best class to start?

[Aricard]

It is the first time I am going to play, and I wanted to know the best class to play it for the first time and enjoy the game, I don't want any smokes XD

[Q_taro]

If it's your first time, you might want to use a strider that can fight both close-range and long-range.

[Omnicide]

Strider/Ranger/Assassin/MagickArcher all have access to daggers and that means you have dodge roll and double jump. Their attacks tend to be the most responsive and intuitive to use compared to other games, whereas the others might feel more janky until you are used to them.

https://dragonsdogma.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Vocations

You'll want to check the stat growth sections if you care about that sort of thing, but it's not required to comfortably clear the game.

Grab the physical defense passive from warrior and the magic defense passive from sorc asap, they are available to purchase just by unlocking the classes without having to level them up.and make you much more durable.

Strider has the most balanced stat distribution so you can't go wrong there either. They also get a damage bonus when climbing some enemies that other dagger vocations don't get.

[Ruebeus]

The best class is whichever one you find most fun.

[0rgan Farmer]

All 9 classes are fun imo

[no1schmo]

Strider. It just has more options and balanced stat growth.

[Pink Eye]

As others have mentioned vocations are up to preference. All of them bring their own utility to a party. I suggest going through each class, leveling it up to max, while switching to the next class after you finish. This lets you experience the gameplay from all sides so you can figure out what you want your pawn to be so they can best support you in combat; it also gives you an idea of what you want to eventually settle on for best fun.

If you're looking for suggestions though. I recommend Mage then Sorcerer. Those two classes have an answer to all the challenges that the game will throw at your party. Sorcerer is more damage based but Mage is more utility based. Both are great. If both you and your pawn are a Sorcerer then you can pull off some sick spell sync mayhem. Double the fun if you have the wyrmking ring (you get this ring in a main quest but before turning it in you can make a forgery and turn the forgery to the quest giver and keep the real ring); and the augment that enhances spell casting results in some fun spell mayhem.

For Augements, for me personally, these are essential to me:
Awareness - Sorcerer, Rank 1 Augement - less damage from magical based attacks, very nice to have when you get into Bitterblack content.

Intervention - Mage, Rank 2 Augment - Increases your resistance to debilitations, such as petrification, silence, blindness, and a few more elemental based debilitations. This is super important to have for Bitterblack content.

Restoration - Mystic Knight, Rank 8 Augment - Increases the amount of HP to a pawn when you revive it. It's nice to have.

Resistance - Magick Archer, Rank 9 Augment - Further increases resistances to debilitations and covers a few more that Intervention doesn't.

[Wolfy]

- Strider with the Splitter skill series is super fun.
- Ranger with XFold arrows is super fun
- Magick Archer with Immolate is super fun

Never played Mystic Knight but Riposte seems fun if you are good with timing, Warriors on the other hand are clunky... They can definitely shine but I feel like it takes too long to get used to it or get access to good skills, so it doesn't feel as good to play.

I personally didn't like the Mage/Sorcerer, the spells are definitely cool but the casting time bore me to death. (Plus their earlier fashion is meh)

[no1schmo]

I feel like TC asked 1 simple question and is getting guides dumped on him, or people giving him no real advice at all.

TC, if you haven't started already, again, go Strider; it's just balanced so you can experiment with melee and ranged combat. It's not hard to change classes later in the game and play with them all, but Strider is really just the easiest to start.

[Just a Gamer]

I recently started playing the game. I started as a fighter, I maxed it out, tried almost all of the skills it has and know I know what's its pros and cons. Than went to mystic knight. The best is, you still have a few of the weapon skill you previously unlocked with the fighter, but you can also learn new magic shield stuff, and even some staff skills and do some magic. So
maxed it out and thought: I was the front liner the whole time, now lets do a support line, so I am a mage now. My character is lvl 40, but this game doesn't get boring what so ever. I'm also a very slow player, I take my time with the game. I even do the walking sometimes just to try out my newly gained skills.

To answer your question, as long as you bring a variety of pawns with you or at least one mage who can give element boons to your weapons, you can't go wrong.

[Guh~hey~hey~♫]

Start as a fighter untill you unlock sinew and vehemence (the shield block will help you a lot early on).
Then switch to strider and never look back... it has the second best stamina growth, shine at melee and range, has some of the best control skills in the game, is the best vocation at climbing and most importanlty has a perfectly balanced stat growth for strength, magic, defense and magic defense.... meaning that it will be open to any vocation change (except for tanks, but tanks are the poorman vocations in DDDA).
It's good as a beginer vocation and one of the most OP as an expert/veteran vocation.
You cant go wrong as a strider, this is the only vocation that has no arch nemesis (it can kill any and every things solo).

Later on you're gonna want to switch to warrior to ulnock clout. But this can wait till level 100, so you wont need to level up as a warrior.

Assassin might be interesting too, mostly because it's a rogue tank and so has quite a lot of survivability skills (iframes, block, counters, etc...), is very versatil (can use a lot of different weapons) and has the best strength growth, but.... as a beginner you will often get hit while assassin require some knowledge to handle fights unscathed and has the lowest magic defense and a very average defense.... it also has the lowest stamina growth of all yellow vocations, so it requires more stamina management than a strider or a ranger (especially while climbing).

Though once used to strider and fighter gameplay you might want to try out assassin a bit....

[xabre2th]

you should try every class, dagger is the strongest weapon by far thu.

[ZeSentinel]

Originally posted by 0rgan Farmer:

All 9 classes are fun imo

exactly this !

[StDrake]

Originally posted by Wolfy:

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I personally didn't like the Mage/Sorcerer, the spells are definitely cool but the casting time bore me to death. (Plus their earlier fashion is meh)

Tell me about it, playing caster all the way and after some research it turns out I'm stuck with the princess suit until I beat the main game or dig up something nice in Bitterblack.

Casters are a challenge to play. After trying out some bow action I'd recommend rather the yellow classes as well.

[Paidian]

Originally posted by StDrake:

Originally posted by Wolfy:

-
I personally didn't like the Mage/Sorcerer, the spells are definitely cool but the casting time bore me to death. (Plus their earlier fashion is meh)

Tell me about it, playing caster all the way and after some research it turns out I'm stuck with the princess suit until I beat the main game or dig up something nice in Bitterblack.

Casters are a challenge to play. After trying out some bow action I'd recommend rather the yellow classes as well.

First of all, I don't know how long you've been playing the game for but if this is your first time, welcome to the community :)

There's a spellcasting mechanic for the Sorcerer class the game doesn't explicitly tell you about: spell syncing.

Basically, if you're a Sorcerer and casting a spell, if a nearby Sorcerer pawn also has that spell, they come near you and start casting the same spell, and this stacks for every pawn. Each pawn casting the same spell speeds up the charge time, making it VERY noticably faster to cast higher-level large AOE spells.

More info on: https://dragonsdogma.fandom.com/wiki/Spell_Syncing

Edit: One more thing; if you look up info on builds and characters and whatnot online, you'll find a lot of old information about stat scaling per vocation. This is, for the most part, superseded by the items you find on Bitterblack Isles that came with the Dark Arisen expansion, making the difference between a min-maxed build and a casual one more or less non-existent. It's like 2-3 more hits to kill a big boi, really not that important so I strongly urge you to try out different builds and unlock vocation skills naturally rather than grinding them.