Playstyles? (Game Difficulty & How to Change It) - Dragon Age: The Veilguard

As with most RPG games, Dragon Age: The Veilguard features a number of difficulties you can choose from, starting right in character creation. Though, you might notice that these are called Playstyles in the game, and perhaps rightfully so — they go a little bit beyond the simple Easy-Normal-Hard scale and offer some variety in adjusting the particular areas of combat to suit your own style. Moreover, The Veilguard allows you to adjust these even more precisely in the custom settings mode.

In this guide, we will go through what the various Difficulty settings (Playstyles) are, what the individual options represent, and where you can access these options!

How to Choose Your Playstyle/Game Difficulty

You will get to choose your Playstyle as early as character creation, after you’ve done most of the creation for your character. There are 5 preset Playstyles with scaling Incoming Damage, Enemy Aggression, Tactical Challenge, and Defend Timing, and a 6th option that will let you fully customize your experience. We will go over each of these presets and the options they come with in sections below.

How to Change Game Difficulty

This is not the only time you can choose your difficulty setting. If you’re finding the game to be too difficult or too easy in general, or you aren’t enjoying a particular aspect of combat, you can change it at any time within the game’s settings!

The only exception is if you choose the Nightmare Playstyle, as this one cannot be changed once you start the game.

Playstyles

As stated earlier, there are 5 different preset Playstyles you can choose from. These difficulties will range from a very easy mode for players that just want to experience the story, to a brutally difficult one made for the players that really want to challenge themselves.

To help understand what each difficulty entails, here are the 4 categories listed with the Playstyles:

Incoming Damage: Determines the amount of damage you will take from enemies.
Enemy Aggression: How frequently enemies will attack you and use their more powerful attacks.
Tactical Challenge: How important it will be to pay attention to things like status effects and elemental weaknesses.
Defend Timing: The window of time you have to successfully defend against attacks.

Each of these categories has 5 levels, and you can easily see how the more difficult presets correlate with the higher levels on the individual categories.

In the individual sections below we will give an overview of what each individual Playstyle setting is.

Storyteller

Here for the story.

“A plunge into story with more forgiving combat.” This is the easiest of the difficulty settings, for players that want to focus on the story.

Incoming Damage – 1
Enemy Aggression – 1
Tactical Challenge – 1
Defend Timing – 1

Keeper

Here to build a party.

“A balanced combat experience that emphasizes party composition and equipment choices over reaction times.” A slightly harder difficulty that will make you want to pay a little more attention to your party and your gear.

Incoming Damage – 2
Enemy Aggression – 2
Tactical Challenge – 2
Defend Timing – 1

Adventurer

Here for action and adventure.

“A balanced experience that places equal emphasis on combat, party composition, and equipment choices.” The middle-ground Playstyle, where you will have to keep all aspects of combat in mind if you want to succeed.

Incoming Damage – 3
Enemy Aggression – 3
Tactical Challenge – 3
Defend Timing – 3

Underdog

Here to be pushed to the limit.

“Overcome punishing odds and save the world from unforgiving enemies.” This mode bumps up the difficulty, putting a little extra emphasis on having to master the defensive timing.

Incoming Damage – 4
Enemy Aggression – 4
Tactical Challenge – 4
Defend Timing – 5

Nightmare

Here for Brutality.

“Overwhelming battles that give no quarter. Requires a mastery or combat, equipment, and skills to survive.” This is the hardest difficulty setting, made for players who really want to test their skills. Unlike all of the other Playstyle choices, if you start the game on Nightmare, you cannot change it later.

Incoming Damage – 5
Enemy Aggression – 5
Tactical Challenge – 5
Defend Timing – 5

Unbound Playstyle

Here to chart a new path.

If you don’t want to use any of the preset difficulty settings, you can choose Unbound. This is a fully customizable setting that will let you choose many aspects of the game, from combat settings to assisting you with exploration.

There are all of the different options you can choose if you want to try the Unbound Playstyle:

Exploration Preset
Aim Assist
Aim Snap
Combat Timing
Enemy Damage
Enemy Health
Enemy Aggression
Enemy Resistances
Enemy Vulnerability
Face Melee Target

There are plenty of options for difficulties, so you can go through the game in a way that’s perfect for you. And unless you choose Nightmare, you can always change it at any time!