Dragon Age Veilguard Heart of Corruption walkthrough and guide
Nov. 5, 2024The Heart of Corruption quest in Dragon Age Veilguard is a long one and ends with a level 50 boss
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
The Dragon Age Veilguard Heart of Corruption quest can be started early on in the Crossroads, but it’s an endgame task that takes a long time and puts you against a brutal level 50 boss at the end. Getting to this boss requires you to take on several weaker foes to obtain their essences, and even this stage takes a while, as you’ll need to level up a lot and unlock a few key locations by completing lots ofDragon Age The Veilguardquests. If you’re ready to take the fight to the Blight directly, I’ve explained all the steps for the Heart of Corruption side quest in Dragon Age Veilguard.
How to beat the Heart of Corruption quest in Dragon Age Veilguard
To complete the Heart of Corruption side quest in Dragon Age Veilguard, you need to fulfil certain other quests and parameters.You cannot complete Heart of Corruption unless you also complete:
Dragon Age Veilguard save or leave the mayor choiceDragon Age Veilguard Pinnacle of Its KindDragon Age Veilguard Echoes of the Past
You can get the Heart of Corruption quest before you encounter any of these elements, but you can’t complete it until they’re done. Behind each gate is a boss fight that’s part of the Heart of Corruption’s mandatory path, and the Gates only open when you slay certain bosses around the game and collect their “Champion’s Essence”. Not only that, but those Gate bosses themselves aren’t accessible until you progress the campaign until the point where the areas of Thedas you find them in are unlocked.
Once you’ve unlocked them in their respective questlines, you need to pass through each one and defeat a powerful boss behind each gate. The weakest of these bosses is level 32 and the most powerful is level 42, so players will need to be in the mid-game at the very least. Still, we’ll go through them all now.
The weakest of the three bosses you need to kill to unlock the seals for Heart of Corruption is theBetrayal of Felassan, a level 32 boss beyond the Gate of Deep Sorrows.Here’s some advice to help you bring it down:
Kill the Betrayal and you’ll be able to claim the Revenant Essence off its body, one of three essences needed to unlock the door and Heart of Corruption. There’s also a chest nearby with a unique item inside - it appears these items will change depending on your class, but every boss in this quest has one after it, so make sure you don’t leave them behind!
The Slaughter of the Pillars is another shield-and-spear wielder with the same attack patterns as the Betrayal of Felassan, so all the muscle memory you learned in that last fight will help you here too. However,the Slaughter, found behind the Gate of Parched hopes, is level 37, and there’s a few distinct nuances to keep in mind when you fight this tougher boss.
Once the Slaughter of the Pillars is killed, grab the corrupted essence off its body, and get ready for the next fight being against a very different sort of foe.
The final encounter - at least until the final boss - is theFall of the Protector, a level 42 boss behind the Gate of Pale Reflections. This one isnota shield and spear user, a wholly different kind of boss, and certainly the most powerful of the three revenants so far. Here’s some help on beating it:
Defeat the Fall of the Protector and you’ll be able to get the final corrupted Revenant Essence, as well as another chest with a unique item!
Once you have all three essences, head back to the door. You can insert them individually as you collect them or all in one go (it really doesn’t matter), but either way, the Blight should recede and allow you to progress down the corridor beyond.
Be warned:not only is the final challenge going to be spoilt further down, but before you go further on, you should make sure you’re atleast level 40 and ideally much higher,andhave allies and powers that focus on Fire damage.
The final challenge of the Heart of Corruption side quest is aBlighted Dragon, also called a Revenant Dragon, a level 50 boss encounterthat mirrors the dragon fight that Rook had in the wake of theDragon Age Veilguard Minrathous or Treviso choiceearlier in the campaign. Here’s our best advice on how to beat it:
Beat the dragon and the Heart of Corruption quest will finally be over, with a pool of rewards and currency, as well as one more unique item found in a chest at a little dead-end path at the opposite end of the arena.
© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and raconteur with a Masters from Sussex University, none of which has actually equipped him for anything in real life. As a result he chooses to spend most of his time playing video games, reading old books and ingesting chemically-risky levels of caffeine. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at USgamer, Gfinity, Eurogamer and more besides.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s big bad isn’t bald due to hereditary hair loss, his age, or a stylistic choice: “Solas lost hair because of stress”
Dragon Age: The Veilguard directors say they would’ve loved to explore “what lies beyond the sea” and add new classes in the DLC we’re never getting
Marvel Rivals gets its first post-launch patch, taking aim at bugs that were making players get stuck in various places and an overpowered Doctor Strange strategy
