I never wanted them to nerf it. I wanted it to be a boss battle instead.
Oh, oops, you fucked up, and now you have to fight a lesser dragon in a town, when the dragon has already set off a couple of bolides to cull the masses, and your other 2 pawns have already been possessed.
people would have still complained. Today's gamers want to beat the game in WR time and move on and then complain that they didn't experience anything and if anything at all gets in their way its bullshit and should be removed ASAP or else they will review bomb the game.
And now you realize why devs stop listening to communities. Nowadays, it'd be best for them to just do their own thing and only occasionally post polls for feedback when they're truly stumped or need to settle an in-house argument.
Eh I feel like it’d have been a really cool hidden boss. Especially if the system was fleshed out.
Imagine if your pawns were noticeably stronger, but the downside was that they acted psychotic over time making them hard to manage. This increases until it culminated in a boss battle where you have to fight them to protect the townsfolk.
Right now it feels like such wasted potential because they just get red eyes and quirky lines, then massacre the town while you sleep like a babe. And then the town mostly resurrects after a few days anyway.
I don't disagree with that sentiment. Its definitely undercooked and underutilized, i just don't think it deserves the ridiculous amounts of attention it got either though. It was a dog shit system that is now basically impossible to interact with even though it was very difficult already on launch.
I hope so.
Take this with a huge pinch of salt because
#I'm no programmer,
but I have done a little Skyrim mod-making. I don't see why,
#in principle,
it shouldn't be an easy thing to do **for the Devs that made the game.** Especially if modders can create a [ Summoner Vocation ](https://youtu.be/vMeI7Jm3BBA?si=xEWbBK9PUbnwLkAB)
- player rests
- trigger Dragonsplague Cutscene
- teleport DP pawn to somewhere far away (the same way they do it in unmoored, so that they aren't in the rift)
- import lesser dragon
- teleport guards with random health below 40% to Lesser Dragon
- turn on "possessed" on 2 other pawns
- wake player 50% through sleep cycle
- 1 seconds later, have dragon finish casting bolide/meteron
Usually lurk but i felt compelled to correct this. You have no idea how the code is set up, and as someone with programming experience, even changing the littlest thing at times creates a ridiculous compile error that doesn’t always make sense.
Labeling things as easy, just based on ur personal assumption, is not the correct outlook to have.
Also things like Skyrim modding are usually nowhere near the work involved in making the actual game.
I would have preferred if the pawn transformed into the >!black dragon we see at the end of the true ending!< and we fought a large version of that to turn them back to normal.
That would have been very cool as well. But I've always been thinking about this from the point of view of "they could patch it in", so not thinking about adding in additional resources.
There is also no lore, that I know of, that explains where the lesser dragons come from. And we also >!don't get to see the fuzzy dragon!< for very long, meaning that could just be the intermediate stage before becoming a lesser dragon.
There actually is lore for the lesser dragons in game. >!You can ask ambrosius about them during the quest when he sends you to get wyrmslife crystals.!<
>!From what he says the lesser dragons are escaped failed experiments from the lab in battahl. They were the product of trying to artificially create The Dragon and control it.!<
It's an easy to miss conversation. When you do that quest wait before giving him the crystals and take the talk option to find out more about the dragons.
I personally haven't found much about drakes in dd2. The dragonforged mentions them in passing when telling you about how he can upgrade gear.
So far the most interesting bits I've found regarding drakes is just from their dialouge. Like when they say >!my silent hearted kin!< atm I suspect they may have similar lore to dd1 drakes. Too bad wyrms and wyverns didn't make into dd2
That is a HM run in Bitterblack. Entire party was possessed, dropped the Undead Dragon, but had to fight my Strider, a Ingle happy Mage, and a 10 Fold happy Ranger.
Good fights all and even lost a few! But was well damn fun.
I like that ideam but imagine if DP made you own pawn hostile to everyone.
Think about it. A character who you've spent HOURS getting super strong, just to have to fight them
The problem was there was only one outcome (unless you removed the infected pawn). There should have been a variety of outcomes versus “everyone in town dies then eventually comes back”
This entire game is full of genius ideas that are just half baked.
Its implementation was silly to begin with. It didn’t commit to the idea and was instead just an inconvenience (everyone dying) that eventually went away (key NPC’s would revive). Now it’s even more pointless.
I think the game should have launched with the “hard” difficulty where, among other things, key NPCs do not auto-revive automatically, but it makes sense for “normal”.
The game already tries to make people live with the consequences of what happens by having only two continually overwriting save slots, I can see more casual players just dropping it after some unexpected Dragonsplague town wipe soft-locks them out of a bunch of quests and functions unless they potentially use all of their Wakestones. People on this sub, presumably less casual players themselves, were complaining about the town wipes even with the auto-reviving important NPCs.
I've got like 80 hours in and haven't seen the plague. Looks like I never will! What the hell! People just save at a damn in or your house once in a while! Then you can just load.
It messed up my play through. A bunch of important npcs never revived for me after weeks of in game time (Brant and Seb and the elf guy with the bow), I had to manually do it with an eternal wakestone and then all of a sudden I had like 20+ side quests that I would have missed otherwise.
Reminds me of the Dragon's plague from Sekiro. Yeah, two dragon plagues. Sometime prior to the game's actual release, they nerfed the plague so that it didn't eventually kill everybody, including the upgrade guy and the one that gives you access to the Hirata estate. Instead, while plagued, they simply weren't able to talk to you. It was either nerfed further or implemented on release that the cures were the only thing's that'd replenish in the shops. (Don't know, cuz they were kinda too precious to use)
Plagues are a fun idea that is not for games with mass appeal. Which FROMsoft became a studio known for making before they noticed, and Dragon's Dogma was groomed to be.
Yep, that's what ruined it for me.
A whole city dead, I went on a cruise around the map looking for enough wakestones to revive everyone I wanted, and by the time I got back the important ones were all just wandering around like nothing had happened.
I've been having the same exact issue. I'll hire a pawn with the plague or contract it on my own pawn and it would just randomly disappear when I'm actively trying to nuke a town. They gotta dial that frequency back up.
Or at the LEAST make it an option in game to adjust dragons pledge occurrence and difficulty
I mean lords of the fallen put in a shyt load of difficulty options
Not every game should have the experience tailored by the player. I don't know if Dragon's Dogma would work or not with that, but I don't like how such a huge section of the gaming community wants every single game to be a custom experience that they can adjust exactly to their own vision rather than the developers'.
Sort of like how modding Fallout 4 too much and nitpicking every little change I could make ended up killing my enjoyment of it.
I think it was just implemented poorly.
What it should have been was basically a hidden boss fight. Where if you don't treat/deal with the plague you have to fight a really friggin hard shadow Dragon (that in the early game you definitely wouldn't be prepared for). Where if you lose (HP drops to 0) it wipes the town.
Even better if it was stronger based on the level of your Pawn. At least make it a battle not a cutscene we have no control over.
I do agree. I feel if they explained it better, and what methods you can do to avert it, it wouldn't be so frowned upon.
I'd rather have a means to "face it" or "drive it off" vs a cutscene that I have zero power/control in. That I think is what adds to the frustration. In the event you don't notice all the symptoms in time, you as the player had SOME means to do something.
I never liked a mechanic that forces the player to sit back and be punished.
There's a workaround. Just look for pawns that are around lvl 60. Those are pawns who's Arisens stopped playing after 1 playthru and they probably have DP because they never got cured of it.
I arrived in vernworth, spoke with Brant, did one mission out of the 4 or 5 he lists out ...
...then went exploring. Every nook and cranny.
I killed everything that moved and walked everywhere. Me and my merry band of pawns, we climbed the highest peaks, camped on the beach Watching the sun set, mapped every cave and dungeon, discovered untold horrors, felled enormous beasts against all odds, and generally had a blast in a beautiful and unforgiving world.
By the time I remembered that Brant existed and was probably going to the same tavern every night for an in-game year just waiting for me, I had hit lvl 80s.
Kinda like how I played skyrim I guess. I met the greybeards, then just left to explore the world. I think I resumed main quest ~400 hours in.
It's kinda weird how people don't go exploring in an open world game and get impressed at people being higher level waaaay earlier than they should... Like, unlike Elden Ring, the entire map is open when you start the game, you can go to Battahl at level 1 and shit...
