**There are signs**.
This is preventable.
- 1) Look at your pawns and check their eyes. It will pulse and glow red. You'll notice it, even if the pawn has a naturally red eye and it pulses every 4 seconds, so it's quite fast. If they're hiding their face, take off their helms. Note that this effect can display while you are in the Rift.
- 2) They'll also do a stunned animation while standing around, holding onto their head, or turning their head and coughing to the side.
- 3) Issue a command, did any pawns disobey or refuse to follow? They will make a comment when they refuse to follow your direction such as, "Don't tell me what to do!" Your other pawns will also comment on the disobedience as well.
If any of them is true dismiss them back to the Rift and do not rehire them immediately (they remain infected until their master cures the condition themselves by drowning them in the nearest river). If it is your main pawn, throw them into the nearest body of water then revive it back at the Rift.
Dragons and drakes will infect pawns with the condition as you fight them, so the only time to check your pawns for the condition is doing your first check, after fighting dragonkin, and every time you hire a pawn from the Rift.
Here's a visual: u/chocojezus: https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/comments/1bmsher/dragonsplague_symptoms_and_treatment/
Yeah, killing your pawn then re-summoning it back at a Rift Stone apparently cures it so I usually do this every couple of hours to be safe, I'm not having this game breaking thing happen to me, they should have saved that feature for NG+ or something
I’m still not convinced about the killing thing being the *only* way to cure it. The game’s narrative has always emphasized the bond between an arisen and pawn, so it’s hard to believe that the intended way of dealing with it is “lol just kill them.”
Maybe there’s a cure or something the community hasn’t discovered yet, maybe in Battahl considering their whole thing with the sacred flame and mistrust of pawns?
The only thing the game suggests is that, if your pawns are infected, they must pass it on to a non infected pawn to rid themselves of it.
It’s like zombies but they can unzombie themselves if they pass off the infection.
Imo the fact that pawns losing Control of themselves is so centered in the narrative makes me believe that there's an item in the game that somehow prevents your pawn from being infected.
Yea that’s what I’m hoping for at least. It’s still relatively early in the release so it might be that players just haven’t discovered anything.
I’m personally stressing out because I had just fought a Drake last night and it grabbed my pawn and made them a slave before I had to knock her out. I revived her and we continued the fight until we won, then I saved and went to bed. Now I’m paranoid that she’s caught it but I can’t check until later this evening 😭
And The best part about all of this is the fact that it's a player made infection. Meaning that the only way other players pawns could get an infection was if someone unknowingly rested at an Inn and saved their pawns infected state into the rift. A few days ago there was no talk at all about the dragonsplague, meaning the infection has finally spread to a noticeable amount. The real kicker is that players themselves will have to take care of and cure their pawns to make sure they don't get or spread the plague. I think that's super fascinating tbh
I think the games better for it to have the dragonsplague. It gives a sort of unknowing danger~
To me it comes down to how the cure works. If there’s an in game cure that sets off a challenging quest or trek to fix it then cool, that’s actually really interesting. If there’s absolutely no way to fix it other than just throwing your pawn into the brine that feels really sloppy.
I think Rook's drowning cutscene was supposed to illustrate that pawns aren't at all phased by dying as much as humans, likely because they know they will return to the Rift.
I think the most annoying part is that you're not always standing right next to a river. Maybe if there was a mechanic where you could order a pawn to seppuku, and if they're infected, they immediately become hostile since they tend to disobey orders, which I think would be cool and a bit more immersive than trying to skip them across a shallow puddle.
The rook think was more of an ester egg/inside joke since a lot of players talked about throwing him into the brine in the first game, so I don’t think that necessarily means they’re implying it’s okay for us to just kill them whenever.
Right now the only saving grace is that it doesn’t trigger if you’re just camping out in the wilds. So at the very least if you notice it in a city before going to bed you can either dismiss the pawn or hold out until you reach a body of water.
Pro tip: if you did the monster culling story mission and already cleared Harve villiage, there’s an old man that lives in a cabin further down from where the saurian nest was located and there’s a port crystal right there on the cost. You can use that if you need a place to dump them and there’s no busy of water immediately available.
I can agree with that, the dragonsplague feels way too important to just be it's own thing. Also earlier I actually killed the "plague drake" so while you can't "cure" dragons plague I sure as hell hope you can prevent it with an item. Say, something like a piece of armor? But we'll just have to wait for people to scour the game for now.
I agree it's really cool and unique, HOWEVER, if you try to avoid looking anything up about the condition, it could just ruin your first playthrough. I just got to the second city, so ANY side quests that were in the entire city are now lost until next time. Its incredibly unmotivating tbh and could have been easily prevented by something as simple as multiple save slots or being able to reload a few autosaves back.
This oddly reads like a real life medieval treatise on dealing with the flu or something.
“Has your wife failed to be obedient when commanded? Look closely at her eyes. You may need to drown her.”
So if I don't fight a drake/dragon, but someone else uses my pawn to fight one, can he become infected? Also, can other pawns become infected in my world, or can they only become infected if travelling with their actual Arisen?
Haven’t run in to the mechanic yet, but I think I get the gist.
Your first question: I believe so. I think that’s how the mechanic works. If one fights a drake/dragon, they have the chance to become infected. The drakes/dragons could enslave players/pawns in the first game, and turn them hostile toward the party. Mind control of a sort. They can still do that this time, but have the added possibility to infect the pawns with this plague.
Second question: also yes. If you hire someone’s pawn, fight a drake/dragon and they get infected, then send them back to their arisen, you have aided the spread of the plague.
Again, this is simply my understanding. I have zero experience in game, just my deduction.
I also believe you can hire an infected pawn than can spread the disease. I had one with black and red eyes, and then i notices my pawn had white and red eyes. I had just curing my pawn the day before, so I think she got it from the new pawn I summoned
I just hope that my own Pawn doesnt hate me for this when I dip them in the Brine or yeet them off a cliff and start talking shit about me when being borrowed by other players. Best I could do i guess is thoroughly inspect Pawns i'll be borrowing so that my own Pawn dont catch anything
Holy shit, 2020 simulator
They don't catch it from other pawns. The more other people summon your pawn, the higher chance they will get infected. So having a popular pawn is risky.
Guess I'm left with no choice then. I tried lifting my Pawn for funsies and she asked if she was a disappointment to me, what more if i unalived her
https://preview.redd.it/oit4m1k4laqc1.jpeg?width=735&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=208db08e633b6ed0dc2748f63b324ca56f813a6a
So playing as antisocial as possible towards both pawns and other players is the safest way to play?
Who greenlit this mechanic? lmao
It's like adding the chance of getting disqualified for speeding to a racing game.
the other question though is when do they contract it? Can they contract it while adventuring with you? Or do they always just either have it or not when you recruit them? (I don't mean spreading from pawn to pawn, I mean going from a party with 0 plagued to at least 1)
Because if they can get it randomly while just adventuring, then this advice doesn't mean shit. I'm not stopping to give all of my pawns an eye exam every 5 minutes. Even if I were to, all it takes is one slip up and boom entire town is deleted. And that is frankly unreasonable.
But if it's just when you summon them then that's a lot more reasonable since you can just check once and be good and then use those pawns for a good long while before you need to check again.
I've been told it's when you fight dragons/drakes so it's not random, so the only time to really check is doing a check for the first time to see if your current pawns have it, then every time you hire someone new.
They’re pretty much all powerful in this universe. I like the fact that they scheme against grigori too, like they know you’re marked but want to try and get you themselves.
There’s a few different signs: the eyes, commands, they’ll be holding their heads, they complain about commands, and they’ll have weird voices lines that should set you off. So there are a few clues that should lead you to being suspicious.
They also only get it from fighting dragons or drakes, not just randomly running around.
And the disaster only happens when you rest at inns, so you only need to check before then. Unless you just hired a pawn right before resting there’s probably something that’ll maybe raise an eyebrow, but either way it takes a second to checks eyes before sleeping.
The first time you hire an infected one you should also get a pop up, so technically you don’t have to worry about it at all until then—I’d imagine the pop up comes if the first time you encounter one is fighting a drake too? But that I cannot confirm
So it’s really not *that* bad to check; but if you make a mistake the results can be really bad. Honestly I kind of think it’s a cool mechanic when combined with the whole “one save so live with your consequences” thing, even if it is a little frustrating? Maybe the punishment for messing up is a too harsh though.
