Beware gifts of counterfeit 'ferristones' in Dragon's Dogma 2—nothing bad'll happen if you use one, you'll just look stupid in front of all your gossipy pawns

Dragon's Dogma 2 lets you hire other players' main pawns for both pyramid scheme good and plague-spreading evil—both some pretty big extremes on the spectrum of compassion and injustice. Well, turns out there's a more chaotic neutral way to bother another player via pawns—nothing harmful, it's just kinda funny. Welcome to the wonderful world of counterfeit items.

There are two things you need to know to understand the tweet above. Firstly, when you hire another player's pawn, you can send them back to their master with a gift. If you're anything like me, this is usually a scrag of meat or something, but if you really had a good time with your pawn you can give something more meaningful—a cool weapon you've got spare, some powerful consumables, or a rotten fish. Whatever floats your boat.

The second, vital bit of context is that Dragon's Dogma 2 has a sort of item duping system in it—via the Scrap Store in the Checkpoint Rest Town. This shop, which strikes me as the mediaeval fantasy equivalent of a Duty Free, lets you make forgeries of certain items. 

Whether or not the forgery will share the same statistics is another question entirely. Sometimes it'll work, allowing you to turn in fakes for quests. Other times, you get a Wokestone instead of a Wakestone.

The names themselves are exceptional. Seeder's Tokens, Golden Stove Beetles, and who could forget: The Partcrystal. Just barely different enough from the real thing to be missed if you're tapping through your inventory management as fast as possible.

Hilariously enough, as one player on the game's subreddit has found, some of these items will still play an animation when you use them. Attempt to use a "Ferristone", and your Arisen will then proceeded to triumphantly huck it into the air, only for the dud to plummet. Instead of magic, you'll find the air filling with dead silence and the thick smog of embarrassment.

Nothing like a dud to make me look stupid in front of my friends. from r/DragonsDogma

So consider yourself warned. Whenever you get a snazzy new item from your pawn's misadventures, double-check its name, lest your entire pawn party be given something new to gossip about with their other masters.