Wrapping your head around Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s crafting is the key to taking full advantage of its RPG mechanics. This guide will explain how it all works.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is finally here. After 10 years without a new entry in the franchise, our review calls the game ‘worth the wait’.
A colorful cast of companions and intriguing factions to flesh out the world are pretty standard fare for BioWare. What may surprise players is the new direction that combat takes and how some familiar RPG systems play into it.
One of those systems is Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s crafting and we’re going to give a rundown of how to unlock the feature and the different options for improving your gear.
When do you unlock crafting in Dragon Age: The Veilguard?
To unlock Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s crafting mechanics, you’ll need to progress through the main story. Start with beating the prologue and completing your first trip into Arlathan Forrest.
After completing The Singing Blade quest, you’ll return to The Lighthouse and be able to make your first trip into the Crossroads. Here, you’ll meet the Caretaker who serves as your spiritual smith.
From this point on, you’ll be able to access crafting by heading to the main courtyard of the Lighthouse and summoning the Caretaker. This gives you access to the two main crafting options for the game.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard crafting – Upgrades explained
Upgrading gear is the bulk standard crafting mechanic in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. It works similarly to most other RPGs. You simply select a piece of gear and use a set amount of resources found in the world to increase its stats. Your Companions’ gear can be upgraded in the same manner.
Different gear gains different stat increases for each individual Upgrade. The corresponding stats are as follows:
- Weapons: Damage and Stagger
- Armor: Defense and Ability damage
- Belts: Healing
Each piece of gear can be upgraded a total of nine times to a maximum of level 10. In order to increase the maximum level that you can upgrade your gear, you need to increase your Caretaker Power.
The Caretaker’s Power can be increased by finding Mementos in the game’s various locations. Progressing the Caretaker’s level also unlocks the second pillar of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s crafting mechanics.
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Dragon Age: The Veilguard crafting – Enchantments explained
Enchantments are unlocked upon leveling up your Caretaker Power to its fourth tier. At this point, you can apply one Enchantment to each piece of gear including Rings and Amulets
Enchantments are weapon augments similar to the innate modifiers that you’ll find on gear. You can add a single Enchantment to a piece of gear with effects like adding elemental damage, increasing your resource generation, buffing your overall health, and more.
Interestingly, Enchantments can also be equipped to your Abilities and they’ll trigger when they’re used. Similarly to Upgrades, you’ll unlock increasingly effective Enchantments as you level up your Caretaker Power.
There is one more element of gear progression in Dragon Age: The Veilguard that is adjacent to crafting but is not available via the Caretaker.
Increasing gear rarity in Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Gear in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is divided into different tiers of rarity. Every piece of gear in the game is technically individual but you’ll come across multiple instances of the same piece of gear found in chests or available for purchase at vendors. Finding and acquiring a duplicate increases the rarity of the corresponding armor, weapon, ring, or amulet.
There are five tiers of rarity in the game and they are as follows:
- Common
- Uncommon
- Rare
- Epic
- Legendary
Increasing the rarity of a piece of gear boosts it to your current maximum upgrade level as well as adding a new cap for its base stats. More importantly, it adds a new augment to the gear such as damage bonuses, defensive boosts, and more.
There are also Unique pieces of gear with game-changing effects that can become the cornerstone for entire builds. Unique gear cannot be Upgraded but it can be Enchanted.
That’s everything you need to know about crafting in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. If you’re looking for more tips to improve your journey in Thedas, check out our other coverage.