How to know when you're in a timed quest in Dragon's Dogma 2
DD2 advises you early on not too take on too many quests at a time, but what does that actually mean?
Early on in the game, Dragon's Dogma 2 issues you with an ominous warning: some quests are time-sensitive, so you should avoid taking on too many at once.
For those of us who routinely activate every side-quest they come across in an RPG, complacent in the belief that quest-giving NPCs will obligingly hang around in the same place for months waiting for us to scroll back to the bottom of our quest log if that's what it takes, this warning can strike fear into the heart.
However, as with many things in DD2, timed quests aren't quite as opaque as the game would have you believe. Here's how to deal with timed quests in Dragon's Dogma 2.
How to tell when you're in a timed quest in Dragon's Dogma 2
This is the easy part: timed quests in Dragon's Dogma 2 are denoted with a flashing hourglass symbol next to their entry in the quest log.
See, I did tell you that it was less opaque than the game wanted you to think.
If there's no hourglass symbol next to a quest's entry title in the log, then you can rest assured that you've got as long as you want to get around to it. Well unless, that is, a procedurally generated world event decides to do something exciting like murder a mission-critical NPC while you're not looking; but that can literally happen at any time in Dragon's Dogma 2, and so paradoxically is not really worth you worrying about.
How to manage timed quests in Dragon's Dogma 2
Dragon's Dogma 2 isn't out to give you an easy ride, and you might have realised already that you need to be diligent about checking your quest log if you want to know how many timed missions you have on your plate right now.
Here's a two-step process I found helpful in ensuring that I didn't miss out on timed quests in Dragon's Dogma 2:
- Every time you receive a new quest, or advance a quest to its next objective, check the quest log to see if the hand symbol next to it intermittently flashes into an hourglass symbol.
- If you have a quest with an hourglass symbol on it, make completing that quest your top priority, and aim to get it done before you do anything else!
The quest log won't tell you exactly how long you have to complete a timed quest, so it's best to get on with it as quickly as possible to avoid missing your deadline.
This simple method ensures that you never have more than one timed quest in your log at any given time, and stops you from getting overwhelmed with mutually exclusive timers ticking down simultaneously.
For more DD2 systems explainers, see our guide to how saving actually works in Dragon's Dogma 2.