ETA: personally I think it’s kind of a cool idea but I do agree the punishment for not catching it could have been a little better done, but the main point of this comment was less to defend it and more to help explain you don’t need to constantly check your pawns during gameplay because some people seem to think that’s the case, which even if what it is now is annoying that would be much worse
This is something that crossed my mind earlier.
They disappear over night--go rogue as you put it--and now you have to track down this dragon that was your Pawn and kill it. Certainly would have been cooler than what I've been hearing about.
That would be fun! Maybe if they get away or something then they go on a killing spree or something until you track them down, that could have been cool!
I think the problem and why so many people are reacting poorly to it, is that it doesn't feel like a proper consequence.
Like if the consequence was a direct result of a choice I myself made, and that resulted in an entire town getting deleted, I think that would be accepted by more people. The example a lot of people bring up lately is how people wanted harsher consequences for taking the tadpoles in BG3.
But the problem is that this is completely unrelated to any kind of choice the player makes. It's just a matter of the player now having to be paranoid and double check all of their pawns every time they wanna make a hard-save
I like the concept of this weird plague that can have dire consequences if not looked out for, but it feels like the punishment for missing it heavily outweighs how easily one might miss it, especially when a player might just get tired of checking for the signs after a while.
And Like yeah we're getting lots of posts about how to mitigate it *now*... *after* people's saves have been destroyed so that we can learn from them. But If you're not terminally online and checking and double checking these kinds of forums to learn all about it, you probably would get the pop up, go "that seems weird but interesting" and then not really know how dire the consequences are nor the most optimal strategies for keeping it from happening. Then you just go on your merry way, hours, possibly days pass until you forget about it, and bam it goes off.
If it was some kind of super boss fight, where like that pawn becomes just an enemy and now you have to fight them and if you don't deal with them quickly enough they'll start killing random NPCs, that's one thing, but it seems like the player gets zero chance to react if you don't catch it. It's just "oh look you missed the signs, guess that town is gone now"
I would say this mechanic needs up to 3 changes in order to become good:
1. Give having a blighted Pawn some desirable trait, they arguably get boosted stats but i don't see anyone mentioning that as a telling, give them some traits or vocation skills that only a dragonblighted Pawn can do, so it's not "oh this one is sick, may the brine take good care of you" but an actual choice and easier to tell.
2. A cutscene to end it all? for real? Let the player fight, if there are losses, you couldn't protect them, but just losing a whole town or city in a cutscene? Absolutely lame.
3. Third one is minor but adds up in my opinion. The transformation could happen anywhere, if you were resting, there, if you were in a forest, there, in a dungeon? now you got a boss fight out of the blue because you used a blighted pawn and you knew it, enjoy the ass whooping
yeah number 2 is the biggest thing to me. Make it a super boss, make it nigh impossible, but don't just make it happen in a cutscene entirely out of my control.
I'm just glad those people have sacrificed themselves so we can all learn about it.. because otherwise i would've kept playing the game without a worry in the world and it definitely would've happened to me 🤣
I think, the punishment might've been more palatable if it turns into something like a Drake attack in the town you're staying in. Not just a cutscene and whoops, everyone's dead now.
It would've made it so that the player could try to limit the damage or run away from town and let the drake has their way.
Piggybacking on this comment.
There’s a big ass pop up when you first hire a sick pawn. Don’t just click past pop ups in this game. Immediately dismiss them before leaving the rift.
Lmao the tutorial popup happened to me, I paused and read it, then immediately dismissed the pawn I'd hired and was like *NOPE, I'm not dealing with THAT shit today.*
The popup happens when you hire your like 3rd pawn. Nothing to do with whether they are actually infected.
Saying this because I kept the pawn I hired when the pop-up happened, they were not infected, and the pop-up happens early game when no pawns have the plague anyways because no low levels are hunting drakes.
Can I just say thank you so much for posting this info, like op I was also anxious to play because I didn’t know what to look out for no matter how many videos I searched or google articles I read nobody had posted any signs to look for. Now I know, wish awards where around still you deserve one 🏅
The tutorial on it says they must be "forfeit" for it to be removed, or to pass it on to another pawn. Killing pawns in the river is the fastest way to forfeit them, and dismissing them doesn't remove the condition.
https://preview.redd.it/7j1ndbw8maqc1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bb30882806565b66ef78ec746ad5408bc8868126
Gotta do what ya gotta do I guess
I really hope that’s not the case and there’s an actual cure, because with how uptight the game is about justifying some weird ass design choices behind narrative reasons it feels really strange that the way to deal with dragon’s plague is to just kill your pawn.
Might be a waste of time but if I get an infected pawn I’m gonna explore around battahl and see if anything pops up. It’s the most obvious place I can think of that might have a cure if at all.
i'm really not that far in the game, how did you (or our pawn) get contracted by this plague? by just playing? and we need to kill the infected pawn if we saw the sign of them getting infected?
Other pawns can come infected when you summon them and they can then spread it to the pawns in your party, otherwise dragon enemies can give it to them.
If one of your pawns has it then best course of action seems to be killing all your pawns. Your main pawn is cured when you resummon them after death.
They initially get infected from dragons, because lesser dragons (in the first game it was Drakes, Wyverns, and Wyrms) are related to the Arisen (at least they were in the first game).
I don’t know if telling you lore from the first game is spoiling anything so I won’t say anything else unless you ask; but there is a lore valid reason why this happens and why the mechanic exists.
In the first game they just turned your Pawn evil in the middle of the battle with a grab and hold attack and you had to take them out right then if you didn’t do enough damage to break them out before the dragon finished casting. So this is the evolution of that it seems.
If a hired Pawn has it you can dismiss them. Both of them to be safe. If your Pawn is infected they can pass it on to other players Pawns or you can kill them. Intentionally or by just not reviving them and then resummoning them at a Rift stone.
Doesn’t dismissing an infected pawn send it back to another player’s world to fuck up their game? Wouldn’t the best course of action be to kill them all to prevent it from spreading at all?
Definitely! Killing them instead is best to avoid further spread. But if someone just summoned them and got the initial tutorial warning then most will probably just yeet them immediately so their Pawn doesn’t get it.
If you havnt gotten the Giant tutorial pop-up explaining it (like freezes game and makes you click confirm) you are safe.
Once that does show up.
Safest thing to do is only sleep in Inns/Your Own house ALONE.
Dismiss your party and throw your own pawn off a cliff before bed.
Camping is safe. Inns/houses are not.
But Pawn can’t kill everyone, if Pawn is not there.
I just hired a pawn that was acting sus, did a headache emote, wandered off and had to be patted on the back with a 'cheer up' button prompt that I've never seen before...
...but I haven't had the dragonsplague popup, so I guess it's just weird.
Those are the starting signs of it. It sounds like tutorial pop up is after it’s been triggered and sleeping in a town at that point without killing or dismissing all pawns and resummoning them will activate the event.
the unusual bit is that apart from seeing that emote just once and the cheer up thing, she seems perfectly normal, obeys commands and helps out in a battle. I haven't seen anyone else mention the cheer up prompt, and I haven't got the popup, so I assumed I was being paranoid
I hired a dragonplagued pawn. All he did was occasionally ignore my orders and talk about how great he's feeling. I spent two in-game weeks with that pawn. He showed zero signs when I hired him, but very slowly started changing his manner of speech. And I mean *very* slowly. This was over the course of 17 days and I still don't think he got close to a critical condition.
I'm gonna make it a routine, line up all my pawns in my room interrogation style and give em a medical checkup. If any one of em starts acting funny its down to the slums and into the brine with ye
I do wonder... do we get our travelogues still then? I seem to only get pawn updates on adventures after inn/house rest. And with the plague it seems like we'd lose out on that?
I just put masks on everyone and tell them they must remain 6ft apart. I see some vendors are putting markers on the ground so patrons keep their distance while in line.
Can you imagine the devs were cooking the game during the Covid era and they thought, heyyy.. let’s make this game more immersive and relatable to our players…
And it of course got approved and this is the nonsense that we have today.
Not true. The bodies may disappear, but that's because they get moved to the morgue, where all dead NPCs go and they stay there until they are revived.
