Dragon’s Dogma Vocation Tips: Mystic Knight

Dragon’s Dogma was released in late May of 2012.  It has  been compared to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Shadow of the Colossus, Monster Hunter, and Devil May Cry.  It is an action rpg that follows the a character whom you create using the pretty detailed Character Creation interface, and their quest to slay the Dragon.  This will take you all across Gransys, with plenty of adventures and fun along the way.

The game is purely a single player experience.  However, each player creates a “pawn” that will follow them throughout their adventures.  They control this pawn’s development as well as its equipment and skills.  This brings forth the only real online interaction within the game.  A player is able to have three pawns in his party.  To get to three, the player is able to recruit pawns that other people have made.  These pawns aren’t taken away from the player who made them and the creator can receive items and rift crystals (which can be used to recruit higher level pawns) in return.

Each member of the party will have a vocation.  This vocation determines that character’s stat growth, skill set, and weapons.  For example, a mage will have low health, attack, and defense, though they will have high magic and magic defense.  While they will be able to use magic, they will not be able to use, say daggers and a bow like a strider or a sword and shield like a fighter.  There are nine vocations in total, though pawns can only become one of the first six.  Each vocation plays extremely different from the others, and out of all the ones I’ve played, they’ve all been enjoyable (though the ranger and warrior are my favorites).

This article will teach you how to use the Mystic Knight, who is much like the fighter, though with more of a focus on defense.  The Mystic has pretty balanced stat growth, with good health and decent stamina growth, low attack growth, and medium growth in all other stats.

The Mystic Knight’s main strength comes through the use of the magic shield.  While the Mystic Knight is able to learn a lot of different skills for the shield, the most useful ones are weapon enchantments.  These enchantments, while not lasting as long as those of a mage, are cast on not only yourself, but any pawns that are pretty close to you as well.  This ability allows you to enchant your weapon with whatever you need to take on the enemy at hand, instead of hoping that your mage will be smart enough to cast the right one on you.

It’s good to switch over to a Mystic Knight after using a Fighter or Warrior, because that will make up for the low attack gain of the Mystic Knight, and the magic attack stat isn’t particularly needed, as you won’t be casting all that many spells.  By equipping the Mystic Knight with a powerful sword, they can become much more effective than a fighter could ever be.  Mystic Knights don’t get the powerful Dragon’s Maw skill, but their sword skills are good enough, and their shield skills are much more useful than a fighter’s.

Mystic Knights have a lot of powerful defensive augments and their shield allows them to play very defensively as well.  The Mystic Knight is the ultimate defensive class as it can equip heavy armor, use a shield, and has access to healing skills.  However, the Mystic Knight is most effective when played as a powerful front line attacker, with the shield being used to keep from being knocked back, and enchanting weapons in order to do as much damage as possible.  The Mystic Knight has most of the fighter’s sword skills, so play as a fighter and then switch over to a Mystic Knight for the best results.  The Mystic Knight can also be used as a tougher spellcaster, though I find it much more effective to use it as a melee character.

The only thing to worry about with the Mystic Knight is aerial enemies, as the Mystic Knight runs into the same problems as the Fighter and Warrior.  The Mystic Knight is a fun class to play though, has some great augments, and the ability to enchant weapons can make difficult fights a cakewalk.

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