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Discover everything you need to know about the best, most efficient way to start your adventure across the Living Lands in Avowed.
Embarking on a new role-playing adventure like Avowed is an exciting journey, but it can also be a bit daunting. Whether you’re a seasoned RPG player or a newcomer, making the right choices early in the game can have a significant impact on your experience. From creating your character to understanding the world of Eora, the decisions you make during your first steps will shape your gameplay, story progression, and overall enjoyment. In this guide, we’ll explore tips, strategies, and insights to help you get the best start in Avowed, ensuring you dive into the game fully prepared and ready for the adventure that awaits. Let’s break down how you can make the most of your initial hours in this deep, immersive world.
The Best Start in Avowed a How-to Guide
Like many RPGs, the many choices you have to make at the beginning of Avowed can seem overwhelming when you’re playing the game for the first time. Stepping out into the world, with a map that is completely fogged over, can be exciting, but also daunting. You’re going to sink a lot of hours into this game, and avoiding mistakes at the beginning can save you a lot of headaches later on.
Here are our tips on how to get the best start in Avowed:
- Don’t Stress Character Creation: Background is role-play-centric and attributes can be changed.
- Learning Combat: Each combat encounter practice timing your blocks, parries, and dodges.
- Best Starting Build: Fighter offers good survivability, Ranger is OP starting at Level 5.
- Best Weapon Combos: The best weapons for each class on your front and back bar.
- Don’t Buy Weapons at the Docks: Weapons drop everywhere, spend your gold on consumables and maps.
- Get Unique Gear: Your priority should be getting unique weapons and gear from sidequests and exploration.
- Upgrade your Gear: Provides the best damage and defensive boost in the early game.
- Find Totem Collectibles: Combine six fragments and a base to unlock some fantastic passives.
1. Don’t Stress Character Creation
The character creator in Avowed has all of the choices that most fans of the RPG genre will be very familiar with. Race, appearance, background, attributes, difficulty settings, and more. In many games, your choice of background is synonymous with your class. You may be restricted to certain weapons or certain abilities.
Significantly, this is not the case in Avowed. Your choice of background does affect your character background and will unlock unique dialogue options when talking to NPCs. It will also determine the weapon first find and equip at the start of the tutorial section and the distribution of attribute points in the character creator.
However, even in the character creator itself, you can move these attribute points around as you like! Additionally, you can change weapons as soon as you find another. And there are plenty of weapons that drop along the way.
Consequently, the only thing you are locked into when creating your character is the role-play and dialogue aspect of your background. Other than that, you have free reign to change your abilities and attributes at any time for a small gold fee.
2. Learning Combat
The combat gameplay in Avwoed isn’t super complicated, but will be challenging on higher levels of difficulty. Therefore, at the beginning of the game you’ll want to immediately start learning the mechanics when fighting lower-level enemies. Instead of just charging in and swinging, watch for enemy ‘tells’ that indicate their attacks, so you can practice timing maneuvers like blocking, parrying, and dodging. Your execution won’t matter too much in the beginning, but becoming skilled at them will make defeating stronger bosses much less difficult.
As you’re in the midst of combat, firing off abilities, keeping track of your stamina, and dealing with enemy attacks, don’t forget about your companions. You’ll meet your first companion, Kai, as soon as you reach the docks of Paradis. He’s a great starting companion and tank, with an ability that can instantly draw aggro. This can be a live saver, and you should trigger it any time you’re getting too much pressure from a strong enemy. You’ll eventually meet up to four companions in Avowed, with two joining your group in the first region.
Finally, our last significant tip for getting the best start with combat in Avowed is to always pre-buff before fights with food consumables. Most edible items in Avowed will boost either health or essence regeneration. Furthermore, you can eat more than one at a time and stack the buff timer. Or stack the effect by eating different items. Gobble some of these up before heading into a big fight, and you’ll have good health regeneration already in place. Save your potions for burst healing, and use these easy to get food consumables first.
3. Best Starting Build
Avowed has three main class skill trees: Fighter, Ranger, and Wizard. The overall gameplay identity of each tree will be familiar to most RPG players. Fighters are tanky, with a good balance of offense and defense. Rangers are bow users, agile assassins that can strike from the shadows or strafe large bosses. Wizards are spellcasters, often sacrificing physical constitution for powerful magic. They can deal great damage but are also physically weak.
In many RPGs, once you pick one of these playstyles, can mean that you will mostly stay within the relevant skill tree. Moreover, sometimes these classes can lock you into certain weapons or playstyles. However, Avowed offers players a lot of versatility with the weapon types and abilities you choose. Starting in one skill tree does not mean you are locked into it. In fact, strong builds will likely want to take abilities, and especially passives, from at least a couple of trees.
Finally, as we mentioned above, you can choose to refund your skill points at any time. It will cost a bit of gold, but you can then respec your character however you like.
4. Best Weapon Combos
To get the best start in Avowed, your priority will be surviviability and strength, and your choice of weapons will play a large role in keeping you alive. You can have two weapon combinations in Avowed. One main-hand and off-hand set, and a second main-hand and off-hand set. You can swap between these at any point, even in the middle of combat.