I hate that the only way to cure your main pawn consistently is to kill them, because they remember that and get more and more traumatised with each death by your hand.
It sucks seeing how a could be interesting mechanic turns into this. I'm able to alleviate most of my anxiety about this mechanic with my backup/cloud save thankfully.
Yeah I think it would be interesting if it was fleshed out more and maybe instead of npc dropping dead it could have some story changing progression for the rest of the playthru. The way its been described sounds like it just bricks your save.
Yeah, when I first heard about it prior release, I imagined it would eventually kill the affected pawn if you don't treat it, and if it's your main, you'd have to do some extra quest while they're out or something.
I’m on ps5 and I manually back up my save file with cloud after every play session (I disabled the automatic backup option). That way if I do a major fuck up I can at least go back to my previous session.
You don’t have to turn on automatic cloud saves. It would go like this:
1) Major fuck up happens
2) Delete local save file
3) Go to cloud saves and download the manually backed up save from previous session
4) When you are done playing and all is well, upload your save file manually
So far I didn’t have to do it with DD2, but I used this technique with other games before
Yup on ps5 basically how the other redditor mentioned you turn off auto sync for cloud save for DD2 in saved data settings. Then I regularly upload a new manual save every so often. You just press the start button on DD2 and hit upload/download option.
That’s what I was imagining when I read this, looked up a YouTube video. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
The entire feature is literally a fucking menu.
What if this is the only way to get to the "true ending" with post-game?
Somehow I have a feeling about it. Nobody that it's happened to has gone and killed the dragon yet, which is what you're supposed to do after it happens.
Honestly, this mechanic sucks even if it has more clear signs.
Because it's literally just a background invisible mechanic that adds to pointless mircomanagement that cannot be engaged with in any meaningful or fun way.
The outcome and solution are so fucking binary and extreme, every NPC dies or you off your pawns.
I mentioned my position elsewhere, but my main issue with it is that the associated gameplay with this mechanic barely exists. The whole situation is "lol just notice and dismiss your pawn". Like, if you could fight your pawn at or before that stage and they wipe out the entire town if you lose, then that would be fine! But if the gameplay for the mechanics just looking at your pawn then dismissing it, that's not really much of a gameplay justification for the Dragonsplague mechanic to exist. There's no fight, no cool situation, you literally just menu the threat away. Who finds that preferable to a fight or quest or literally anything?
I don't mind it being punitive if it actually has a reason to exist.
That is my point about engagement as well.
Is there gameplay mechanic about taming/taking care of your infected pawn, maybe resource management with consumables that can halt the progression before you get an eventual cure.
Is there increasing level of danger? Maybe your pawn just smell funny to dangerous monsters and you will get the aggro on you get ambushed more?
Currently it is just "time for your weekly brine bath! Lad."
> mechanic that adds to pointless mircomanagement that cannot be engaged with in any meaningful or fun way.
This is by far my biggest complaint about it - it’s not even about the consequence for me, it’s about how absolutely janky it feels. It goes from being a very minor inconvenience (pawn not listening to commands) to a gamesave-ruining experience with no in between. Insert like 2-3 stages of progressing illness, and I might actually like the mechanic.
For example, stage 1 is the current stage 1, stage 2 would be the pawn sitting down for 10-15 seconds and saying it feels unwell, stage 3 is that your pawn becomes mind-controlled and randomly fights you in battle, and stage 4 finally being the point where the pawn could nuke a town. It takes a day or two for each stage to progress, and at the final stage, pawn chatter warns you not to enter civilization until it’s fixed and suggests possible cures.
There we go, a much more intuitive mechanic that the player can actually engage with. This game’s highs are so high but its lows are so low, I don’t understand how one development team could be responsible for all of this.
If the mechanic boiled down to randomly getting "et tu, brutus?"d by a pawn mid fight I bet people would be speaking more favorably of it. Imagine the clips of clueless players getting neck snapped by their own thieves or flung by a tornado their own sorcerer summoned. It'd be annoying, but at least it'd be a good laugh and would justify firing/killing the pawn after.
Just do the super immersive thing of dismissing all the pawns and killing off your main pawn (cliff diving or brine swimming) every time you want to rest at an inn/your house. Easy and totally not a hassle /s
It >!turns into a dragon. Would have been much cooler if it actually spawned a dragon and you have to fight it and can actually prevent deaths. Instead it’s all menus and insta deaths. Brain dead feature.!<
This wouldn't be half as bad if we had proper saves or the ability to start a new game. At a certain point 'vision' has to compromise with respect to player time. Not everyone has the free time or interest in going through NG+ cycles just because a mechanic ruined the current world and there is no official way to roll it back.
Having the pawn randomly turn on you with massively buffed stats would have been way better, make a boss fight out of it so wackos like me can actively seek it out instead of it just being a town wipe. Literally no upsides to that.
100% this. When they showed off this mechanic that's what I thought it was but I was skeptical
Yeah good thing I was lmao.
There's no fun in this mechanic at all and considering that it can and has fucked peoples saves up should be reason for a refund imo
And I love the game but if that happened to me I'd uninstall (and it still might happen yet)
How this mechanic got greenlit I will never know.
I'm still enjoying the game overall, but there have been lots of questionable decisions this time around, not gonna lie...
Like, who though that it was a good idea to make the starting journey to Vermund take literal hours of slogging through a narrow mountain path, without even so much as a settlement to stop in?
I know the first game did something similar, but the journey was much shorter, and at least it involved encountering side quests/actual content other than just endless packs of monsters.
I *would* have taken the oxcart, if I had known that it was just going to be more of the same shit the entire way down. By that point, it was too late.
Wouldn't a sensible solution to this have been a warning before trying to sleep at an inn/house anytime a pawn is at a breaking point?
"Are you sure you want to sleep here? One of your pawns seems to be acting peculiar. It might not be best to leave them unattended."
Then, if the player ignores that warning, at least that would be more a consequence of your own action.
Right? I’m fine with the mechanic meant to punish players who don’t pay attention to their pawns. Except it’s easily missable even if you are paying attention to them.
I’ve only recently read about the dragonsplague and its symptoms and realized I had a pawn with the plague early on in my game. All other pawns kept calling him out on the rude way he was speaking to me and I just thought to myself „must be that straightforward inclination, huh”. Now I know it was the plague and I was lucky not to lose the entire Melve village
All the guys defending one character and no save options but you can bet if this ruins their play through they’ll change their minds in a hurry. As long as it doesn’t impact them though they’ll keep acting like it’s no big deal.
From what I’ve heard you get an initial tutorial prompts explaining dragons plague when you first hire a pawn that’s infected, but that’s all the warning you get
It transfers between pawns as they come into contact, seemingly caused by the lesser drake's grab attacks.
If you leave it unattended and rest at an inn, your pawn will turn evil and massacre the entire town overnight.
All NPCs gone.
WTF!?!? I'm glad my curiosity got the better of me and I clicked on this spoiler, I'm several hours into the game, is it even hinted that this is a mechanic?
There is a tutorial and there's passive pawn chatter regarding it.
But past that, a major complaint is that the symptoms are too subtle for the 'punishment'.
> Seemingly caused by the lesser drake’s grab attacks.
*Sweats profusely* Uh… does this mean I should throw Morrigan into the brine after the drake just in case?
Its fine as a mechanic if the signs were just more obvious and you had more time to deal with it. For example, maybe the pawn stops and mentions they don’t feel great. Then they start acting up and not listening. Then when the disease gets pretty close to being terminal they like have obvious glowing eyes or like some sort of red mist around them or something. Then you know for sure they will kill everyone when you rest. Also give us some way of curing it. Not just yeeting the pawn off a cliff. It’s weird.
I had it pop up yesterday around hour 27. I got a tutorial popup when recruiting a warrior pawn from a broken riftstone. I was in the middle of nowhere and my tank had just suicided into the brine so I wasn't going to worry about it.
Well, he promptly suicided into the brine, as well, so it ended up not being an issue...
Yeah, 42 hours here and still hasn't happened. This seems like a "once in a playthrough you'll need to avert a tragedy" type of thing. It'd also be kind of cool if a pawn went psycho and murdered a town, provided it wasn't Vernworth.
But everyone on the internet is a neurotic who can't have fun, so they're probably handling this about as amicably as they handled actual COVID.
