Death Penalty: What Happens When You Die?

Dying in Dragon's Dogma 2 (DD2) forces you to load a previous save and accumulate loss gauge – reducing your health. See more details on what happens when you die, when your pawns die, and whether you should load from the last save or inn rest.

What Happens When You Die?

Load a Previous Save

When you die, a death screen prompts you to load the game from a previous save – either from the last save point or from the last time you've rested at an inn.

Loading from the last auto-save allows you to restart the encounter with more loss gauge, which reduces your maximum health.

Alternatively, loading from the last inn rest resets your progress to the last time you've rested at an inn or your house.

How to Get Houses and All Houses List

Loading from Last Save Reduces Max Health

When you die and load the game from the last save, you lose around 20% of your current maximum life.

This continues after every consecutive time you die and load from the same point without recovering your health until you are left with only 10% of your maximum health.

This discourages players from brute forcing their way through battle encounters by restarting the same save points repeatedly.

You can restore your maximum health by resting in campsites or in inns or houses.

How to Increase Health

Should You Load from Last Save or Inn Rest?

Last Save to Restart an Encounter

In most cases, you should load from the last save point.

This allows you to restart an encounter with newfound knowledge and opportunities to emerge triumphant in a difficult battle.

Note that you shouldn't be careless and rely on loading from a previous save point, as you lose 20% of your current maximum health each time you load from the last save, which makes every restart making the encounter more difficult.

Inn Rest to Quit from Current Adventure

If you find yourself in a difficult spot to escape, such as fighting a brutal boss with your maximum health reduced to less than half with no safe escape routes, consider calling it quits and reloading from your last inn rest after dying.

Note that reloading from the last inn rest loses all your progress from between that inn/house rest to where you've previously died. This allows you to restrategize when returning to where you died.

How to Get Houses and All Houses List

What Happens When Pawns Die?

Main Pawn Becomes Forfeit

When your main pawn dies, and you fail to revive them, they become forfeit and can be revived from any Riftstone.

Items in your main pawn's inventory stay with them and are inaccessible until they are revived.

What Happens If Main Pawn Becomes Forfeit?

Hired Pawns are Dismissed

Hired Pawns that die are immediately dismissed, and your items in their inventory are moved to your storage.

What Happens to Items of Dismissed Pawns?

Dragon's Dogma 2 Related Guides

Beginner's Guide: Tips and Tricks

Tips and Tricks