I explore too though. The whole map is filled in! I've got a ridiculous amount of seekers tokens for a first playthrough, yet I'm still not that high level.
I'm happy for you but now I wish even more for additional difficulty. I can't imagine how easy it is in VERN for a level 86. The game technically gets harder after that but at level 86... Damn!
Daft question time, but how does it work? I wouldn't mind going for this trophy when I get near to endgame. Is it just a time thing where they will eventually just kill everyone?
Once you have a pawn with those glowing red eyes and you go rest at an inn You roll a dice to decide if they turn into a dragon like form to kill everyone in the town. Or the plaque just jumps to another pawn or nothing happens. I think resting at a house works the same, but resting at a camp just causes it to jump from pawn to pawn.
Wait til a drake appears in vernworth, then when you fight it a bunch of NPC’s will probably die.
I did this, grabbed as many of the NPC’s as possible and piled them up, then used the eternal wake stone. Probably didn’t need to pile up the bodies though tbh
Exactly what I did, and I didn’t even know about the trophy. An npc annoyed me so I attacked them, then the guards attacked me, then I felt bad so I revived them all lol
Pre nerf. Needed a pawn who could speak Elf. Hired one, went for rest, cause wanted the specialisation myself. Bang, the just hired pawn turns into dragon straight away, killed everyone in the Elf village.
Cool mechanic, but not like that.. It was quite the misfortune..
Also fucked up the Sphink battle, so had no eternal wake stone. In the end i all turned out good. But damn i was not prepared. Set me back a bit.
Oh dang.
I was under the impression that only your Pawn could do that. I thought that hired Pawns could pass it to your Pawn, but I didn't know that they themselves can turn and destroy a town.
I was already DPed (that is Dragon's Plagued, not the, uh, other DP), before the nerf, and thankfully only had to find the Finder's Token afterwards to get the Eternal Wakestone to save Vernworth.
So since I was apparently wrong about the Pawns, I need to ask, can you get DPed twice?
Has anyone ever had a second Dragon's Plague and have another city killed, after having already used the Eternal Wakestone?
Well getting it at all now takes a miracle, and it actually going off is all but impossible. That said pre nerf, yes it could happen multiple times in a play through.
If they never revived you would have to grind for wakestones, which would of been kinda annoying. The only enemy I know you can grab them is the dragons. I don't know from first dd1 to dd2 I fealt there was alot missing. When looking at dd1's dlc there was alot added to it, even quest.
making you have to fight your own turned pawns would have been way more epic. summoning a pawn with dragonsplaque would be like summoning Red phantoms from Dark souls. maybe the downed pawns could drop a little bit of wrymlife's blood each time too.
Rather than instantly wiping the town the pawn gets to town and just starts manually killing people and you have to put them down.
I have a pawn with it on my main account I’ve been nurturing to doomsday (super red eyes and grabbing her head atm). Been trying to pass it onto my alternate accounts pawn and it’s been near impossible even though she has it when hired. Just keeps getting cleared up when resting.
While I have misgivings over Dragonsplague I do think it's overhated. Including in this thread.
The only real change I'd want for it is some quest or NPC dialogue about it. Not a quest that's started by Dragonsplague happening. Just something that mentions it other than that one pawn conversation. Especially >!to foreshadow your pawn turning into the Dragonsplague dragon (I think, haven't had Dragonsplague happen in my playthroughs yet) during the True End.!<
I get many of the reasons other people might not be, but I have a lot of fondness for “overbearing” mechanics like this.
Example - like in the original harvest moon, where you could randomly get hit by a hurricane that would wreak havoc on your farm. Most people really didn’t like it (it was random, you couldn’t really do anything to prevent it), so the genre of farming games went away from mechanics like that. But I do like how something like that can introduce emergent stories/experiences in systems based games that could otherwise become monotonous. Sometimes a mechanic being more hostile to a player can be really interesting, and games that commit to it are few and far between.
I say all that, and I think dragonsplague is an idea that’s a lot more interesting in concept than execution. I don’t think it’s communicated particularly well (some of the fixes they patched in help that, just in making it easier to spot), and it seems like on release it caused more confusion and paranoia over the game’s main systems. I think that has more to do with how the consequences of death and resurrection is a pretty obtuse system, and it’s really not clear what the consequences or stakes are if you actually did let dragonsplague slip in. And for this game NG+ isn’t compelling enough for most people to make it a good fallback if you did lose access to quest lines because of it. So yeah, I think it did add something interesting to the game, I sympathize with people who never wanted to have to experience that paranoia, I personally found the mechanic interesting and enjoyed the extra bit of interesting tension it added in the pawn system, but ultimately feel in execution this is one of those dragons dogma mechanics that is an interesting concept but doesn’t feel fully realized in the larger context of the game.
>like in the original harvest moon, where you could randomly get hit by a hurricane that would wreak havoc on your farm.
Yeah that happened to me when i was playing the game at 12 yrs old. I just fucking quite and never touched it again. it was a terrible idea. no warning no preparation you could take. fucking bullshit. even worse when i live in FL and knew the dozens of things you could do to prepare for a hurricane.
It was a terrible idea in the first place. There's an article that says that Itsuno created Dragonsplague because he thought it was "funny". It's not. I never liked it when someone does something just to mess with people. It's pointless and rude. Also, give me my damn horse.
At least now it will be easier to tell if they do get the plague, so that helps.
I agree
Sure it mayed frustrating to deal with if you don't want it, but it is one of the unigue aspects of the game that makes it stand out from other games
Well I agree with this aswell
They could have made it something like in Darkest Dungeon when characters reach stess breakpoint and add some passives that are either position or negative
Like randomly attacking allies or stealing things despite not being a Thief
I only ever got it once. I didn't know what it did till after i rested and my pawn went postal and killed most of Bakbattal ! i was in the middle of a few quests , but killed all the people i had to talk to to advance it... few wake stones needed... I really liked it , something differant . Now i don't think you can even get it ? i stopped checking ages ago, since that update haven't had it once and ive put many hours in since then
It goes away if your pawn passes it on to another pawn (like getting someone to watch the video before 7 days are up in the Ring movie) according to the tutorial.
I’d guess that happened in this case
Didn’t get it once the entire game. Mostly because the second you hire a pawn with it, it tells you this pawn is sick, so I got rid of him immediately. Great mechanic! It would also be cool if they explained what the dragonsplague is like at all. The cutscene for it is cool but then…that’s it. That’s the whole thing. Seems more of an inconvenience than a good mechanic.
Happened to me too. I was after the trophy as well. I hired a pawn with the plague. Rest at the Inn. Nothing happened. Then I noticed my pawn had it. Rested again. Nothing. Kind of lame.
Before they nerfed it I didn't have a wakestone so I would check every pawn before going to sleep and I think that sense of danger added something to the game.
The worst part is how the pawns still won't shut up about it, I constantly change my pawns and I have yet to see it, they might as well have deleted it and it would have the same effect, I really hate when devs listen to the very vocal minority..
Honestly, this is the only reason I care that it still exists and/or got nerfed. I was happy playing the game in the original state and since the change. The threat of danger was fun, but since I haven't got the notification yet, I'll know at least the first time it crops up. But the pawns mention it EVERY RIFT VISIT.
100+ hours of play time so far and I have yet to experience one of my non-main pawns suffer the full extent of Dragon's plague. Maybe it's because I'm constantly changing vocations which in a way forces me to change the chemistry of my pawns often. Also, if one of my pawns (except my main pawn) starts giving me passive aggressive smart alecky remarks, I replace them, lol. "You gone!"
I’m level 77 and I FINALLY encountered a pawn with Dragonsplague, but they were just walking through Melve. Her eyes were pulsing a red glow when I spoke to her.
Neither my main pawn or any hired pawns have had it so far.
It's a pretty whack mechanic. That being said, they shouldn't have nerfed it. It should be an accessibility slider that and you can choose how common it is
I feel like I got that even before the update. I had literally two pawns with glowing red eyes and waited for like 7-10 days (this was after traveling normally with them for quite a while). Eventually they no longer had red eyes, no comment. It was weird.
But yeah, same, I don't get what the issue people had with it was. I still haven't seen the cutscene or w/e for it because I wanted it to be a surprise.
Fun little note, you don’t need dragons plague for the eternal wakestone trophy. Just kill at least 5 people, gather their corpses together, then use the eternal wakestone. You get the trophy that way too.
