Does dragonrot really matter?

[your worryingly hot sister]

I haven't used the dragon tear given to me yet. I know dragonrot lowers the chance of unseen aid, but I never found myself using it in the first place. I think some vendors also don't sell items if they're infected, but they usually don't sell many important things (and when they do, it's easy to get enough gold without dying to buy it). Does dragonrot do anything else?

[Gearwar]

You can not progress the storylines of the characters any further if they are afflicted. Wether they can die or not I do not know. It seems abit of an underused mechanic.

[Goilveig]

Nobody dies of dragonrot, but it can stop advancement of side quests until you cure it, as well as reduce lore you might get.

Also, vendors are still usable even when rotting.

[Anatolius]

Originally posted by Goilveig:

Nobody dies of dragonrot, but it can stop advancement of side quests until you cure it, as well as reduce lore you might get.

Also, vendors are still usable even when rotting.

^

[vczh]

Originally posted by Goilveig:

Nobody dies of dragonrot, but it can stop advancement of side quests until you cure it, as well as reduce lore you might get.

Also, vendors are still usable even when rotting.

But they only give you useless things. Real goods are found from maps and mobs.

[K-ON!]

I read something that From software were intend to use dragonrot as a big punishment , like people will die because of it, and lock out certain ending or quests. But they consider it too punished, so they changed the mechanic.

[X6205]

Not really, because NPC questlines are nonexistend without any reward at all.. Very poor execution this time FromSoft.. Unless your ultimate goal is to get worthless one-time usable Jinza's Jizo Statue, you can ignore Dragonrot.

[Sasha Mason]

Originally posted by K-ON!:

I read something that From software were intend to use dragonrot as a big punishment , like people will die because of it, and lock out certain ending or quests. But they consider it too punished, so they changed the mechanic.

That would've actually been better. The NPC's don't really matter anyways apart from the Vendors, but rot itself doesn't prevent using them to buy things. And the most important NPC's that are vital for the different endings can't even get dragon rot.

[MMB]

Considering the learning curve of the game at launch npc's dying because you where dying
would have freaked a lot of people out.

[Sasha Mason]

Originally posted by RE/PAKO:

Considering the learning curve of the game at launch npc's dying because you where dying
would have freaked a lot of people out.

Then implement a mechanic where it doesn't happen until you progress to a certain point in the story

[OCTDUMPUS]

Originally posted by Mason™ of Germany:

That would've actually been better. The NPC's don't really matter anyways apart from the Vendors, but rot itself doesn't prevent using them to buy things. And the most important NPC's that are vital for the different endings can't even get dragon rot.

Agreed, the current penalty is not that bad as you can always spend all your resources before a boss fight

[RedPhosphorus]

Wall of Text™ that talks about Demon's Souls:
I wish Sekrio had a system similar to Demon's Souls. In Demon's Souls, there was a mechanic called World Tendency, which governed the game's difficulty, item drop rate, and which blocked access to certain events. World Tendency could either be Pure White or Pure Black, and the player was always somewhere on the spectrum between these two end points. What made this system interesting is that players were given a method to alter their difficulty curve in real time, in exchange for altering their experience. White Tendency would reduce enemy health, attack, and defense power, but these enemies were much more likely to drop only healing items, rather than coveted upgrade materials. On the other hand, Black Tendency would increase enemy health, attack, and defense power, but enemies would be more likely to drop rarer items, and of course they netted the player more souls when slain. In addition, Black Phantom NPCs would appear in the world, which would drop special items when defeated, along with the Primeval Demons, who dropped the rare Colorless Demon Souls. Both the Pure White and Pure Black World Tendencies restricted access to special areas that housed special items and enemy encounters.

Tendency was governed by the number of deaths a player suffers throughout the course of his playthrough. Black Tendency could be easily acquired by simply allowing oneself to die while in Human Form. In Demon's Souls, players could consume Ephemeral Eyes to rid themselves of Soul Form, which was a debilitated state wherein the player character would lose half of their health bar. Repeated deaths in Human Form contributed to the World Tendency of any given level, so White World Tendency was acquired by avoiding death in Human Form or remaining in Soul Form, as deaths in Soul Form didn't count towards Black Tendency.

While this system wasn't perfect, it gave the game some degree of replay value, because players would have to achieve both Pure Black and Pure White World Tendencies in order to experience everything the game had to offer.

Sekiro's Dragonrot doesn't really impact the experience all that much. I'm not sure, but I don't think that any NPCs questlines are locked behind the different world phases that occur throughout the game as the player progresses, so Dragonrot won't really lock access to any NPCs so long as the player cures it and progresses through their questline before the world state changes. Since players are more or less in control of when the world state changes, this means that Dragonrot is a hollow punishment that really has no major and lasting consequences.

Dragonrot effects the lore more than anything else.

[goka9696]

Dragonrot is useless. Don't worry about it.

[Kalvix]

its like the revive mechanic sadly, completely and totally pointless as you can really just play till near end-game then remove it once and quickly go around doing all the quests as as far as I know there isn't really a point that stops you from doing them until at least VERY near the end.

I mean this game has some interesting ideas but they definitely weren't fleshed out very well. I tend to just leave the rot on until I want to do parts of a side quest then I remove it, doing it like that I ended my first run with about 10 spare tears so I don't feel it'll ever be something I worry about as if anything in my first run I wasted some at times I shouldn't have bothered like right after a tough boss that got people rotted but when I had no need of them to talk for their quest anyway.

[sillyskeleton]

It seems like a really poorly implemented mechanic. I'm half convinced it's just a feature to troll the player into worrying more than they should about something they don't fully understand. I certainly started to enjoy my time with the game more once I realised how pointless Dragonrot was.