Gamestar mentioned the following archetypes to be available to play:

* Elven Ranger from Thunderbrook
* Dwarven Mercenary from the Thash Mountains (near Lowangen)
* Pickpocket from Punin
* Battlemage from Andergast
* Healingmage from Thunderbrook
* Rashdulian warrior
* Archer from Anchopal
* Amazon warrior from Castle Kurkum (near Beilunk)
* Thorwalian pirate

Also, there is a paragraph about travelling:

Travelling can be compared to NWN2 (for veterans: Realms of Arkania 1/2), from a regional map you can choose your destination. During travel random encounter can interrupt your passage. That means ambushes or wild animals, something like that.
...
Drakensang was this month's title story of the German magazine Gamestar. Here's a summary of some of the things from the article:

- The game takes place in an area 80 miles around Ferdok, in the Middenrealms county called the Kosh. Dragons are devastating the hinterlands of Ferdok. You start your career in the small village Avestreu (german name). You will also travel to a large dwarven city and a cyclops city

- Character creation: You can choose your character from 11 Archetypes, 8 of them having 3 sub-classes. That makes 27 different character types overall. Archetype in that case means an unchangeable combination of race, class and cultural background. You can choose the gender, but can't change the look of your character (figure, head, hair, skin color, etc.). For your character's talents you will have some customization options, but you are not allowed to generate your own character from scratch (ed: perhaps a good decision, because character generation in TDE 4 is quite a complicated thing that needs a hell lot of time, a lot more complicated than AD&D)

- Character feats (talents): The number of talents is not yet final and need some more balancing. The article mentions two talents that indicate some kind of craftmanship in Drakensang, forging and making bows. Alchemy / Brewing potions is integrated, the talent "survival" reveals placing herbson the map. To train your characters you need to visit a trainer and pay for their lessons with Gold and experience points. 40 spells of the official rule set have been integrated into Drakensang, e.g. Fireball, lightning, Summon Skeletons. Warriors have feats like Overthrow (Umreißen), blade dance (Klingensturm) and Precise shot.

- Party: besides your main character you can have up to 3 companions. You can change your party constellation at all times. Nonactive companions autolevel through the whole game. All companions have their own personality and their own individual quests. You have full control over your companions' character attributes, equipment and inventory.

- Combat: 5 different group formations; you can modify your attack rolls, for example to do more damage, but this also increases the chance to get a critical failure. For a successful attack the computer calculates the hidden part of the body. The armour of this part influences the damage a charactersuffers from the attack.

- Controls: There is one leading character, the rest of the party follows automatically (like NWN2). To direct your character(s) you can either use WASD or mouse. Camera follows automatically, is rotable and offers different zoom steps (see also the oncoming dev diary #12). Left click orders your char to execute an acion (context sensitive, for example open the door), right click opens a radiant menu you can choose alternative orders from (use lock pick, use magic, break door).

- Technical things: Not all dialogs are synchronized, only the most important ones. Like Dragon Age, Drakensang does not have a regular day / night circle. Instead it is using lights as a tool to create atmosphere, like the sky becoming suddenly dark when a dragon flies above the heads of your party.

- Quests: Most quests offer different solutions, for example battle, persuasion, choosing one faction over another. An example was given, a witch is asking the player to bring her altar wine from the camp of thepraiots (a inquisition like organzation, followers of the god of order, Praios). He can choose between helping the witch and bringing her the wine or killing her by order of the praiots. Both has consequences for following quests.​