In this guide, I will explain how to farm items, materials, experience, and money effectively in Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen.
Despite being an incomplete game, Dragon’s Dogma still offers hundreds of hours of fun. It has a plethora of items for you to gather and optional objectives to complete. Its achievements are also quite fun to obtain, and gaining levels up to level 200 is made much easier with farming.
There’s a multitude of weapons and armor to unlock. In fact, it’s almost impossible to list them all here. And each of them can be upgraded, making them exceptional in every regard. In order to do so, you must farm upgrade materials.
Achieving all the trophies, upgrading every weapon and armor set you like, and becoming wealthier than the king himself can be quite enjoyable things to do in Dragon’s Dogma.
In this guide, I will explain simply how to have fun and raise your level and wealth in the game. Please note that this guide contains spoilers for the late-game sections of Dragon’s Dogma. Proceed with caution.
The story
Dragon’s Dogma has a story that wouldn’t take more than about 12 hours to complete. You can farm lots of items and money while completing many side quests and story quests, as well. I suggest obtaining a pickaxe at the start of the game (they’re very common items) to mine for ore.
In all honesty, farming is less significant for completing the main storyline. It’s in the end-game sections that you can truly experience the game in a different way. But before getting to that, you must achieve a high level of affinity with Fournival, a rich character from Gran Soren.
Be mindful to not gain too much affinity, because then the game will automatically mark him as your romantic interest. But if you fancy him, go all out. No one judges. But if you prefer someone else, gain the maximum affinity for them and give them a high priority to make them your partner.
Anyway, gaining a high level of affinity with Fournival allows you to purchase some very important items, post-game. They are the Banker’s Periapt and the Veteran’s Periapt. Respectively, they significantly boost the money and experience gained from killed enemies (2x more money and XP, respectively) for five minutes. In order to gain his friendship, complete the quests given by him and give him some gifts while the main story progresses.
Reaching the post-game sections
After killing Grigori, the dragon, and reclaiming your heart, the whole world will change. It will become gloomier and stronger, rarer enemies will spawn all over the map. It’s truly a drastic change and the game becomes much more difficult and subsequently, much more enjoyable.
Seek the notice boards from the game (for example, the village’s and the encampment’s notice boards) to obtain difficult but highly rewarding quests. You will have to face rare and powerful enemies in these missions.
Before you begin combat with them, use a Banker’s Periapt and a Veteran’s Periapt to boost gained money and experience. After killing them, loot the rare upgrade materials they drop.
I will now suggest a few locations you must visit to find rare and powerful enemies that will reward you with ultra-rare materials to upgrade your gear with, and a lot of money and experience (again, be sure to use Banker’s and Veteran’s Periapts accordingly).
- A Gorechimera among other rare enemies is present in West Gransys.
- Drakes and a Hydra will spawn in southern Gransys.
- And rarer variants of common enemies, like hellhounds and semi-unique saurians will be present all over Gransys.
Let’s now turn our attention to the Everfall.
Everfall
Exploring the Everfall is very important for farming, and it’s arguably the best location to do so. On each level of this labyrinth, there will be powerful bosses and rare enemies. They will reward you with extraordinary sums of gold and experience, even more so with the periapts.
Before achieving the main objective and turning it in (that is, collecting Wakestone Shards), farm as much as you can. Take your time and explore the Everfall. It’s an intriguing and important location, and there will also be lots of treasure chests.
And of course, we can’t forget the Ur-Dragon. The most powerful enemy of the game. Killing it requires a ton of work, and your character needs to be super-powerful. But it’s very rewarding to kill him because many of your gear will be instantly upgraded to the Dragon Forged level, which is the highest level.
You will need the most powerful items, fully upgraded, in order to conquer the Bitterblack Isle DLC, which is a whole other experience.
The Conclusion
After collecting items and gaining levels, you can proceed to progress to the Bitterblack Isle expansion, and after that, your next playthrough. Using the periapts and grinding is very important for surviving in BBI and the Hard Mode, which is a difficulty level for New Game +.
