Step into the sprawling world of Dragon Age: The Veilguard with confidence-whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a newcomer to Thedas, these 14 essential beginner’s tips will help you master character creation, combat tactics, companion bonds, and exploration secrets before you even draw your first sword. Prepare to face the Dread Wolf and ancient elven gods with strategy and style!
Think carefully when creating a new character
When creating a new character in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, think carefully about your choices because some are permanent and significantly impact your gameplay experience. While you can adjust your character’s appearance later, your race, faction, and class selections cannot be changed once set. These choices influence your character’s backstory, dialogue options, and combat style, so pick a faction and class that align with your preferred playstyle and roleplaying interests. For example, factions grant unique buffs and affect reputation gains, while classes determine your combat approach, whether as a Warrior, Rogue, or Mage. Taking time to understand these options ensures a more satisfying and immersive journey through the game.
When creating a character in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, you’ll make a number of decisions you can’t change later.
You’ll choose a lineage (human, elf, Qunari, or dwarf). You’ll choose a class (mage, rogue, or warrior). You’ll align yourself with one of six factions (the Grey Wardens, Mourn Watch, Shadow Dragons, Antivan Crows, Lords of Fortune, or Veil Jumpers). Lastly, you’ll have the chance to tinker with the “world state,” which allows you to match whatever narrative outcomes you ended up with in your Dragon Age: Inquisition playthrough (but, frankly, those choices are mere set dressing).
You’ll be able to change your appearance later, save for the base lineage you choose – all elves have pointy ears, for instance. But for the rest of these choices, you’re locked in once you finalize your character. Before committing to a character build, consult our guides on what class to choose and the best faction to pick.
Environments are more linear than you’d think (at least at first)
In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the environments might initially seem vast and open, but they are actually more linear than you might expect. The game uses a bright blue waypoint system that guides you clearly along the quickest routes, minimizing confusion and helping you stay on track without feeling lost. While you can explore and find hidden passages, treasures, and side quests, the overall progression through areas tends to be quite structured, resembling a carefully designed path rather than a fully open world. This linearity helps maintain a smooth narrative flow and ensures you don’t miss important content early on, making the game feel accessible and focused at first glance.
You’ll be led by the nose (if the nose is a sparkling blue waypoint) through a lot of Dragon Age: The Veilguard and initially won’t have to make many choices about where to go or what to do next. Veilguard has a great pathfinding system that will put waypoints on your HUD, showing you not just where to go but also the most efficient way to get there, ensuring you don’t miss anything.
Don’t ignore your map
In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, your map is an essential tool that you should never overlook. It not only guides you with bright waypoints to your next objective but also highlights valuable nearby chests, Fen’Harel statues that boost your skills, and yellow exclamation points indicating new side quests. Regularly checking your map, especially when at your base, the Lighthouse, helps you spot time-sensitive companion conversations and hidden passages that often conceal treasures. Exploring the edges of each map area ensures you uncover all secrets and collectibles, making your journey through Thedas more rewarding and complete.
Your maps will show you the location of nearby chests and stat-boosting Fen’Harel statues. Yellow exclamation marks indicate new side quests. And when you’re at the Lighthouse, your base of operations, you’ll occasionally see little clock symbols associated with your companions – these indicate character-driven conversations that can expire if you don’t seek them out before leaving the Lighthouse.
Watch for side doors and dead ends, too. There’s almost always some treasure to be found just by going the wrong way.
You’ll come back to that spot later, we promise
In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, you’ll often encounter areas, hidden passages, and treasures that you can’t fully explore or unlock on your first visit. Don’t worry if you find yourself leaving certain spots behind-many locations are designed for you to return later with new abilities, companions, or after progressing in the story. This encourages thorough exploration and rewards patience, as coming back to these spots can reveal valuable loot, side quests, or important story elements you might have missed initially.
