Facebook
Reddit
Email
Get your adventure in the Living Lands started out right by following our best Top 10 Beginners Tips for Avowed!
As an exciting new entry in the fantasy RPG genre, Avowed is set to captivate both seasoned gamers and newcomers alike with its immersive world, deep lore, and rich gameplay mechanics. Whether you’re just stepping into the world of Eora or you’re looking to enhance your journey, this guide will walk you through the top 10 essential tips to help you get started. From character creation to combat strategies, these tips will give you the edge you need to navigate the challenges ahead and make the most of your adventure in this epic fantasy realm.
Top 10 Tips for Beginners in Avowed
Avowed is a new first-person RPG set in the rich, fantasy world of Eora, developed by Obsidian Entertainment. Set in the same universe as Pillars of Eternity, the game features a deep narrative, immersive environments, and tactical combat. Known as the Envoy, your custom character will embark on a journey through a vibrant world filled with political intrigue, ancient mysteries, and dangerous foes.
The starting area in Avowed serves as a small tutorial, but soon enough you’ll be on the docks of Paradis with the region of Dawnshore open before you. Avowed has large areas to explore, with all kinds of treasures to loot and secrets to find. On top of that, you’ll have to manage your inventory, discover crafting, and determine your weapon, playstyle, and abilities. It can be overwhelming making all these choices in the beginning, but our beginners tips will keep you from making mistakes you might regret.
Here are 10 essential tips and tricks when you begin a new game in Avowed:
- Selecting Class and Build: Rangers is OP, but you can easily respec your build at any time.
- Healing: The health regen you get when consuming food is a lifesaver. Safe the potions for burst healing.
- Secret Doors: Always have elemental magic or elemental grenades available to open blocked passageways.
- Mix and Match Skill Trees: Don’t limit yourself to a single skill tree, branch out for a balanced build.
- Making Gold: Sell gems, decon weapon loot, and save gold for adra.
- Vertical Exploration: Always look for opportunities to climb up and discover new things.
- Use Companions: Companions offer survivability and exploration benefits.
- Merchants and Vendors: Always buy lockpicks, treasure and totem maps, and adra if in stock.
- Attribute Points: Don’t restrict yourself to one skill tree, you can use your points anywhere.
- Your Game Priorities: Explore, find unique weapons, upgrade your gear, find totem fragments, and have fun!
1. Selecting Class and Build
The strongest beginner build you can choose when starting out in Avowed is to play as a Ranger. Specifically, the skill Shadowing Beyond, which grants you stealth invisibility for a short period. You can use the ability in a variety of ways, including to strategically retreat or to revive your companions. For example, one of the godlike abilities you receive will allow you to cast a spell that revives fallen companions within a certain radius. However, this ability has a longer cast time. If you are the only one left standing in a fight, enemies can and will interrupt you. Going invisible will give you the breather you need.
Furthermore, the Shadowing Beyond ability can be combined with the stealth attack godlike ability for an easy opening strike. This ability can only be used from stealth when striking at an enemy’s back. Moreover, it’s incredibly powerful and can one-shot most regular enemies and will deal great damage against bosses. Therefore, you can pop Shadowing Beyond, sneak into the middle of a camp, and take out a good chunk of boss health before anyone knows you’re there.
However, the length of your invisibility is limited by your essence (magic) pool. Consequently, a strong stealth Ranger build will also want to take attributes and use gear that can increase your essence pool.
2. Healing
Players familiar with the RPG genre will naturally want to prioritize using healing potions often because they are generally the most rewarding when it comes to surviving tough battles. However, in Avowed you want to prioritize using food, not potions because of the health regen they provide. As you’re exploring the region of Dawnshore you’ll discover a wide variety of ingredients you can harvest. These can all be consumed in their raw form and usually will boost either health or essence regeneration. Moreover, you can increase your stock very easily at vendors, where ingredients are incredibly cheap.
The best way to use food consumables in Avowed is by pre-buffing before a fight. The game has no limit on the amount you can eat or drink at a time, so you can load up for great health regeneration. Furthermore, you can also stack consumable buffs, like drinking ale for max health and grog which will heal you based on debuffs removed.
