Caught between two cities under siege by blight dragons in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, your choice to save Minrathous or Treviso is more than a simple rescue mission-it’s a pivotal decision that will shape your alliances, affect your companions, and alter the fate of entire factions. Will you side with Neve and the Shadow Dragons or back Lucanis and the Antivan Crows? Each path carries heavy consequences, forcing you to weigh loyalty against survival in a battle where no victory comes without loss.
Our Dragon Age: The Veilguard guide will help you decide whether to help Minrathous or Treviso, along with some helpful advice.
First, finish side quests before choosing Minrathous or Treviso
Before deciding whether to help Minrathous or Treviso in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, it is highly recommended to complete all available side quests first. This is because choosing to save one city will cause side quests in the other location to fail automatically, locking you out of those missions and their rewards. Completing side quests beforehand ensures you maximize loot, faction strength, and companion bonds, which can influence your gameplay experience and story outcomes. Additionally, finishing these quests before the pivotal choice allows you to better weigh the consequences and benefits of supporting either Minrathous or Treviso without losing valuable content.
Not really a spoiler, but a dragon attack is kind of a big deal for a city, so things are going to get messed up. Among those things is any available side quests.
If you have open side quests in whichever city you don’t choose to save, they’ll all automatically fail. Based on our testing, if you have companion quests for Neve or Lucanis, the one in the city you don’t save will also automatically fail if you don’t complete it.
Load up a save from before “A Warden’s Best Friend,” and go wrap up whatever you need to. The only exception, according to our testing, are the side quests involved with defeating a champion of the gods; those are higher-level quests, and remain available even after you complete “On Deadly Wings.”
Should you help Minrathous or Treviso?
When faced with the choice to help Minrathous or Treviso in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the decision largely hinges on which companion and faction you prefer to support, as both cities are under simultaneous attack by blighted dragons. Helping Minrathous pleases Neve and benefits the Shadow Dragons but angers Lucanis and weakens the Antivan Crows, while defending Treviso has the opposite effect-supporting Lucanis and the Crows but alienating Neve and the Shadow Dragons. Both choices lead to significant consequences, including failed side quests, changes in city conditions, and companion relationship impacts, with no definitive “right” answer. Many players consider saving Minrathous the marginally better option due to the lesser strength loss for the Antivan Crows and the potential for romancing Neve, but your choice should align with your preferred story and companion dynamics.
Look, you’re dooming one city to pretty extensive damage, so this is really a call about which faction you want to help the most, the Shadow Dragons or the Antivan Crows (and, by extension, Neve or Lucanis respectively). Your choice determines how well-positioned those two factions are to help you in the endgame.
There’s a lot to consider here – any outstanding side quests, your relationship with the faction, your relationship with the companion, and the weight on your conscience. Most of the dialogue, the big bad you run into (aside from the dragon), and even how the fight plays out are the same, though.
This ultimately boils down to a choice between Neve and Lucanis. Whoever you don’t pick will leave the Lighthouse and your party for a little while (until after you finish both “The Dragon Slayer” and “Where the Dead Must Go”).
The change to the world is a little more obvious. While neither town will be outright destroyed, there will still be lasting effects.
- If you help Minrathous, the Shadow Dragons gain 150 faction strength while the Antivan Crows lose 250 faction strength.
- If you help Treviso, the Antivan Crows gain 150 faction strength while the Shadow Dragons lose 250 faction strength.
Additionally, your contacts in either the Antivan Crows or the Shadow Dragons will take a hit and you’ll permanently lose access to their merchant. You’ll need to re-explore the city you don’t save and unlock fast travel beacons again. Your enemies – the Antaam and the Venatori – also make moves and gain power in whatever town you don’t help (which leads to new side quests).
There is, however, a more lasting consequence to consider.
Your choice Hardens an ally
Choosing to help either Minrathous or Treviso in Dragon Age: The Veilguard results in a companion becoming “Hardened,” reflecting a strain in your relationship due to the difficult decision. If you save Minrathous, Lucanis becomes hardened, losing some support abilities but gaining stronger attacks, and the Antivan Crows faction suffers a loss in strength. Conversely, saving Treviso causes Neve to harden, affecting the Shadow Dragons faction negatively. This hardening affects not only your companions’ availability and romance options but also the dynamics of their respective factions, making your choice impactful on both personal and factional levels.
Whoever you don’t help is understandably upset (and appears to be extra upset if you’ve allied yourself with their respective faction during character creation). You’ll lose them from your roster for a little while. More importantly, though, one skill will stop working and some of their other skills will become Hardened.
For whoever you don’t side with, either Neve or Lucanis will no longer be able to use their healing skill on your party (Replenish and Soothing Potion, respectively). If that’s a skill you use a lot, it’s worth considering.
At the same time, Hardening increases the strength of a handful of their skills. For Neve, it’s her cold damage against barriers and their cooldowns. For Lucanis, it’s his necrotic attacks against barriers.
Which city’s fate feels more impactful for my story in Dragon Age Veilguard
The fate of Treviso arguably feels more impactful for your story in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. While the choice to save Minrathous or Treviso is presented as a balanced dilemma, lore-wise it is uneven-Minrathous, the capital of the Tevinter Empire, is well-defended with armies, mages, and the Archon’s Palace, making its survival more plausible. Treviso, a merchant city already under occupation and lacking defenses, suffers far worse consequences if abandoned, including long-term devastation from the Blight that poisons its canals and land for decades.
Choosing Treviso results in Minrathous falling to the Venatori but leaves the city largely intact, whereas choosing Minrathous leads to Treviso’s near ruin with severe environmental and social fallout. This imbalance makes Treviso’s fate carry heavier narrative weight and long-term consequences, affecting faction approval, companion availability, and quest access. Ultimately, the choice impacts your story more through faction dynamics and companion relationships than through a fully grounded world consequence, but Treviso’s survival or destruction resonates more deeply within the game’s unfolding events.
How does choosing Treviso deepen my connection to the city’s lore and history
Choosing to save Treviso in Dragon Age: The Veilguard deepens your connection to the city’s rich lore and history by immersing you in a setting that reflects its real-world inspiration-a city known for its elegant canals, medieval and Renaissance architecture, and a layered past shaped by Roman origins, Venetian rule, and resilience through wars and restorations. In-game, this choice ties you to Treviso’s struggle to preserve its identity and heritage against overwhelming odds, much like the historical city’s survival through centuries of conflict and occupation.
By defending Treviso, you engage directly with its narrative of a once-prosperous trading hub and border city that has faced numerous sieges and challenges, mirroring its historical role as a fortified and culturally significant location. This enriches your experience by connecting your gameplay to a city whose story is not just about survival but also about the preservation of culture, art, and community-elements reflected in the game’s detailed environment and questlines involving local factions and companions loyal to Treviso.
Thus, choosing Treviso offers a more intimate and historically resonant storyline, allowing you to explore themes of resilience, heritage, and the cost of protection, making your role in the city’s fate feel deeply meaningful within the broader Dragon Age narrative.
