7 Avowed tips and tricks to survive The Living Lands

To survive the Living Lands, you’ll need to master combat, embrace exploration, and have a deft tongue to get the better of the many people you’ll encounter on your adventure. While surviving isn’t necessarily all that hard by video game standards, there are little tidbits that are well worth knowing to make life a little easier in these harsh lands.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through 7 tricks and tips hard-earned during our time with Avowed for review. They should help you hit the ground running and get up to speed with useful info that the game doesn’t necessarily make all that clear.

A twinkling sound means there’s loot nearby

As you explore the Living Lands, you’ll often hear a twinkling sound. This denotes some form of loot nearby, typically a chest, lockbox, or backpack. It’s also directional, so if you hear it coming from the right, you’ll need to explore to the right. It’s a useful little signal that can make finding general loot but also quest critical items, totem fragments, and treasure map location a lot easier.

Complete side quests first

Whenever you reach a new area, you’ll hoover up a list of side quests by talking to the NPCs with exclamation marks above their heads. While it can be tempting to power through with the main story quest, you’re better off completing all these side quests first. The reason for this is that in some areas, story beats can kill side quests or make you inadvertently fail objectives.

Crafting materials

While you’ll want to be constantly harvesting plants and looting corpses and buildings, you can also craft your own resources if you need to. It isn’t all that well explained in the game, but if you head to the workbench in your Party Camp, then to the Crafting tab at the top you can fashion together all kinds of materials. This is particularly useful if you’re after materials that are hard to come by because they aren’t available natively in the area you’re in, but which you’ll need for higher tier weapon and armor upgrades. For example, Hylea’s Talon isn’t available in Dawnshore, but you can craft it from Paradisan Ladder, which is abundant in the area. And, if you’ve ever short, you can always buy materials native to that region from traders.

Exploration is often rewarded

Each of the regions that make up the Living Lands is stacked with secrets, many of which lead to valuable loot or optional side quests and content. It’s well worth taking some time to venture off the beaten path to explore and rid each map of the fog of war. Some of Avowed bests moments happen where you least expect them to. Another benefit to this is that you’ll unlock fast travel beacons, which makes getting around a lot easier in the future. Lastly, another byproduct of heavy exploration is that you’ll earn stacks of XP.

Talk to companions at your Party Camp

Every so often you’ll see an exclamation icon next to your companion(s) name on the HUD. This signals they fancy a chat. Don’t dismiss it. Take time to periodically set up a Party Camp and exhaust their dialogue options. Before long, they’ll offer to teach you skills, which translate to important combat buffs that will prove very useful as you get deeper into Avowed.

Accept gifts from the ‘voice’

Shortly after starting Avowed, you’ll meet the whispering voice in your envoy’s head. While it’s a crucial part of the story, it can also confer some superb combat benefits. In the spirit of avoiding spoilers, we’ll keep this cryptic: when you are offered a gift from the voice, make sure to accept it, and do so whenever one is offered. This will allow you to unlock some of the most powerful abilities in the game.

Unlock Parrying ASAP

If you’re playing anything other than a full magic or ranged build, we recommend using your first ability point to unlock the Parry ability. As the name implies, it allows you to time a perfect block against melee attacks to parry, knocking back enemies and triggering an immediate counter-attack. It’s frankly a game changer when it comes to up-close-and-personal playstyles.

Use the mini-map

The mini-map is a vital resource, not just for positioning yourself in the world, but also because it signals when materials, collectibles, loot, and quest markers are nearby. Keeping a close eye on the mini-map will save you having to constantly load into the proper map to get your bearings. It’s also particularly useful for uncovering secrets and concealed areas. Notice a piece of loot marked on the map but can’t find it? There may be an environmental puzzle or a hidden space nearby for you to uncover.