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Obsidian Entertainment’s Avowed has quickly become one of my favorite games of 2025, thanks to its striking similarities to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, its deep dialogue choice system, and the freedom to shape your playstyle however you see fit. But while it shares familiar elements with other RPGs, Avowed introduces mechanics and nuances that many beginners might overlook until much later in the game. Instead of diving into the Living Lands as an overconfident yet underprepared adventurer, here are a few crucial tips the game doesn’t explicitly teach you, ensuring you get the best possible experience from the start.
Tips for Players Starting Avowed for the First Time
After several hours of playing Avowed, I realized that I wasn’t correctly using or utilizing several gameplay features. The biggest and probably most important tips I would recommend to a beginner playing the game are:
- Forge your path while creating your character. Build your own build.
- Answer dialogue options like a real person, not according to what’s good or bad.
- Not everything that gives you a side quest will be obvious. Seek them out.
- Only focus on the important stats.
- Be as nosy as possible.
Build Your Own Build
Despite there technically being three different ability trees for you to plug your points into, you don’t have to fall into one category. The game let’s you choose a rimary and secondary weapon while also allowing you to choose what weapon goes in what hand. Personally, I have dipped my toes into all three as a wizard who utilizes a grimoire and a one-handed sword as my primary weapon set and dual pistols as my secondary. Abilities only have three ranks at most, so using up three of your points to maximize that particular skill sounds like a deal to me in comparison to other skill and ability-based games.
Answer Like a Real Person
After playing games like Mass Effect, Skyrim, and even The Outer Worlds, you sort of get caught up in some dialogue choices being inherently evil and others good. Sometimes, you’ll find choices that are a little more in the middle. In Avowed, you just need to answer like a real person. There isn’t any physical indication to tell you whether your decision will cause that mercenary to walk away or call his gang to kill your party. However, if you read all your options carefully, you’ll find that people don’t have such black-and-white views on your actions. In fact, you don’t even need to worry about new people you meet or towns you visit for the first time wanting you dead just because you did something someone disagreed with in the neighboring region. There’s a lot more room for you to forge your character into your own.
Seek Out Side Quests
Okay, this might be something that more veteran RPG players would know, but for new players in Avowed, it’s surely helpful. Not every side quest you can get your hands on is given to you by a person with an exclamation point over their head. Some quests require you to search them out if you don’t want to miss them. More than once I was given quests by NPCs who called out for help without ever indicating that they would have something for me to do. You’ll even get to do more quests in other regions for the same NPCs if you decide to help them out.
Focus Only on Important Stats
There are a total of six different attributes that you can add stat points to as you level up. However, there are only three that you need to focus on. As long as you dedicate your points to Might, Perception, and Resolve, you’ll have absolutely no problem maneuvering through many of the first dialogue options you’ll experience. In my experience, most of the special dialogue options outside of the ones belonging to your background focus on these three attributes specifically. When it comes to the other three, you’ll quickly find that there are many other ways to satisfy those same stats. As an example, one of the first abilities you can start pouring points into is Toughness, which increases your health by up to 45%, instead of spending an attribute point on Constitution.
Be a Nosy Envoy
Read anything you come across and explore every crevice you can find. I love that Obsidian’s dev team implemented such detailed and complex companions who will point out and explain things to you for a pretty immersive experience. Doing this provides you with the advantage of finding tons of overpowered loot and discovering new bits of lore that genuinely help you put the pieces of what’s happening together. Sure, fans of Pillars of Eternity will know what’s happening, but newcomers don’t have that advantage. So, poke around where you shouldn’t read everyone’s diary, and collect every lore book you find right from the start. You’ll have quite the edge by the time you reach the final few regions.
Avowed is available to be played on PC and Xbox.
