If you’ve never played it before, you still may have already heard that Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen isn’t an easy game. Around every corner lurks some foul creature or wicked human just waiting to bring you down. Your only hope for survival is to level up, grow stronger, and put your trust in the Pawn Legion.
Growing stronger can be a bit of a challenge, though. Leveling up requires experience, and when its so easy to perish at the hands of even the weakest of foes in Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, it can prove to be more difficult than you anticipated. You don’t keep experience when you die like in some games, in fact you’ll go back to your last save point and fight all those difficult monsters once again.
Since it can be pretty challenging to get your level up, and thus increase your power, we’ve put together some handy tips to help you on your path to being the greatest Arisen Gransys has ever seen.
Kill Everything That Isn’t an Innocent Human
Seriously, if it moves and you can’t go to jail for it, kill it. Goblins, cyclopes, griffins, harpies, bandits, seagulls, even bunnies. Kill them all. This is particularly useful in the very beginning of the game where you won’t come across too many foes outside of goblins and monsters far too challenging for you.
You can manage to hit level 5 in a relatively short amount of time killing nothing but bunny rabbits while trying to get a feel for the controls. You will also be able to gather resources that you can both use and sell, so there are nothing but benefits from farming literally everything with a heartbeat.
Just remember, stay away from innocent people. Jail can be quite the damper on a great adventure and you’ll be stuck with having to get out. Be a hero and kill some random creatures instead.
Don’t Hire Anyone
In Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen you will create your main character and one main Pawn. You will have the option to hire up to two more Pawns in order to bring your party up to four members. Here’s the thing though, the more members in your party, the less experience you get.
If you’re really serious about being able to level up quicker, and are confident in your combat abilities, ditch the extra help and embark on a farming adventure with just your main Pawn. This will increase your experience by a significant amount, leveling you up a bit quicker.
Keep in mind that you will only have two people, but the game won’t lower the difficulty of the enemies you’ll face. So save often, and make sure to be ready to run when the situation calls for it.
Take Quests from the Boards in Cassardis and Gran Soren
Like in many open-world RPGs, there are quest boards located in the major cities of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, and these will help you in your endeavor to level up. Most are relatively simple to complete. You will have to kill a certain number of a specific enemy type, or hunt down one particularly scary one. They never take too long and you will earn experience from two streams.
Not only will you get the experience from actually killing the targets as you normally would have, but you will also get a large amount once the bounty is complete. It’s a good way to double dip on experience for things you’re already doing.
Farm Large Monsters
Large monsters such as cyclopes, chimeras, and dragons spawn in the same areas. If you stumble across one, remember the area and then head back to an inn to rest. Sleep for 4 days (the time it takes for the large monsters to respawn), then return. You can tackle the beast again and earn yourself some more experience.
It’s best to use this method if you were able to defeat the beast with relative ease; if it was really challenging, you may want to strengthen up a bit so you can do kill more in a shorter period of time.
Play on Hard Mode
Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen has hard mode available from the moment you start the game. While this drastically increases the challenges you’ll face, it also doubles the experience for everything you do. Of course, for many this will be a daunting option. We weren’t joking before when we said the game isn’t easy, and putting it on hard will on exacerbate the situation.
One thing you can do, if you’re willing to sacrifice some of that experience, is hire really high level Pawns. While a higher level Pawn will lower the experience you’ll net, it will still be a lot higher than what you would’ve gotten on normal or easy. You can switch the difficulty once you feel you have leveled up enough, or just stay in the same mode.
All of these methods will be a bit challenging at first, but that’s part of the fun. In time you will see your level rising to amazing heights as you make your mark on the world.
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