So, the second most important top 10 tips for beginners in Avowed is to save your potions for burst healing! Before heading into a fight, pre-buff with food for health regeneration and additional buffs.
3. Secret Doors
Exploration in Avowed can be incredibly rewarding because of all the secrets you can discover and treasures you can find. However, at times you can find your way blocked by frosty iron bars, spider webs, crumbling walls, and more. To keep making your way forward, you need to either keep some specific grenades on hand or have the right spells on hand.
Avowed places no restrictions on class or weapon use. Even if you’re playing a strong physical melee build with two-handed weapons, you can still use magic at any time. Consequently, there is no penalty for keeping a wand or grimoire in your inventory at all times. Even if you’re not playing a spellcaster build, you can use basic elemental magic spells at any time to burn away webs or burst freeze metal gates.
However, casting spells will also use up some of your essence pool and there may be times when you don’t want to sacrifice that. In those cases, you can likely use one of the many different types of grenades that you can find in Avowed. Magran’s Fury will deal a burst of fire, Eye of Rymrgrand can freeze water and burst open metal gates, and electric lily seeds can activate devices. Although these can also be useful in combat, make sure you save a couple for exploration.
4. Mix and Match Skill Trees
The combat and ability system in Avowed provides you with a lot of versatility, and you should take advantage of it! Just because the ability skill trees are divided into Fighter, Ranger, and Wizard does not mean you have to limit yourself. Depending on your weapon and playstyle choices you may want to focus primarily on one skill tree, but there are great benefits in all.
For example, even a sword and shield Fighter will want to go into the Ranger skill tree and take the Parry passive, which allows for perfect blocks. Furthermore, a dagger-wielding Ranger will want the Devastating Criticals from the Fighter tree to increase their burst damage.
Consequently, our fourth most important top 10 tips for beginners in Avowed is that when you’re starting, look to take two active skills and advance them. Then spend your other points on passives which don’t need to be slotted.
5. Making Gold
The best way to make gold in Avowed is by exploring, looting every copper and sterling you can pick up, and selling all of the gems you can find. Gems are the best way to get gold in Avowed, and you’ll mostly find them by exploring, though sometimes you might get one as a quest reward. Additionally, bounties are a great way to earn gold, as well. Check out the bounty board in Paradis once you’ve leveled up a bit and you can earn 500 gold per bounty.
Just as important as making gold is saving what you have! It can be tempting in the early game to buy weapons from the vendors right at the docks but don’t bother. All of those common weapons will drop like loot rain as you fight enemies. More importantly, your overall goal will be to get unique weapons that you can claim from gold treasure chests, sidequests, and some bounties.
Additionally, once you’ve got a bit of gold in your pockets, don’t bother selling all of your weapon loot to vendors. Instead, break down those weapons straight from your inventory screen. This will not only decrease your carry weight, meaning you can stay out and loot more but will give you crafting materials. Those materials are important because they are how you will level up your unique weapons and armor in Avowed. Don’t waste your time and resources upgrading common weapons, save it for the good stuff.
6. Vertical Exploration
Exploration is a huge part of the game in Avowed with lots of caverns, cisterns, ruins, secret passageways, and more to discover. But our next most important top 10 tips for beginners in Avowed, is don’t forget to look up! Climbing is essential for finding your way around and seeing everything the game has to offer. Whether you are scaling rocks and jumping across cliffs in the wild, or climbing ladders and jumping over rooftops in the city, the game is incredibly vertical.
Additionally, the jump can be a bit deceptive and you can often cross wider gaps than you think. Get a bit of a running start for extra distance. Additionally, if you’re having a problem crossing water, use the Eye of Rymrgrand to freeze a circle of water right next to a platform you can reach. Swim over, stand on the ice, and you can grab the edge and climb up.
Finally, if exploration is feeling a bit slow to you, keep an eye out for the Fresh Water consumable. It will grant you a 25% boost to speed, so you can unfog the map a bit faster.
