Dragon's Dogma 2 Rift Crystals: Uses and Farming

Rift Crystals, or RC, are Dragon's Dogma 2's pawn currency, used mainly to hire pawns stronger than your Arisen and to buy pawn-related goods. Understanding how you earn them and how the hiring economy works makes building a strong party far cheaper. This guide covers what RC are for, how to farm them, and how other players hiring your main pawn feeds back into your supply.

The details here are checked against the Fextralife Dragon's Dogma 2 wiki and PowerPyx as of October 2026, with hiring tips from Reddit's r/DragonsDogma.

What Rift Crystals are for

Rift Crystals are spent at riftstones, the glowing portals where you summon and hire pawns. Hiring a support pawn whose level is at or below your Arisen's is free, but hiring one above your level costs Rift Crystals, with the price rising the larger the level gap. RC are also used to buy useful wares from the riftstone, so they double as both a hiring fee and a secondary currency for pawn-focused items.

It is worth understanding why the game ties a currency to hiring at all. Your Arisen travels with one main pawn you created plus two support pawns borrowed from other players, and those borrowed pawns bring their own skills, gear, and crucially their knowledge of quests, enemy weaknesses, and item locations. A high-level pawn essentially rents you expertise and firepower you have not earned yet, so the RC cost is the price of punching above your weight.

Because a well-chosen higher-level pawn can carry fights, RC effectively let you borrow strength beyond your own level, which is especially valuable when you are under-leveled for a region. New players should read our beginners guide to understand how the two support-pawn slots fit into your party.

How to earn Rift Crystals

You gather Rift Crystals from several sources as you play, so an active playthrough keeps a steady trickle coming in. The biggest and most passive source is other players hiring your main pawn, which rewards you with RC when that pawn is used and sent home.

• Other players hiring your main pawn and returning it, often with RC and gifts.
• Defeating enemies, which can drop small amounts of RC.
• Opening chests and finding RC caches around the world.
• Dismissing hired pawns at a riftstone, which can return some RC.

Farming RC through the pawn economy

The most efficient way to farm Rift Crystals is to make your main pawn one that other players want to hire. A pawn that is a useful vocation, well equipped, and given a helpful inclination and good knowledge of quests and monsters gets hired more often, and every hire can send RC and gifts your way when it returns home. Keeping your pawn's gear current and its vocation in a popular, supportive role increases that passive income.

A few concrete habits raise your pawn's appeal. Support-friendly vocations such as a healing-capable caster or a sturdy frontliner tend to get hired more than niche picks, and a tidy, readable appearance helps your pawn stand out in the rift listings. Teaching your pawn by taking it through quests and fighting varied monsters builds the knowledge that makes it genuinely useful to a stranger. Finally, actually hiring and using other people's pawns, then sending them home with a small gift, encourages the same courtesy in return, which is often how the best RC and item gifts come back to you.

Playing online and resting at an inn to refresh how your pawn appears in the rift both help your pawn circulate. This is a slow, passive system rather than a quick grind, but over a full playthrough it becomes your main RC source.

Spending RC wisely

Riftstones also sell pawn-related wares and let you adjust aspects of your hired party, so your RC are not only a hiring fee. Treat them as a budget: a modest reserve lets you grab a strong pawn the moment you hit a wall, while chronically overspending leaves you short when it matters.

Since hiring same-level or lower pawns is free, save your Rift Crystals for the moments you genuinely need a higher-level pawn to clear a tough fight or a region you are under-leveled for. Avoid hiring pawns far above your level casually, because the cost scales up fast. When you are comfortably strong, lean on free pawns and bank your RC. A good routine is to rotate your support pawns regularly anyway, because a hired pawn that returns home carries your rating and gifts back to its owner, and swapping in fresh pawns keeps their quest knowledge current with wherever you are in the story.

Gold and RC are separate economies, and if gold is also tight, our gold farming guide explains how to fund gear alongside your pawn hires. The two often trade off: spending RC on a strong pawn can let you clear content that then rewards gold and loot, so they are best managed together rather than hoarded in isolation.

Understanding the pawn party and inclinations

To spend Rift Crystals well, it helps to understand what you are actually buying. Your party is your Arisen, your single main pawn, and two support pawns hired through riftstones. The main pawn is yours to equip, level, and shape; the two support pawns are borrowed and can be swapped at any riftstone, which is where RC come into play when you want someone above your level.

Pawns also carry an inclination that shapes how they behave in combat, such as leaning toward healing and support, hanging back at range, or charging the biggest threat. Setting your main pawn's inclination to match its role makes it both more effective for you and more appealing to other players who might hire it. When you hire support pawns, read their vocation and inclination so your party covers the gaps in your own build rather than duplicating what you already do. A balanced party usually wants at least one source of healing and one way to deal with flying or ranged threats, so if your Arisen is a melee bruiser, prioritize a caster or archer pawn and a sturdy guardian over a second bruiser that leaves the same weaknesses exposed.

Common Rift Crystal mistakes

The most common mistake is hiring pawns far above your level early on, draining your Rift Crystals for a convenience you did not need when free same-level or lower pawns would have done fine. A tight RC balance then leaves you unable to afford help when a genuinely hard fight arrives. Hire up only when you are clearly under-leveled for the content in front of you.

Another oversight is neglecting your main pawn's appeal, which quietly starves your biggest passive RC source. If your pawn has outdated gear, an unhelpful inclination, or little quest knowledge, other players pass it over and you miss the crystals and gifts that hiring brings. Keeping it current and sending other people's pawns home with a small gift both feed the loop that keeps your RC topped up without any dedicated grinding.

A more subtle mistake is treating your support pawns as permanent fixtures. Their quest knowledge reflects where their owners are in the game, so a pawn hired long ago may no longer know the areas you are exploring, making it less helpful as a guide. Rotating in fresh pawns every so often keeps that knowledge relevant and gives more players' pawns a chance to earn their owners rewards, which encourages the same courtesy toward your own pawn in return.

Lastly, do not overlook the gifts and ratings system. When you release a hired pawn, leaving a thoughtful gift and a fair rating is how the community's goodwill circulates, and it is often what prompts other players to send their best items back to you. Rift Crystals are ultimately a social currency, so the players who engage with the pawn system generously tend to end up the richest in RC.

It is worth remembering that Rift Crystals are also the gateway to help you cannot otherwise access, such as a high-level pawn that knows exactly how to beat a monster giving you trouble. Viewed that way, a modest RC reserve is less a hoard than a safety net, letting you summon the right specialist for a wall you are stuck on. Spend them on those genuine problem moments and let your main pawn's popularity quietly refill the balance between crises.

Skipping the RC grind

The intended path is to build an appealing main pawn, play online, and let hires and exploration top up your Rift Crystals over time, hiring higher-level pawns only when you need the extra muscle. It is a system that rewards a thoughtfully built pawn.

If you would rather not manage RC income at all, the Level 999 and infinite stats modded save includes infinite Rift Crystals along with a maxed main pawn, so you can hire whomever you like without ever running short. It is a save file only and you must own the game; browse the full lineup on the Dragon's Dogma 2 page.

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