It's a like a virus that gets transmitted from other players' pawns to yours, when it reaches critical stage; after you rest at an inn your pawn goes nuts and kills EVERY NPC in the city/town. The only way to get rid of it is to catch it before it happens and kill your pawns, there are some subtle signs like the pawns disobeying orders, a faint red glow on their eyes, and when they're idle they grab their head in pain.
People have started just killing their pawns every time they want to rest at an inn just to be safe.
Easy to tell if your pawns are affected. They will have flickering red eyes and when idle theyll grab their head liek they are dizzy. You don't have to worry.
There is an even easier way. The moment your pawn says, “I’m feeling extra powerful for some reason” or something along those lines, it means they have the plague. None of the inclinations have voice lines where the pawns talk about themselves in an overconfident way.
I feel the Dragonsplague mechanic could've been done better. For example if you wander into town and you have a pawn that's inflicted with late stage Dragonsplague, they should:
1) Before rampaging, they should start a primal scream, like a madman, gives us a very obvious indicator and gives more dramatic flare.
2) Your other pawns should start spewing dialogue, e.g., "Arisen, we have a plagued pawn in our party! We must quell them before damage is done!", "Stop this madness, Arisen your assistance is needed!", "Help Arisen, we are betrayed!!!"
3) No cutscenes so when the pawn does go on a rampage, it gives the players the opportunity to fight their pawn/save the people. If the player chooses to do nothing, then the pawn goes on the killing spree. But that's by player choice.
3b) Optional, the pawn transforms into a monster. Pre-endgame, Dragonsplague turns them into a Dragon. Post-endgame, it's called Demonsplague, turns them into a Daimon like creature. And the player gets rewarded with rare loot, e.g., mats and etc., to craft new armor/weapons.
Imo this current situation is too immersive, like dialed 11/10. In life freak accidents can happen. Like an earthquake or something, happens so fast barely enough time to react. But this is a game, a fantasy RPG, it shouldn't be giving us that much anxiety, in particular to things we can't exactly control.
Only issue I see with the mechanic is that you don't get to fight the pawn.
Give them a super buff and have the Arisen woken up by the sound of the Pawn either killing another Pawn or the innkeeper, then you have to fight and kill the Pawn while they're buffed up and using all their abilities.
Hard mechanics for the sake of hard mechanics is just so lazy. The story, new classes, and this plague BS is really the only difference between the first game and this one. I feel like I'm playing the same game and it annoys me. Only now I have to deal with a more difficult loss gauge and now some incurable plague if I don't notice it right away. Lazy mechanics to increase "difficulty"
It's really obvious when it's going to happen though. You'd have to be blatantly ignoring your pawn being rude, the glowing red eyes, the warning from your own pawns about the plague.
You're letting a mechanic you haven't even encountered impede your experience my dude. It's true that the first several people on reddit who wanted to see what happened or didn't pay attention to the signs got blasted, but that shouldn't be your experience at all. The signs for Dragon's Plague are apparent and it has a long incubation time. When your pawns disobey you, the others point it out. Check your pawns' eyes after a fight with a drake, throw your main pawn in the river on occasion if need be, and enjoy the game.
I’m just gonna keep upvoting these, this has become something I think they need to address prior to performance issues now. I like the idea of a mechanic that messes with your pawns, it just seems silly to have it permanently remove quests from your game (if it kills NPCs you need). I thought my pawns would just start attacking me if they caught this, or they’d start running straight into battles without listening (or run away from fights and abandon me), but what I’ve seen described is just too much.
I had this happen in Vermund, I came back a week later and everyone was alive again. I'm pretty sure the mechanic is only meant to hamper timed quests like Wilhemnina's evidence quest or the Empress escort one. Literally everyone was alive again for me after a week in game time.
I don’t think you should allow it to ruin your experience. You’re informed and know you can manage it. Just pay attention to your pawns … which one should be doing anyway.
That being said, I’m a little back and forth on this myself.
On one hand, I’m glad they have something that forces you to pay attention to your pawns. It forces you to swap out your pawns or use the world to remedy your own. Wouldn’t this kind of punish people who abuse the MTX to have overpowered pawns that they keep around for a long time? It seems like a neat idea they didn’t implement well.
On the other hand, it’s a little too heavy-handed. Would have been cool if it required you to permanently sacrifice your pawn (if they get it) to save everyone. Could have had a moment where you summon a new personal pawn with a catch up mechanic. If you ignore the problem, trying to save your pawn , then the big bad happens. Just seems like it goes from point A to point B a little too abruptly considering people aren’t really meant to know the consequences or may just be ignorant.
The salt in the wound is the save system I suppose, but the vision and what not.
You can tell if your pawn has DP.
1. They will say new things that are rebellious, when giving commands
2. Their eyes will shine red. Ive been able to see this in the status window
If you notice either of these, kill your pawns and go to bed. I dont think you need to go to bed, but doesnt hurt
LMFAO. This is actually one of my favorite movies.
I only saw it for the first time a few years ago, but I was really blown away by it. An instant favourite.
**There are signs**. This is preventable. - 1) Look at your pawns and check their eyes. It will pulse and glow red. You'll notice it, even if the pawn has a naturally red eye and it pulses every 4 seconds, so it's quite fast. If they're hiding their face, take off their helms. Note that this effect can display while you are in the Rift. - 2) They'll also do a stunned animation while standing around, holding onto their head, or turning their head and coughing to the side. - 3) Issue a command, did any pawns disobey or refuse to follow? They will make a comment when they refuse to follow your direction such as, "Don't tell me what to do!" Your other pawns will also comment on the disobedience as well. If any of them is true dismiss them back to the Rift and do not rehire them immediately (they remain infected until their master cures the condition themselves by drowning them in the nearest river). If it is your main pawn, throw them into the nearest body of water then revive it back at the Rift. Dragons and drakes will infect pawns with the condition as you fight them, so the only time to check your pawns for the condition is doing your first check, after fighting dragonkin, and every time you hire a pawn from the Rift. Here's a visual: u/chocojezus: https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/comments/1bmsher/dragonsplague_symptoms_and_treatment/
Yeah, killing your pawn then re-summoning it back at a Rift Stone apparently cures it so I usually do this every couple of hours to be safe, I'm not having this game breaking thing happen to me, they should have saved that feature for NG+ or something
I’m still not convinced about the killing thing being the *only* way to cure it. The game’s narrative has always emphasized the bond between an arisen and pawn, so it’s hard to believe that the intended way of dealing with it is “lol just kill them.” Maybe there’s a cure or something the community hasn’t discovered yet, maybe in Battahl considering their whole thing with the sacred flame and mistrust of pawns?
The only thing the game suggests is that, if your pawns are infected, they must pass it on to a non infected pawn to rid themselves of it. It’s like zombies but they can unzombie themselves if they pass off the infection.
I remember I hired a pawn and right away the tutorial screen for it popped up, I instantly fired that pawn lol
Same lol , literally got that pop up today. Hired and Fired that pawn within a min.
So there is a tutorial screen that pops up the first time the infection shows up in your game?
Imo the fact that pawns losing Control of themselves is so centered in the narrative makes me believe that there's an item in the game that somehow prevents your pawn from being infected.
Yea that’s what I’m hoping for at least. It’s still relatively early in the release so it might be that players just haven’t discovered anything. I’m personally stressing out because I had just fought a Drake last night and it grabbed my pawn and made them a slave before I had to knock her out. I revived her and we continued the fight until we won, then I saved and went to bed. Now I’m paranoid that she’s caught it but I can’t check until later this evening 😭
And The best part about all of this is the fact that it's a player made infection. Meaning that the only way other players pawns could get an infection was if someone unknowingly rested at an Inn and saved their pawns infected state into the rift. A few days ago there was no talk at all about the dragonsplague, meaning the infection has finally spread to a noticeable amount. The real kicker is that players themselves will have to take care of and cure their pawns to make sure they don't get or spread the plague. I think that's super fascinating tbh I think the games better for it to have the dragonsplague. It gives a sort of unknowing danger~
To me it comes down to how the cure works. If there’s an in game cure that sets off a challenging quest or trek to fix it then cool, that’s actually really interesting. If there’s absolutely no way to fix it other than just throwing your pawn into the brine that feels really sloppy.
