7 articlesAfter an insanely long time and a complete name change at some point, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is finally out. Anybody who has played a Dragon Age title before, or any BioWare RPG for that matter, will know how the companions and the party dynamic are a major part of their appeal.
In this guide, we will be taking a closer look into the gameplay aspect of it, as companion choices are going to be purely subjective and based on who you vibe with the best. Also, I will try to keep this pretty spoiler-free (I’m not even halfway through myself either). Let’s get to it!
Best Companions to Pick
As stated above, your choices will mainly be based on whoever you like the most, or whose banter you think is going to be the best. In my case, I always take Neve and Lucanis around with me whenever I can as I just like those two in general.
Davrin and Emmrich are a good duo to have if you want to hear some dialogue revolving around their respective familiars. Bellara and Emmrich have been a neat combo too. Now, if we are talking about specifically just gameplay reasons, then continue on.
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When it comes to purely gameplay reasons, barring any quests that require specific companions, you should be matching primers and detonators. This will depend entirely on the skill trees of each, and for the most part, you can get your favorite companions with you while still having synergies.
This is something that is taught to you very early on, during a pivotal point in a certain character’s development. Basically, the combination of those two will cause a detonation, which does area-of-effect damage and applies a lot of stagger.
In harder difficulties, this can give you a lot of breathing room when dealing with a large number of mobs. It also helps you build up stagger quickly against tougher targets, though it does not do the best damage in that regard.
This is just the bare basic thing you need to consider, as there is also your own skill tree to keep in mind when picking synergies. For example, if you are a rogue who can clean barriers with ease using the bow, you might want companions who can help whittle down armor instead.
For a more balanced approach, you will want to set your companions’ abilities so that one of them deals with barriers more, while the other can help burst down armor. This is how I prefer to do it since I like bringing companions more for roleplay and dialogue reasons.
There are also your own abilities to keep in mind. Rook has both primers and detonators for various ailments. This will depend mainly on which class and specialization you lean toward since their abilities have wildly varying effects.
Even then, you can refund everything for free. So, if one specialization doesn’t fit your playstyle or favorite companions, you are always allowed to do a complete reset and try something else.
For instance, if you are a rogue and you want to lean heavily into Necrotic damage, you can do that and then pair up Lucanis and Emmrich for their abilities that do the same damage type. This is hardly needed unless you are specifically able to reduce specific resistances too, though.
At the end of the day, companion choices are, as always in Dragon Age or even Mass Effect games, completely dependent on your own personal preferences. They hardly affect gameplay, especially now that they can’t die in combat, so the only things to consider are detonations and largely unnecessary min-maxing of damage.