The linear nature of the early game doesn’t mean you’ll visit a location once and then be done with them. New sections of the world will unlock as you progress the story, and the game gives you plenty of reasons to return to areas you’ve already explored – chests to unlock, side quests to activate, merchants to buy from. It’s noted in your journal that several quests and side quests can and should be prioritized or left for later – “This area will unlock later on during the team’s travels,” the quests read.
You’ll sometimes come across chests that you can see but not reach. If you can’t solve (or figure out how to solve) a puzzle associated with a chest, save it for later. You might be missing a traversal ability, or you might need to complete a specific side quest first.
Dialogue icons summarize your response
In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, dialogue icons play a crucial role by visually summarizing your response options, allowing you to quickly understand the tone and personality your character, Rook, will convey. These icons represent emotions such as honesty, playfulness, toughness, cynicism, caution, sentimentality, or curiosity, helping you anticipate how your choices might influence the conversation and story progression. This system enhances immersion by reflecting Rook’s personality consistently and sometimes triggering callbacks in dialogue based on previous interactions, making each choice impactful beyond just the words spoken.
While there’s a little ambiguity in how your character will deliver a line of dialogue, the symbol in the middle of the dialogue wheel hints at the emotion that dialogue conveys. Selecting the three exclamation marks causes your character to say something panicked; the crying eye prompts an empathetic response; the knight with crossed arms means you’ll respond confidently (and sometimes rudely); the jester mask means you’ll say something witty or snarky; and the thumbs-up plays on the typical straight-laced action hero response.
There’s no morality system underpinning any dialogue, as you may expect if you’ve played one of BioWare’s previous games. Unless there’s a red heart sign, the universal RPG symbol for “flirt” (yes, there’s romance in Veilguard), these choices are purely a role-playing exercise.
Give all of your companions some airtime
Give all of your companions some airtime by actively involving each of them in your journey and combat strategies. In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, every companion has unique skills and abilities that can be combined for powerful effects, such as Primer and Detonator mechanics that trigger devastating combo attacks. To maximize their potential, equip their abilities thoughtfully, balance roles between support and damage, and ensure you bring a diverse team to tackle various challenges. Beyond combat, spending time with companions through dialogue, gift-giving, and completing their personal quests strengthens your bonds, unlocking skill points and deeper storylines. This engagement not only enhances their effectiveness in battle but also enriches your overall experience with the game’s narrative and exploration elements.
You’ll recruit seven companions to your party, ultimately assembling the titular Veilguard. You can chat and, yes, flirt with all seven. Each party member has a dedicated companion quest chain, and you can bring two party members at a time with you for (most) regular missions and side quests. As you complete missions with a party member, you’ll increase your bond with them, allowing you to level-up their skills.
Instead of focusing on two or three favorite companions, regularly shift between all seven. Without spoiling anything, the higher your bonds are across your entire party, the better prepared you’ll be for the final mission. And who knows? Along the way, you might end up warming to those you initially bristled at (not naming any names, Bellara).
For a detailed list of all party members and when you get them, see our guide on Veilguard’s companions.
You can liberally save-scum
Dragon Age: The Veilguard features a built-in Temporary Decision Save system that automatically creates a save file before major story decisions. This allows players to reload and reconsider their choices without manually saving beforehand, effectively encouraging “save-scumming” without the usual stigma. You can freely experiment with different outcomes by reloading these temporary saves, making it easy to explore various narrative paths and consequences. However, these temporary saves do not last indefinitely, so it’s best to use them soon after they’re created.
A BioWare game isn’t a BioWare game if it doesn’t present you with lots of choices – and lots of opportunities to screw up. You can juggle up to 100 manual saves in Veilguard, and that’s in addition to a very generous autosave system. The handy “temporary decision save” additionally triggers an autosave whenever you make a pivotal decision. If you’re unhappy with any choice you make, you’ll have ample options to revert back to an earlier save state.
