Avowed Beginner's Guide: Quick Tips and Tricks to make it in the Living Lands

Even for veterans of the Pillars of Eternity games, Obsidian Entertainment's Avowed promises a new experience. Taking place in the Living Lands, a heretofore unexplored part of Eora, Avowed also takes the form of a first-person RPG with a decidedly different approach to combat and exploration. With that in mind, we've come up with a few quick tips to help you find your feet as you enter the world of Avowed.

Find Your Path and Flex Often

Avowed eschews the class system of previous Pillars of Eternity games in favor of a more freeform character progression system built around assigning points to Attributes and Abilities, with a lot of baked in.

Attributes are your standard stats that represent your Might, Constitution, Dexterity, Perception, Intelligence, and Resolve. These give you statistical bonuses, like boosts to your maximum health, carry weight, and magical essence for casting spells. Attributes also unlock certain dialog options (for example, a high Might score might allow you to intimidate someone into doing your bidding during a quest).

Abilities are spent freely and unlock passive and active benefits in combat and exploration. The unlocks are often gated based on your character level, and though they're organized around Fighter, Ranger, and Wizard trees, you can put your points in any ability so long as you meet its requirements.

It's also quite easy to try new things as you play Avowed, as you can reset your ability points for a nominal fee. Use that fee to try new skills and builds to find your ideal approach to combat, or even tailor your build to surmount specific challenges or gear.

Unique gear pieces are valuable bits of kit, as they carry distinct perks that give an effect that standard gear pieces don't. Unique weapons even have a configurable enchantment, which you can activate at your Party Camp in exchange for upgrade materials. Changing the enchantment will change a Unique weapon's perk effects, usually to adjust its specialization towards one combat style or another.

Wear the Best You've Got

Speaking of gear, Avowed is also flexible when it comes to letting you wear what you want to. You can use any armor and weapons you like, though certain attributes (like Perception) will influence how much damage you'll do with various weapon types.

Meanwhile, heavier armor gains a bonus to damage reduction, but exacts a penalty to your maximum stamina and maximum essence. You can reduce this penalty by putting points into abilities from the Fighter and Wizard trees, but the system will allow you to become a wizard in heavy armor or a melee fighter wearing robes, if that's how you want to roll.

Gear quality also plays a major role in managing combat challenge in Avowed. Gear has a quality rating ranging from Common (green) to Legendary (orange), and enemies are given challenge ratings along the same scale. Fighting enemies with a higher quality rating than your current gear will result in you taking more damage and dealing less.

You'll want to go to your Party Camp regularly to upgrade your gear with crafting materials scattered throughout the world to keep up. Given that these materials can be in somewhat limited supply, try to focus on keeping your best or favorite weapons and armor upgraded as far up the quality tree as possible, to avoid suffering disadvantages in combat. You'll also be able to buy better gear from stores (for a high price) or find it out in the world as you enter higher-leveled areas. That said, upgrading is the only way keep unique gear items relevant as you move through the game.

Scour The Living Lands

Keeping your favorite gear pieces upgraded will take a lot in the way of materials. You'll get most of your stash of Paradisan Ladder and assorted gewgaws by foraging around each of Avowed's large regional zones. Your minimap will indicate most items. You'll also find materials in chests and containers tucked away in various nooks and crannies.

Beyond crafting and upgrade materials, you'll also find useful collectibles, like Totem Pieces, which can be assembled at your Party Camp for lasting passive benefits.

Home is where Party Camp is

Everywhere you can find a large pillar of green Adra stone in a zone, you'll be able to set up Party Camp and rest for the night. Doing this restores your health and essence to maximum, and allows you access to the party stash, enchantment table, gear upgrade workbench, and DLC costumes.

You'll also be able to speak to your party members, gaining insight into their character, hearing their feedback on major decisions and story beats, and even listening to their opinions on their peers.

Conveniently, you can fast travel directly to any discovered Adra pillar and instantly set up Party Camp, then fast travel back to your last location when you take down the Party Camp. It's a convenient site you can use at will.

That's just a handful of tips to help get you started on your journey in the Living Lands! Check out more of our Avowed guides and the full review!