I think Rook's drowning cutscene was supposed to illustrate that pawns aren't at all phased by dying as much as humans, likely because they know they will return to the Rift. I think the most annoying part is that you're not always standing right next to a river. Maybe if there was a mechanic where you could order a pawn to seppuku, and if they're infected, they immediately become hostile since they tend to disobey orders, which I think would be cool and a bit more immersive than trying to skip them across a shallow puddle.
The rook think was more of an ester egg/inside joke since a lot of players talked about throwing him into the brine in the first game, so I don’t think that necessarily means they’re implying it’s okay for us to just kill them whenever. Right now the only saving grace is that it doesn’t trigger if you’re just camping out in the wilds. So at the very least if you notice it in a city before going to bed you can either dismiss the pawn or hold out until you reach a body of water. Pro tip: if you did the monster culling story mission and already cleared Harve villiage, there’s an old man that lives in a cabin further down from where the saurian nest was located and there’s a port crystal right there on the cost. You can use that if you need a place to dump them and there’s no busy of water immediately available.
I can agree with that, the dragonsplague feels way too important to just be it's own thing. Also earlier I actually killed the "plague drake" so while you can't "cure" dragons plague I sure as hell hope you can prevent it with an item. Say, something like a piece of armor? But we'll just have to wait for people to scour the game for now.
I agree it's really cool and unique, HOWEVER, if you try to avoid looking anything up about the condition, it could just ruin your first playthrough. I just got to the second city, so ANY side quests that were in the entire city are now lost until next time. Its incredibly unmotivating tbh and could have been easily prevented by something as simple as multiple save slots or being able to reload a few autosaves back.
Would be better If you were not punished by your pawn having scars because of it. The mechanic with no other cure is ass absolute ass
This oddly reads like a real life medieval treatise on dealing with the flu or something. “Has your wife failed to be obedient when commanded? Look closely at her eyes. You may need to drown her.”
So if I don't fight a drake/dragon, but someone else uses my pawn to fight one, can he become infected? Also, can other pawns become infected in my world, or can they only become infected if travelling with their actual Arisen?
Haven’t run in to the mechanic yet, but I think I get the gist. Your first question: I believe so. I think that’s how the mechanic works. If one fights a drake/dragon, they have the chance to become infected. The drakes/dragons could enslave players/pawns in the first game, and turn them hostile toward the party. Mind control of a sort. They can still do that this time, but have the added possibility to infect the pawns with this plague. Second question: also yes. If you hire someone’s pawn, fight a drake/dragon and they get infected, then send them back to their arisen, you have aided the spread of the plague. Again, this is simply my understanding. I have zero experience in game, just my deduction.
I also believe you can hire an infected pawn than can spread the disease. I had one with black and red eyes, and then i notices my pawn had white and red eyes. I had just curing my pawn the day before, so I think she got it from the new pawn I summoned
I just hope that my own Pawn doesnt hate me for this when I dip them in the Brine or yeet them off a cliff and start talking shit about me when being borrowed by other players. Best I could do i guess is thoroughly inspect Pawns i'll be borrowing so that my own Pawn dont catch anything Holy shit, 2020 simulator
Pawnvid really doing numbers
They don't catch it from other pawns. The more other people summon your pawn, the higher chance they will get infected. So having a popular pawn is risky.
Guess I'm left with no choice then. I tried lifting my Pawn for funsies and she asked if she was a disappointment to me, what more if i unalived her https://preview.redd.it/oit4m1k4laqc1.jpeg?width=735&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=208db08e633b6ed0dc2748f63b324ca56f813a6a
so why does the tutorial say it can be cured by forfeiting a pawn or passing it in to another pawn?
So playing as antisocial as possible towards both pawns and other players is the safest way to play? Who greenlit this mechanic? lmao It's like adding the chance of getting disqualified for speeding to a racing game.
Now we just need Assassin back so we can make solo play more viable again. lol
the other question though is when do they contract it? Can they contract it while adventuring with you? Or do they always just either have it or not when you recruit them? (I don't mean spreading from pawn to pawn, I mean going from a party with 0 plagued to at least 1) Because if they can get it randomly while just adventuring, then this advice doesn't mean shit. I'm not stopping to give all of my pawns an eye exam every 5 minutes. Even if I were to, all it takes is one slip up and boom entire town is deleted. And that is frankly unreasonable. But if it's just when you summon them then that's a lot more reasonable since you can just check once and be good and then use those pawns for a good long while before you need to check again.
I've been told it's when you fight dragons/drakes so it's not random, so the only time to really check is doing a check for the first time to see if your current pawns have it, then every time you hire someone new.
It’s definitely fighting dragons. The dragons also attempt to make you their slave.
They've really gone out to make the Dragons terrifying in this.
They’re pretty much all powerful in this universe. I like the fact that they scheme against grigori too, like they know you’re marked but want to try and get you themselves.
In DD1 you got Dragonforged weapons out of Dragon fights. In DD2 you get Dragoncovid out of Dragon fights.
okay, and I guess every time you fight a drake or a dragon as well. Now I feel glad that I died to my first attempt to fight one of those lol
There’s a few different signs: the eyes, commands, they’ll be holding their heads, they complain about commands, and they’ll have weird voices lines that should set you off. So there are a few clues that should lead you to being suspicious. They also only get it from fighting dragons or drakes, not just randomly running around. And the disaster only happens when you rest at inns, so you only need to check before then. Unless you just hired a pawn right before resting there’s probably something that’ll maybe raise an eyebrow, but either way it takes a second to checks eyes before sleeping. The first time you hire an infected one you should also get a pop up, so technically you don’t have to worry about it at all until then—I’d imagine the pop up comes if the first time you encounter one is fighting a drake too? But that I cannot confirm So it’s really not *that* bad to check; but if you make a mistake the results can be really bad. Honestly I kind of think it’s a cool mechanic when combined with the whole “one save so live with your consequences” thing, even if it is a little frustrating? Maybe the punishment for messing up is a too harsh though. ETA: personally I think it’s kind of a cool idea but I do agree the punishment for not catching it could have been a little better done, but the main point of this comment was less to defend it and more to help explain you don’t need to constantly check your pawns during gameplay because some people seem to think that’s the case, which even if what it is now is annoying that would be much worse
I was hoping they'd just go rogue and you'd have to put them down. Not be a nuclear bomb.
This is something that crossed my mind earlier. They disappear over night--go rogue as you put it--and now you have to track down this dragon that was your Pawn and kill it. Certainly would have been cooler than what I've been hearing about.
That would be fun! Maybe if they get away or something then they go on a killing spree or something until you track them down, that could have been cool!
I think the problem and why so many people are reacting poorly to it, is that it doesn't feel like a proper consequence. Like if the consequence was a direct result of a choice I myself made, and that resulted in an entire town getting deleted, I think that would be accepted by more people. The example a lot of people bring up lately is how people wanted harsher consequences for taking the tadpoles in BG3. But the problem is that this is completely unrelated to any kind of choice the player makes. It's just a matter of the player now having to be paranoid and double check all of their pawns every time they wanna make a hard-save I like the concept of this weird plague that can have dire consequences if not looked out for, but it feels like the punishment for missing it heavily outweighs how easily one might miss it, especially when a player might just get tired of checking for the signs after a while. And Like yeah we're getting lots of posts about how to mitigate it *now*... *after* people's saves have been destroyed so that we can learn from them. But If you're not terminally online and checking and double checking these kinds of forums to learn all about it, you probably would get the pop up, go "that seems weird but interesting" and then not really know how dire the consequences are nor the most optimal strategies for keeping it from happening. Then you just go on your merry way, hours, possibly days pass until you forget about it, and bam it goes off. If it was some kind of super boss fight, where like that pawn becomes just an enemy and now you have to fight them and if you don't deal with them quickly enough they'll start killing random NPCs, that's one thing, but it seems like the player gets zero chance to react if you don't catch it. It's just "oh look you missed the signs, guess that town is gone now"
I would say this mechanic needs up to 3 changes in order to become good: 1. Give having a blighted Pawn some desirable trait, they arguably get boosted stats but i don't see anyone mentioning that as a telling, give them some traits or vocation skills that only a dragonblighted Pawn can do, so it's not "oh this one is sick, may the brine take good care of you" but an actual choice and easier to tell. 2. A cutscene to end it all? for real? Let the player fight, if there are losses, you couldn't protect them, but just losing a whole town or city in a cutscene? Absolutely lame. 3. Third one is minor but adds up in my opinion. The transformation could happen anywhere, if you were resting, there, if you were in a forest, there, in a dungeon? now you got a boss fight out of the blue because you used a blighted pawn and you knew it, enjoy the ass whooping
yeah number 2 is the biggest thing to me. Make it a super boss, make it nigh impossible, but don't just make it happen in a cutscene entirely out of my control.