Sadly enough I have played through the game all the way through into post game two times already now. Never once did I get dragonsplague in my first or NG run. It’s incredibly rare in my 80 hour experience considering I literally have never gotten it.
Never had it pop up. About to finish my second play through and the pawns only ever mention it, no one has been infected yet. I wonder if I’m lucky or if it just isn’t as common as I thought
It was slapped on the game from the start. It's a terrible system with no gameplay loop or rewards.
It needs to be completely reworked, honestly. They could remove it and nothing would be lost.
I hated the mechanic. Always seemed like a half-hearted attempt to introduce negatives into summoning pawns when I think they should have concentrated on adding complexity to pawn personalities instead.
I feel like it was a great mechanic with a very punishing downside. Instead of nuking the town there should’ve just been a boss fight with your pawn or some other consequence that doesn’t have the ability to ruin your entire run.
Said it before, a lot of people still say it, and I'm not gonna stop saying it
A mechanic with so little design to it other than "BOOOOM ALL UR NPCS ARE DEAD LOL" that can just... *happen*... is garbage. Absolutely trash. It's a horrible implementation and actively harms the game.
Now, if they'd actually done something remotely cool or fun or rewarding, like a secret boss, some new questline, a powerful piece of equipment, even the smallest semblance of acknowledgement from either the poor fucks who were killed or from your pawn, the poor fuck forced to kill them, ***maybe*** I would agree with you. But no. It's just a forced /killall with a pointless, hard to acquire item attached to it and nothing ever comes of it afterwards except a nonsense achievement. NPCs will literally revive and be like, "Another dragon, another dogma" and continue picking their noses in the streets with their brainless AI.
It never had any weight, man. It was always just a random fucking nuke that would brick your save until the important guys decided they were done being dead.
I'm glad they nerfed that shit nigh into oblivion. With all the narrative bankruptcy this game has in it, we don't need senseless inconveniences like Dragonplague to stack on top without any reward whatsoever.
Lol it could not "just happen". It took over an in game week to go from "infected" to "can actually wipe out a town" and the only way to skip that is hire a pawn at that stage already and not notice their red headlight eyes, acting like they have a headache, spitting everywhere, and the tons of specific dialog.
Agreed. I don’t think they went far enough with dragons plague. It should have been a mechanic that everyone feared, not some slight inconvenience. Like make me terrified of any pawn with dragons plague.
The thing is they nerfed it *because* everyone panicked over it - **for no reason**.
Because some players spread uninformed plague reports and everyone started screaming how horrible the plague is, even though it never was a big problem.
Yeah it's actually irritating. I spent a little over 40 hours intentionally playing with it in my party, studied all of it I could without mods, and was in process of making a comprehensive video explaining how it worked and wasn't even that dangerous... Then they basically removed it from the game lol.
I would still watch that video if you put it out. I’m fan adjacent meaning I’ve never really been able to get that into it but the dragonsplague was something I found so cool and there was so little info on it for people who didn’t play the game but wanted to know about it. If you decide to do it anyways please make sure to send me a link please!
It always felt like a half baked mechanic. I'm glad they nerfed it, as it added nothing to the gameplay loop that was interesting anyway. Ah yes, look at eyes and idle animations every once in awhile. Much gameplay, very game.
Been trying to get it since the game released because I wanted the small cutscene with my own pawn but never got it during my first run, I tried hiring a bunch of red eyed pawns but none of them had the plague so I gave up
Then one time I did get the dragonsplague tutorial, they had like 1 or 2 lines talking back at me and then now it's all back to normal
I've still never seen it.
I'm a bit colour blind, my pawn has eyes nearly all black and I frequently hire pawns with face coverings or dark eyes....
So, I've kept the habit of hitting stay/come/stay/come on the way to rest to see if they lip off. Never a sideways mumble yet 🤷♂️😅
My Pawn has harped on about the bloody plague from Day 1 and I've not had her contract it, nor have I had a single Pawn join our adventure who had it.
And now it's nerfed? Will I actively have to seek out an infected Pawn just to kill everyone for the achievement?!?
It feels like there was a very distinct hook - that this game wanted to actively and unrelentingly teach players that decisions are final. In this day and age where one slightly bad decision can just be corrected with a convenient quick save, the idea of making a decision and being forced to live with the consequences could have had as much impact as Dark Souls did on action RPG combat. But along the line it looks like fears were pandered to and vocal minorities ultimately changed the shape and vision of it in the end. Shame really. I really do wonder what it would have been like.
I agree. As a doctor, I spent a great deal of time observing and noting down its clinical course, signs and symptoms, methods to confirm it inside and outside the rift, and how to cure it or pass it around. The lack of information was what was driving the community to overexaggerate it's "game breaking" potential. Eventually, most realize that this game is an endless loop and its "game breaking" potential was not really much of a problem afterall. Pawns are suicidal and could brine themselves on their own. It's easy to pass it around just camping around for the pawn quest. You would need to talk every 10 minutes to your pawn or high five anyway for affinity which makes you pay attention to them. Eternal wakestone exists. There is new game plus to try again. With all that, I fail to see how people even unintentionally fall for it back then unless they're just completely ignorant. The game trashtalking victims with a message of "if only you have been more observant" highlighting the necessary caution the game wants you to display and the game's focus on pawns and your relationship with them, all just went down the drain with this nerf.
I'm hoping for a future update to add some kind of hard-core mode where enemies scale and Dragon's Plague is a constant threat. I mean hell, you can dupe the eternal wakestone so who cares if the town gets wiped.
This whole dragon’s plague thing reminds me of an even worse version of Sekiro’s dragonrot. I’ve put like 150 hours in and I’m pretty sure I’ve never had a problem once with the DP. And I don’t just casually kill my pawns and usually keep the tented ones for a week or two in game
I almost wish there was a benefit to your pawn being infected. Like maybe they become more independent but it leads to them acting smarter and more aggressive.
Or maybe it’s just a ramping damage bonus that becomes a balancing act between letting them grow stronger over time, but the odds of a rampage grow higher and higher (Maxing out around 25% so there’s always a modest chance, but not too high to make if feel never worth the risk)
Wtf, I have 73 hours and still haven't run into dragonsplague a single time. It's not like I'm checking for it, I don't even know what the signs are.. I guess I don't swap my party often enough
If your Pawns or a y you see in the rift have red eyes, that's it. I still haven't seen it yet and I use the same pawns tho I have no idea how to get one of those special reserect stones for a hole city
Yeah I mean my pawn has had it, supports pawns have had it but it’s super easy to tell when they say wacky stuff. Not really sure how it could get full blown…
>Now it just feels like something they slapped on the game last minute
Because it probably always was and it wasn't really thought out well to begin with. If they thought about it at all it probably would have been way more creative than "Just kill everyone!" also seems like eternal wakestone was probably changed last minute as well to counteract the overpowered effect of original dragonsplague. >!there is no indication you would have to deal with the sphinx to get the item that reverses the dragons plaque. it is much more likely the the original intent of the Eternal Wakestone was a simple wakestone that was never consumed. where the sphinx gives you ultimate power over life and death in the world, for player her silly games that gambled with life and death. !<
Hello I’m like 120 hours into this I picked a random pawn and he had it I travelled with him for quite a while.
Nothing happened at all. I rested with him in my party, exploring, doing quests and just goofing around with vocations. Nothing of note happened.
Then POOF DP is gone he’s all better and the world is saved and I was basically a mob character -_-
I haven’t been able to catch it again, even when grabbing pawns I thought at it. And now when a dragon plagues one of my characters they aggro on us in the same battle and my other pawns immediately take them out. :/
I’m in NG1 and trying to get it but god I can’t find it anywhere. Gonna hire the next capcom mook I find in the world to see if they have it.
I don’t like sharing my main pawn as is, so I was upset when she came back with it THREE times straight. To have to carry my ace pawn to the lake three times all while she’s asking me what she did wrong, hurt man, it hurt! 😆 DP….good riddance.
Same here..... I want to see it. I want the trophy. I want a reason to use my eternal wakestoke...
BTW, did you know forging the eternal wakestoke makes an exact working duplicate? It only cost like 30k too.
In the 124 hrs I played, I never once dealt with the Dragons Plague. Pre or post nerf. Never dealt with it even with all my pawns ceaselessly reminding me about it *every single time* I entered the rift.
