Progression, Items, and Companions in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Hello everyone,

Today, we’re excited to dive into Progression, Items, and Companions with this blog and the accompanying videos to help you better understand how to customize Rook, companion and create a truly unique party.

Item Progression

In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Rook can equip up to nine items, including armor, helmet, belt, trinket, rings, main hand, off-hand and alternate weapons. These items can be purchased from faction vendors—where better reputation unlocks higher-tier gear—or found through exploration and quests.

Items range in rarity from common to legendary, with rarer items offering unique stats and abilities.

The Caretaker’s Workshop at Rook’s base is a new feature that allows players to upgrade items. As you progress, you’ll improve the Workshop by collecting Mementos found in the world or at shops. Higher Workshop levels unlock better upgrades and enchantments that impact abilities or weapon stats.

Items can also be enhanced by collecting duplicates, which increases their rarity, improves stats, and grants additional enchantments. You can even add up to three runes to Rook’s lyrium dagger, each granting different passive bonuses.

The Caretaker’s Workshop in the Lighthouse allows Rook and their companions to upgrade their gear with various enchantments and stat boosts. Each item or ability can hold one enchantment, and you can swap them as you refine your build.

Rook’s initial faction choice influences their appearance in casual wear, but any armor can be ‘transmogged’ to resemble other gear collected along the way. This flexibility ensures you can look stylish while boosting stats.

Skill Progression

As a part of leveling up your class, you’ll need to complete missions, find codex entries, and explore the world. Each new level grants health, stats, and skill points.

You can spend skill points to unlock abilities in the Constellation Skill Tree to customize your character's growth. Each class and companion aslo has a unique specializations, which become available at level 20.

The four types of skills are:

• Traits – Activated by specific button actions and can something like a powerful counterattack after a successful defense.
• Passives – Always active, providing ongoing boosts to abilities, defense, or attack. For example, adding +10% necrotic damage to your auto attacks.
• Abilities – Combat actions, like dashes or healing spells .
• Ultimates – Special, high-impact and damage abilities with longer cooldowns.

With a max level of 50, Rook will be able to fine-tune their abilities to work effectively with companions. The largest experience boosts come from quests, while killing enemies and exploration offer smaller gains. Helping the people of Thedas and building bonds with the Veilguard are rewarding ways to level up and gain reputation with factions.

As Rook levels up, they earn skill points to invest in the Constellation Skill Tree, where shapes denote skill types:

• Large Circle: Core skills and weapon proficiencies.
• Diamond: Abilities for combat slots.
• Medium Circle: Major passives or ability upgrades, enhancing effects like critical hit chances or range.
• Small Hexagon: Traits that modify class skills, such as counterattacks.
• Small Circle: Minor passives or stat boosts.

Each skill can be refined into cohesive builds, and you can reset skill points at any time without resource costs, allowing you to adjust as needed.

Each class has access to three specialization areas, described in our Combat blog. After unlocking a specialization, Rook gains new abilities tailored to that theme. For example, even a Grey Warden Rook can access the Veil Ranger specialization if they’re a Rogue.

Companions’ Progression

Each companion has a unique skill tree and their own gear, including armor, trinkets, and weapons, which can be upgraded and enchanted. By combining companions’ abilities with your own, you can create powerful synergies and build a well-rounded party.

Companions level up with Rook, gaining two skill points per level. Bonding with companions through quests, conversations, and decisions increases their experience. Friendships and romances are equally important in The Veilguard, allowing you to strengthen bonds with your party.

Rook can take two companions on missions, each with unique Primer and Detonator abilities that can be combined for explosive results. For example, Rook’s Toxic Dash primes an enemy with the Sundered status, which Neve’s Icebreaker detonates for extra damage.

These videos highlight the main areas of progression in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Watch the full video below to see the possibilities for customizing Rook and the Veilguard.

As Rook journeys across Thedas—facing challenges, building alliances, and battling legendary foes—the player decides the fate of the Veilguard. Will you be the hero Thedas needs?