While playing Dragon's Dogma 2 I lost around four hours of progress and it's all because of that pesky little "Load from Last Inn Rest" option in the main menu. You see, Dragon's Dogma 2 is pretty hardcore when it comes to saves, consequences, and just generally wanting you to bear the brunt of your decisions.
It's not an RPG where you can really game saves—for the most part you can't reload an old save to take back something you did Skyrim-style. You can't even start a new game in Dragon's Dogma 2 itself, so you're stuck with whatever ugly beastren mug you chose until you reach the barberie in the capital city of Vernworth to change appearance—unless you go through an elaborate process deleting your save.
Now to give some context; there are two ways to load saves in Dragon's Dogma 2 from the main menu:
- Load from Last Save
- Load from Last Inn Rest
After playing the game for any length of time you'll realise that you don't actually rest at inns very often—especially with that 2,000 gold price—and spend most of it camping out in the wilderness, so 90% of your saves will be made based on when you choose to save the game or when it autosaves. However, the danger of the inn save is ever present. This is because, and here's the important part, if you choose the "Load from Last Inn Rest" option it will delete your other save.
The game will give you a little message, but honestly, it's very easy to click through without reading entirely, especially as it doesn't say "warning" or lead with that all important info. If you try to backtrack to the main menu afterwards to select the "Load from Last Save" option instead, it will now be gone, meaning any progress you've made between your last inn rest and your previous save is lost.
This is obviously a method of deterring save-scumming, but considering how rarely you'll use the inn, it feels a bit dangerous. With this in mind, you might want to rest at an inn more frequently so you'll never lose much progress. I suppose it also lets you use your inn save as a designated fallback point—a restart to the day if you will, for if you ever find yourself stuck or in a difficult position. You could also use it as a method to test something, provided you were doing that thing right after you inn-rested.
It's worth nothing that you'll unlock a house in Vernworth where you can stay for free through the A Place to Call Home quest. When you rest in your house it counts as an inn save and lets you receive your pawn rewards from other players, so it's well worth getting this and staying here whenever you're in Vernworth to make sure you have a fallback point.
You'll probably still be loading up your last save (auto or otherwise) more often than using an inn save, though. The only reason I loaded up an inn save was to check if it also included camp rests, then I clicked through since it looked like your typical "Do you want to load this?" message, figuring that I'd be able to return to the menu and choose the other option instead, because that's absolutely standard for most other RPGs.
The moral of the story is just don't choose "Load from Last Inn Rest" unless the situation in your other save is completely unsalvageable and you need a fallback option. Also if an option is going to potentially wipe hours of progress, it should lead with that info or display it in the context of a warning that doesn't look like a standard load save message.
