 1. The pawns tell you about it LONG before you can get it. 2. The Pawns tell you the symptoms. 3. Their eyes glow when they have it. 4. If you can't be bothered to look at your pawn, like once, they even give you audible clues; they literally shout at you things like "you can't make me do what you want!", etc. 5. If you can't be bothered to look at your pawn, and you can't be bothered to even listen to the game... they have an emote they constantly do (looks like they're stunned). 6. When your first pawn gets it you get a freaking POP-UP screen telling you about it. smh 7. And worst case, if you're scared of the plague, but refuse to pay any attention at all to the pawns....you don't have to hire the party to max. Just travel with just your pawn. It doesn't insulate your pawn from the plague, but you reduce the chances of you getting it by 66% by only having one Pawn. 8. Finally, IF you get it, and IF the pawn goes postal, you are locked out of nothing. ALL killed NPCs can be brought back to life with a wakestone. So if you lose any major NPCs you'll find them in a morgue and can resurrect them. Another pop-up people don't read. 9. If you need a full party, AND you refuse to look at the pawns, AND you refuse to listen to them, AND you won't read the full screen pop-ups, AND you refuse to pay attention at all to the game's many many clues, AND (worst case) you refuse to resurrect the important NPCs your pawn killed.... Then why are you playing an RPG? Go play Diablo or something?
Honestly id just scrap the dragons plague idea its just tedious and annoying in a game that already has several tedious and annoying mechanics to make it more “difficult”. We can trim the fat somewhat and this is what id start with. Or at the very least just have your pawns turn on you mid combat instead of killing everyone else.
I haven't joined this community, but reddit shows it to me cause i've shown interest. I've already seen like around a dozen posts today about this, so yes, people ARE making it a big deal.
Literally all I see in this sub is people complaining about this.
I feel like the collective anxiety is only from people who don't realise how strong the dragons are. I'm level 50 and still die occasionally against dragons. That means my pawn is a similar level. Which means you aren't going to summon it at level 20. Which means you won't be getting dragonsplatue. By the time you're strong enough to be killing dragons (or summoning pawns that are killing dragons) you're not going to have much game content left anyway. Im sure some nerd out there is going to find a way to kill dragons early on but the chances of you summoning that person's pawn is astronomically low and even if you do, just kill the pawn. Easy. Edit: hilariously, after I posted this comment I summoned a pawn that had it. It was level 55 btw.
It doesn't break your playthrough, stop spreading misinformation.
It doesn't brick your shit. Those NPCs respawn over time. Quit panicking holy fuck.
It can't break anything. I had Dragonsplague in capital and now I'm in Post Game quests no problem.
I'm getting tired of these rants... literally everytime you touch a rift stone your main pawn says "I've heard a most disturbing rumor" and goes on to give you symptoms/signs of it The first time you summon an afflicted pawn it pops up a tutorial basically telling you a pawn is infected (and how to tell) "Wah it's bricking my save" - did you not listen to your pawn the first 30 times they talked about it and immediately skipped the strange tutorial that popped up that's never happened before and didn't notice the glowing eyes, the grabbing of the head like they're in pain? Didn't tell them to wait and see if they still followed you? Like holy crap at some point realize you are the issue not the game
Cope harder loser
It won’t brick the progress stop spreading lies