7. Use Companions
Companions in Avowed are vital to your survivability and exploration as you venture out in the dangerous and deadly Living Lands. There are four total companions you can recruit. Their skill tree is available from the same Abilities screen you use for your character, although their abilities are much fewer and simpler to follow. Overall, when progressing your companions you want to focus on two skills and passives, particularly ones that reduce the cooldowns on their active abilities.
Kai is the first companion you will gain, and he will join you shortly after you land on the docks of Paradis. He is going to be your tank, with one helpful skill that will cause him to jump in front of you and take aggro for a limited time. Additionally, he has a utility ability that you can command him to use to deal fire damage to things like spider webs in the environment. Thus, adding you to your exploration.
Marius is the second companion you’ll meet, later on in the first region of Dawnshore. He is your ranged bow user with high damage and an immobilization ability that will root enemies in place. He also has a nice exploration and combat utility that will highlight enemies, items, and loot within a certain range.
You won’t meet Giatta until you reach the second major region in Avowed, and she’ll really change the game for you with her healing abilities and lightning utility.
Finally, keep an eye out for the UI popup that indicates when companions want to talk. Head to camp and speak with each. Ask questions, and discover more about them. Help them out with a quest whenever they ask. Engaging with your companions can reward you with ‘training’, which grant permanent bonuses to attributes and more.
8. Merchants and Vendors
Your priority buys when visiting merchants and vendors are as follows:
- Adra
- Treasure maps
- Totem maps
- Consumables
- Lockpicks
- Grenades
Adra is hugely important for upgrading your unique weapons and armor and is also very expensive given the quantities you’ll need. Sell those gems to get your gold, and stock up on adra whenever you can.
Additionally, there are two types of maps in Avowed: treasure and totems. Totem fragments are especially important because when they are assembled and activated in your camp, they can grant you powerful combat bonus passives.
Consumables, as we mentioned above, are incredibly cheap and a great way to stay alive. Additionally, some ingredients you can cook into stronger meals while at camp. Raw meat is an especially easy ingredient to roast at a fire and increase the healing it provides.
Finally, always buy lockpicks from any merchant you can find them out. Lockpicks can be found and looted from enemies and the environment in Avowed, but you may be surprised at how few and far between they can be. You’ll all two quickly run out, especially at the beginning of the game, so stock up on them whenever you get a chance.
9. Attribute Points
In our next top 10 tips for beginners in Avowed, we’re going to be talking about Attribute points. In character creation, different background choices will present you with a different spread of attribute points. However, this is mostly window dressing because you can respec your attribute points at any time.
Overall, in Avowed different build archetypes should focus on prioritizing certain loadouts:
- Might and Resolve for tank or high survival fighter
- Dexterity and Perception for burst rangers and stealth players
- Intellect and Perception for range spell casters
Furthermore, attribute points can also unlock unique dialogue options, allowing you to gain new insights into character motivations or lore. It can be tempting to spread your attribute points out, but try not to dilute them too much.
You can also use consuambles that give 300-second buffs to boost overall stats in Avowed. This also includes conversations when talking with NPCs, so if you can’t pass an important speech check due to low perception, simply craft some brew and drink it beforehand.
10. Your Game Priorities
In summary, when you start playing Avowed, these should be your top priorities:
- Buy maps and other quest items from Vendors
- Get a unique weapon by completing a side quest
- Only upgrade unique weapons and gear.
- Make sure you are the right armor weight before investing heavily.
- Once you reach Level 5, use your ability point to unlock Shadowing Beyond for a stealth boost.
- Always be on the lookout for totem fragments while exploring.
If you find yourself struggling with combat, try investing in upgrading your gear. It might not seem like much of a jump in stats at first, but it can really make a difference in the early levels. Additionally, you can always change the difficulty (up or down) at any time.
Finally, when playing an expansive RPG like Avowed, never forget to just have fun. The Living Lands are a wild world, with diverse and fantastical environments. Exploring these spaces is very rewarding, and you should always prioritize the journey over the destination!
Looking For More About Avowed?
Thank you for reading the Avowed: Top 10 Tips for Beginners Guide. We provide the latest news and create guides for Avowed. Also, watch me play games on Twitch or visit my YouTube channel!
