10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started ‘Avowed’ – Forbes

AvowedAfter sixty hours, I have more time than most into Avowed, Microsoft’s big new RPG by Obsidian that serves as something of a stopgap in the decade between Elder Scrolls games, albeit not in the same universe like Fallout: New Vegas was previously.With all this playtime, I have learned a few things along the way, things that I believe I think you’re going to want to know as soon as you pick up the game. So, here are ten things I wish I knew when I started Avowed1) Buy Lockpicks All The Time – If you see a vendor, talk them, buy every lockpick they have. Always. While there is no lockpicking minigame in Avowed, there are locked doors and chests that will require 1, 3 even 5 lockpicks at a time. While you will find some from dead enemies, they will never be enough, so clear out vendor stock every time you talk to one, and don’t worry about the cost as they are extremely cheap.2) Two Ways to Upgrade Weapons And Armor – Avowed’s gear upgrade system is really simplistic, taking your items through a series of rarity upgrades the more materials you sink in. But there is also sort of an alternative to that. So, your options are as follows:Collect and dismantle all weapons and chestplates you find. This will give you the materials you need to upgrade your best weapons over time, in addition to finding these materials in chests or on enemies. Then you can take them slowly through the rarity tiers over time. The second way is to instead sell those items at shops, where some will be worth more than others. A shop in a zone will usually sell a rarity one level above what you currently have, and in my second playthrough, I realized that if I saved up significant cash, I could just buy these outright to scale my damage dramatically. The exception here are unique items you find that you will take through rarity tiers with materials once you find one you like. But that may take a while.Obsidian3) Don’t Forget Unique-Specific Upgrades – This one is easy to overlook, and even by the end of my second playthrough I was still forgetting about it. Uniques not only go through rarity tiers like other gear, but they have an ability to boost their unique properties significantly though an upgrade at your camp. This is easy to miss because it is not at the blacksmith, there is a little station in camp besides that which is purely for these upgrades, which are a binary choice between abilities, and require high-end materials.4) Send Gear Directly Back to Camp – This is not a mechanic that many games like this have, usually requiring fast travel back to town or camps to deposit gear when you’re about to be encumbered. Avowed skips all this and with the press of a button you can easily deposit your heavy or currently unused gear back in camp despite being anywhere in the world. Amazing quality of life addition here.5) There Are No “Come Back Later” Zones – What I mean by this is that when you are exploring in the wild and come across an area, you will almost never run into a situation where it’s a “come back later when you accept this sidequest or it’s inaccessible” type thing. Either you will find a side quests wherever you are (one may start at town, but if you grab the item and kill the target or whatever, it auto-activates) or there will be no quest and it’s just an explorable space that will likely have a lot of loot, and maybe some lore about what the zone is and what happened there, without being a true quest. The exception here are finding enemies way above your level so…Avowed6) How Enemy Levels Work – If there is a “come back later” mechanic, it’s this. Enemy difficulty is marked by skulls, ranging from zero to three in terms of how hard a fight is going to be. Especially early in the game, do not get yourself in a tangle with three skull enemies. You can take them on later in the game when you have a great build flowing, but early this will be frustrating.The way this works is not just level, but gear. The more you upgrade your gear to higher qualities, the more the game will deem you ready to fight those enemies, and their skull levels will drop from what they were previously. Your team will also yell at you during fights if your gear sucks and you shouldn’t be there.7) Respec To Any Build Easily – This is sort of self-explanatory, but if you don’t like what you’re playing as, even an entire class, Avowed you lets you respec every stat point, every skill point and even every companion point. It costs gold but not that much, and you can literally flip from a warrior to a mage without starting over. The main issue is gear, but you will probably have stockpiled materials to upgrade say, wands instead of axes just as you’ve been playing, so even that’s not too bad.8) Spam Cook Food – You will find a ton of food everywhere you go, and it takes essentially no time at all to take everything you have, dump it into the fire and now have consumables that are two or three times better than they would be individually in terms of healing and mana restoration. It is a really streamlined system compared to other games and you shouldn’t forget about it.Avowed9) The Essential Companion – Speaking of healing, I don’t exactly like this, but Avowed is set up where you should almost always have one companion with you, Giatta, the mage who has a heal-on-command skill that is one of the only ways to heal outside of consumable items in the game, and she will instantly make fights, or healing after fights, 5x easier. But she is your third companion, so you are going to have to get through a chunk of the main quest to get her. Do that as soon as possible and upgrade her healing and defense abilities as high as you can.10) If You Can Go High, Go High – This is an exploration tip in that while you will find zones to explore by walking around the landscape, the exploration system once you get to these unique places is almost always to go as vertical as you can up a rock formation or building or anything like that. Even if you have gone pretty high and gotten some good loot, keep going. A lot of these places may seem like you’re “done” but then there are hidden ways to go even higher, and find even more valuable loot.That’s what I’ve got, and I hope you have fun.Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram.Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/02/18/ten-things-i-wish-i-knew-when-i-started-avowed/