I haven't once thought about my Arisen's mug ever since I slapped a helmet on his head, but even I'm annoyed that changing your appearance isn't a god-given right in Dragon's Dogma 2. Instead, alterations to your character and main pawn come in the form of a book you buy in towns. This book, Art of Metamorphosis, isn't bought with regular gold, but a rarer currency called "Rift Crystals" acquired by finding Riftstones and sending your pawn out to help other players.
It's a functional system on its own—I'm sitting on hundreds of RC I'm not using—but Capcom is catching reasonable flak on day one because it's also selling Rift Crystals and the Art of Metamorphosis tome as DLC. Thankfully, modders have already uploaded a workaround to make character re-creation much easier.
With the mod "Early N' Cheap Art of Metamorphosis" by Nexus user SilverEzredes, the makeover tome which usually costs 500RC can instead be purchased from one of the earliest vendors in the game for a paltry 10 gold. You'll find this vendor in Melve, the first major town in Dragon's Dogma 2.
He's well stocked, too: with 99 copies of Art of Metamorphosis available at 10g per, you can load up on all the character redos you'll ever need for the price basic sword. To actually use the tome, head to one of the Barbaries in major cities (Vernworth being the first you'll find) and select the bottom store option to "Modify Appearance." There is one downside to the mod some have noticed: once players progress to the main city of Vernworth, some are unable to find the vendor back at Melve. It's unclear if he simply disappears at some point or if he moves somewhere else.
As far as getting the mod up and running, you'll need one other mod first: Fluffy Mod Manager. It's the same manager used for other Capcom games like Resident Evil 4 Remake, Monster Hunter Rise, and Devil May Cry 5, and it seems simple to set up.
It's still very early days for Dragon's Dogma 2 mods, of course, but it's encouraging to see players already tuning the RPG to their preferences by removing weapon requirements for vocations, increasing carry weight, and getting a (work-in-progress) weapon transmog tool for the Fighter class running. Not bad for launch day.
If you're jumping into this brilliant, but often frustrating RPG this weekend, I recommend taking a quick peek at our top 10 tips for getting started in Dragon's Dogma 2.
