Behind its DLC microtransactions, Dragon’s Dogma 2’s most divisive element is arguably Dragonsplague, the pawn-infecting sickness that your AI companions can catch while questing online and may eventually drive them to murder entire settlements’ worth of NPCs.
The pawn pox is thankfully fairly rare – I’m yet to encounter it in my 40-odd hours of playing, despite sending my pawn far and wide to rack up badges online – but it’s a key part of the game. Your pawns will occasionally remark on the rumoured threat, noting that it can cause the loyal followers to lose their senses – realised most starkly in the chance of your faithful warrior/wizard/ranger/whatever filling up one of the world’s in-game morgues with the residents of a town.
What makes Dragonsplague especially jarring for some players is that it can be difficult to spot – glowing red eyes are a telltale sign, and players have started gifting rotten food with pawns as a warning that they’ve caught the murder-ick. Still, if you’re not gazing lovingly into your followers’ eyes on the regular, you might fail to spot it in time.
While I’d argue that it’s all part of the game as intended – especially in a game that doesn’t hesitate to autosave its single save slot after every event, good or bad (RIP, the person I failed to save from an assassin) – and shouldn’t be touched, you may feel differently as you dutifully gather wakestones to try and repopulate a friendly village slaughtered by a red-eyed pawn.
If that’s the case, there is now a cure for Dragonsplague: mods! As spotted by VG247, several modders have come up with ways of making Dragonsplague a bit easier to track – or getting rid of it entirely, if you prefer.
For the former, there’s the distinctly unsubtle Dragonsplague Counter mod, which sticks a big red number from 1 to 10 on your pawns’ heads to indicate their current level of infection. (Red eyes manifest at 7, if you’re wondering.) While a glowing red number plastered on their forehead is about as far as you can get from the more immersive world that Dragon’s Dogma 2 conjures, there should at least be no way you miss someone about to succumb to the pox.
Other mods offers ways to cure all pawns of the sickness and prevent the risk of permanent plague or even just remove the system from the game entirely, which works by apparently swapping the hidden counter to another member of your party and effectively telling the game that plague pawns shouldn’t murder everyone they see. Always reassuring to know, I suppose.
So there, you go: there’s a cure for Dragonsplague if you want it. For me, at least, I’ll continue to adventure across the lands and risk what may come – maybe I’ll change my mind if it finally claims my beloved sorcerer companion Tonii Tiger, though.