There’s no inventory limit
In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, players benefit from having no inventory limit, allowing them to pick up and carry as many items as they find without worrying about space constraints. This design choice encourages thorough exploration and looting, as you can freely collect valuables, crafting materials, and gear upgrades without the need to constantly manage or discard items. Equipped items and crafting materials do not take up inventory space, and there is also a party chest for storing items you want to keep for later. This system removes the common RPG frustration of inventory management, letting players focus more on their adventure and strategy.
Hail the RPG gods. If you see it, pick it up!
Don’t sell your valuables to just anyone
When selling valuables in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, don’t just offload them to the first merchant you find. Each faction has its own merchant, and selling valuables to a specific faction’s vendor boosts your reputation and faction strength with them. This reputation increase can unlock better gear and upgrades in that faction’s shop, which is crucial for improving your combat capabilities. Therefore, if you want to strengthen ties with a particular faction, hold onto your valuables until you can sell them all at once to that faction’s merchant. This strategic selling not only maximizes your gold but also enhances your standing and access to valuable resources in the game.
You can’t sell your equipment or crafting materials, but pretty much anything else you pick up is marked as a “valuable” that can be sold off.
Selling all of your valuables to the first merchant you see might get you a lot of gold, but selling your valuables to a vendor increases your reputation with that vendor’s faction. You can see your standing with a faction from the world map in a sidebar on the left. If you’re looking to build relations with a specific group, you might want to hold onto your valuables until you come across that faction’s vendor.
Buy mementos
Mementos in Dragon Age: The Veilguard are essential collectible items used to upgrade the Caretaker’s Workshop, which in turn enhances the power and rarity of your weapons, armor, and accessories. You can find Mementos scattered throughout the world, often glowing with a blue-white light, or purchase them from vendors using gold or Etheric Remnants. Delivering Mementos to the Caretaker at the Lighthouse allows you to increase your Caretaker Power, unlocking higher workshop levels and automatically upgrading all newly acquired gear to match your current workshop rank. To fully maximize your equipment upgrades to level +10, you will need to collect around 140 or more Mementos, totaling 12,000 Caretaker Power. Regularly buying Mementos from faction vendors-especially after upgrading their ranks-can be a valuable strategy to boost your gear’s strength efficiently.
Once you meet the Lighthouse’s Caretaker, you’ll unlock Veilguard’s upgrade system. How far you can upgrade (and eventually enchant) your team’s gear depends on the Caretaker’s level which is increased by mementos. These are the items with the blue diamond-and-hand icon.
There’s a tactical menu in combat
The tactical menu in Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s combat, accessed via the Ability Wheel, allows players to direct their AI companions during battles, providing strategic control over their actions and target priorities. This feature enhances the action-oriented combat by enabling players to coordinate ability combos, such as primers and detonators, for increased damage and tactical advantage. The menu also offers insights into enemy vulnerabilities and resistances, helping players make informed decisions in the heat of combat.
The Ability Wheel (RB/R1 or tab on a keyboard) pulls up a wheel that lets you direct your allies in their attacks and lets you choose from your and their skills (along with the order they happen in). Time is paused while you have the wheel open. As you get more comfortable and confident in combat, you can also use LT/L1 or left CTRL to pull up a mini version of the wheel that does not pause time.
Apply detonate = boom
In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, mastering the “Apply” and “Detonate” mechanic is crucial for effective combat. Some skills apply a status effect (the “primer”) to enemies, while others detonate these effects for powerful combo attacks that can immobilize foes and cause area-of-effect explosions. Coordinating these abilities between your character and companions can significantly turn the tide of battle, making it essential to build your party’s skills around these synergies. Always look for opportunities to apply a primer and follow up with a detonation to maximize damage and control on the battlefield.
Your companions are capable fighters in their own right, but they all have a couple of abilities that work even better when paired with someone else’s. Some skills either apply or detonate an effect – Overwhelm, Staggered, or Weakened – and in order to put those effects into play, you need to first apply them, then detonate them. Just make sure you select them from the action wheel in the correct order.
