TL;DR
- Recruit Lucanis immediately in Treviso for maximum romance progression time
- Complete all Minrathous and Treviso sidequests before A Warden’s Best Friend
- Purchase essential items from Minrathous/Dock Town vendor before point of no return
- Lucanis requires consistent trust-building dialogue choices and patience
- His romance features unique companion quests with significant narrative consequences
For players drawn to complex character arcs and emotionally charged relationships, Lucanis Dellamorte presents the ultimate slow-burn romance challenge in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
GameSpot maintains transparency regarding revenue sources from affiliate partnerships and advertising collaborations.
Among the seven potential romantic partners available, Lucanis stands apart as the most demanding companion to court successfully. As a human rogue aligned with the secretive Antivan Crows faction, he embodies emotional distance and guarded vulnerability. His deeply concealed personal history creates substantial barriers that require methodical effort to overcome.
Whether you’re encountering repeated rejection or seeking strategic guidance, this comprehensive breakdown delivers actionable insights. We cover his complete companion quest progression, Hero Of The Veilguard reward mechanics, optimal affection-earning techniques, and crucially, how to sidestep an easily missed early narrative decision that permanently blocks his romance path.
Should your romantic interests extend beyond Lucanis, consult our Dragon Age: The Veilguard romance options guide for detailed analysis of all available relationships.
Upon adding Lucanis to your party, you’ll quickly discover his commitment to the Antivan Crow identity extends beyond mere affiliation to become a core aspect of his worldview.
Securing Lucanis at the earliest opportunity provides substantial advantages for romance progression. When you initially reach the Crossroads hub area and encounter The Caretaker, the narrative presents a branching path decision: journey to Minrathous or proceed to Treviso. Lucanis becomes available for recruitment exclusively in Treviso, and prioritizing this destination grants valuable additional time to cultivate his trust and affection through extended interactions.
Lucanis represents the singular companion whose romance path features an unintentional permanent lockout mechanic, making strategic foresight absolutely essential.
Before concentrating on romantic advancement with Lucanis, players must prioritize avoiding a critical early-game error that renders him permanently unavailable for romance. Surprisingly, this pivotal choice occurs following completion of Davrin’s companion quest titled A Warden’s Best Friend, creating an easily overlooked narrative trap that can sabotage your long-term romantic objectives.
In preparation for undertaking A Warden’s Best Friend, thoroughly complete every accessible sidequest—with particular emphasis on missions located within Minrathous and Treviso regions. The quantity of available quests remains manageable during this early game phase, requiring minimal time investment. Methodically visit both urban centers, finalize all active missions, and meticulously scan each city map for golden exclamation point indicators, as these denote unacquired side quest locations. For players absolutely committed to pursuing Lucanis’ romance, acquire all available merchandise from the initial Minrathous/Dock Town merchant, since future access to this vendor becomes permanently restricted. The three primary missions you must definitively complete before initiating A Warden’s Best Friend include:
Beyond the critical early-game precautions, successfully romancing Lucanis demands sophisticated understanding of his unique personality mechanics. His companion quests typically involve morally ambiguous decisions that test your commitment to understanding his complex worldview. Each successful interaction builds toward unlocking deeper narrative layers and potentially exclusive gameplay rewards.
Key progression indicators include his gradual opening up during camp conversations and increased willingness to share personal insights during missions. The emotional payoff for persevering through his guarded exterior delivers one of the most rewarding narrative arcs available to players who appreciate character-driven storytelling.
Managing your party composition becomes crucial when pursuing relationships with both Lucanis and Neve simultaneously. The decision to save Treviso creates tension that impacts Rook’s standing with Neve, making careful character selection essential. However, maintaining both companions in your active party exposes you to continuous flirtatious exchanges between them that can become overwhelming for some players.
Lucanis features a deliberately paced romance arc that unfolds significantly slower than other companion relationships. This extended timeline means you’ll endure extensive banter between him and Neve if they travel together. While consistently choosing romantic dialogue options with Lucanis prevents his relationship with Neve from advancing beyond playful teasing, the constant back-and-forth may create discomfort for players who feel excluded from these interactions.
Strategic bench rotation provides the optimal solution: consider temporarily removing Neve from your active roster until Lucanis formally commits to your character. Alternatively, deploy them on separate missions or maintain them in different party configurations to minimize the romantic tension while maximizing individual approval gains.
Lucanis’ personal storylines present players with morally complex decisions that significantly impact relationship progression. These narrative choices test your alignment with his values and directly influence approval ratings.
Below you’ll find the complete catalog of Lucanis’ mission chains:
Building rapport with Lucanis follows predictable patterns when you understand his preferences and background. His approval system responds consistently to specific behavioral patterns and dialogue selections.
Players pursuing romance with Lucanis gain substantial advantages by aligning with the Antivan Crows as their primary faction. This affiliation unlocks exclusive conversational options and creates narrative synergy that enhances the romantic storyline. During our testing with a female elf Rook character who mirrored Lucanis’ rogue class and Crow allegiance, we identified multiple relationship acceleration opportunities. Importantly, characters of any racial background, gender identity, class specialization, or faction loyalty can successfully romance Lucanis—the Antivan Crow rogue combination simply provides additional approval boost chances.
