How to use valuables in Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Should I be hawking these or holding onto them?
Unsure what to do with your valuables in Dragon Age: The Veilguard? You'll start stockpiling loot pretty early in the RPG as you explore every nook and cranny and upend treasure chests into your backpack. But the game doesn't make it clear what valuables are for. Sure, you can sell them to a merchant, but they also have a secondary purpose:gaining faction strength.
There are a number of ways to get loot in the game, whether from random merchants, quests, or by finding it during quests in the treasure-filled locations you'll be frequenting. All that said, here's how valuables work in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
How to sell valuables
The first thing you can do with valuables is sell them for cold hard cash, though only with faction specific vendors. They're marked on the map with a little shirt-shaped "Merchant" icon, as opposed to all of the regular traders that you can find while wandering around the game's different regions.
When you talk to the merchant, you can simply select the sell valuables option on the right and then "sell all" to empty out your inventory of all the loot you've been picking up. Before you do, however, it's worth talking a bit about faction strength and how this ties into valuables.
Valuables and faction rep
Selling regular valuables with a faction merchant gets you faction rep—that's simple enough—but you're probably wondering why there are random traders scattered around the map who only sell valuables. What's the point in buying something you're just going to sell anyway?
Some valuables do give you permanent listed bonuses when acquired, but the main reason is certain valuables are worth more faction strength if you sell them to the right faction. Say I run around Dock Town and find a merchant selling the Compendium of the Dead rare valuable. Judging by its description, The Mourn Watch would be really into this, so I head to the Necropolis Halls and sell it for extra rep.
Valuables provide +3 (as standard), then +8, +15, and +75 faction reputation if you find something really rare and appropriate. Generally, make sure to look at valuable descriptions, especially those that are uncommon and rare, and then sell them to the relevant party. If you're not sure, here's some info for those I've found so far:
Valuable | Sell it to this faction | Strength increase |
---|---|---|
Compendium of the Dead | The Mourn Watch | +15 strength |
Demonic Bezoar | The Mourn Watch | +15 strength |
Darkspawn Horn | Grey Wardens | +15 strength |
Darkspawn Fangs | Grey Wardens | +8 strength |
Darkspawn Guts | Grey Wardens | +8 strength |
Dragon Tooth | Lords of Fortune | +75 strength |
Venatori Sigil | Shadow Dragons/Antivan Crows | +15 strength |
Venatori Ornament | Shadow Dragons | +15 strength/+8 strength |
Venatori Crystal | Shadow Dragons | +15 strength |
Ritual Pouch | Shadow Dragons | +15 strength |
Cheater's Deck | Shadow Dragons | +15 strength |
Ocularum Pedestal | Veil Jumpers | +15 strength |
The Divine's Hat | Any faction | +8 strength |
As you can see, factions are interested in stuff relevant to them. Grey Wardens like Dark Spawn, Shadow Dragons like Venatori, The Lords of Fortune like dragons, and the Antivan Crows like wine and fancy things. It's worth noting that some valuables are worth the same strength with all factions, like The Divine's Hat.
If you want to be really optimal, your best bet is saving up all of your uncommon and rare valuables, saving the game, then going through each faction working out what'll give you the most rep. That, or just sell things however you want.
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Sean's first PC games were Full Throttle and Total Annihilation and his taste has stayed much the same since. When not scouring games for secrets or bashing his head against puzzles, you'll find him revisiting old Total War campaigns, agonizing over his Destiny 2 fit, or still trying to finish the Horus Heresy. Sean has also written for EDGE, Eurogamer, PCGamesN, Wireframe, EGMNOW, and Inverse.