14 beginner’s tips before you start Dragon’s Dogma 2

polygon.com:

Dragon’s Dogma 2 resists you at every turn. Seemingly every mechanic in this sprawling RPG — from combat to exploration to the pawns who resolutely follow you around — is complex in a way that eludes quick explanation. Even the save system doesn’t make sense.

The upshot is that patience rewards you with knowledge here. We’ve collectively sunk dozens of hours into Dragon’s Dogma 2, and thus have plenty of wisdom to impart. What follows are 14 tips for beginners, consisting of everything we wished we knew before starting.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 only has one save file, and there’s no (official) way to start a new save. It autosaves often and you can save from the menu whenever you want. That’s all normal enough. Where it gets weird is when you die — like when you fall off a slightly too-high roof.

When your character dies, you’ve got two options: “load from last save” or “load from last inn rest.” Loading from the last save just backs you up a few minutes at most. Loading from the last inn rest, though, reverts you all the way back to the last time you paid to stay in an inn.

And then immediately autosaves over your file.

Treat “load from last inn rest”as a nuclear option when something goes horribly wrong or when you just need to back up a lot. Once you know how it works, though, you can treat inn saves as restore points for important decisions.

Since Dragon’s Dogma 2 only lets you maintain one save file, you’re locked into the character you create (or the one you import from the Dragon’s Dogma 2 Character Creator app). While you can change vocations or your appearance down the line — both for yourself and for you main pawn — doing either comes at a cost. And you cannot change between human and beastren after you make your selection.

At the start of Dragon’s Dogma 2, you’re prompted to select from one of four vocations: Fighter, Archer, Mage, and Thief. Your vocation is your character class, and determines a lot about what you can do — what weapons you can wield, what armor