Dragon's Dogma 2 players have found a way to cooperatively print money with pawns—it's just impossible to explain without making it sound like a pyramid scheme

A quizzical-looking Arisen with short red hair and a numerous amount of scars looks gently confused as something is explained to him in Dragon's Dogma 2.
(Image credit: Capcom)

The pawn system in Dragon's Dogma 2 is neat—and pawn quests are neater still. In case you're uninitiated, when you create your "main pawn" in the game, that pawn will be hired by other players running about in their own game worlds. In other words, you're hiring other players' main pawns, and you're leasing yours out all the time.

Every time you wake up in an inn room, your main pawn will come back to you with their haul—usually an item or a gift. You can also set a 'quest', which allows you to offer a reward from your own inventory for any number of tasks, with some being as simple as, say, finding a cyclops. This is where the MLMM (mass lackey money-making) bit comes in. Hey where are you going? This isn't a pyramid scheme, I swear!

PSA: Set your Pawn Quest reward to 10k Gold from r/DragonsDogma

As outlined by the trustworthy-sounding Thick_Shady on the game's subreddit, you can become your own boss and make over 200,000 gold in two hours via five simple steps, minimum effort required. Again this is not a pyramid scheme.

Here's why this works. While you need to pay 10,000 of your own gold to set a quest reward whenever you rest at an inn, multiple players can complete that quest. This is printing money for everybody but you, adding a potentially-infinitely scaling swell of cash to the Dragon's Dogma 2 economy.

Like Thick_Shady suggests, if everybody sets their quest reward to 10,000 gold and makes sure it's something easily-achievable? Then the ecosystem feeds back into itself. Stonks on stonks. You'll even get tips from other players using your pawn in the form of items (or probably a rotten fish). 

"Doing this, I made 200k gold within about 2 hours of running around killing cyclops and ogres, not to mention the extra gold you could get from selling the monster drops." This is honestly a sound strategy—but there's one problem. It requires enough players dumping 10,000 bounties into their pawns at regular intervals and, not to be a party pooper, you actually don't have to do that to make money from other players' pawns. 

"This works better the more people do this," Thick_Shady explains, in a manner that's in no way reminiscent of how pyramid schemes make you buy into their stock. "You only have to pay 10k gold again after your pawn returns while resting at home or an inn, so make sure to camp instead for as long as you need."

In order to facilitate this beautiful, shining, heart-warmingly cooperative economy, players are starting to build up a list of pawns that offer the 10,000 reward. I've been joking about this being shady, but it is genuinely profitable for everyone as long as they play ball. Still, it requires two things. Firstly, that players actually buy-in for 10,000 gold. Second, that their pawn is then hired more than once between inn visits. 

On the plus side? If you've got the spare cash to do this, hiring somebody else's pawn that offers a 10,000 gold reward will let your investment pay for itself. But if you're the only one doing it in your area? You might be literally printing money into the void.

On the other hand, the more players that stack onto the inverse pyramid, the more players will be able to afford the buy-in, and the more 10,000 gold reward pawns there will be destroying the in-game economy. Turns out if you all lift together, you can actually game the system—all it takes is a little jolly cooperation.

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Beginner tips: Arise Arisen
Dragon's Dogma 2 fast travel: Take an ox cart
How to start a new game: Start again
Dragon's Dogma 2 pawns: Build your party
How to change appearance: Makeover

Harvey Randall
Staff Writer

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.