I am now at 220 hours into Dragon’s Dogma 2, and a significant portion of that playtime has been on Trickster. I’ve been offering a lot of tips and tricks (pun intended) for this vocation in many online discussions. I find myself repeating some of the same bits over and over, so I figured maybe it was time to write a formal guide on the vocation. I hope that it’ll help more people understand and enjoy this weird and awesome vocation.

In the first version of this guide, I had not yet entered into post-game or started New Game Plus. Now that I have, and have had a lot more time to experiment with the vocation, I’ve chosen to go for a full rewrite of my guide. I now know that, while Trickster can clear 99% of the content of this game, there are a few fights that are hugely painful without the ability to do damage, yourself. There are workarounds, but these specific fights (there are a total of 3 of them in the end/post-game) I wouldn’t blame you for switching vocations just for them. I’ll note the spoilers before I mention what they are. Other than these fights, Trickster is viable in every situation. Last, please note that this guide is based on my personal experiences and opinions on the vocation, and there is no one “right” way to play a vocation, especially in a single-player game that isn’t focused on class balance. So take what I say with a grain of salt!


Note: I will not be going over how to unlock Trickster and its ultimate skill, “Dragon’s Delusion”, as I consider that spoiler content. There’s plenty of YouTube guides if you want to know.

I’m going to skip over the truly basic info about Trickster and general combat stuff, but here’s some things you might not know if you’ve only had a casual try of this vocation: Trickster fulfills the “tank” role of your party, in addition to having one extremely powerful buff that affects only your main, and two hired pawns. It has the potential to be the most effective of the “tank-capable” vocations (which includes this, Fighter, and Warrior), due to not taking any damage themselves… If played right. The idea is to grab the attention of every enemy in the area, which will be automatically redirected onto your Simulacrum (smoke clone/ghost, I’ll call it “clone” the rest of this guide), as long as it is alive. The real challenge for Trickster, then, is making sure that that clone stays alive. This is made extra difficult because any damage you take, if it makes you flinch even a little, will make your clone disappear. So your skill choices will generally be based on what strategy you want to implement for using that clone. And your team composition will be influenced by your being a very effective tank, but not doing any damage, yourself (so you want more offense-oriented pawns).

More than other vocations, your team composition is very important. Usually, the best way to play DD2 is to set up your party like a classic MMO party: A tank, a healer, and two damage dealers. You are the tank, so that leaves a healer and two damage dealers. It’s a little more complicated than that, though. You are a tank that does zero damage, and takes zero damage when things are going right. And, in a perfect world, your team takes little to no damage as well. So I like to grab a Mage, but a Mage that also contributes to damage output (both themselves and the team). So my suggestion is to get a Mage with one damage spell (I like High Levin), an elemental Affinity buff (I think Ice Affinity is a good pick), High Celerity to make your pawns attack even faster, and Celestial Paean so the whole party has infinite stamina most of the time. Any damage your team does manage to take can be healed up by the Mage’s innate Anodyne skill. You could consider swapping in High Palladium, High Halidom, or High Solemnity as well, depending on the situation. Note that, if you plan to be fighting drakes specifically, your Mage should absolutely have Solemnity. The main thing that will wipe a party when fighting them is their spells, especially Meteoron. A Mage casting Solemnity will drastically reduce the danger of this.

Now that the most important pawn is covered, let’s talk about damage. You have a lot of options here. But the two stand-outs for your damage-dealer pawns’ vocations, to my mind, are Thief and Sorcerer. If your only goal is to kill things as fast as possible, pick two Sorcerers that have one or both ultimate skills. They should also both have Prescient/Augural Flare to nuke down bosses fast. If you are trying to farm materials, money, etc, then Thief pawns are the way to go (as long as they have Pilfer/Plunder). Thieves are also usually really good at quickly cutting down boss enemies, and are better at survival than Sorcerers if they have Formless Feint. They can dodge anything almost all the time with your Mage casting Celestial Paean to fuel their ultimate skill. Ultimately, you can just pick whatever you want if you and your Mage are doing a good job. I usually have a Warrior (my main pawn) and a Sorcerer. I’ll likely use a Thief in the endgame alongside my Warrior pawn for a little extra farming.