Additionally, there will be a variety of heavy, two-handed weapons that some melee builds may want to use. However, equipping one of those will obviously take up both spots on one of your weapon sets. Here are the weapon combinations we recommend when starting out in Avowed:
- Warrior: One handed Sword and Shield on front bar. Pistol and Shield on back bar.
- Ranger: Dual wield Daggers (or one-handed Sword and off-hand Dagger) on front bar. Bow for range on back bar.
- Wizard: Wand and Shield on front bar. Grimoire and Pistol on back bar.
5. Don’t Buy Weapons at the Docks
After the tutorial section, which takes place on a starting island, you’ll be transported to the harbor outside of the city of Paradis. Just up the docks you’ll find your first group of three vendors. You should have a small amount of gold built up after looting on the starting island, and it might be tempting to spend it here. Unless there is a weapon type that hasn’t dropped for you yet and you absolutely must have it, don’t bother. Weapons drop regularly when you defeat enemies, and any type you don’t already have, you likely will soon.
Here are your merchant priorities at the beginning of Avowed:
- Consumables – Both food ingredients (health regen) and grenades.
- Maps – Mark the locations of treasure and hints for collectibles.
- Lockpicks – These drop as loot, but not often. Stock up whenever you see them for sale.
- What to Sell – Try to stick to only selling gems. It’s better to break down your common weapons for crafting materials.
Eating food ingredients before jumping into a fight is a great way to pre-buff with health regen in Avowed. You’ll find ingredients to gather and drinks to loot all over the world, but will probably need to restock occasionally. Grenades serve two purposes: throwables in combat, and as utility in exploration. Certain grenades can do elemental damage. And that fire can also be useful in burning down spider webs.
6. Get Unique Gear
Weapons in Avowed come in familiar qualities – common, fine, exceptional, superb, and legendary. Furthermore, all of the regular weapons that drop in the starting region of Dawnshore will be of common quality. However, the exceptions to this rule are Unique weapons and gear. As the label implies, these gear pieces all have unique names and are marked with gold/yellow text. When you first find them, they will start at common quality but can be upgraded with crafting materials. Even better, they come with two Enchantment bonuses. Furthermore, the primary enchantment can be upgraded to one of two options.
Unique weapons are always more powerful and will continue to be so as you invest in upgrading them. Therefore, these weapons should be your priority to find. These weapons drop in a variety of places including main quests, side quests, bounties, and treasure chests. Here are some of the best early-game unique weapons you can find in Dawnshore:
- Unflinching Duty (Shield) – Complete the ‘Message From Afar’ main quest.
- Anextli’s Grimoire – Looted from a skeleton south of Berath’s Gateway.
- Last Light of Day (One-handed Sword) – Complete the ‘Dawntreader’ side quest.
- Caeroc’s Pride (Pistol) – Looted from bounty target Luandi
Additionally, you can find a wide variety of armor, rings, amulets, and trinkets which are unique. The easiest early unique piece to get is a pair of Archaist’s Boosts. These boost health restoration and movement speed and can be found by climbing the Lighthouse just to the west of the docks.
7. Upgrade your Gear
If you’re feeling out of your depth in combat, and struggling against enemies that hit too hard or have too much HP, your problem may not be your build, but your gear. Even unique weapons and armor will struggle against the stronger enemies you find on Castol’s Folly. Before changing the difficulty, however (which you can do at any time), first invest in upgrading your gear using the workbench in camp.
To start upgrading your gear in Avowed, you are going to need crafting materials – a lot of them. You can buy crafting materials from merchants, but the cost will add up quickly. Instead, the best way to get crafting materials in Avowed is by deconstructing all of the regular weapon drops you loot from enemies. Weapons drop everywhere, and these materials will start to add up.
Furthermore, only invest your crafting materials in upgrading unique weapons you’re fairly certain you’ll want to continue using going forward. Once you upgrade a piece of gear, you can’t get those materials back.
It might seem counter-intuitive, but upgrading your gear can be more of a damage and defensive boost in the early game of Avowed than extra attributes or skill points. Don’t neglect this crucial mechanic!
8. Find Totem Fragments for Passive Boosts
The best collectible items to find in Avowed are totem fragments, which can be assembled into a sculpture you can place at your camp and activate. The are four totems in Avowed, one for each region. Furthermore, they have all broken into six fragments, plus a base. You must have the base before you can assemble the totem and place it in your camp. However, you can collect the items in any order and the smaller fragments will stay in your inventory.
The reason you want to go to the trouble of finding all of these pieces is because each piece comes with a unique passive bonus. After you have found the totem base, place it on the stone in camp, and any pieces you have already collected will automatically be restored to the totem. Activate the totem, and you will receive all of the passive bonuses available.
Additionally, only one totem can be activated at a time in Avowed. However, the available passives on incomplete totems will apply, so long as you have the base and activate the totem.
As you’re exploring Dawnshore, always keep an eye out for the golden glow that highlights a totem piece. Normally these pieces will be sitting out in the open, and not locked behind treasure chests. Additionally, if you are having trouble in your search you can purchase a map from Sanza’s Emporium in Paradis Hightown to facilitate your search.
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