What you need to know
- Capcom's new ARPG Dragon's Dogma 2 doesn't allow you to fast travel unless you've got Portcrystals and Ferrystones. The former act as anchor points you place down and then use the latter to warp to, but while Ferrystones aren't too hard to find, Portcrystals are exceedingly rare.
- However, by taking advantage of mods that add tons of duplicate items and make them easy to acquire, some players on PC are gifting hundreds of Portcrystals to random players.
- This is possible thanks to Dragon's Dogma 2's Pawn system, which allows you to send a gift to the owner of a hired Pawn when you dismiss them. Pawns can be hired and then dismissed instantly, allowing these benefactors to give away dozens of Portcrystals in minutes.
- While some are concerned these gifted Portcrystals will affect the balance of Dragon's Dogma 2's open world, it's important to note that you can only have 10 Portcrystals active at once, and to reiterate that you can only fast travel to one if you have a Ferrystone.
Of all the different rewards and treasures you can earn by exploring and completing quests in Capcom's long-awaited ARPG Dragon's Dogma 2, Portcrystals are one of the rarest, and are also arguably one of the most valuable. These magical blue crystalline stones act as anchors you can warp to with Ferrystones when placed, and making use of them the game's only true fast travel option (you can doze off on oxcarts, but in my experience, a giant monster will usually come along and smash it to pieces).
Only a handful of Portcrystals are available in the vanilla game normally. However, by installing mods like Crazy's Shop and Item Tweaks, players on PC can buy hundreds of the things from vendors for the amazingly low price of 1 Gold a pop. And by taking advantage of Dragon's Dogma 2's Pawn system, several folks using these mods are passing them along to their fellow Arisen like (rock) candy — that's pretty funny when you consider that Capcom is selling one for $3 on Dragon's Dogma 2's online store.
I learned of this phenomenon this morning when I stumbled across this Reddit post, in which a player expresses amazement that their Pawn was given a Portcrystal before being dismissed. For the unaware, Dragon's Dogma 2 has a mechanic that allows you to send hired Pawns home with a "thank you" gift when you dismiss them. Typically, most players offer things like flower bouquets or useful consumables, but there's nothing stopping you from giving away extremely rare items like Portcrystals, too.
WHAT?! I received a Portalcrystal as a pawn gift. Is this normal? from r/DragonsDogma
A few users replied to the post suggesting that mod users could be gifting Portcrystals to other players, which several stepped forward to confirm. "Lol right on the nail! Im one of those guys lol, i spent an hr just gifting port crystals at the riftstone," wrote u/KidFrankie3, explaining how they've been taking advantage of the fact you can hire and then dismiss Pawns immediately to quickly give gifts to countless random players. "Prob gave out like 80 😎"
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Of course, because Portcrystal drops are designed to be extremely limited so that you're driven to travel through and explore Dragon's Dogma 2's world on foot, some are concerned that these players are affecting the balance of the game for others. I think these worries are somewhat warranted — the open world is absolutely phenomenal — though realistically, you're probably never going to get more than one or two fast travel crystals from these benefactors, and you're never able to have more than 10 active anyway.
A few of the Portcrystal philanthropists have offered their takes on the matter. "I have modded a shop selling me stones etc etc and I do gift portcrystals to others. Now, if they keep it or not, it's up to them," explained u/Cuboru. User u/FriedBaecon took a similar stance: "I use mods and I give out portcrystals all the time. If youre a purist and you have a problem with it go dump it in the brine." You could also go sell unwanted Portcrystal gifts for Gold — don't worry, Dragonsplague is making sure the Brine stays well-nourished. You could always pay it forward and give someone else the Portcrystal if you don't want it, as well.
There's also the question of whether or not it's safe to either use these mods or receive the extra versions of items that they add. While the safety of the former is still up in the air (as far as I'm aware, nobody has yet been banned from interacting with Dragon's Dogma 2's online Pawn features for using mods), there's no way Capcom would punish random players for getting things like these Portcrystals as gifts. Though they're mod-added, it's not like these are "illegal" items that don't exist in vanilla — folks with the mods installed just have way more of them than they're supposed to.
Notably, the modding scene for Dragon's Dogma 2 is off to a strong start in general; in addition to mods like these that make Portcrystal giveaways like these possible, there's also one that adds 99 cheap appearance change items, another that helps you out with the Sphinx's hardest riddle, and a useful CPU priority tweak that improves performance, among others. If you're interested in using these mods and others, make sure you peruse the Dragon's Dogma 2 Nexus Mods site.
Dragon's Dogma 2 is available now, and it's one of the best Xbox games and best PC games you can play in 2024 if you love action RPGs with deep, varied combat and rich fantasy worlds. Capcom's new title is playable on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PS5 for $69.99.