Some of you may be wondering why you’d use a Mage at all if Trickster is so good at keeping aggro, and you can just use curatives for the spot-healing. The answer is simply that micromanaging curatives is tedious. I also think there’s a good chance that the haste, stamina, and elemental damage buffs the Mage tosses out to your two damage dealing pawns contributes more damage overall than a third damage dealer. But I’d have to do more testing to be sure. In any case, having Anodyne just improves quality of life a ton.

I think Trickster has a mix of the best and the worst skills in the game, which makes sense, considering how strange the vocation is overall. I’ll go over each in detail:

• Beveiling Fumes: Bonking enemies with your censer (technically, this skill has a small bit of range to it) to get aggro is something you should almost never have to do. But you might want to do it anyway if you have the Whimsical Daydream censer (look it up if you want to know why).
  
• Effigial Incense: This is really the most important skill for Trickster. You should always have your clone out, as any and all aggro you get will be directed onto it.
  
• Effigial Snuff: This just gets rid of your clone. Really no reason to use it unless you just want to unsummon it in town or something.
  
• Invoking Essence: This will be your most-used skill, by far. You need to constantly reposition your clone in order to keep it from getting destroyed, or to direct enemies into good positions. You can also hold down the button for this skill as long as you want to have your clone follow you. You can even keep holding the button after you sheath your weapon so you can travel with it. This is very useful so you can drop your clone and run away from it if you get ambushed on the road. Just be careful, because if you get caught in an attack meant for your clone, the clone will disappear.
  
• Enthralling Aroma: What this does, is make your clone “possess” one enemy. When that enemy is possessed, all other enemies you have aggro on will attack that possessed enemy. This seems to be the “intended” way for Trickster to do damage. But I almost never use this feature, for a couple reasons. I’ll go into detail about this mechanic later.
  
• Mending Vapor: This skill means that, while you are holding your clone behind you with Invoking Essence, it will continually be healed. This is super important, and it’s the main mechanic you have to learn how to use well when trying to hold aggro and generally survive. Whenever you are holding your clone, you are at great risk of being attacked in the crossfire aimed at your clone.
  
• Drifting Brume: This skill lets you “charge up” your basic Beveiling Fumes attack for a second, and then launch a ball of smoke a pretty good distance away. This also does no damage, but it enables you to grab aggro on a distant target without closing in to bonk it. That said, I don’t think the range is any longer than Suffocating Shroud, so it’s not all that useful, in my opinion.
  
• Effigial Quickburn: This is simply a passive upgrade that enables you to summon your clone faster. Life does get a bit easier once you have it, because you are more likely to succeed in resummoning your clone while under attack with this skill.
  
• Trailing Aroma: Just lets you get further from your clone before it starts to disappear. I can’t really remember having any issues before this upgrade, but still nice.

Now that we've covered the Core skills, let's go over the ups and downs of the weapon skills:

• Sweeping/Suffocating Shroud: You can technically get by without this skill, but it would be silly to try. The AoE blast of smoke is gigantic at the second rank (like really gigantic). It reliably takes aggro from your team in a single cast, as long as you don’t have Warriors or Fighters using Roar or Shield Drum. If your clone is already up, it should always be the first thing you cast in a fight. Just pop this every so often, especially when more enemies join the fight.
  
• Delusory Screen/Illusive Divider: This skill doesn’t always seem to work, though it does often enough to be one of Trickster’s top skills. It seems like, if an enemy’s “charge” animation clips them into the wall a bit, or the wall is summoned on top of them, they will act as though it isn’t there. With careful positioning (and a bit of luck), you can use these walls to keep yourself and the clone safe long enough to heal the existing clone or summon a new one. Overall, this is a game-changing skill when used right, but can be hard to find room for in your loadout, depending on your style.
  