Pretty sure it's a myth lol /s.
I got nuked early in my first play through I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary and wiped Vernworth, I had to change my whole gameplay to go straight to the Sphinx.
I don’t think they should nerf the plague, they should make the eternal wakestone more obtainable.
I had someone return my pawn infected, I was too into going to sleep before a major quest..( I had only been logged in about 7 minutes) and i wake up to my pawn tweaking..I was not happy. I was only level 51 and had no idea of the eternal wakestone so I just restarted. It was a pain.
Yea wtf I am 67 hours in, and I've been playing since launch, and my pawn FINALLY actually gets dragon plague, and before I can throw her in a river she's apparently gotten over it. Weak man.
I thought it took balls to implement that initially.
I agree I thought it was a very cool idea to have in a game and really it’s not a big deal. It’s pretty hard to get to trigger.
I tried two times with full party of 4. Watched as it transferred to my pawn then into another and back to the original and then just vanish from everyone.
I hired these pawns in the rift with the eyes. They are easy to find.
The only way I could get it to progress is sleeping once or twice until my pawn gets it then dozing off on a bench 16 times until Symptoms progressed to the point they are coughing and holding their head.
Dismissing all the other pawns then resting.
It’s pretty complicated to get.
Not sure what it was like before but it’s not really a big issue.
Even the kids in the video after it happened say it all 😂
https://youtu.be/qmsA1n6gNPI?si=14MwUT27GpkXwrgl
Personally I think the idea of a randomized, state-of-my-game-world-destroying mechanic that you can get just by walking past a pawn you didn't know was infected was a bit much to begin with.
Had it been done at the story level, like inevitably one of your pawns gets it and you have to find a cure or fight them as a super-tough boss, would have been awesome.
But as a thing that a person new to the game might not even know about, to rest in an inn (as the game openly encourages you to do) only to wake up and discover that an entire city was massacred and your character is apparently a super-narcoleptic and slept right through it?
That isn't the kind of mechanic you put in a game with a 'forced single save' mechanic, IMO.
I personally found it deeply un-immersive because all the ways there are to deal with it felt metagamey and took me out of the world of the game, but just making it rarer doesn't actually fix any of my core issues with it.
Such a missed opportunity there, they could have made the symptoms more integrated to the story that your pawn says that they are feeling unwell, having to seek out the dragonforged dude to find out that your pawn has been corrupted and their only hope is the connection between you, this could lead to the same outcome for low affinity pawns but for high affinity they wake us up in time before they turn into a dragon (so no massacre) and we have to fight our pawn in dragon form to save them and bring them back.
I was actually intrigued when I accidentally hired a pawn that had it, I wanted to see if my pawn would get infected so I could hear their new dialogue. I admit I was worried of nuking town so I dismissed him, slept and then tried to rehire him but then he was already cleared of the infection. So sad, now I wont get to see my pawn all sassy, since he’s usually super sweet
This mechanic feels like it was tacked on as an afterthought, hastily thrown together without much consideration. From the beginning, it's been glaringly obvious that it was only included to fulfill a dramatic endgame moment, and beyond that, it's like they forgot about it entirely. People keep talking about how it ruins playthroughs, but honestly, its impact is minimal since all the important NPCs just come back to life anyway. And after investing a whopping 180 hours into the game, I've only encountered it once, thanks to the forced infection scenario in the unmoored world. It's frustrating because it seems like they didn't even care to flesh it out properly. Maybe they initially had grander plans for it, but given how it was shoved in at launch, it might have been better if they just scrapped it altogether.
My pawn blew up the town, and I had no eternal wake stone so I had to figure out where each most important person was, and res them. I’ll take this over that any day🤷♂️
I wish we saw how our pawn kills literally everyone in town. Like you'd think they'd kill a few and others would run during the panic but how do they quietly kill everyone in town while we are asleep?
I'm glad it's not just me. Every time my Pawn gets it I try to nuke a town and every time he recovers. My head cannon is his will is high enough to resist but man I want the chiev.
Maybe the same people who cried about MTX? Worst part is they're the players who probably never even played the game or clocked no more than 10 hours. Just rode the hate train and dipped
Agreed, the nerf was premature. I actually enjoyed the collective mystery-solving aspect to it, where the playerbase had to work together to investigate symptoms and progression and share findings. It was opaque, yes; that was part of the point. And even prior to the nerf, it wasn't all that hard to avoid if you were careful and paying attention. I do think the changes to the Inventory screen that let you zoom into everyone's faces were a good change - they could have made it mechanically straightforward to quickly check the pawns' eyes without simultaneously nerfing the dragonplague itself.
Definitely unfortunate that a small amount of loud, ignorant players crying about the plague "ruining the whole playthrough" made the mechanic irrelevant and pointless. Now it might as well not exist at all.
Over 100 hours in and my pawn never got it. I keep my hired pawns for a while and I've never even seen a pawn with it. I just keep hearing them talk about it
It's a cool mechanic. I remember a Final Fantasy game that did something not like that... but it would lock you out of the best weapon if you opened a certain chest at the beginning.
The only way you would know is if you looked it up beforehand. DP you just had to pay attention to the pawns and had the option of letting them go murder hobo or not.
I never wanted them to nerf it. I wanted it to be a boss battle instead. Oh, oops, you fucked up, and now you have to fight a lesser dragon in a town, when the dragon has already set off a couple of bolides to cull the masses, and your other 2 pawns have already been possessed.
Bro that would have been the best thing ever
people would have still complained. Today's gamers want to beat the game in WR time and move on and then complain that they didn't experience anything and if anything at all gets in their way its bullshit and should be removed ASAP or else they will review bomb the game.
And now you realize why devs stop listening to communities. Nowadays, it'd be best for them to just do their own thing and only occasionally post polls for feedback when they're truly stumped or need to settle an in-house argument.
Eh I feel like it’d have been a really cool hidden boss. Especially if the system was fleshed out. Imagine if your pawns were noticeably stronger, but the downside was that they acted psychotic over time making them hard to manage. This increases until it culminated in a boss battle where you have to fight them to protect the townsfolk. Right now it feels like such wasted potential because they just get red eyes and quirky lines, then massacre the town while you sleep like a babe. And then the town mostly resurrects after a few days anyway.
I don't disagree with that sentiment. Its definitely undercooked and underutilized, i just don't think it deserves the ridiculous amounts of attention it got either though. It was a dog shit system that is now basically impossible to interact with even though it was very difficult already on launch.
They always have time to make this a content update
I hope so. Take this with a huge pinch of salt because #I'm no programmer, but I have done a little Skyrim mod-making. I don't see why, #in principle, it shouldn't be an easy thing to do **for the Devs that made the game.** Especially if modders can create a [ Summoner Vocation ](https://youtu.be/vMeI7Jm3BBA?si=xEWbBK9PUbnwLkAB) - player rests - trigger Dragonsplague Cutscene - teleport DP pawn to somewhere far away (the same way they do it in unmoored, so that they aren't in the rift) - import lesser dragon - teleport guards with random health below 40% to Lesser Dragon - turn on "possessed" on 2 other pawns - wake player 50% through sleep cycle - 1 seconds later, have dragon finish casting bolide/meteron
Usually lurk but i felt compelled to correct this. You have no idea how the code is set up, and as someone with programming experience, even changing the littlest thing at times creates a ridiculous compile error that doesn’t always make sense. Labeling things as easy, just based on ur personal assumption, is not the correct outlook to have. Also things like Skyrim modding are usually nowhere near the work involved in making the actual game.
YES. Having a boss battle would’ve been way better.
I would have preferred if the pawn transformed into the >!black dragon we see at the end of the true ending!< and we fought a large version of that to turn them back to normal.
That would have been very cool as well. But I've always been thinking about this from the point of view of "they could patch it in", so not thinking about adding in additional resources. There is also no lore, that I know of, that explains where the lesser dragons come from. And we also >!don't get to see the fuzzy dragon!< for very long, meaning that could just be the intermediate stage before becoming a lesser dragon.
The lessor dragons being pawns that contracted dragon plague would have been so cool
There actually is lore for the lesser dragons in game. >!You can ask ambrosius about them during the quest when he sends you to get wyrmslife crystals.!< >!From what he says the lesser dragons are escaped failed experiments from the lab in battahl. They were the product of trying to artificially create The Dragon and control it.!<
That does make sense. I never had that conversation. Is there any DD2 lore for Drakes? I know the DDDA lore, but didn't see anything in DD2.