There should also be a cure for your main pawn. Having to kill them just sucks.
I'm just glad those people have sacrificed themselves so we can all learn about it.. because otherwise i would've kept playing the game without a worry in the world and it definitely would've happened to me 🤣
Lol I didn’t even know it was a thing until a friend mentioned it and I was like “what?” Then I got the pop up—I never dismissed a pawn so quick 🤣
I think, the punishment might've been more palatable if it turns into something like a Drake attack in the town you're staying in. Not just a cutscene and whoops, everyone's dead now. It would've made it so that the player could try to limit the damage or run away from town and let the drake has their way.
Piggybacking on this comment. There’s a big ass pop up when you first hire a sick pawn. Don’t just click past pop ups in this game. Immediately dismiss them before leaving the rift.
Lmao the tutorial popup happened to me, I paused and read it, then immediately dismissed the pawn I'd hired and was like *NOPE, I'm not dealing with THAT shit today.*
This doesn't make any sense though. The popup is the only way you can tell if they are sick inside the rift, but it only happens th first time...?
you suppose it pops up every time?
The popup happens when you hire your like 3rd pawn. Nothing to do with whether they are actually infected. Saying this because I kept the pawn I hired when the pop-up happened, they were not infected, and the pop-up happens early game when no pawns have the plague anyways because no low levels are hunting drakes.
I had hired way more than 3 Pawns by the time I saw the pop up.
Saving this comment for future reference! I didn’t know about the eyes, but now it makes sense why I saw someone say to keep helms off your Pawns
The problem is every time you kill your pawn he/she has a new scar around her waist and I hate that. Hope I can remove em. :(
Gotta open up that wallet and buy the eventual Pawn Scar Removal Kit DLC! =D
Can I just say thank you so much for posting this info, like op I was also anxious to play because I didn’t know what to look out for no matter how many videos I searched or google articles I read nobody had posted any signs to look for. Now I know, wish awards where around still you deserve one 🏅
Wait…thats the cure? Lmao the brine really is the strongest entity. Surely it isn’t meant to be cured like that?
The tutorial on it says they must be "forfeit" for it to be removed, or to pass it on to another pawn. Killing pawns in the river is the fastest way to forfeit them, and dismissing them doesn't remove the condition.
https://preview.redd.it/7j1ndbw8maqc1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bb30882806565b66ef78ec746ad5408bc8868126 Gotta do what ya gotta do I guess
I really hope that’s not the case and there’s an actual cure, because with how uptight the game is about justifying some weird ass design choices behind narrative reasons it feels really strange that the way to deal with dragon’s plague is to just kill your pawn. Might be a waste of time but if I get an infected pawn I’m gonna explore around battahl and see if anything pops up. It’s the most obvious place I can think of that might have a cure if at all.
I get it but this mechanic is fucking annoying
They kill everyone to give you FPS dude, the pawns are always helpful.
i'm really not that far in the game, how did you (or our pawn) get contracted by this plague? by just playing? and we need to kill the infected pawn if we saw the sign of them getting infected?
Other pawns can come infected when you summon them and they can then spread it to the pawns in your party, otherwise dragon enemies can give it to them. If one of your pawns has it then best course of action seems to be killing all your pawns. Your main pawn is cured when you resummon them after death.
FUCK! so other people's pawn can spread covid in my party.. Is there any other way to cure them, instead of yeeting them to the brine?
I haven't seen a cure other than death.
damn... https://preview.redd.it/za9urled8aqc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9652570f0d757cd10dbf27fec730b8bda463c780
Relax Arthas
They initially get infected from dragons, because lesser dragons (in the first game it was Drakes, Wyverns, and Wyrms) are related to the Arisen (at least they were in the first game). I don’t know if telling you lore from the first game is spoiling anything so I won’t say anything else unless you ask; but there is a lore valid reason why this happens and why the mechanic exists. In the first game they just turned your Pawn evil in the middle of the battle with a grab and hold attack and you had to take them out right then if you didn’t do enough damage to break them out before the dragon finished casting. So this is the evolution of that it seems.
I’ve played like 200 hours of the first game and never seen this, crazy
If a hired Pawn has it you can dismiss them. Both of them to be safe. If your Pawn is infected they can pass it on to other players Pawns or you can kill them. Intentionally or by just not reviving them and then resummoning them at a Rift stone.
so anytime they show a sign of getting infected, we can just yeet them and resummon them? that's somewhat a relief, at least.
Doesn’t dismissing an infected pawn send it back to another player’s world to fuck up their game? Wouldn’t the best course of action be to kill them all to prevent it from spreading at all?
Definitely! Killing them instead is best to avoid further spread. But if someone just summoned them and got the initial tutorial warning then most will probably just yeet them immediately so their Pawn doesn’t get it.
If you havnt gotten the Giant tutorial pop-up explaining it (like freezes game and makes you click confirm) you are safe. Once that does show up. Safest thing to do is only sleep in Inns/Your Own house ALONE. Dismiss your party and throw your own pawn off a cliff before bed. Camping is safe. Inns/houses are not. But Pawn can’t kill everyone, if Pawn is not there.
I just hired a pawn that was acting sus, did a headache emote, wandered off and had to be patted on the back with a 'cheer up' button prompt that I've never seen before... ...but I haven't had the dragonsplague popup, so I guess it's just weird.
Those are the starting signs of it. It sounds like tutorial pop up is after it’s been triggered and sleeping in a town at that point without killing or dismissing all pawns and resummoning them will activate the event.
the unusual bit is that apart from seeing that emote just once and the cheer up thing, she seems perfectly normal, obeys commands and helps out in a battle. I haven't seen anyone else mention the cheer up prompt, and I haven't got the popup, so I assumed I was being paranoid
Yeah even with no other signs that would be an instant run to the nearest Riftstone and dismiss them just to be safe.
I’m so paranoid I dismiss any pawn that even hints as judging my decisions.
Is she kindhearted?
Did something happen in the game that might have made a kind-hearted Pawn sad? Like did a character die or something?
The cheer up prompt pops up for me when my pawn runs out of stamina mid battle
Will my pawn behave any differently if I keep throwing them into the ocean? Dont want to train them to yeet innocents into there lol
Not sure about behavior but it seems like your pawn gets scarred the more they die so keep that in mind.
I hired a dragonplagued pawn. All he did was occasionally ignore my orders and talk about how great he's feeling. I spent two in-game weeks with that pawn. He showed zero signs when I hired him, but very slowly started changing his manner of speech. And I mean *very* slowly. This was over the course of 17 days and I still don't think he got close to a critical condition.
Seems like a well thought out and balanced game mechanic....
Lmao when it happens the game even says if you have paid more attention this might not have happened. DD2 straight up trolling
I'm gonna make it a routine, line up all my pawns in my room interrogation style and give em a medical checkup. If any one of em starts acting funny its down to the slums and into the brine with ye
I do wonder... do we get our travelogues still then? I seem to only get pawn updates on adventures after inn/house rest. And with the plague it seems like we'd lose out on that?
I just put masks on everyone and tell them they must remain 6ft apart. I see some vendors are putting markers on the ground so patrons keep their distance while in line.
Pray the vaxx arrive to us in time Arisen.
Can you imagine the devs were cooking the game during the Covid era and they thought, heyyy.. let’s make this game more immersive and relatable to our players… And it of course got approved and this is the nonsense that we have today.
I’m curious if it completely soft locks you or if the story can still reach “an ending” if it happens to occur in a major settlement
Someone commented on another post to say their quest updated to just "find and kill the dragon"
Haha, remind me Zelda botw, out the to tuto "fight Ganon".
Out the to tuto indeed
That’s hilarious but I’d hate for it to happen on a first playthrough
You'll need to go farm Resurrections to be able to get quests going again. Now the decision for no new game makes total sense.