• Aromatic Rally/Resurgence: In the early game (and possibly mid-game), this is a must-have skill. Once you pop it, all of your pawns get a big damage buff, and cannot die. This is a really insane skill overall, but especially when your team is getting their butts kicked. If you keep it going, they are essentially immortal killing machines. Combine this with a Mage’s haste and infinite stamina buffs, and you have a team of rabid dragon-slaying monsters. Why don’t I consider it a must-have after the early game? Because your pawns start to get really powerful from the mid-game and onward, if they have been well-built by their owners. In general, unless fighting something your team composition is specifically weak to, you shouldn’t need the damage buff that much. Additionally, most threats are not easily capable of wiping out your team. There are some exceptions later in the game, but you generally know what you are getting into before fighting them. That said, this skill is always a good choice, I just don’t consider it to be a necessary one. It’s okay to leave this one out and try some other tactics.
  
• Espial Incense/Visitant Aura: This is, hands down, is one of the coolest and most unique skills in the game. Being able to detach your spirit from your body and fly around the map is really crazy. It is also, amazingly, one of the best combat skills Trickster has if you can believe it. The reason is that you can summon your clone to the position of your spirit while using this skill, just like if you were summoning it to yourself. This allows for all kinds of shenanigans. I’ll go into more detail about the tactics of using this skill in combat later.
  
• Fickle Floor/Tricky Terrace: This skill is such a cool idea, to be able to trick enemies into falling to their deaths, and really fits the whole theme of this vocation. However, it is often not useful (no nearby cliffs/water), and there are significant downsides when it is (probably can’t get the loot drops, might not kill enemies while putting them out of your reach). I do want to add that this skill can be top-tier if you already know your route and what the terrain is like on that route. A good example is the Agamen Volcanic Island, my favorite place to farm and practice my vocation skills. The route north of the Volcanic Island Camp is simply a long canyon with paths along the edge of the canyon. A perfect place for using Tricky Terrace. u/w1ldstew also showed me a video of them staggering mobs with this skill, and I have been able to reproduce the effect. It seems like whenever a mob charges or leaps into the phantom floor, they will briefly stagger. I have noticed this can help your clone survive longer, and give opportunities for throws/pins.
  
• Latching/Binding Effigy: If you already like the “possession” mechanic (Enthralling Aroma), this gives you a much safer way of doing it. You can launch your clone at a distant enemy to possess them, which is way less likely to get you staggered when attempting to attach the clone. Since I don’t use this mechanic very much, I never bring this skill.
  
• Scented/Fragrant Alarum: Now this is likely the worst skill in the game. I cannot think of a time in this game in which being able to see enemies through walls would give you any kind of real advantage, as there are no stealth mechanics to speak of. On top of that, you can achieve the same result by floating over with your spirit during Visitant Aura.
  
• Dragon’s Delusion: I like this skill a lot. Probably the most visually-impressive one in the game, and actually very useful, to boot. It summons an ethereal dragon for a huge stamina cost that, while it does no damage, it sends enemies running in fear or causes them to trip/stagger, even bosses. I’ll go into more detail on how to make the best use of this skill later.

Now that we’ve gone over all the weapon skills, I think it should be pretty obvious which ones are your best bet to take with you. But here’s my suggested setup:

• Suffocating Shroud
  
• Visitant Aura
  
• Aromatic Resurgence
  
• Dragon’s Delusion

In almost every scenario, this is the loadout I go with. I think it is worth experimenting with all of the skills, but this is what I have found to be the most reliable. It enables you to fulfill the main role of Trickster, while also giving you the ability to buff up your team and directly mess with bosses via Dragon’s Delusion. Lately, I’ve been swapping out Aromatic Resurgence for Illusive Divider, since my team rarely has trouble surviving, and already does more than enough damage. This variant definitely makes it easier to keep my clone up and gives me a bit more to do, with controlling enemy pathing.