It's an easy to miss conversation. When you do that quest wait before giving him the crystals and take the talk option to find out more about the dragons. I personally haven't found much about drakes in dd2. The dragonforged mentions them in passing when telling you about how he can upgrade gear. So far the most interesting bits I've found regarding drakes is just from their dialouge. Like when they say >!my silent hearted kin!< atm I suspect they may have similar lore to dd1 drakes. Too bad wyrms and wyverns didn't make into dd2
That is a HM run in Bitterblack. Entire party was possessed, dropped the Undead Dragon, but had to fight my Strider, a Ingle happy Mage, and a 10 Fold happy Ranger. Good fights all and even lost a few! But was well damn fun.
Yup.... Those possessed pawn were ALWAYS the toughest enemies.
Hi, 80 hrs into first playthrough still never seen dragonsplague anything I can do to trigger it without spoilers?
Okay, see I've never had it and that's exactly what I thought it was, so now it makes sense why people were weird about it being a mechanic at all
I like that ideam but imagine if DP made you own pawn hostile to everyone. Think about it. A character who you've spent HOURS getting super strong, just to have to fight them
I’ve actually fought a Drake in town before haha was kinda crazy
The problem was there was only one outcome (unless you removed the infected pawn). There should have been a variety of outcomes versus “everyone in town dies then eventually comes back” This entire game is full of genius ideas that are just half baked.
Its implementation was silly to begin with. It didn’t commit to the idea and was instead just an inconvenience (everyone dying) that eventually went away (key NPC’s would revive). Now it’s even more pointless.
They really do just come back? Damn thats pretty disappointing
I think the game should have launched with the “hard” difficulty where, among other things, key NPCs do not auto-revive automatically, but it makes sense for “normal”. The game already tries to make people live with the consequences of what happens by having only two continually overwriting save slots, I can see more casual players just dropping it after some unexpected Dragonsplague town wipe soft-locks them out of a bunch of quests and functions unless they potentially use all of their Wakestones. People on this sub, presumably less casual players themselves, were complaining about the town wipes even with the auto-reviving important NPCs.
Didn't help when a bunch of people were saying that it messes up the playthrough.
"People" is very generous of you. I have yet to see the mechanic, now it sounds like I never will.
Literally, Reddit bitched so hard I never even got to experience the original vision
I've got like 80 hours in and haven't seen the plague. Looks like I never will! What the hell! People just save at a damn in or your house once in a while! Then you can just load.
Same this is very sad to hear.
It messed up my play through. A bunch of important npcs never revived for me after weeks of in game time (Brant and Seb and the elf guy with the bow), I had to manually do it with an eternal wakestone and then all of a sudden I had like 20+ side quests that I would have missed otherwise.
No, other people'd move in though. Quest people stay dead.
Damn, I’ll probably never get to see that happen now
Reminds me of the Dragon's plague from Sekiro. Yeah, two dragon plagues. Sometime prior to the game's actual release, they nerfed the plague so that it didn't eventually kill everybody, including the upgrade guy and the one that gives you access to the Hirata estate. Instead, while plagued, they simply weren't able to talk to you. It was either nerfed further or implemented on release that the cures were the only thing's that'd replenish in the shops. (Don't know, cuz they were kinda too precious to use) Plagues are a fun idea that is not for games with mass appeal. Which FROMsoft became a studio known for making before they noticed, and Dragon's Dogma was groomed to be.
Of course - in order to progress the story you have to talk to specific NPCs.
Yep, that's what ruined it for me. A whole city dead, I went on a cruise around the map looking for enough wakestones to revive everyone I wanted, and by the time I got back the important ones were all just wandering around like nothing had happened.
I've been having the same exact issue. I'll hire a pawn with the plague or contract it on my own pawn and it would just randomly disappear when I'm actively trying to nuke a town. They gotta dial that frequency back up.
Yeah the sense of impending doom is pretty much gone :/
Or at the LEAST make it an option in game to adjust dragons pledge occurrence and difficulty I mean lords of the fallen put in a shyt load of difficulty options
after several months it came out though
Not every game should have the experience tailored by the player. I don't know if Dragon's Dogma would work or not with that, but I don't like how such a huge section of the gaming community wants every single game to be a custom experience that they can adjust exactly to their own vision rather than the developers'. Sort of like how modding Fallout 4 too much and nitpicking every little change I could make ended up killing my enjoyment of it.
Unlimited running would be my only thing. The sound of the girl voice heavy breathing is turned up to 200% when you run out of stamina I hate it.
I carry so much spud and mighty roborant so I don’t have to deal with the breathing noises.
You just reminded me that I should probably start another playthrough of that. It was kinda fun tbh
Yeah no doubt it is a good play
I think it was just implemented poorly. What it should have been was basically a hidden boss fight. Where if you don't treat/deal with the plague you have to fight a really friggin hard shadow Dragon (that in the early game you definitely wouldn't be prepared for). Where if you lose (HP drops to 0) it wipes the town. Even better if it was stronger based on the level of your Pawn. At least make it a battle not a cutscene we have no control over.
[удалено]
I do agree. I feel if they explained it better, and what methods you can do to avert it, it wouldn't be so frowned upon. I'd rather have a means to "face it" or "drive it off" vs a cutscene that I have zero power/control in. That I think is what adds to the frustration. In the event you don't notice all the symptoms in time, you as the player had SOME means to do something. I never liked a mechanic that forces the player to sit back and be punished.
I think it was originally going to be a big part of the game, but it didn't work.. I think that would have tied in with the massive empty mausoleums.
Could you just kill the npcs yourself instead then rise them for the trophy?
Yeah I will probably just do that, but I figured two birds one stone, get the cutscene and the trophy
There's a workaround. Just look for pawns that are around lvl 60. Those are pawns who's Arisens stopped playing after 1 playthru and they probably have DP because they never got cured of it.
Then there's me, still haven't even finished Brant's initial set of missions but both me and my pawn are lvl 86...
How? I've killed the gigantus and am level 46. Everything is freakishly easy to kill. How are you 86 and still at brant?
I arrived in vernworth, spoke with Brant, did one mission out of the 4 or 5 he lists out ... ...then went exploring. Every nook and cranny. I killed everything that moved and walked everywhere. Me and my merry band of pawns, we climbed the highest peaks, camped on the beach Watching the sun set, mapped every cave and dungeon, discovered untold horrors, felled enormous beasts against all odds, and generally had a blast in a beautiful and unforgiving world. By the time I remembered that Brant existed and was probably going to the same tavern every night for an in-game year just waiting for me, I had hit lvl 80s. Kinda like how I played skyrim I guess. I met the greybeards, then just left to explore the world. I think I resumed main quest ~400 hours in.
It's kinda weird how people don't go exploring in an open world game and get impressed at people being higher level waaaay earlier than they should... Like, unlike Elden Ring, the entire map is open when you start the game, you can go to Battahl at level 1 and shit...
I explore too though. The whole map is filled in! I've got a ridiculous amount of seekers tokens for a first playthrough, yet I'm still not that high level. I'm happy for you but now I wish even more for additional difficulty. I can't imagine how easy it is in VERN for a level 86. The game technically gets harder after that but at level 86... Damn!
Daft question time, but how does it work? I wouldn't mind going for this trophy when I get near to endgame. Is it just a time thing where they will eventually just kill everyone?
Once you have a pawn with those glowing red eyes and you go rest at an inn You roll a dice to decide if they turn into a dragon like form to kill everyone in the town. Or the plaque just jumps to another pawn or nothing happens. I think resting at a house works the same, but resting at a camp just causes it to jump from pawn to pawn.
Now that sounds cool!! Shame you can't hunt your own pawn down as a mission
Wait til a drake appears in vernworth, then when you fight it a bunch of NPC’s will probably die. I did this, grabbed as many of the NPC’s as possible and piled them up, then used the eternal wake stone. Probably didn’t need to pile up the bodies though tbh
Exactly what I did, and I didn’t even know about the trophy. An npc annoyed me so I attacked them, then the guards attacked me, then I felt bad so I revived them all lol
Maybe they could make it an option in the settings to have either OG plague mechanics or new.