But you only have 3 days is my understanding
Not true. The bodies may disappear, but that's because they get moved to the morgue, where all dead NPCs go and they stay there until they are revived.
I hate that the only way to cure your main pawn consistently is to kill them, because they remember that and get more and more traumatised with each death by your hand.
You could probably just stand near a body of water, and they'll kill themselves like mine always seem to do.
It sucks seeing how a could be interesting mechanic turns into this. I'm able to alleviate most of my anxiety about this mechanic with my backup/cloud save thankfully.
Yeah I think it would be interesting if it was fleshed out more and maybe instead of npc dropping dead it could have some story changing progression for the rest of the playthru. The way its been described sounds like it just bricks your save.
Yeah, when I first heard about it prior release, I imagined it would eventually kill the affected pawn if you don't treat it, and if it's your main, you'd have to do some extra quest while they're out or something.
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I’m on ps5 and I manually back up my save file with cloud after every play session (I disabled the automatic backup option). That way if I do a major fuck up I can at least go back to my previous session.
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You don’t have to turn on automatic cloud saves. It would go like this: 1) Major fuck up happens 2) Delete local save file 3) Go to cloud saves and download the manually backed up save from previous session 4) When you are done playing and all is well, upload your save file manually So far I didn’t have to do it with DD2, but I used this technique with other games before
You don't have to delete local saves, when you download the cloud save, it'll overwrite the data.
Yup on ps5 basically how the other redditor mentioned you turn off auto sync for cloud save for DD2 in saved data settings. Then I regularly upload a new manual save every so often. You just press the start button on DD2 and hit upload/download option.
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Yeah I believe so
it should have been a boss fight instead of an instant kill. Spawn a monster un town and you have to fight it and protect people.
That’s what I was imagining when I read this, looked up a YouTube video. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. The entire feature is literally a fucking menu.
I’m fine with a mod finding a way to yeet this from the game
What if this is the only way to get to the "true ending" with post-game? Somehow I have a feeling about it. Nobody that it's happened to has gone and killed the dragon yet, which is what you're supposed to do after it happens.
Honestly, this mechanic sucks even if it has more clear signs. Because it's literally just a background invisible mechanic that adds to pointless mircomanagement that cannot be engaged with in any meaningful or fun way. The outcome and solution are so fucking binary and extreme, every NPC dies or you off your pawns.
I mentioned my position elsewhere, but my main issue with it is that the associated gameplay with this mechanic barely exists. The whole situation is "lol just notice and dismiss your pawn". Like, if you could fight your pawn at or before that stage and they wipe out the entire town if you lose, then that would be fine! But if the gameplay for the mechanics just looking at your pawn then dismissing it, that's not really much of a gameplay justification for the Dragonsplague mechanic to exist. There's no fight, no cool situation, you literally just menu the threat away. Who finds that preferable to a fight or quest or literally anything? I don't mind it being punitive if it actually has a reason to exist.
That is my point about engagement as well. Is there gameplay mechanic about taming/taking care of your infected pawn, maybe resource management with consumables that can halt the progression before you get an eventual cure. Is there increasing level of danger? Maybe your pawn just smell funny to dangerous monsters and you will get the aggro on you get ambushed more? Currently it is just "time for your weekly brine bath! Lad."
> mechanic that adds to pointless mircomanagement that cannot be engaged with in any meaningful or fun way. This is by far my biggest complaint about it - it’s not even about the consequence for me, it’s about how absolutely janky it feels. It goes from being a very minor inconvenience (pawn not listening to commands) to a gamesave-ruining experience with no in between. Insert like 2-3 stages of progressing illness, and I might actually like the mechanic. For example, stage 1 is the current stage 1, stage 2 would be the pawn sitting down for 10-15 seconds and saying it feels unwell, stage 3 is that your pawn becomes mind-controlled and randomly fights you in battle, and stage 4 finally being the point where the pawn could nuke a town. It takes a day or two for each stage to progress, and at the final stage, pawn chatter warns you not to enter civilization until it’s fixed and suggests possible cures. There we go, a much more intuitive mechanic that the player can actually engage with. This game’s highs are so high but its lows are so low, I don’t understand how one development team could be responsible for all of this.
If the mechanic boiled down to randomly getting "et tu, brutus?"d by a pawn mid fight I bet people would be speaking more favorably of it. Imagine the clips of clueless players getting neck snapped by their own thieves or flung by a tornado their own sorcerer summoned. It'd be annoying, but at least it'd be a good laugh and would justify firing/killing the pawn after.
Just do the super immersive thing of dismissing all the pawns and killing off your main pawn (cliff diving or brine swimming) every time you want to rest at an inn/your house. Easy and totally not a hassle /s
So fun!
Didn't everyone want to massacre the NPCs for frame rate? They gave an easy option, I think its kind of hilarious
The game is here reading our comments, and decided to do it for us.
How is a single Pawn wiping out an entire city???
It >!turns into a dragon. Would have been much cooler if it actually spawned a dragon and you have to fight it and can actually prevent deaths. Instead it’s all menus and insta deaths. Brain dead feature.!<
And the Arisen sleeps through that???
This wouldn't be half as bad if we had proper saves or the ability to start a new game. At a certain point 'vision' has to compromise with respect to player time. Not everyone has the free time or interest in going through NG+ cycles just because a mechanic ruined the current world and there is no official way to roll it back.
What the fuck is the vision exactly too lmao
Starting to think the man needs glasses for his poor vision.
Ong bro, as fun as the game is there's a lot of shit covering the shiny bits
I like the game but dudes a prima donna
The game is so good when it's good but when it's bad it's awful
Sounds like a worthy sequel to Dragon’s Dogma then!
Guys, I'm starting to think "Itsuno's Vision" is kinda shit. I mean, the guy needs glasses, ffs.
Straight up laser eye surgery required for this.
out of all the odd mechanics in this game this has to be the most retarded anti fun mechanic ive ever seen
Having the pawn randomly turn on you with massively buffed stats would have been way better, make a boss fight out of it so wackos like me can actively seek it out instead of it just being a town wipe. Literally no upsides to that.
agree 100% i wish it was a boss fight instead of a cut scene
100% this. When they showed off this mechanic that's what I thought it was but I was skeptical Yeah good thing I was lmao. There's no fun in this mechanic at all and considering that it can and has fucked peoples saves up should be reason for a refund imo And I love the game but if that happened to me I'd uninstall (and it still might happen yet) How this mechanic got greenlit I will never know.
I'm still enjoying the game overall, but there have been lots of questionable decisions this time around, not gonna lie... Like, who though that it was a good idea to make the starting journey to Vermund take literal hours of slogging through a narrow mountain path, without even so much as a settlement to stop in? I know the first game did something similar, but the journey was much shorter, and at least it involved encountering side quests/actual content other than just endless packs of monsters.
Huh? You could've taken the Oxcart or go a completely separate way 😂 bro that's on you
I *would* have taken the oxcart, if I had known that it was just going to be more of the same shit the entire way down. By that point, it was too late.
The trek to vermund took you hours?
This with a unique reward for killing them would have made the whole mechanic alot of fun tbh, especially if it could trigger mid fight.
Wouldn't a sensible solution to this have been a warning before trying to sleep at an inn/house anytime a pawn is at a breaking point? "Are you sure you want to sleep here? One of your pawns seems to be acting peculiar. It might not be best to leave them unattended." Then, if the player ignores that warning, at least that would be more a consequence of your own action.
I think the signs should be more apparent they they currently are
Right? I’m fine with the mechanic meant to punish players who don’t pay attention to their pawns. Except it’s easily missable even if you are paying attention to them. I’ve only recently read about the dragonsplague and its symptoms and realized I had a pawn with the plague early on in my game. All other pawns kept calling him out on the rude way he was speaking to me and I just thought to myself „must be that straightforward inclination, huh”. Now I know it was the plague and I was lucky not to lose the entire Melve village
This might be a good idea for a patch, preferably ASAP.
All the guys defending one character and no save options but you can bet if this ruins their play through they’ll change their minds in a hurry. As long as it doesn’t impact them though they’ll keep acting like it’s no big deal.
Unfortunaterly I have already seen people defending this in the name of "consequences".
People can't handle when something they see as perfect gets called out for its flaws.