Like most vocations, Trickster is at its best with a variety of augments from other vocations. That said, the list of augments I like to take are pretty esoteric, compared to other vocations. Ideally, you shouldn’t need much in the way of defense buffs, because you shouldn’t be getting hit very often. Stamina buffs can be nice, but they’re not needed, in my experience. So, instead we’re going to focus on party support and aggro management. Here is my preferred loadout:

• Subtlety (Thief rank 2): This may be a surprise on a tank-focused role, but here’s the thing: In all of my testing (and thanks to a comment from u/w1ldstew) the smoke effect from Beveiling Fumes (and similar skills) acts like a debuff that overrides the aggro system in the game, entirely. This means that, until you hit enemies with smoke, it seems that you, your party, and your clone are all subject to attack based on the aggro priority enemies have. Therefore, having low aggro generation for yourself is actually a good thing. You want to get attacked as little as possible while your clone is down, so that you have a window to summon the clone again. Once you use your smoke, enemy attention will be entirely on your clone again, instead of your party.
  
• Impact (Warrior rank 4): This might seem like an odd choice at first, but consider that one of the best ways you can contribute during a fight is to knock over boss monsters after staggering them with Dragon’s Delusion. As soon as they stagger, run up, grab a leg, and PULL. This augment makes it much easier to topple them.
  
• Constancy (Sorcerer rank 6): The biggest threat to you and your team is the loss of your clone. This is very likely to happen if you get caught in a stray attack and it causes your stumble/stagger or fall over. So you should be adding every bit of Knockdown Resistance you can get.
  
• Sagacity (Sorcerer rank 9): What this skill does is add to your Magick. We’ll go into why this is useful to Trickster later on.
  
• Sustainment (Magick Archer rank 2): Your main role, other than tanking, is buffing and supporting your party. And Trickster is one of the few vocations with the augment freedom to equip this defense/magick defense skill. Making your pawns overall tougher is a nice boon!
  
• Ascendancy (Magick Archer rank 8) -OR- Detection (Trickster rank 2): Like Sustainment, this augment helps your whole team. It adds strength and magick attack buffs instead of defense buffs. But, as I was describing earlier when talking about Aromatic Resurgence, damage buffs for your team become less important as you get later into the game. So if you are still looking for Seeker’s Tokens, I recommend swapping this out for Detection, instead.

There’s a few other notable augments I want to talk about that you may want to prioritize, depending on your current goals or preferences:

• Opulence, Refulgence (Mystic Spearhand ranks 4 and 8) and Prolificity (Magick Archer rank 6): All of these are “farming” augments that increase gold, rift crystals, and overall drops (respectively) during combat. Obviously, these are good if you intend to do a lot of farming.
  
• Enlightenment (Trickster rank 4): Getting extra items when crafting is a nice little bonus, but I’d only pop this one on if you are about to do some bulk crafting. Then replace it with something for combat afterwards.
  
• Fugacity (Trickster rank 6): This should be a great augment if you are planning to do a lot of oxcart traveling, or a lot of camping to respawn mobs for farming. That said, in my testing, it doesn’t feel like it does anything. My oxcarts still get attacked plenty while using it. It could be a confirmation bias though, so not sure.

On its face, fighting as a Trickster is pretty simple. But there’s a lot of nuance to consider, moment to moment. If possible (and you don’t mind holding down a button all the time), have your clone summoned while traveling around the world. Keep the summon button held down, and put your censer away without releasing that button, and that way you can just walk around with it following you. When you see a pack of enemies:

• If they haven’t spotted you yet, and you are running Visitant Aura: Send your spirit ahead and summon your clone into the pack of enemies, but up in the air a bit so they can’t melee it.
  
• If you are not running Visitant Aura, or are too close/ambushed: Immediately let go of the summon button and keep running a bit to get a little distance from your clone.

Once your clone is in position, immediately hit Suffocating Shroud to aggro everything in sight. If you are pretty sure you tagged everything, go ahead and drop Aromatic Resurgence to buff your party. Otherwise, make sure you run to the un-tagged enemies and hit them with your smoke. Beveiling Fumes or Drifting Brume works fine for this if there’s only one or two stragglers and you are trying to save stamina.