Fights in Dragon Age: The Veilguard are kind of easy until they’re not anymore. Like, at all. Figure out the best combos of primer and detonation for both your skills and your companions to give yourself a huge edge in fights. For a detailed look at all skills that have this effect, see our guide to all apply and detonate combos.
Respec often
In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, respeccing your character and companions is a flexible and free feature that allows you to refund and redistribute skill points at any time. This system encourages experimentation with different builds, tactics, and specializations without penalty, enabling you to adapt your playstyle as you progress or try out new combat strategies. However, while you can respec skills freely, your class choice is permanent, so choose your class carefully at the start. Taking advantage of frequent respeccing helps you optimize your team’s synergy and effectiveness in battle throughout your journey.
While you can’t change your class, you can change how your skill points are distributed. Skill points unlock a lot of incremental changes to your stats and damage, but they also unlock new abilities and specializations within your class. And you can respec those skills for free as often as you like.
In the Skills menu, hovering over a node that you’ve spent a skill point on will give you the option to refund that point, letting you rearrange your skill points one at a time. Or you can refund all of your skill points with the triangle/Y button or F on a keyboard.
To get more skill points to play around with, you can track down Fen’Harel Altars.
Stuck on something? You can seriously customize the difficulty
Dragon Age: The Veilguard lets you seriously customize the difficulty to suit your preferred playstyle and challenge level. Beyond the standard easy, medium, and hard modes, you can tweak nearly every aspect of combat and navigation, including enemy health, damage, resistances, and even how long waypoints stay visible. This flexibility allows you to create a tailored experience, whether you want a more relaxed journey or a tough, strategic battle. Adjust these settings anytime through the Gameplay and Interface menus, ensuring you’re never stuck or overwhelmed as you explore Thedas.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard features an impressively robust suite of difficulty settings. Yes, there are your standard easy-medium-hard options. (“Adventurer” is the default.) But beyond that, you can tweak nearly any component of combat and navigation.
You can play with enemy health and damage levels, plus their resistances and vulnerabilities. If you prefer more natural wayfinding, you can tweak how long waypoints stay visible on screen, and can even change the visibility of objects, like chests, in your field of view. Play around in the Gameplay and Interface menus to fine-tune to your liking.
What are the most overlooked character creation tips for beginners in Veilguard
The most overlooked character creation tips for beginners in Dragon Age: The Veilguard include:
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Don’t get too caught up in perfecting appearance early on: You can re-enter the character creator after the opening sequence to change your Rook’s look, so focus first on choices that truly impact gameplay like race, faction, and class, which cannot be changed later.
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Choose your faction carefully: This choice affects your backstory, dialogue options, faction reputation gains, and even combat bonuses. It’s not just cosmetic-each faction grants unique buffs that can influence your playstyle, such as extra potion capacity or damage bonuses against certain enemies.
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Understand how class and faction interplay with abilities: Your class determines your combat style and skill trees, while faction choice can unlock specific class specializations. Pay attention to ability tags (e.g., Smash, Projectile) since passives often enhance specific types of abilities, influencing your build effectiveness.
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Roleplay value matters: Picking a race, faction, and class that fit your preferred story and character concept can enhance immersion and affect narrative outcomes, so consider your character’s motivations beyond just stats.
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Use subtle appearance sliders: Small adjustments like jaw bone angles can significantly alter your character’s face, helping you create a look that fits your vision without spending hours on customization.
These tips help ensure your character creation choices align with both gameplay mechanics and story preferences, avoiding common pitfalls beginners make when focusing too much on aesthetics or overlooking faction and class impacts.
How can adjusting jaw bone angles improve my character’s femininity in Veilguard
Adjusting the jaw bone angles in Dragon Age: The Veilguard can significantly enhance your character’s femininity by softening and reshaping the face to appear less boxy and more heart-shaped. Specifically, moving the jawbone position downward and tweaking its width and depth can reduce a harsh, angular jawline, creating a more delicate and traditionally feminine facial structure. This subtle adjustment helps transform the face from a strong, square look to one with softer contours, which is often perceived as more feminine.
