The passage of time plays a significant role in Dragon’s Dogma 2, both as part of the lore and as a gameplay mechanic. While the former is a bit esoteric and spoilery, the latter is something you’ll be grappling with all game, as NPCs and enemies have their own schedules you’ll need to work around. Check out the How to Change The Time of Day page to learn about quickly advancing time - this page will be focused on what happens at different times of day, what enemies you’re likely to encounter at night and during daylight, and how and when enemies, chests, and resources respawn in Dragon’s Dogma 2.

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Resting will restore your Loss Gauge and create a checkpoint save, and you can use a little nappy-nap to change the time of day, but defeated enemies will respawn if you rest.

Day and Night Differences - Dragon’s Dogma 2¶

For all intents and purposes, you may as well consider time to be a binary function in Dragon’s Dogma 2 - the world has a “day” state and a “night” state, and while interesting things can happen at dusk and dawn, this is mostly just NPCs transitioning between whatever they normally do at these times.

Generally, most essential services aren’t disrupted at nighttime - merchants will still be at their stores, inns and taverns remain receptive to visitors, Vocation Guilds are still open to fickle adventurers, and so on. In fact, the two main things that may not be available to you at night are quest-specific NPCs (this is entirely dependent on the NPC and quest in question - it pays to read quest descriptions and pay attention to dialog!) and oxcart travel. Oxcarts only travel during the day, and their drivers are notoriously fickle about what they consider to be “day”. Fortunately, you can ring a bell near each oxcart station to summon an oxcart and wait for the appropriate time of day, making the daylight limitation something of a non-issue.

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Undead prowl at night, including powerful variants like the Skeleton Lord.

Monster That Spawn at Night - Dragon’s Dogma 2¶

Side quests aside, you don’t typically have to worry about the day-night cycle in town too much, but outside of town things are a bit different, as not only does the low visibility of nighttime make everything more hazardous (lanterns are virtually mandatory) but a new host of enemies will now prowl the land. These new nocturnal foes are typically various forms of the undead - skeletons, zombies (technically called undead, but c’mon… undead is the category name, zombies are zombies!), phantasms etc. Even including rare and dangerous variants like the Skeleton Lord and Dullahan. These enemies largely do not displace existing foes, as goblins, hobgoblins, bandits, harpies, and saurians are all perfectly fine engaging in their own unique brands of mischief whether the sun is up or not. This generally means at nighttime you’re dealing with a net increase in enemies, making it a more perilous time to travel. Just about the only foe that’s less active at night is the Griffin, which isn’t likely to be encountered when the sun is down.

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Chests no longer seem to respawn in Dragon’s Dogma 2, making the treasure you get from them all the more important.

Enemy, Chest, and Resource Respawns - Dragon’s Dogma 2¶

While the day/night cycle has some influence on the world - namely what you’ll encounter when you hit the road - the passage of time has its own tricks to play, as well. Most things in the game will respawn over time, specifically ore veins, materials, fishing spots, and enemy spawns. As a general rule of thumb, everything mentioned previously will respawn any time you rest - doesn’t matter where or how long, whether it’s a campsite, inn, or within a house you own. Monsters can also respawn if you’re absent from an area long enough, but in this case, smaller enemies tend to respawn more regularly than larger ones (e.g. if you go through the Guerco Cavern en route to Battahl and take too long returning, the bandits, choppers, and hobgoblins may respawn, but the Chimera and Golem are unlikely to do so unless you rest).

This means it’s pretty easy to respawn most enemies in the game, should you need to farm them, but it also means resting is, in effect, resetting your progress. If you’re planning to make a round trip between two areas, you’re better off not resting lest you end up having to fight your way back and forth. Then again, if you want to double-dip on resources, you’re only a Camping Kit away from respawning pretty much everything you’d care to loot.

There’s one glaring exception to the respawn rule: chests. Chests do not seem to respawn during a playthrough, or if they do, the respawn time is uselessly long. Bit of an odd change considering how in the original Dragon’s Dogma chests respawned fairly regularly (within a couple of days) and often had severe RNG on their contents, encouraging you to run through areas multiple times and loot them. On the other hand, this change makes the loot you get out of chests more special.