If you are running Illusive Divider, now’s a good time to drop one or two walls in preparation for the next move. If placing two walls, make sure they overlap quite a bit, or else enemies will sneak through the middle. If you are running Visitant Aura and have not yet moved your clone, now is a good time to do so. As long as you have your clone out, it’s in decent shape, and you have hit everything with smoke, you can plop down just about anywhere away from the fighting and be relatively safe to invoke your spirit form. Place your clone a bit in the air above the enemies. Not too high, but outside of melee range.

Every once in a while, use a blast of Suffocating Shroud just to ensure you keep aggro and bring in any new enemies you might have missed in the fray. Also make sure to reapply Aromatic Resurgence if it has faded. And, be absolutely certain you pop Resurgence when you see a drake or dragon about to cast Meteoron (or any spell, really) and the Mage doesn’t have Solemnity/isn’t using it. This one move can turn a party wipe into something you can keep fighting through. Alternately, if you are able to immediately begin casting Dragon’s Delusion right when you see them casting Meteoron, you should be able to interrupt the cast.

When your clone is down to ⅔ or ½ of its health, it’s time to start thinking about summoning it to you to heal it up. If you have walls up, this is often safe to do as long as all the enemies are on the other side of it, but just be ready for the enemies to ignore the walls and walk right through them. Without walls, you have to find the right moment. You can use terrain elevation, real walls, or sheer distance from enemies to make this happen. If you have Dragon’s Delusion, you might also consider using this. It will scatter the enemies and make it take longer to finish them off, but it will make it safe for you to heal your clone. Make sure to put your clone back in the air, if you have the ability to, after you heal it up.

Clone Dodge: You can greatly prolong the life of your clone if you know the right moments to summon it over to you. For example, when a goblin leaps at the clone, you can tap the summon button to bring it to your position, effectively “dodging” the attack. This is risky, because there will likely be other goblins about to leap at the clone. There are ways to lessen the chance of getting hit when doing this: When you summon your clone, be facing to the left or right, instead of directly at the enemy. It’s even better if you are moving when you do this, circling the enemy perpendicular. The reason this helps is that any attacks directed at your clone won’t have you between the attacker and the clone. As long as the attack doesn’t have a big area that covers you and your clone, you likely won’t be hit.

Smoke Bully: The “possession” mechanic is, in theory, the main way for Trickster to do damage. It’s very risky to do this normally, since you have to get up close and one stray hit will likely make you lose your clone. Binding Effigy makes it safer to do this by giving you the ability to possess a target from long range. I believe having your clone possessing an enemy does make the clone take less damage (not positive about this). But it still does take damage, so keep that in mind. The biggest issue is that the possessed target will no longer be targeting your clone, so it targets you instead. Additionally, melee enemies have strong tracking/prediction, so your possession target is likely to hit you with a charge, leap, or thrown object. However, if you are using walls (or clever use of terrain), you may be able to make good use of possession. What you are hoping for during a possession is that the target will be too stunlocked by the other enemies attacking it to come after you. Putting a wall between you is a good way to give time for that to happen. If that fails and the enemy is charging straight at you, summon your clone and run so that they become distracted by the clone instead.

Boss Bully: There is one scenario where possession works great: Against bosses that are not alone. Most large monsters in this game have big, telegraphed attacks that you can stay out of fairly easily even if you are their only target. So if you are fighting a boss monster, and there are other bosses or small monsters around, definitely possess one of them and watch the kaiju fight. One interesting thing about this is that your clone will attach to whatever large monster’s body part you hit with it. So if you, for example, attach your clone to their head, all other monsters will attempt to aim at their head (though it is difficult to hit specific areas intentionally with this skill). In the end, I am of the opinion that you don’t really need to add to the party’s damage output with possession most of the time. The mechanic is a bit too risky to bother with, except in the rare case of boss fights with other enemies around. I definitely recommend experimenting with it though, as it’s a lot of fun when it works well.

Trickster Judo: There are actually a lot of combat moves you can still do as a Trickster. I’m going to list them out here to break it down:

• Most of these moves are reliant on enemies being staggered or knocked down. This will happen often as a result of your pawns’ attacks, but can also be triggered by throwing objects, using grimoires, or casting Dragon’s Delusion (though usually that takes too long to benefit from staggers caused). You can also get staggers for this using Tricky Terrace sometimes (thanks again, u/w1ldstew).
  