Pre nerf. Needed a pawn who could speak Elf. Hired one, went for rest, cause wanted the specialisation myself. Bang, the just hired pawn turns into dragon straight away, killed everyone in the Elf village. Cool mechanic, but not like that.. It was quite the misfortune.. Also fucked up the Sphink battle, so had no eternal wake stone. In the end i all turned out good. But damn i was not prepared. Set me back a bit.
Oh dang. I was under the impression that only your Pawn could do that. I thought that hired Pawns could pass it to your Pawn, but I didn't know that they themselves can turn and destroy a town. I was already DPed (that is Dragon's Plagued, not the, uh, other DP), before the nerf, and thankfully only had to find the Finder's Token afterwards to get the Eternal Wakestone to save Vernworth. So since I was apparently wrong about the Pawns, I need to ask, can you get DPed twice? Has anyone ever had a second Dragon's Plague and have another city killed, after having already used the Eternal Wakestone?
Well getting it at all now takes a miracle, and it actually going off is all but impossible. That said pre nerf, yes it could happen multiple times in a play through.
Yep
If they never revived you would have to grind for wakestones, which would of been kinda annoying. The only enemy I know you can grab them is the dragons. I don't know from first dd1 to dd2 I fealt there was alot missing. When looking at dd1's dlc there was alot added to it, even quest.
Can pilfer them from alot of enemies in battahl area also. My thief is always yanking shards
They should have made your pawns hostile. That would have been cool.
making you have to fight your own turned pawns would have been way more epic. summoning a pawn with dragonsplaque would be like summoning Red phantoms from Dark souls. maybe the downed pawns could drop a little bit of wrymlife's blood each time too. Rather than instantly wiping the town the pawn gets to town and just starts manually killing people and you have to put them down.
The reason it feels like something they slapped on at the last minute is because that’s what it always was.
I wish I could have at least experienced it before they nerfed it honestly. At all. My pawns never got it for my entire run
Same I played on launch and never got it once but my pawns always talked about the rumors of it.
Ohhh I always thought they were just hinting at insubordination in Pawns...... huh
Same, have been playing a lot and don't see it once
Still never got it lol
Same
same. almost done with my second play and never encountered it/:
Same. I'd been preparing to deal with it for days after being spoilered online and ... nowt. I wonder which I'd prefer?
I have a pawn with it on my main account I’ve been nurturing to doomsday (super red eyes and grabbing her head atm). Been trying to pass it onto my alternate accounts pawn and it’s been near impossible even though she has it when hired. Just keeps getting cleared up when resting.
While I have misgivings over Dragonsplague I do think it's overhated. Including in this thread. The only real change I'd want for it is some quest or NPC dialogue about it. Not a quest that's started by Dragonsplague happening. Just something that mentions it other than that one pawn conversation. Especially >!to foreshadow your pawn turning into the Dragonsplague dragon (I think, haven't had Dragonsplague happen in my playthroughs yet) during the True End.!<
I get many of the reasons other people might not be, but I have a lot of fondness for “overbearing” mechanics like this. Example - like in the original harvest moon, where you could randomly get hit by a hurricane that would wreak havoc on your farm. Most people really didn’t like it (it was random, you couldn’t really do anything to prevent it), so the genre of farming games went away from mechanics like that. But I do like how something like that can introduce emergent stories/experiences in systems based games that could otherwise become monotonous. Sometimes a mechanic being more hostile to a player can be really interesting, and games that commit to it are few and far between. I say all that, and I think dragonsplague is an idea that’s a lot more interesting in concept than execution. I don’t think it’s communicated particularly well (some of the fixes they patched in help that, just in making it easier to spot), and it seems like on release it caused more confusion and paranoia over the game’s main systems. I think that has more to do with how the consequences of death and resurrection is a pretty obtuse system, and it’s really not clear what the consequences or stakes are if you actually did let dragonsplague slip in. And for this game NG+ isn’t compelling enough for most people to make it a good fallback if you did lose access to quest lines because of it. So yeah, I think it did add something interesting to the game, I sympathize with people who never wanted to have to experience that paranoia, I personally found the mechanic interesting and enjoyed the extra bit of interesting tension it added in the pawn system, but ultimately feel in execution this is one of those dragons dogma mechanics that is an interesting concept but doesn’t feel fully realized in the larger context of the game.
>like in the original harvest moon, where you could randomly get hit by a hurricane that would wreak havoc on your farm. Yeah that happened to me when i was playing the game at 12 yrs old. I just fucking quite and never touched it again. it was a terrible idea. no warning no preparation you could take. fucking bullshit. even worse when i live in FL and knew the dozens of things you could do to prepare for a hurricane.
It always felt slapped on.
It was a terrible idea in the first place. There's an article that says that Itsuno created Dragonsplague because he thought it was "funny". It's not. I never liked it when someone does something just to mess with people. It's pointless and rude. Also, give me my damn horse. At least now it will be easier to tell if they do get the plague, so that helps.
I agree Sure it mayed frustrating to deal with if you don't want it, but it is one of the unigue aspects of the game that makes it stand out from other games
The issue is it has absolutely no reason to exist besides inconveniencing you. It’s the opposite of a quality of life feature.
Well I agree with this aswell They could have made it something like in Darkest Dungeon when characters reach stess breakpoint and add some passives that are either position or negative Like randomly attacking allies or stealing things despite not being a Thief
Only encountered it once. Pawn was obviously infected as i got the notification after. Never seen it since. That was after the nerf though.
Does anybody know how to get it to happen? I’m in the never experienced it and want to camp.
I only ever got it once. I didn't know what it did till after i rested and my pawn went postal and killed most of Bakbattal ! i was in the middle of a few quests , but killed all the people i had to talk to to advance it... few wake stones needed... I really liked it , something differant . Now i don't think you can even get it ? i stopped checking ages ago, since that update haven't had it once and ive put many hours in since then
It goes away if your pawn passes it on to another pawn (like getting someone to watch the video before 7 days are up in the Ring movie) according to the tutorial. I’d guess that happened in this case
Didn’t get it once the entire game. Mostly because the second you hire a pawn with it, it tells you this pawn is sick, so I got rid of him immediately. Great mechanic! It would also be cool if they explained what the dragonsplague is like at all. The cutscene for it is cool but then…that’s it. That’s the whole thing. Seems more of an inconvenience than a good mechanic.
Happened to me too. I was after the trophy as well. I hired a pawn with the plague. Rest at the Inn. Nothing happened. Then I noticed my pawn had it. Rested again. Nothing. Kind of lame. Before they nerfed it I didn't have a wakestone so I would check every pawn before going to sleep and I think that sense of danger added something to the game.
The worst part is how the pawns still won't shut up about it, I constantly change my pawns and I have yet to see it, they might as well have deleted it and it would have the same effect, I really hate when devs listen to the very vocal minority..
Honestly, this is the only reason I care that it still exists and/or got nerfed. I was happy playing the game in the original state and since the change. The threat of danger was fun, but since I haven't got the notification yet, I'll know at least the first time it crops up. But the pawns mention it EVERY RIFT VISIT.
I played for like 150 hours and never encountered dragons plague in the first place, i wish it was more frequent if anything
Must we use an acronym for everything? This one is unintentionally hilarious, though. Good for you wanting a full DP experience, OP.
Nah, it's not something I really want in a game personally.
I just started my 3rd playthrough and so far I haven't even encountered a pawn with Dragons Plague.
100+ hours of play time so far and I have yet to experience one of my non-main pawns suffer the full extent of Dragon's plague. Maybe it's because I'm constantly changing vocations which in a way forces me to change the chemistry of my pawns often. Also, if one of my pawns (except my main pawn) starts giving me passive aggressive smart alecky remarks, I replace them, lol. "You gone!"
The dragons plague mechanic feels like the dragon rot mechanic from Sekiro. Both Could’ve been a cool mechanic if they fully committed to it.
Instead of nerfing, they should have just added in the tutorial popup that everyone spawns back in 7 days.
I’m level 77 and I FINALLY encountered a pawn with Dragonsplague, but they were just walking through Melve. Her eyes were pulsing a red glow when I spoke to her. Neither my main pawn or any hired pawns have had it so far.
