Dragon Age Veilguard’s character customization looks intense

So many numbers

BioWare

BioWare posted a new series of videos diving into Dragon Age Veilguard’s character customization, skill trees, and weapon upgrades, and there’s a lot of all of those. The update comes after BioWare showed off a lengthy new gameplay video with one of Veilguard’s companion quests and mid-game combat with some of those skills in action.

First up is character progression for Rook – that’s you. Hilary Hidey, one of Veilguard’s producers, walked through how specializations work and the types of skills you can unlock to create a unique build, and it’s essentially a more complex version of Dragon Age Inquisition’s skill tree. Rook has core skills, class abilities, passive abilities, traits – weapon combos that require specific inputs – minor passives, and, eventually, ultimate skills tied to your chosen specialization.

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Rook’s skill constellation seems a bit overwhelming at a glance, with six major sections and multiple skill clusters in each, but it looks like BioWare is opting for an approach similar to Diablo 4. In addition to your big skills and flashy moves, you can add modifiers such as extra necrotic damage and build towards a devastating assassin build that debuffs enemies, as Hidey does in the customization breakdown video.

Companions have their own skill trees and get two points each time they level up. It sounds like leveling companions might work differently than leveling Rook, as Hidey says a good chunk of their experience comes from their personal quests and important platonic or romantic conversations. Combo moves with Rook’s companions are an important part of Dragon Age Veilguard’s tougher battles, including primer and detonation skills that explode enemies and deal heavy damage. 

BioWare said you’ll want to think carefully about how Rook’s skills match with their companions to get the best results. If you mess up, though, you can swap learned skills out whenever you’re not in a battle, and you can also refund skill points for free at any time.

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The third part of character customization is item progression, which is where Dragon Age Veilguard starts to look more like a looter game. Weapons come in different rarities, which is usual for the genre and series, and each rarity tier has special stat modifiers you won’t find on a lower-tier weapon. Items also have a separate rank level tied to the item shop at the Lightouse hub, and they can get additional enhancements as their rank climbs higher. You won’t find items of a rank higher than your current shop level, but you can combine duplicates to unlock more features and raise the item rank level.

It gets pretty involved, with some weapons having several abilities that do more than just increasing elemental damage. Still, it’s probably something you only have to engage with if you want to tackle some of Veilguard’s tougher challenges. We’ll know for sure soon enough. Dragon Age: The Veilguard launches on October 31, 2024, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.