Pawns are a key part of how you interact with the world of Dragon’s Dogma 2, and they will occasionally talk about some important things. One such topic is a mysterious, Pawn-only illness called the Dragonsplague that can have disastrous effects on your save file.
Dragonsplague is a silent killer in that you won’t even learn about the illness until you invite a Pawn into your Dragon’s Dogma 2 party that is already infected by it or run into the issue in combat. This plague only impacts Pawns, but it can easily cause your journey to spiral out of control if you don’t know how to identify and cure it—which is not easy.
What is Dragonsplague in Dragon’s Dogma 2?
Even without encountering the Dragonsplague yourself, you can occasionally hear Pawns talking about an illness they can contract while traveling beyond the Riftstone. While it won’t cause issues right away, it can potentially destroy some of your progress in Dragon’s Dogma 2.
This is a contagious disease that any Pawn you invite to your party can have, and once they are in your party, they can pass it along to other Pawns traveling with you—including your main Pawn. It can also be directly contracted by your Pawns while battling a Drake or Dragon. If left to fester inside a Pawn, innocent lives could be forfeit.
If a Pawn with Dragonsplague is left untreated for multiple days, resting at an inn or other location could trigger a unique cutscene where that Pawn loses themselves to the illness and turns into a murky Dragon made of shadows—thus causing a tragedy in the settlement. Once you clear the cutscene and the pop-up telling you what happened, the affected Pawn will return to the Riftstone, and inspecting the surrounding area will show basically every NPC has been killed, with their bodies littering the streets.
Some players have reported that this interaction can actively hamper story progress because named and important NPCs are not spared from the Shadow Dragon’s wrath. This means you can still beat the game, but many side quests and even some important story missions will be completely unplayable unless you revive key NPCs. But how can you avoid a Pawn with Dragonsplague?
Dragon’s Dogma 2: How to identify Dragonsplague symptoms
While Dragonsplague is a mostly hidden part of Dragon’s Dogma 2, there are ways to spot the disease if you come into contact with it, which involve monitoring the appearance and behavior of your Pawns.
The first time you encounter the Dragonsplague, you will receive a pop-up explaining the disease just like all of the other Dehabilitations you can be afflicted with in the game. This is the only time you will actively be warned about the disease. But Dragonsplague does not appear on any Pawn’s Status page—essentially making it untrackable through menus. That means you need to rely on paying attention to your party in and out of battle if you want to tell if a Pawn has Dragonsplague.
How to cure Dragonsplague in Dragon’s Dogma 2
There are only two ways to “cure” Dragonsplague in Dragon’s Dogma 2: allowing the infected Pawn to pass on the disease to another Pawn or forfeiting them to the RIft entirely. There is currently no known way to alleviate Dragonsplague through curative items or other methods.
The first method seems like a waste of time because the exact length of time you need to wait for one Pawn to pass on Dragonsplague to another is unknown, and delaying action will only push you closer to a Shadow Dragon causing destruction in your sleep. You are better off using another method to tackle the problem as quickly as possible.
The term “forfeit” means that a Pawn leaves your party and returns to the Rift. This can be done by dismissing them or having them killed in action. When you first invite a Pawn to your party, quickly check them for Dragonsplague if you have already encountered the illness. If you see the early signs of infection, immediately go back into your menu and dismiss that Pawn to avoid it spreading Dragonsplague to someone else. You should also do this to any of your Pawns that contract the illness naturally during your journey.
If you can’t simply dismiss your Pawn for any reason, such as the infected Pawn being your main Pawn that is tied to your Arisen, you must forfeit them through other means. The easiest way to do this is by picking up the infected Pawn and throwing them into a large body of water they can’t easily escape. This will call upon the Brine, fog-like creatures that live within the water and drag whatever enters to the depths—which for Pawns, means they return to the Rift.
These are currently the only way to stop a Dragonsplague tragedy from potentially ruining your playthrough, especially with how finicky things like autosave and the Load from Last Inn Rest systems can be.
