Building your character in Dragon Age Inquisition is an important part of combat and one of the core aspects of the game, but it’s not just your character that should be focused on.
All the party members that you acquire (a total of 9) have specific specializations and can be built in various ways to suit the combined needs of your team.
Combat in Inquisition demands some sort of tactics, especially when you are fighting against tougher enemies and High Dragons. For such purposes, it is usually best to build a team that has specialized individual characteristics, and also has synergy as a whole.
Character Leveling
The three classes in the game (Warrior, Rogue, and Mage) all offer 4 standard skill trees, along with one specific specialization. Every time you kill an enemy or finish a certain quest, you gain a certain amount of XP based on the length/complexity of the quest or the difficulty of the enemy.
When you accumulate a specific amount of XP, you level up. At this time, you acquire 1 point to spend to unlock an ability from any one of the trees. Each tree offers a mix of active and passive abilities.
Active abilities are diamond shaped, while passive are circle shaped. All Active abilities have a smaller ability attached to them – these are upgrades for the ability they are attached to, and also require a point to be invested into them.
Unlocking a Specialization
When you reach level 9, your character will have the option of specializing in one of three specialization trees. Specialization is done by taking up quests given to you by specific trainers that arrive at Skyhold once you reach level 9.
The quests usually require quite a bit of exploration, and are rather time consuming. However, they are absolutely worth it, as a specialized character is much more powerful and practical as compared to one who limits him/herself to just the mainstream four ability trees.
When you reach level 9, all your other party members will automatically have their specialization trees unlocked, even if they are a level below you.
The following are the specializations for each party member:
- Blackwall – Champion
- Cassandra – Templar
- Cole – Assassin
- Dorian – Necromancer
- Iron Bull – Reaver
- Sera – Tempest
- Solas – Rift Mage
- Varric – Artificer
- Vivenne – Knight Enchanter
Building and Re-Specing Your Character
Levels are gained rather slowly in Dragon Age Inquisition, mainly because the game encourages you to explore and take part in different quests to acquire XP.
At the beginning you probably won’t have a fixed plan or build in mind, but as you go past level 12 you’ll eventually start to understand the importance of certain skills, and the uselessness of others.
Don’t worry, you have a chance for repentance – simply buy the Tactician’s Renewal amulet from the Blacksmith (an infinite amount are available) and re-spec all your characters that you feel need to built properly.
All you have to do is equip the amulet on a specific character, and his/her points will be reset. You can then go into the Abilities menu and invest the points to your liking.
Dragon Age Inquisition Character Builds
If you need aid in building your character, or want specific tried and tested builds that work well in the battlefield, you can take a look at some of ours. We have 4-5 builds for every class, one for each specialization and two that are more focused on the primary four trees.
Our builds tackle generic equipment that works with the build structure (weapon and shield or two-handed weapon in case of Warrior), along with the skills that you will acquire. We’ll leave it up to you to decide which skill takes what place in your key assignments.
You can check out our Class Builds and Party Builds for more details on how the builds should be used and why they are structured like the way they are:
Don’t forget to share your own builds, leveling and progression tips by commenting below!