As emphasized earlier, maintaining Lucanis in your active party roster represents the most straightforward method for elevating his approval metrics. To monitor your current standing, access his profile screen within the Companions interface. The system displays a numerical rating ranging from 1 to 10, accompanied by descriptive text detailing your relationship status.
The following compilation details specific behaviors and conversation decisions that will enhance Lucanis’ approval score:
Advanced players should prioritize missions that align with Lucanis’ personal motivations and background. Questlines involving tactical combat, strategic decision-making, and loyalty demonstrations yield the highest approval returns. Time investment estimates suggest dedicating 3-5 hours specifically to Crow-aligned content for optimal relationship progression.
A common mistake involves neglecting the approval tracking system—regularly check your standing after major story decisions to ensure you’re maintaining positive momentum. For optimization, schedule regular returns to Crow headquarters between major story arcs to trigger additional dialogue scenes that provide approval opportunities.
To access Lucanis’ most powerful combat capabilities, you’ll need to establish a strong relationship with this complex character. His character interface should reflect an affection rating of 9 or greater, indicated by the “Personal Demon” designation accompanied by dual heart symbols. If your approval metrics haven’t reached the maximum threshold of 10 points, the pivotal Murder Of Crows mission chain provides your final opportunity for significant relationship progression.
Successfully navigating this narrative arc yields substantial affinity gains, culminating in Lucanis confronting you with the decisive question: “What am I supposed to do with this idiot?” This moment represents the culmination of your character development journey together.
When faced with Lucanis’ dilemma, you command two distinct resolution paths—extending mercy or enforcing confinement. While neither selection influences your approval metrics with the character, each pathway unlocks dramatically different combat specializations and legendary equipment sets that will define your playstyle for the remainder of the campaign.
This decision represents one of the most consequential branching points in character development, as the abilities gained cannot be respecced or changed post-selection. Understanding the long-term implications of each choice is crucial for optimizing your party’s combat effectiveness in challenging endgame encounters.
Selecting the forgiveness route unlocks the Demon of Rebellion ability as Lucanis’ Hero Of The Veilguard specialization. This defensive-oriented power provides a 10% resistance enhancement for the player character while amplifying your entire party’s Barrier damage output by 25%. This makes it particularly valuable for teams relying on protective magic and sustained engagements.
The compassionate approach also rewards Lucanis with the Crow’s Poise Legendary Armor collection, featuring these distinctive combat advantages:
This armor set excels in coordinated team play where controlling enemy positioning and exploiting elemental weaknesses are prioritized over raw damage output.
Opting for imprisonment activates Demon of Defiance as Lucanis’ ultimate combat specialization. This aggressive ability dramatically increases Lucanis’ Critical strike damage and Detonation potency by 50% respectively, while his techniques deal 25% additional damage against enemies suffering from any Affliction status effect.
The punitive decision also grants access to the Crow’s Tenacity Legendary Armor ensemble, which provides these combat enhancements:
This armor configuration transforms Lucanis into a crowd control specialist, particularly effective when facing multiple enemies simultaneously. The scaling stagger mechanics make it increasingly powerful as encounter density increases, providing exceptional area denial capabilities.
Based on extensive gameplay analysis and damage testing, the imprisonment pathway delivers superior combat performance for most playstyles. The substantial critical damage amplification combined with affliction-based damage multipliers creates devastating single-target elimination potential.
The targeted individual in this narrative context thoroughly warrants confinement from both moral and practical perspectives. The rewards obtained through this decision trajectory generate significantly enhanced damage throughput from Lucanis throughout the remainder of your campaign.
For players focusing on optimized class builds that prioritize elimination speed over defensive capabilities, Demon of Defiance provides the clear mathematical advantage in sustained damage calculations.
Action Checklist
- Choose Treviso immediately at Crossroads decision point
- Complete all Minrathous and Treviso sidequests (scan for golden ! markers)
- Purchase all available items from Minrathous/Dock Town vendor
- Delay A Warden’s Best Friend until all preparation complete
- Select trust-building dialogue options consistently throughout interactions
- Select Antivan Crows as your primary faction during character creation
- Complete all Treviso region quests and Crow-specific assignments
- Monitor approval rating after each major decision using companion interface
- Bench Neve strategically when Lucanis is in party to avoid romantic tension
- Choose flirtatious dialogue options consistently with Lucanis
- Achieve affection score 9+ through dialogue choices and companion quests
- Complete Murder of Crows questline for final approval boost
- Choose imprisonment for maximum damage (Demon of Defiance) or forgiveness for team support (Demon of Rebellion)
- Equip corresponding legendary armor set and test ability synergies
- Integrate Lucanis’ new abilities into your overall strategy for endgame content
No reproduction without permission:SeeYouSoon Game Club » Dragon Age: The Veilguard – Lucanis Romance Guide