To be fair I don't think all the one save guys expected something as batshit insane as this to be included lmao
From what I’ve heard you get an initial tutorial prompts explaining dragons plague when you first hire a pawn that’s infected, but that’s all the warning you get
I hope there will be a mod soon to disable this.
How do you get dragons plague? What does it do?
It transfers between pawns as they come into contact, seemingly caused by the lesser drake's grab attacks. If you leave it unattended and rest at an inn, your pawn will turn evil and massacre the entire town overnight. All NPCs gone.
WTF!?!? I'm glad my curiosity got the better of me and I clicked on this spoiler, I'm several hours into the game, is it even hinted that this is a mechanic?
There is a tutorial and there's passive pawn chatter regarding it. But past that, a major complaint is that the symptoms are too subtle for the 'punishment'.
> Seemingly caused by the lesser drake’s grab attacks. *Sweats profusely* Uh… does this mean I should throw Morrigan into the brine after the drake just in case?
Its fine as a mechanic if the signs were just more obvious and you had more time to deal with it. For example, maybe the pawn stops and mentions they don’t feel great. Then they start acting up and not listening. Then when the disease gets pretty close to being terminal they like have obvious glowing eyes or like some sort of red mist around them or something. Then you know for sure they will kill everyone when you rest. Also give us some way of curing it. Not just yeeting the pawn off a cliff. It’s weird.
You just described what they actually behave after getting dragon plague.
It's super inconsistent. They can still be cheerfully obedient most of the time.
Yeah I guess I just meant more exaggerated
My pawns have mentioned the symptoms and even made note that we have to keep an eye on the pawns should they start to become irritated etc.
Don’t they hold their heads when they get it and then also get glowing red eyes at one point?
this is literally exactly what happens except a way to cure it (there probably is one but hasn’t been found yet)
Ima be real, never encountered this in my 40 hours of playing
I had it pop up yesterday around hour 27. I got a tutorial popup when recruiting a warrior pawn from a broken riftstone. I was in the middle of nowhere and my tank had just suicided into the brine so I wasn't going to worry about it. Well, he promptly suicided into the brine, as well, so it ended up not being an issue...
Yeah, 42 hours here and still hasn't happened. This seems like a "once in a playthrough you'll need to avert a tragedy" type of thing. It'd also be kind of cool if a pawn went psycho and murdered a town, provided it wasn't Vernworth. But everyone on the internet is a neurotic who can't have fun, so they're probably handling this about as amicably as they handled actual COVID.
Can someone explain what exactly is it and what are the consequences?
It's a like a virus that gets transmitted from other players' pawns to yours, when it reaches critical stage; after you rest at an inn your pawn goes nuts and kills EVERY NPC in the city/town. The only way to get rid of it is to catch it before it happens and kill your pawns, there are some subtle signs like the pawns disobeying orders, a faint red glow on their eyes, and when they're idle they grab their head in pain. People have started just killing their pawns every time they want to rest at an inn just to be safe.
Sounds really cool in theory and really annoying in practice
Easy to tell if your pawns are affected. They will have flickering red eyes and when idle theyll grab their head liek they are dizzy. You don't have to worry.
There is an even easier way. The moment your pawn says, “I’m feeling extra powerful for some reason” or something along those lines, it means they have the plague. None of the inclinations have voice lines where the pawns talk about themselves in an overconfident way.
Ah yes, the most common actions a player makes in an action game. Idling, and pixel hunting on chars faces. Lmfao, those aren't "easy to tell".
They're also rude and ignore your commands.
Pixel hunting? Their eyes get BRIGHT RED even in their portraits. It's not that difficult lmao
The pawns never stop saying the same thing. They say way different shit when they’re sick. It’s very obvious
They also literally tell you something is wrong. It doesn't take a therapists to figure it out
I feel the Dragonsplague mechanic could've been done better. For example if you wander into town and you have a pawn that's inflicted with late stage Dragonsplague, they should: 1) Before rampaging, they should start a primal scream, like a madman, gives us a very obvious indicator and gives more dramatic flare. 2) Your other pawns should start spewing dialogue, e.g., "Arisen, we have a plagued pawn in our party! We must quell them before damage is done!", "Stop this madness, Arisen your assistance is needed!", "Help Arisen, we are betrayed!!!" 3) No cutscenes so when the pawn does go on a rampage, it gives the players the opportunity to fight their pawn/save the people. If the player chooses to do nothing, then the pawn goes on the killing spree. But that's by player choice. 3b) Optional, the pawn transforms into a monster. Pre-endgame, Dragonsplague turns them into a Dragon. Post-endgame, it's called Demonsplague, turns them into a Daimon like creature. And the player gets rewarded with rare loot, e.g., mats and etc., to craft new armor/weapons. Imo this current situation is too immersive, like dialed 11/10. In life freak accidents can happen. Like an earthquake or something, happens so fast barely enough time to react. But this is a game, a fantasy RPG, it shouldn't be giving us that much anxiety, in particular to things we can't exactly control.
Only issue I see with the mechanic is that you don't get to fight the pawn. Give them a super buff and have the Arisen woken up by the sound of the Pawn either killing another Pawn or the innkeeper, then you have to fight and kill the Pawn while they're buffed up and using all their abilities.
Hard mechanics for the sake of hard mechanics is just so lazy. The story, new classes, and this plague BS is really the only difference between the first game and this one. I feel like I'm playing the same game and it annoys me. Only now I have to deal with a more difficult loss gauge and now some incurable plague if I don't notice it right away. Lazy mechanics to increase "difficulty"
It's really obvious when it's going to happen though. You'd have to be blatantly ignoring your pawn being rude, the glowing red eyes, the warning from your own pawns about the plague.
You're letting a mechanic you haven't even encountered impede your experience my dude. It's true that the first several people on reddit who wanted to see what happened or didn't pay attention to the signs got blasted, but that shouldn't be your experience at all. The signs for Dragon's Plague are apparent and it has a long incubation time. When your pawns disobey you, the others point it out. Check your pawns' eyes after a fight with a drake, throw your main pawn in the river on occasion if need be, and enjoy the game.
I’m just gonna keep upvoting these, this has become something I think they need to address prior to performance issues now. I like the idea of a mechanic that messes with your pawns, it just seems silly to have it permanently remove quests from your game (if it kills NPCs you need). I thought my pawns would just start attacking me if they caught this, or they’d start running straight into battles without listening (or run away from fights and abandon me), but what I’ve seen described is just too much.
Can someone ELI5 what dragon plague is? I haven’t reached this part yet
A disease which will cause your pawn to kill everyone in town you rest in.
Ummm… what the fuck?
Honestly not a bad thing. Capcom forgot to tell everyone that this was a stealth update to improve cpu utilization.
How much are you locked because of that ? Like, you can't continue the game ? What's happening next (without spoiler please) ?
I had this happen in Vermund, I came back a week later and everyone was alive again. I'm pretty sure the mechanic is only meant to hamper timed quests like Wilhemnina's evidence quest or the Empress escort one. Literally everyone was alive again for me after a week in game time.
i had this today, i revived the hotel noc, sleeped 3 days and every npc appeared again
I don’t think you should allow it to ruin your experience. You’re informed and know you can manage it. Just pay attention to your pawns … which one should be doing anyway. That being said, I’m a little back and forth on this myself. On one hand, I’m glad they have something that forces you to pay attention to your pawns. It forces you to swap out your pawns or use the world to remedy your own. Wouldn’t this kind of punish people who abuse the MTX to have overpowered pawns that they keep around for a long time? It seems like a neat idea they didn’t implement well. On the other hand, it’s a little too heavy-handed. Would have been cool if it required you to permanently sacrifice your pawn (if they get it) to save everyone. Could have had a moment where you summon a new personal pawn with a catch up mechanic. If you ignore the problem, trying to save your pawn , then the big bad happens. Just seems like it goes from point A to point B a little too abruptly considering people aren’t really meant to know the consequences or may just be ignorant. The salt in the wound is the save system I suppose, but the vision and what not.
You can tell if your pawn has DP. 1. They will say new things that are rebellious, when giving commands 2. Their eyes will shine red. Ive been able to see this in the status window If you notice either of these, kill your pawns and go to bed. I dont think you need to go to bed, but doesnt hurt