9 Tips When Starting Avowed, Obsidian’s Skyrim-Like Action RPG

Welcome to the Living Lands, a mystical and dangerous place where your emperor has sent you to fight the growing dreamscourge plague. The Skryim-like action RPG Avowed excited me when I previewed it at Gamescom last year, and now that I’ve spent around a dozen hours with the full game, here is a list of tips that should help you get a better foot forward when you start the game, from settings to tweak to exploring advice.

Turn down the music volume

The music in this game is far too loud and constantly fights with the character dialogue, making everything sound like a mess. It also seems like the developers even knew about this since the music level is already lowered to 80% by default, but even that level isn’t enough. Go into the audio settings and turn that down even lower — I found that 60% was a good spot to enjoy the music while hearing what everyone’s saying.

Keep an eye on the mini map 

You’ll start recruiting new companions pretty quickly into the game, and their name and health will pop up on the left side of your screen. What will also pop up in a little icon with an exclamation point, which means they’re wanting to have a specific conversation with you. Unfortunately, you can’t have this chat unless you’re at camp, which you won’t unlock until a little ways into the game after you’ve already met a companion or two. Once you have though, you can freely fast travel to camp and go through these new dialogue options.

Unlock the frame rate

Avowed will automatically save your game from time to time in addition to letting you create multiple manual saves when you want. You can go into the gameplay settings and adjust how often you want that auto save to happen. If you find yourself constantly dying and being sent further back than you’d like, this is a good option to tweak for more frequent backup saves.

Switch to third person camera

It might seem like blasphemy to choose not to play a Skyrim-like in first person, but that’s actually how I’ve preferred to do it. In the gameplay settings you can switch the camera position to third person in order to see your character. I’ve found this helps me deal with combat encounters against multiple enemies trying to surround me, navigate platforming sections, and let me see the new armor and gear I’ve equipped on my hero.

Take advantage of free healing at camp

If you’re not in the middle of combat or a dungeon, fast traveling to one of your camp sites is the best way to heal yourself without using items or resources. Simply warping there will replenish your health and essence (magic) meters. Better still, when you leave camp you have the option to exit where the camp is located or back to the exact point you originally fast traveled from meaning you won’t have to run back to where you left.

When the game says you need better gear, get it