Antivan Crows/Shadow Dragons Faction Merchant Gone – Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Once you recruit Davrin to your team and return to the Crossroads, your companions will rush to greet you, but not with the good news: both Minrathous and Treviso are under attack and, sadly, you can’t help them both. On Blighted/Deadly Wings presents you with a choice and a few things get affected after, including you no longer having access to the merchants in one of the cities. In this guide, we will recount all of the consequences and focus on what items and options the game locks you out of as a result.

Beware: this guide contains some spoilers for the quest “On Blighted/Deadly Wings” and major spoilers for its impact!

Before we dive into it, a quick summary of the article is: the merchants you no longer see (yes, including the Faction Merchant) are not coming back. They are gone for the rest of the game. You will have an alternative way to get at least some of the Mementos you missed out on, but your access to some of this equipment is now permanently gone — include the Faction Merchant’s Unique gear. Our advice? Reload that save and grab as much of it as you can.

Now, if you wanted some more details and a bit of a to-do list prior to the attack, you are in the right place! We will cover all of it in the sections below.

Treviso vs. Minrathous: All Consequences of the Choice

If you are here, you have likely already made your choice, but let’s recap it anyway: choosing to help Treviso and stand with the Antivan Crows and Lucanis or assist Shadow Dragons and Neve in Minrathous are mutually exclusive, but the effects are nearly identical to the either side (aside from number of Passive skills boosted and one more notable exception we will mention in the list below).

Companions and Quests

And, before we dive into the effects your choice has on the Merchants, let’s make sure we account for all of the other consequences:

• The companion which you do not assist (Neve or Lucanis) becomes Hardened
  • They will no longer use supportive abilities (their healing skill tree). The skill points spent there will be refunded.
  • Damaging abilities are more effective (specifically, all of the Damage vs. Barrier passive skills for both, and also Cooldown duration for Neve only)
  • Relationship progress is slower
  • And here is that notable exception (unless it gets patched in the future): you are free to still pursue your Romance with Neve, but Lucanis “no longer has time for a romance with you”.
• This effect will not go away later in the game.

• Similarly, the companion you do not assist will stay unavailable until you recruit the rest of the Companions by progressing further in the story.
• All of the old Side Quests you have not completed in the city that fell to the attack are automatically failed.
  • The city, however, will gain new ones that relate to its destruction in the conflict.

(If you wanted a more detailed breakdown of the affected Companion Ability trees and Skills, you should check out our Neve/Lucanis is Hardened guide.)

Merchants, Faction Reputation, Items, & Mementos

Finally, let’s discuss how “On Blighted/Deadly Wings” will affect your Faction Reputation, Equipment, Mementos, and the fallen city’s Merchants. In short… well, it kinda screws with them all.

Most of the Merchants in the city that you don’t go to help are gone. This includes miscellaneous Valuables Merchants, as well as the Faction Merchant (if you paid attention during the assault, you might have even noticed yourself fighting them in their tainted form.)

• The miscellaneous merchants and their merchandise and gone permanently. If you had an eye on a specific Valuable, Memento, or a Drink, you will not be able to acquire it. You may find some of the Mementos you missed out on as a result carried by the Black Emporium Merchant, Xenon the Antiquarian, much later in the game (The Caretaker will mention the invitation to you following the “Cobbled Swan” questline.)

• The Faction Merchant and — this is important — the easiest way for you to build the Reputation with that faction are also gone. You will have an option to visit a Wisp version of the Faction Merchant in the first Crossroads island, but if you decide to use them to raise your reputation with the faction (for the good ending, e.g.) beware that it will happen at a much slower rate. It will also be a far less rewarding experience without the useful equipment and Unique Items originally carried by the living Faction Merchant.

Do the City Merchants/Faction Merchant Come Back?

None of the merchants you lost as a result of the attack come back — the consequences are permanent for the rest of the game.

So, yes. Whether you weren’t able to help Minrathous or Treviso, all of their merchants are now gone, and your ability to access some of these items as well as build your reputation with the related Faction will only be recovered to a limited degree and mostly later on in the game.

What to Handle Before the “On Blighted/Deadly Wings”

So, what is a good approach here? Thankfully, no matter your choice, you are not locked out of anything crucial to your experience (unless you planned on pursuing Lucanis‘s Romance questline and chose to help Minrathous, which locks him out of a romance).

But, what if you have just completed the questline and are feeling cheated out of the items? What if the prospect of grinding out Valuables for the Reputation at a much lower rate later on doesn’t seem fair, considering how little the game communicated the importance of this particular decision?

Well, in that case, you are better off reloading your save to take a little bit more time before you recruit Davrin. Specifically, in order to get all the items from the faction merchant, you should focus on acquiring Valuables and selling them to the faction that will be destroyed. This will likely enable you to get the Faction Merchant to Rank 3, letting you purchase most of their gear.

However, without lots of grinding for Valuables and some good luck when it comes to early game Fade-Touched Crystal spawns (specifically in the chest at the end of “A Slow Poison”), it is both time-consuming and not guaranteed that you will be able to reach Rank 4 with either Faction Merchant. Because of this, we recommend that you accept losing the Faction Merchant’s unique and other Rank 4 benefits.

(Still, we have a dedicated guide for obtaining the Shadow Dragon Unique before it disappears, if you would like to go through the process.)

Before too long, you will get access to at least some of the Mementos you missed out on from Xenon the Antiquarian, the Black Emporium merchant, in exchange for a resource called Etheric Remnant, which you will pick up in combat and while exploring.

Meanwhile, you will be able to sell Valuables to the Wisp that represents the Faction you lost access to at the Crossroads, in the marketplace area on the first island. (Getting all of the Factions to a maximum reputation matters for one of the endings.) Even at a lower exchange rate, you can get to 3 stars with that Faction by selling off Valuable Items to it, and you will probably amass quite a few over your travels.

It is recommended to wait to sell items to the Wisp merchant, however, as you will continue earning faction reputation for the destroyed faction by completing quests. Because of this, it is most efficient to wait until just before beginning the quest “When Plans Align” near the end of the game, so that none of your valuables go to waste.

And so — in a broader sense — no, you don’t really have to reload your save to prepare for the outcome. Still, if your pre-quest save is recent and you are already feeling disappointed after you were eyeing a particular item in the store, there should be nothing stopping you from heading back, now that you are aware of the full consequences.

What was your experiences with the quest choice? Did you enjoy its significance to your playthrough, or did you feel like it was unexpectedly severe? Have any more tips for stocking up ahead of time? Share with us in the comments below!