Avowed Beginner's Guide: Tips Every New Envoy Should Know

Avowed drops you into the Living Lands as the Envoy of Aedyr, an imperial agent with strange godlike growths and a soul plague called the Dream Scourge to sort out. It looks like a standard first-person RPG, but it plays by its own rules. Levels matter way less than gear quality. Companions carry more weight than a perfect stat spread. And a bunch of the systems that actually matter never get a proper tutorial. So here's the short version of what a new Envoy should know before the island chews you up and spits you into a Xaurip camp.

Choosing Your Origin and Background

Character creation is lighter than it looks. There's no class pick, and abilities later on come from three open trees (Fighter, Ranger, and Wizard) plus a Godlike tree that unlocks through the story. Mix them however you want. The big decision at the start is your background, and there are five:

| Background | Starting Points (Might / Con / Dex / Per / Int / Res) | | --- | --- | | Arcane Scholar | 2 / 0 / 2 / 2 / 3 / 1 | | Court Augur | 0 / 0 / 2 / 3 / 3 / 2 | | Noble Scion | 2 / 1 / 2 / 2 / 2 / 1 | | Vanguard Scout | 1 / 2 / 2 / 3 / 1 / 1 | | War Hero | 3 / 2 / 1 / 1 / 0 / 3 |

Two things to know before you agonize over this. First, those point spreads are presets, not locks. You can rearrange all ten points however you like, so an Arcane Scholar with zero Intellect is totally legal. Second, the lasting effect of a background is dialogue. Scholars get know-it-all options, War Heroes get soldier talk, and so on. Most of those checks are just flavor. Every so often one talks you out of a fight, which is nice.

Attributes are worth a minute of thought, because each point buys two real effects:

| Attribute | What One Point Gives | | --- | --- | | Might | +3% damage, +10% carry capacity | | Constitution | +5% max health, +6% poison and bleed resistance | | Dexterity | +4% attack speed, +7% action speed | | Perception | +3% critical hit chance, +5% max range | | Intellect | +5 max essence, +6% elemental resistance | | Resolve | +5 max stamina, +12% Second Wind efficiency |

At creation you can stack at most 3 points in one attribute, and gains top out at 15 over the whole game, so dumping everything into one stat eventually wastes points anyway. Might is the safe pick for almost anyone, since damage plus carry weight is never bad. Casters want Intellect for a bigger essence pool. If you plan to block and dodge a lot in melee, Resolve pays for itself.

One last creation screen note: you can adjust how obvious your godlike features are, but people in the Living Lands will react to them either way. That's part of the story, not a stat thing.

Understanding the Companion System Early

There are exactly four permanent companions, and you can only bring two at a time. The rest hang out at camp. You can't miss any of them, because they all arrive through the main story:

| Companion | When They Join | | --- | --- | | Kai | Start of the opening Dawnshore quest, A Message from Afar | | Marius | During An Untimely End, still in Dawnshore | | Giatta | End of The Animancy Method, in Emerald Stair | | Yatzli | During Face Your Fears, in Shatterscarp |

Kai is your frontliner. He's a big aumaua marine who soaks hits, and he even has his own Second Wind passive to pick himself back up when he drops. Marius is the quiet scout type who prefers picking enemies off from range. Giatta is the best support in the game once you reach Emerald Stair, with a straight heal (Purification), Barrier, and Acceleration. Yatzli is a mouthy wizard who shows up late but brings real damage and debuffs. You'll actually meet her back in Emerald Stair, she just takes her sweet time committing.

A few habits make companions way better than they look on paper:

• They level up automatically whether they travel with you or sit at camp, and you spend their skill points yourself. If you botch a build, you can respec for a modest pile of gold.
• They'll use their abilities on their own if you ignore them, which sounds helpful until Giatta burns her heal at half health on nobody. Trigger their moves yourself from your hotbar when timing matters.
• Downed companions aren't dead. They get back up once the fight ends, and healing abilities like Dream Touch can revive them mid-battle.
• Talk to them at camp and rest there regularly. Companion conversations, their personal quests, and camp scenes only happen when you actually pitch the tent. Sleep like it's your job.

Who should you bring? Mostly whoever covers your weaknesses. A squishy wand envoy wants Kai holding the line plus a healer once Giatta shows up. If you're the one tanking, Marius and Yatzli add damage from the back. There's no romance system to plan around either, aside from one late confession option with Kai after his quest Battle Scars. Pick for combat, not for shipping.

Managing Deflection, Health, and Endurance

Three bars, three jobs. Getting how they interact is most of staying alive.

Deflection, in Avowed, is mostly a gear word. Rings like the Ring of Minor Deflection and Ring of Major Deflection carry flat damage reduction (the major version is +5%). Flat percentage cuts like that quietly outperform raw armor in a lot of fights, so don't vendor them. Armor itself comes with resistances, and shields are their own math: hold block to soak hits at a stamina cost, and time a block right as a swing lands to stagger the attacker instead. If arrows are the problem, the Ranger tree has an Arrow Deflection perk at level 10.

Health is the red bar, and the game does not refill it for free. Health potions are instant, food heals slowly over time, and camping is the only full restore. The trick nobody explains: eat regen food while already at full health and the healing banks itself as a reserve, shown as a ring icon next to your health bar. That reserve drips back into you as you take damage, slowly during a fight and fast once it's over. Stuffing your face before a tough room is basically a free heal on a timer.

