Players have now had a few days to enjoy the world of Capcom’s action RPG Dragon’s Dogma 2 since its release. The expansive world full of things to discover and complex interwoven narratives have thrilled many, but the game’s most dangerous (and mysterious) system is throwing players into a frenzy.
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Dragonsplague is a mysterious disease quickly spreading throughout Dragon’s Dogma 2, and if not handled properly it can have dire, consequences. If you pay attention and catch the early signs of the Dragonsplague illness, you can avoid disaster. Here’s exactly what you need to look out for to stop Dragon’s Dogma 2’s infectious disease.
What is Dragonsplague?
Even before the release of Dragon’s Dogma 2, Capcom revealed the existence of Dragonsplague. It is a contagious disease that only infects pawns (the NPC party members of the game). Capcom warned that when the disease reaches a terminal stage it will result in a “devastating calamity.”
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Now that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is out and in the hands of players, we know what that calamity entails. If a player rests while having a pawn in their party that has reached the terminal stage of Dragonsplague, a cutscene will play in which that pawn transforms into a dragon and massacres the population of the area you’re currently in— including merchants and quest-giving NPCs.
This means that if not handled properly, Dragonsplague can halt a player’s progress t due to important NPCs being dead. Of course, players can revive NPCs by using Wakestones, but it will take a lot of time and resources to revive the entire population of a town like the bustling Vernwroth. Wakestone Shards, the item needed to craft Wakestones, are incredibly rare and only found by scouring the world. Players can also find the Eternal Wakestone, which will revive multiple NPCs at once, but that requires completing the difficult side quest “A Game of Wits.” So while not strictly irreversible, the consequences of Dragonsplagye are hard to fix.
What causes Dragonsplague?
The disease is spread primarily through recruiting pawns. Infected pawns can be hired while encountering them in the world or by recruiting them through the rift. Once an infected pawn is in your party, they will have a chance of spreading the disease to the other pawns in your group.
The big question is how the disease starts in the first place—there are a few theories but none of them are verifiable at the moment. The first theory is that pawns can be infected when fighting dragons. The second theory is that Dragonsplague infects a pawn after completing the true ending of Dragon’s Dogma 2 and starting a new game without changing your main pawn. This would mean whoever was the first player to complete Dragon’s Dogma 2’s true ending and start a New Game+ playthrough is patient zero, because of the shared online elements of the game. But regardless of the cause, how do you avoid Dragonsplague?
How to spot and cure Dragonsplague
While the game does not list Dragonsplague as a status effect, there are still ways to recognize that a pawn in your party carries the disease. You cannot tell if a pawn is infected before hiring them, but once you do hire an infected pawn, a tutorial for Dragonsplague will pop up on the screen. If you want to avoid infecting your own pawns, you need to dismiss the recently hired pawn as soon as possible.
But after your first encounter with the disease, it becomes more difficult to determine which pawns are infected, as you won’t get the pop-up anymore. There are some visual cues that you should look out for. If you are able to maneuver the camera to look at a pawn’s eyes, they will have a red glow if carrying the Dragonsplague virus. The eyes will also subtly pulse every few seconds. Some players have also reported that infected pawns will clutch their heads or kneel in pain when idle.
As the disease progresses, infected pawns will become more brash in combat, like they’re motivated by a kind of bloodlust. They will then start to disobey orders, and start saying things like “Don’t tell me what to do!” There is no indication of how long a pawn needs to be infected before they turn into a dragon and wipe out a town, so it’s better to err on the side of caution and dismiss infected pawns as soon as possible. If your main pawn is infected, then the only way to cure them is to kill them by throwing them into water or letting them die in combat and then summoning them from the Rift. Some players have also reported that a main pawn will be cured once they have infected another pawn in another player’s game.
While we still don’t know everything about Dragonsplague, it is clear that the best way to keep the disease at bay is to pay close attention to your pawns.