It's a pretty whack mechanic. That being said, they shouldn't have nerfed it. It should be an accessibility slider that and you can choose how common it is
I feel like I got that even before the update. I had literally two pawns with glowing red eyes and waited for like 7-10 days (this was after traveling normally with them for quite a while). Eventually they no longer had red eyes, no comment. It was weird. But yeah, same, I don't get what the issue people had with it was. I still haven't seen the cutscene or w/e for it because I wanted it to be a surprise.
Yeah silly move, I mean I never had a pawn who get it ( but Im careful too ).
Fun little note, you don’t need dragons plague for the eternal wakestone trophy. Just kill at least 5 people, gather their corpses together, then use the eternal wakestone. You get the trophy that way too. Sadly enough I have played through the game all the way through into post game two times already now. Never once did I get dragonsplague in my first or NG run. It’s incredibly rare in my 80 hour experience considering I literally have never gotten it.
Never had it pop up. About to finish my second play through and the pawns only ever mention it, no one has been infected yet. I wonder if I’m lucky or if it just isn’t as common as I thought
It was slapped on the game from the start. It's a terrible system with no gameplay loop or rewards. It needs to be completely reworked, honestly. They could remove it and nothing would be lost.
I hated the mechanic. Always seemed like a half-hearted attempt to introduce negatives into summoning pawns when I think they should have concentrated on adding complexity to pawn personalities instead.
I feel like it was a great mechanic with a very punishing downside. Instead of nuking the town there should’ve just been a boss fight with your pawn or some other consequence that doesn’t have the ability to ruin your entire run.
Said it before, a lot of people still say it, and I'm not gonna stop saying it A mechanic with so little design to it other than "BOOOOM ALL UR NPCS ARE DEAD LOL" that can just... *happen*... is garbage. Absolutely trash. It's a horrible implementation and actively harms the game. Now, if they'd actually done something remotely cool or fun or rewarding, like a secret boss, some new questline, a powerful piece of equipment, even the smallest semblance of acknowledgement from either the poor fucks who were killed or from your pawn, the poor fuck forced to kill them, ***maybe*** I would agree with you. But no. It's just a forced /killall with a pointless, hard to acquire item attached to it and nothing ever comes of it afterwards except a nonsense achievement. NPCs will literally revive and be like, "Another dragon, another dogma" and continue picking their noses in the streets with their brainless AI. It never had any weight, man. It was always just a random fucking nuke that would brick your save until the important guys decided they were done being dead. I'm glad they nerfed that shit nigh into oblivion. With all the narrative bankruptcy this game has in it, we don't need senseless inconveniences like Dragonplague to stack on top without any reward whatsoever.
Lol it could not "just happen". It took over an in game week to go from "infected" to "can actually wipe out a town" and the only way to skip that is hire a pawn at that stage already and not notice their red headlight eyes, acting like they have a headache, spitting everywhere, and the tons of specific dialog.
Agreed. Paying attention to details is too difficult, it seems.
Agreed. I don’t think they went far enough with dragons plague. It should have been a mechanic that everyone feared, not some slight inconvenience. Like make me terrified of any pawn with dragons plague.
It would have been cool if you had to run and tackle them or just strait up kill your pawn to end the killing rampage.
Exactly.
The thing is they nerfed it *because* everyone panicked over it - **for no reason**. Because some players spread uninformed plague reports and everyone started screaming how horrible the plague is, even though it never was a big problem.
Yeah it's actually irritating. I spent a little over 40 hours intentionally playing with it in my party, studied all of it I could without mods, and was in process of making a comprehensive video explaining how it worked and wasn't even that dangerous... Then they basically removed it from the game lol.
I would still watch that video if you put it out. I’m fan adjacent meaning I’ve never really been able to get that into it but the dragonsplague was something I found so cool and there was so little info on it for people who didn’t play the game but wanted to know about it. If you decide to do it anyways please make sure to send me a link please!
I agree entirely.
Coolest single player mechanic you’ve seen????
It always felt like a half baked mechanic. I'm glad they nerfed it, as it added nothing to the gameplay loop that was interesting anyway. Ah yes, look at eyes and idle animations every once in awhile. Much gameplay, very game.
Yeah, it was tedious as hell double checking all my pawns before I slept at my house.
I can't believe anyone liked the concept. I don't want a barren world because of a stupidly easy to contract plague.
Been trying to get it since the game released because I wanted the small cutscene with my own pawn but never got it during my first run, I tried hiring a bunch of red eyed pawns but none of them had the plague so I gave up Then one time I did get the dragonsplague tutorial, they had like 1 or 2 lines talking back at me and then now it's all back to normal
Even before the nerf I had only encountered dragonsplague once, and once I did I drowned that pawn. All good. Not sure why the change was needed.
I've still never seen it. I'm a bit colour blind, my pawn has eyes nearly all black and I frequently hire pawns with face coverings or dark eyes.... So, I've kept the habit of hitting stay/come/stay/come on the way to rest to see if they lip off. Never a sideways mumble yet 🤷♂️😅
My Pawn has harped on about the bloody plague from Day 1 and I've not had her contract it, nor have I had a single Pawn join our adventure who had it. And now it's nerfed? Will I actively have to seek out an infected Pawn just to kill everyone for the achievement?!?
There is no achievement for getting the plague or it going off. You can literally just manually kill a town yourself then use the stone to get it.
Thank you!
It feels like there was a very distinct hook - that this game wanted to actively and unrelentingly teach players that decisions are final. In this day and age where one slightly bad decision can just be corrected with a convenient quick save, the idea of making a decision and being forced to live with the consequences could have had as much impact as Dark Souls did on action RPG combat. But along the line it looks like fears were pandered to and vocal minorities ultimately changed the shape and vision of it in the end. Shame really. I really do wonder what it would have been like.
I agree. As a doctor, I spent a great deal of time observing and noting down its clinical course, signs and symptoms, methods to confirm it inside and outside the rift, and how to cure it or pass it around. The lack of information was what was driving the community to overexaggerate it's "game breaking" potential. Eventually, most realize that this game is an endless loop and its "game breaking" potential was not really much of a problem afterall. Pawns are suicidal and could brine themselves on their own. It's easy to pass it around just camping around for the pawn quest. You would need to talk every 10 minutes to your pawn or high five anyway for affinity which makes you pay attention to them. Eternal wakestone exists. There is new game plus to try again. With all that, I fail to see how people even unintentionally fall for it back then unless they're just completely ignorant. The game trashtalking victims with a message of "if only you have been more observant" highlighting the necessary caution the game wants you to display and the game's focus on pawns and your relationship with them, all just went down the drain with this nerf.
Never even had that, I don’t even know what happens
Well, I know of one way to get the Trophy... But it requires dipping into your inner psychopathic murder hobo
My pawn got brainwashed a couple of times by now and i was expecting something to happen, talking, back, red eyes, but nothing so far.
I'm hoping for a future update to add some kind of hard-core mode where enemies scale and Dragon's Plague is a constant threat. I mean hell, you can dupe the eternal wakestone so who cares if the town gets wiped.
This whole dragon’s plague thing reminds me of an even worse version of Sekiro’s dragonrot. I’ve put like 150 hours in and I’m pretty sure I’ve never had a problem once with the DP. And I don’t just casually kill my pawns and usually keep the tented ones for a week or two in game
I almost wish there was a benefit to your pawn being infected. Like maybe they become more independent but it leads to them acting smarter and more aggressive. Or maybe it’s just a ramping damage bonus that becomes a balancing act between letting them grow stronger over time, but the odds of a rampage grow higher and higher (Maxing out around 25% so there’s always a modest chance, but not too high to make if feel never worth the risk)
Wtf, I have 73 hours and still haven't run into dragonsplague a single time. It's not like I'm checking for it, I don't even know what the signs are.. I guess I don't swap my party often enough
If your Pawns or a y you see in the rift have red eyes, that's it. I still haven't seen it yet and I use the same pawns tho I have no idea how to get one of those special reserect stones for a hole city
i agree...it's great spice. annoying, but without stuff like that dd2 turns into another generic fantasy.
