Avowed Game Wiki: Complete Character Guide for The Living Lands

I rolled a War Hero on my first Avowed run and regretted it about ten hours in. Not because it's bad. It's actually pretty strong for melee. But the dialogue options are so boring. You just growl at people and they back down. My second character was a Court Augur and honestly it felt like a different game. That's the thing about Avowed's character system. Obsidian didn't give you classes. You pick a background and then just... build whatever you want. Fighter skills, ranger skills, wizard skills. Mix them. Nobody stops you. I've now done three full playthroughs and tested all four companions extensively. You know what I wish someone told me before I started. So much stuff the game just never explains. Your background matters more than the tooltips suggest. There are five options. Arcane Scholar gives you extra dialogue with mages and unlocks some lore shortcuts in the Emerald Stair region. Court Augur lets you see through political lies. I mean actual lies. NPCs will try to deceive you and you'll get a perception-style check that other backgrounds don't get. Noble Scion gets discounts at vendors and some snobby dialogue that occasionally backfires. Vanguard Scout is great for exploration. You spot traps and hidden paths without needing high Perception. And War Hero, like I said, gives intimidation options and a small boost to two-handed weapon damage. But here's the part nobody talks about. Your background doesn't lock you out of anything. A War Hero can still learn every spell in the game. An Arcane Scholar can still wield a greatsword. The background only affects dialogue flavor and starting reputation with certain factions. Tbh the attributes are where people overthink things. You have six. They all do something. But some do more than others. Might governs melee damage and how much you can carry. Constitution is your health pool and poison resistance. Dexterity affects attack speed and action cooldowns. Perception is critical hit chance and, crucially, the ability to spot hidden things in the environment. Intellect determines your Essence pool, that's mana, and spell power. Resolve affects stamina regeneration and dialogue persuasion. I've found that Perception is the single most important stat regardless of build. Not because of combat. Because of exploration. Avowed hides so much stuff behind environmental checks. There's a hidden chest behind a waterfall. A fake wall in a dungeon. Dialogue options that appear only if your Perception is high enough. My first run I left Perception at 2 and missed probably a third of the game's secrets. Second run I pushed it to 8 early and found stuff I didn't even know existed. Companions. There are four. Kai is the fighter, the first one you get, in Dawnshore. He's a tank, uses taunts, and his personal quest involves his old military unit. Marius is the hunter, you pick him up in Emerald Stair. Ranged damage, tracking abilities, can mark enemies so they take extra damage. Giatta is an animancer, a soul scholar, found in Shatterscarp. She heals and buffs, and her personal story ties directly into the Dream Scourge lore. Yatzli is the wizard, last companion, in Galawain's Tusks. Pure magic damage, crowd control, glass cannon. You can bring two at a time. I ran Kai and Giatta for most of my first playthrough and it was safe. Almost too safe. Boss fights took forever but I never died. My third run I went Marius and Yatzli and the damage output was absurd. Things melted. But I also died a lot more because nobody could take a hit. Each companion has their own opinion on your decisions. It's not a romance system. There is no romance in Avowed. But they can leave if you consistently go against their values. Kai hates cruelty. Marius hates authority. Giatta wants you to investigate and understand, not destroy. Yatzli cares about knowledge above all else. And the rest of their value systems, well, you get the idea. I lost Kai on my second playthrough because I kept siding with the Steel Garrote and he just walked. No warning. Just gone. Reloaded a save from three hours earlier. The Godlike abilities are tied to the main quest. At certain story beats you get a choice between two abilities. They're permanent. You can't respec these. My recommendation: take the defensive ones. The offensive Godlike powers look flashy but the cooldowns are long and the damage doesn't scale well into the late game. The defensive ones, like the one that gives you temporary health when you drop below 30%, will save your life constantly. One more thing about builds. You can respec at camp any time, for gold. First respec costs almost nothing. The fifth one costs enough that you'll think twice. So experiment early. The attribute points you allocate are permanent though. Only skills can be refunded. That's why I push Perception hard at character creation. You can always respec your combat skills later. You can't go back and put more points into Perception for environmental checks you already missed. Camp is also where you manage companion equipment. Each companion has their own weapon and armor slots. You can't control them directly in combat but you can gear them. Give Kai the heaviest armor and a shield with high block. Give Marius a bow with elemental damage. Giatta benefits from anything that boosts Essence regeneration. Yatzli wants spell power above all else. Companions don't level independently. They scale with you. But their gear doesn't auto-upgrade. You have to swap it out manually, same as your own. The skill trees are worth understanding. Fighter tree has two branches. One for tanking: more health, better blocking, taunts. One for damage: two-handed weapon bonuses, charge attacks, execute moves against low-health enemies. Ranger tree splits into stealth and ranged. Stealth is backstab damage, invisibility on kill, trap disarming. Ranged gives faster draw speed, elemental arrows, and a slow-time aiming ability. Wizard tree covers three schools. Fire magic for raw damage, ice for crowd control, and Arcane magic for utility spells like shields and teleports. You'll earn bonus skill points from certain main quest milestones. These are fixed, not missable. By level 30 you'll have maybe 8-10 bonus points on top of your level-up points. That's enough to max one tree fully with some left over for a secondary. Pure builds get the powerful capstone abilities at the bottom of each tree. Hybrids get more tools but no capstones. It's a fair tradeoff. And about difficulty spikes. The Dream Scourge boss fights are no joke. The one at the end of Shatterscarp took me maybe fifteen tries on my first run. Bring consumables. Food buffs stack in Avowed and they auto-activate when you take damage. Cook everything you find. I ignored cooking for my first twenty hours and that was stupid. A well-fed character with three food buffs active is maybe twice as durable as one running on empty. So if you're starting fresh, here's what I'd do. Pick Court Augur or Vanguard Scout for your background. Push Perception to at least 6 early. Grab Kai first, then switch to the companions whose personalities you actually like because their banter is half the game's charm. Cook your food. And don't ignore the side quests in Dawnshore. There's a ring in one of them that gives +1 Perception and you'll want that.