• Pick up and throw - Any enemy who has been at least staggered can be grabbed by you and tossed for pretty good damage. Ideally, you’ll want to throw them into another enemy, or off a cliff.
  
• Wall slam - After you have picked up an enemy, if you run straight at a wall, your Arisen will play a special animation of body-slamming them into that wall. It does quite a bit of damage and is super disrespectful!
  
• Jump and pin - Knocked down enemies can be pinned to the ground by you if you first jump and then grab them while midair. This keeps you on top of them, and it seems to signal pawns to run over and start attacking the enemy you have pinned, almost every time. This is also a good way to make money with the Whimsical Daydream, as you can keep smacking the pinned enemy with your censer.
  
• Object throw - Rocks, ice blocks left from a Frigor cast, explosive (and other) barrels, and enemy corpses can all be used as projectiles that do good damage. Most of these will also cause the target to stagger, opening up other opportunities.
  
• Boss knockdown - If you can manage to get a stagger on a boss, immediately rush over and grab whichever leg its weight is on and PULL. Your Impact augment will make this extra effective. Once a cyclops is sitting down from this, grab one of its arms and pull instead, to get it all the way down. Knocking over bosses like this gives your pawns a huge window to lay on the punishment.
  
• Fist fighting - Your last resort when all else fails. Unequip your censer (you can do this mid-combat) and give them the ol’ knuckle sandwich! DD2 actually has more unarmed combat moves than you might think, and these attacks do quite a bit of damage at higher levels. In addition to all the moves above, you have heavy and light punch attacks, as well as an aerial kick. Attacks against knocked down targets will also be kicks. The main reason you do this, though, is to fight enemies (such as golems) that your pawns are having a hard time finishing off. As soon as you unequip the censer, your clone will disappear, hence why it is a last resort.

Grimoire Guile: If you’re like me, you have stacks of the various functional grimoires just sitting in your stash. While you only get one cast of a spell from each book, they can be handy to have in your back pocket in case your pawns really need the extra power for a fight. I like to keep a few “Prescribed Tranquility” grimoires in my inventory, at least. This grimoire lets you cast Solemnity, silencing a target and stopping any spell casting. This is very powerful against drakes and dragons in order to stop them casting Meteoron and other spells. In fact, if you silence a drake when it is flying, it’ll knock it out of the sky. Winter’s Path is another good one, as slowing/freezing monsters with cold is always a huge help, and the spell will leave ice blocks for you to throw. Also you can get lots of these books fairly cheap (900g a piece) at the “Rare Book Stand” merchant near the smaller player house in Bakbattahl.

Warfaring Trickster: If you can live without Dragon’s Delusion, Trickster can be played under the Warfarer vocation, with one HUGE caveat: As soon as you switch weapons, your clone will begin disappearing. I guess this must be intentional design, but it feels like a huge oversight. It means that you basically cannot use the core mechanic of Trickster alongside any other vocation’s skills. That said, it is still useful to run a pure Trickster build under Warfarer for the simple ability to switch weapons in the inventory screen. This enables you to bring a Mage staff to heal up after a battle, or use Levitate when exploring.

Note: There exists a combat overhaul PC mod out there that makes it so Trickster clones do not disappear when the censer is unequipped. This makes it possible to play a hybrid Trickster, but I prefer to remain in parity with the rest of the community.

Technically, there is no content that Trickster cannot complete, as you can always unequip the censer to fist-fight (more viable than it sounds, but not as good as a sword). But there are a few fights that are extremely difficult because of this. I’ll go over them here. Almost all of these fights happen near the end of the game, or in the post-game, so this section will be spoilered:

• Golems: The most obvious “problem content” for Trickster are these fellows. Pawns are usually surprisingly good at targeting their weak points. But sometimes, they just can’t seem to get that last medal. Luckily, golems are the easiest enemy to defeat with your fists.
  