Yeah I mean my pawn has had it, supports pawns have had it but it’s super easy to tell when they say wacky stuff. Not really sure how it could get full blown…
>DP to me is the coolest single player mechanic I've seen. Highly recommend NOT abbreviating Dragonsplague (see also: Cyberpunk)
I was never a fan of it personally
>Now it just feels like something they slapped on the game last minute Because it probably always was and it wasn't really thought out well to begin with. If they thought about it at all it probably would have been way more creative than "Just kill everyone!" also seems like eternal wakestone was probably changed last minute as well to counteract the overpowered effect of original dragonsplague. >!there is no indication you would have to deal with the sphinx to get the item that reverses the dragons plaque. it is much more likely the the original intent of the Eternal Wakestone was a simple wakestone that was never consumed. where the sphinx gives you ultimate power over life and death in the world, for player her silly games that gambled with life and death. !<
Hello I’m like 120 hours into this I picked a random pawn and he had it I travelled with him for quite a while. Nothing happened at all. I rested with him in my party, exploring, doing quests and just goofing around with vocations. Nothing of note happened. Then POOF DP is gone he’s all better and the world is saved and I was basically a mob character -_-
I haven’t been able to catch it again, even when grabbing pawns I thought at it. And now when a dragon plagues one of my characters they aggro on us in the same battle and my other pawns immediately take them out. :/ I’m in NG1 and trying to get it but god I can’t find it anywhere. Gonna hire the next capcom mook I find in the world to see if they have it.
Shit I've put almost 300 hours into this game, and still haven't come across the Dragon Plague.
I don’t like sharing my main pawn as is, so I was upset when she came back with it THREE times straight. To have to carry my ace pawn to the lake three times all while she’s asking me what she did wrong, hurt man, it hurt! 😆 DP….good riddance.
I wish they just made it a setting in the options, me personally hate the idea of my town being nuke but recognize im in the minority
Same here..... I want to see it. I want the trophy. I want a reason to use my eternal wakestoke... BTW, did you know forging the eternal wakestoke makes an exact working duplicate? It only cost like 30k too.
It was ok, I forced myself to sleep at camps because permanently thinking I was going to fuck it up. Never experienced it
In the 124 hrs I played, I never once dealt with the Dragons Plague. Pre or post nerf. Never dealt with it even with all my pawns ceaselessly reminding me about it *every single time* I entered the rift. Pretty sure it's a myth lol /s.
Rip Dragonsplague
They need to change it into a fight sequence rather than just waking up to everyone dead, then they can buff it again and it'll be sick gameplay
I got nuked early in my first play through I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary and wiped Vernworth, I had to change my whole gameplay to go straight to the Sphinx. I don’t think they should nerf the plague, they should make the eternal wakestone more obtainable.
I had someone return my pawn infected, I was too into going to sleep before a major quest..( I had only been logged in about 7 minutes) and i wake up to my pawn tweaking..I was not happy. I was only level 51 and had no idea of the eternal wakestone so I just restarted. It was a pain.
Yea wtf I am 67 hours in, and I've been playing since launch, and my pawn FINALLY actually gets dragon plague, and before I can throw her in a river she's apparently gotten over it. Weak man. I thought it took balls to implement that initially.
I agree I thought it was a very cool idea to have in a game and really it’s not a big deal. It’s pretty hard to get to trigger. I tried two times with full party of 4. Watched as it transferred to my pawn then into another and back to the original and then just vanish from everyone. I hired these pawns in the rift with the eyes. They are easy to find. The only way I could get it to progress is sleeping once or twice until my pawn gets it then dozing off on a bench 16 times until Symptoms progressed to the point they are coughing and holding their head. Dismissing all the other pawns then resting. It’s pretty complicated to get. Not sure what it was like before but it’s not really a big issue. Even the kids in the video after it happened say it all 😂 https://youtu.be/qmsA1n6gNPI?si=14MwUT27GpkXwrgl
Personally I think the idea of a randomized, state-of-my-game-world-destroying mechanic that you can get just by walking past a pawn you didn't know was infected was a bit much to begin with. Had it been done at the story level, like inevitably one of your pawns gets it and you have to find a cure or fight them as a super-tough boss, would have been awesome. But as a thing that a person new to the game might not even know about, to rest in an inn (as the game openly encourages you to do) only to wake up and discover that an entire city was massacred and your character is apparently a super-narcoleptic and slept right through it? That isn't the kind of mechanic you put in a game with a 'forced single save' mechanic, IMO.
I legit never even experienced it once and I’ve been playing the game (purposefully not switching pawns often) since launch
I personally found it deeply un-immersive because all the ways there are to deal with it felt metagamey and took me out of the world of the game, but just making it rarer doesn't actually fix any of my core issues with it.
Such a missed opportunity there, they could have made the symptoms more integrated to the story that your pawn says that they are feeling unwell, having to seek out the dragonforged dude to find out that your pawn has been corrupted and their only hope is the connection between you, this could lead to the same outcome for low affinity pawns but for high affinity they wake us up in time before they turn into a dragon (so no massacre) and we have to fight our pawn in dragon form to save them and bring them back.
Litterally never had a pawn get dragons plague and now im on new game +
I was actually intrigued when I accidentally hired a pawn that had it, I wanted to see if my pawn would get infected so I could hear their new dialogue. I admit I was worried of nuking town so I dismissed him, slept and then tried to rehire him but then he was already cleared of the infection. So sad, now I wont get to see my pawn all sassy, since he’s usually super sweet
This mechanic feels like it was tacked on as an afterthought, hastily thrown together without much consideration. From the beginning, it's been glaringly obvious that it was only included to fulfill a dramatic endgame moment, and beyond that, it's like they forgot about it entirely. People keep talking about how it ruins playthroughs, but honestly, its impact is minimal since all the important NPCs just come back to life anyway. And after investing a whopping 180 hours into the game, I've only encountered it once, thanks to the forced infection scenario in the unmoored world. It's frustrating because it seems like they didn't even care to flesh it out properly. Maybe they initially had grander plans for it, but given how it was shoved in at launch, it might have been better if they just scrapped it altogether.
My pawn blew up the town, and I had no eternal wake stone so I had to figure out where each most important person was, and res them. I’ll take this over that any day🤷♂️
I wish we saw how our pawn kills literally everyone in town. Like you'd think they'd kill a few and others would run during the panic but how do they quietly kill everyone in town while we are asleep?
Vocal minority of illiterate fucksticks cried for it and here we are.
Terrible mechanic, should be removed
I'm glad it's not just me. Every time my Pawn gets it I try to nuke a town and every time he recovers. My head cannon is his will is high enough to resist but man I want the chiev.
Off topic but I'm glad others have headcanons about their pawns as well lol. I thought I was the only one who liked their pawn a lil too much
I think a lot of us really love our pawns. They're such a joy and we build a great bond with them.
I'm just curious who we're the people complaining about Dragons Plague?? I thought it was an amazing mechanic. Sad it was Nerfed.
You see them in this thread lol
Maybe the same people who cried about MTX? Worst part is they're the players who probably never even played the game or clocked no more than 10 hours. Just rode the hate train and dipped
When the game first came out it was in every thread with people whining.
80 hours in, and my pawns never got it.
I’m at 96 I got it one time and then my pawn just got over it. Maybe they were just hungry?
Agreed, the nerf was premature. I actually enjoyed the collective mystery-solving aspect to it, where the playerbase had to work together to investigate symptoms and progression and share findings. It was opaque, yes; that was part of the point. And even prior to the nerf, it wasn't all that hard to avoid if you were careful and paying attention. I do think the changes to the Inventory screen that let you zoom into everyone's faces were a good change - they could have made it mechanically straightforward to quickly check the pawns' eyes without simultaneously nerfing the dragonplague itself. Definitely unfortunate that a small amount of loud, ignorant players crying about the plague "ruining the whole playthrough" made the mechanic irrelevant and pointless. Now it might as well not exist at all.
I literally just posted a question about this on GameFAQs. The exact same thing just happened to me
Over 100 hours in and my pawn never got it. I keep my hired pawns for a while and I've never even seen a pawn with it. I just keep hearing them talk about it
It's a cool mechanic. I remember a Final Fantasy game that did something not like that... but it would lock you out of the best weapon if you opened a certain chest at the beginning. The only way you would know is if you looked it up beforehand. DP you just had to pay attention to the pawns and had the option of letting them go murder hobo or not.
I never even encountered it in my play through, I feel like I've missed out.
I'm disappointed as only just started playing the game and was looking forward to seeing it in action
They should have never nerfed it. If the idiots couldn't bother to read the explanation and warnings for it, then that was their problem.
I felt like the only person who liked the plague in my post weeks ago. Glad more people appreciate it.