Ways to stretch the red bar further: Constitution points (+5% max health each), the Fighter passive Toughness (+20% max health at first rank, +45% fully ranked), Constant Recovery to regenerate lost health after taking hits, and drinks that temporarily add up to 20% health for about five minutes. There's also a unique ring, Ondra's Grace, hidden behind a waterfall in Dawnshore. It slowly regenerates your health whenever you're Wet, so you stand in a puddle and watch the heart icon do its work. Cheap trick, works all game.

Endurance is what the game calls stamina, the bar that powers physical stuff. Swinging weapons, firing shots, blocking, dodging, sprinting, climbing, all of it drains the bar, and it refills fast on its own when you ease off. The catch is heavy two-handers eat way more per swing than a dagger. When the bar runs dry mid-fight you can't dodge or block, and that's usually how envoys die. Resolve adds +5 max stamina per point, and the blue essence bar next to it is a separate pool for spells and abilities, boosted by Intellect.

The safety net under all of this is Second Wind. It's a passive you have from the start that automatically revives you when your health hits zero, then goes on a long cooldown. Drop again while it's still cooling down and you're actually dead. Resolve raises the health it restores and shortens the cooldown, so melee builds get double value from it. Enemies have stamina bars too, by the way. Beat one down and the enemy staggers, which leaves them wide open. Fights get a lot shorter when you're aiming at the second bar, not just the first.

Essential Gear and Camping Supplies to Grab First

Your first coins have a clear priority list. Lockpicks first: they run 15-20 coins each from merchants, and unlike most RPGs there's no lockpicking skill here. A chest just tells you how many picks it costs and takes them. Buy a fat stack whenever you pass a shop, because running out means walking past locked loot. Grenades are the other cheap pickup, since early-game burst damage is hard to come by.

The bigger system to understand early is gear quality. Weapons and armor come in five tiers: Common, Fine, Exceptional, Superb, and Legendary, shown as roman numerals I through V. Each tier has three upgrade ranks (+1 to +3), and then a pricier upgrade bumps the item to the next tier entirely. You do all of this at the workbench in your camp, paying in crafting materials (plants, wood, metal, leather) plus coin. Only unique gear can be pushed to Legendary.

Why does this matter more than levels? Enemies are on the same quality scale, and the game marks ones above your gear tier with a skull icon. When a quest shows skulls, upgrading your weapons and chest armor a rank or two often fixes the fight better than two levels would. There's another wrinkle too: unique gear you find tends to arrive at roughly the quality of what you're wearing. Keep your main pieces upgraded and your future drops quietly get better.

For supplies, here's the good news: camping doesn't cost anything in Avowed. If you've played Pillars of Eternity and hoarded camping supplies out of habit, you can stop. Camps sit at the big glowing Adra Waystones scattered around every region. Walk up, make camp for free, and resting fully heals you and your companions. The camp is also your hub, with a stash for hoarders, the workbench, a cooking cauldron, and a shrine for the God Totems you collect.

So the "supplies" you actually stockpile are food and materials. Grab every plant and chunk of ore you walk past, loot kitchens without guilt (there is no stealing penalty in this game at all, everyone just lets the Godlike Envoy rifle through their cupboards), and cook at camp when you can. The Ranger passive Survivalist makes food restore 20% more health, which stacks nicely with the reserve trick from earlier. Break down gear you'll never use at the workbench when you're short on materials, and carry a second weapon set so you can swap between ranged and melee on the fly.

Exploring the Living Lands Without Getting Overwhelmed

The game runs on a fixed difficulty map, not level scaling. You start at Fort Northreach for the opening stretch (two temporary allies, Garryck and Ilora, tag along there), then hit Dawnshore and its main city Paradis. From there the story points you to Emerald Stair and Fior mes Iverno, then Shatterscarp, then Galawain's Tusks. Within each region, areas get nastier the farther you stray from the safe town, and the skull markers in your quest journal are the tell. See skulls, come back later is a perfectly good plan.

Things worth knowing about how the world works:

• Enemies don't respawn. A cleared camp stays cleared, which means there's no grinding to out-level a wall. Loot every camp you empty, because that's the only pass you get.
• There's rarely a reason to return to a region once the story moves you along, so sweep before you leave. Clear the bounty board, finish the side quests, and hunt down that region's God Totem fragments. Four totems exist, one can be active at a time, and each hands out passive buffs. The one exception is Sanza's missing cartographers quest, which sprawls across the whole map.
• Touch every Adra Waystone you see. Each one you reach unlocks camping there and a fast travel point, and getting around the Living Lands on foot gets old fast.
• Climb things. There's a ton of vertical design here, with ledges, jump routes, and loot tucked on rooftops and cliff shelves. And skim the notes you pick up, because even random ones sometimes point at treasure sitting a room away.
• The level cap is 30, and since experience is finite, attribute points are too. Spreading points beats dumping, with the cap at 15 per attribute anyway.

One story tip that trips up new players: the Voice in your head will offer you power early in Dawnshore, during A Message from Afar. You can tell it to get lost, and roleplaying that is valid. Just know that refusing costs you the Godlike ability tree, which includes Dream Touch, an area heal that also revives fallen companions on a 90-second cooldown. If you take the deal, that ability becomes your whole team's lifeline. The big communions happen at adra pillars, so the choice keeps coming back around.

Build one habit before anything else in Dawnshore: before the story ferries you off to Emerald Stair, clear the bounties, grab the totem fragments, and top up your lockpick stack. You leave richer, tougher, and with fast travel pins across the whole region.