• Raghnall: Near the end of the game, before you reach Phaesus to try and stop him summoning a dragon, Raghnall will challenge you to a one-on-one duel. This is obviously a problem, since you can’t damage him. You can try to get your clone out, or fist-fight him, but he hits REALLY hard and attacks far too quickly to give you any breathing room for that. Your only chance of actually winning this fight is to get your clone over the edge of the bridge you fight on, on a phantom floor. Although, I suppose it’s possible you’re so high level that you can just beat him with your fists. Otherwise, you have two options: Run past him to the door, where he will give up on a duel with you and just give you the key. Or, run away from him towards your pawns, and your pawns will help you fight.
  
• Snake Purgeners: FYI, all the glowing crimson endgame bosses are called “Purgeners” as far as I know, but there are two types. I call them the “Snake” Purgener and the “Drake” Purgener. There’s only two of these at the end of the game, but they are like golems on steroids as far as how difficult they are for Tricksters to beat. They move constantly and very fast, making it hard for pawns to home in on their weak spots and attack them. My biggest tip here, if you want to remain Trickster, is to bring two pawns with big area-of-effect spells. The ultimate spells Meteoron and Maelstrom both work great, but so does Hagol, as long as they’re fairly high level. It’s going to be a bit of a slog either way, so I recommend putting away the censer and jumping on the big snake to take out weak points yourself. The Drake Purgeners are also tough for Tricksters, because they are tough for pawns. But you won’t have as much trouble as the Snake types.

The most important thing to know about Trickster stats is how Strength and Magick are used. Simply put: Strength influences your clone’s aggro generation, and Magick determines how durable your clone is. There are some rumors that Strength also affects your Dragon’s Delusion’s knockdown power, but I haven’t seen that confirmed anywhere. Similarly, there’s no telling whether actual Knockdown Power on your censer has any effect on it. Though, after playing with full Dwarven-forging on the Dragonswail Litany (the best censer in the game) for many hours, I can say it doesn’t seem to have much of an effect. To add to that, a fully Dwarven-forged Dragonswail Litany censer has 87 Knockdown Power, while a fully Elven-forged one has 50, so it’s not much of a difference.

Since we have no issues easily holding aggro on our clone with a single cast of Suffocating Shroud, we don’t really need to buff Strength further. In light of that, and Knockdown Power not being very helpful, I still believe it’s best to push the Magick stat as high as you can to make your clone very very durable. So, obviously, I’d go full Elven smithing for your censer’s upgrades as that will net the highest Magick stat possible. As for your armor, always go full Dwarven. The physical defense is only slightly lower than full Battahli-forged armor, and as a Trickster, Knockdown Resistance is your most important stat for survival. As long as you can keep from stumbling when you get hit, almost all damage will be directed at your clone.

As for your ring choices, there are a few good options. I generally go with two Rings of Percipience for a total of +60 Magick (so +90 with the Sagacity Augment) just to boost that clone HP as much as possible. Rings of Resolution are also a good choice, because they give a gigantic +100 Knockdown Resistance a piece (so +260 in total if you factor in the Constancy augment). This makes it very unlikely you’ll lose your clone from all but the most powerful hits. There are many other good ring choices, but they depend on your situation. You might want to wear carry weight-increasing rings, debilitation immunity rings, and so on. But the two that I listed, I believe to be the best choices for Trickster, specifically.

I really hope that this guide helps make Trickster more viable for the people that want to love it, and convinces some skeptics to at least give this crazy vocation a try. Please comment any corrections, info, questions, etc. that you can think of. I am especially interested in any data you all have collected through focused testing of Trickster skills. I really would like to know if Strength, Magick, and Knockdown Power have any other effects than what I’ve stated in this guide, in particular. I’ll update the guide with any particularly juicy info! Thank you!

Update 4/23/2024: The guide has been almost completely rewritten, thanks to many more hours of testing, general gameplay, and tips from other Trickster players.

Edit (4/24/2024): Updated some info on Tricky Terrace and Illusive Divider after another day of testing them. Also updated suggested skill loadout, based on those findings.