Dragon's Dogma 2 is patching its Dragonsplague to be less viral

Capcom has announced a new Dragon’s Dogma 2 patch for later this month, and it will make adjustments to the game’s most polarizing mechanic: Dragonsplague.

An exact release date hasn’t been shared, but Capcom’s announcement Twitter says the patch should be ready before the end of April. Although it does add these new fixes and adjustments will be added to “each platform as soon as they are ready,” which may mean the patch will release at different times across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

Regardless, the biggest inclusion is an adjustment to Dragonsplague, which has been wreaking havoc in Dragon’s Dogma 2 since it causes infected Pawns to go on a killing spree and raze entire villages if left untreated. It’s also very tricky to spot, and the game makes little effort to warn you should one of your Pawns catch the virus. While some players welcome the extra level of chaos and danger it brings to the game, others flat out hate how disruptive it is. There are even PC mods that remove it entirely.

While Capcom has no intention of disabling Dragonsplague itself, the patch will at least make it less common by “reducing the infection frequency,” and also make its symptoms, such as the glowing eyes, easier to spot. That’s not all the patch will do though. Aside from miscellaneous bug fixes, it will add an option to zoom in your Arisen and Pawns’ faces in certain menus, and adjust Pawn behavior in multiple ways. For example, Pawns should become less likely to fall off cliffs and certain lines of dialogue won’t repeat as often.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 launched on March 22 and for all the complaints lobbied against it for the Dragonsplague, its performance, and microtransactions, Capcom looks to have another smash success on its hands. In a press release on April 2, Capcom confirmed the action RPG had sold over 2.5 million units in less than two weeks. By comparison, it took the first Dragon’s Dogma over a month to sell one million units, according to this 2012 Capcom press release.