Dauntless Sharpen Your Skills Update Goes Live Today, Patch Notes

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Written by ValH on December 8th, 2017

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The Sharpen Your Skills update for Phoenix Labs' Dauntless should be going live later today, along with a full Closed Beta wipe. The update will add new items, weapons, and enemies to the co-op action-RPG and introduce sweeping changes to the way its combat and progression work. Here's an overview of all the new stuff:

DAMAGE TYPES AND COMBAT REVAMP

Sharpen Your Skills brings major changes to combat in Dauntless by introducing damage types that change the way Slayers consider their weapon choice, role within their team, and most importantly, how they decide to approach each and every Behemoth encounter

Slayers now have multiple damage types to choose from, allowing a party to cater their weapon selection to the hunt. Each of the damage types have their own unique benefit and effect on the Behemoth. This is furthered by the introduction of damage numbers which allows Slayers to see how effective and impactful their attacks are in real time.

This is a big change to combat flow, and we’re excited to see how players coordinate and optimize their loadouts. Get more in-depth information about damage types and the updated combat system.

THE WAR PIKE

The war pike accentuates the new damage system by exposing Behemoth parts and allowing Slayers that target the affected parts to do more damage. After unleashing a carefully aimed flurry to expose the Behemoths weaknesses, Slayers can launch precise ranged assaults, staggering their quarry with immense force.

SKARN

Skarn fears no Slayer. It remains resolute and utilizes aetheric magnetism to throw powerful, punishing attacks at Slayers who are unlucky enough to get drawn in.

Feel bold enough to take on a Skarn? Learn what you can expect to go up against.

KHARABAK

Kharabak rapidly swarms the party out of nowhere with precise, calculated strikes. It’s a highly mobile predator that will leave even the most experienced Slayers who hunt it bloodied and bewildered after the onslaught.

Think you’ve got perfect dodge rolls? Put that to the test against the precision and fury of Kharabak. Would you like to know more?

THE CELL SYSTEM

In Sharpen Your Skills, players can now add cells to their weapons and armour, allowing them to sculpt their playstyle to their unique strengths or focus on what best serves the hunt as a whole.

With the introduction of the cell system, armour aspects find themselves in a transitional phase. Many of the old aspects simply didn’t play nice with this new direction. We also want players to feel like the power potential of their gear matched the Behemoth they had to fight to get it. To that end, we have removed them from all armour sets except for gear crafted from Ragetail Gnasher, Moonreaver Shrike, and Deadeye Quillshot, which all feature re-tuned aspects.

The intention going forward is that as players encounter deadlier versions of Behemoths, the weapons and armour they craft from them will be capable of much more. New versions of aspects that players loved will make a reappearance alongside all-new, expectation defying effects. For a preview of this, we recommend taking Rezakiri and Shrowd’s weapons for a spin. More specifics on how cells completely change the way Slayers hunt can be found here.

NEW PROGRESSION SYSTEM AND DAILY/WEEKLY HUNTS

There’s no predicting what new threat may be stalking the Shattered Isles. We’ve overhauled our hunt system completely and separated Behemoths by their difficulty into separate regions. Slayers will tackle Patrols Hunts that pit them against any of the beasts that dwell in these domains. Once a Slayer has discovered enough intel, they will be able to embark on a Pursuit Hunt to target the exact Behemoth they want to slay. This will allow them to get the last specific pieces they need to finish crafting more powerful weapons and armour.

After making their way through the known regions, Slayers will be able to depart on daily and weekly hunts to help keep the surging Behemoths at bay. These time specific events come with awesome benefits and rewards that will call even the most comfortable Slayers to arms.

As a result of this progression overhaul, all player accounts will be reset in order to put them in line with the new progression flow. Want to know more about what is changing? All the specifics can be found here.

And an excerpt from the rather extensive patch notes:

Weapons and Armour

• Added new weapon — the war pike.
• Added a brand new equipment augmentation system. Slayers will be able to augment their weapons and armour with cells. With this patch, we are adding over 200 new cells to Dauntless and plan to continue to add more in the future. This is a brand new system that we will continue to tweak and refine as we gather information.
• Added multiple damage types to Dauntless including blunt, piercing and slashing. Each of these damage types have their own hunt advantages.
  • Blunt is great for staggering Behemoths to allow the rest of your party to get free hits. It is especially effective against heads and legs.
  • Piercing exposes Behemoth parts, which amplifies the damage that the affected part takes. Slayers using Slashing weapons should capitalize on this as they will do exponentially more damage and can get much quicker part breaks.
  • Slashing is the critical to getting part breaks and severing limbs. Carefully placed part breaks can completely change the dynamic of a hunt, and are the key to success for any Slayer.
• Newly added damage numbers convey the amount and type of damage being done:
  • Grey is regular damage which is caused by any attack to the Behemoth.
  • Blue is stagger damage which is caused by blunt damage or attacks that are interrupting or knocking down a Behemoth.
  • Red is expose damage which is caused by piercing damage that works to increase the damage that the affected part takes.
  • Yellow is part damage which is damage that is specifically done to that limb in an attempt to break it. This is where slashing weapons shine.
• Defined which weapon attacks can interrupt Behemoth attacks. Our goal is to increase and reward skill around interrupts, making them more challenging in exchange for better rewards in the form of longer staggers. Note that any attack made with a weapon socketed with an “interrupt cell” can interrupt an attack. These changes will impact weapons in the following ways:
  • Hammer: Dodge evade blast cannot interrupt.
  • War pike: Primary attacks cannot interrupt.
  • Chain blades: No attacks (by default) can interrupt.
  • Sword: Primary attacks and special attacks can't interrupt.
  • Axe: Special attack can't interrupt.
• Added new weapons and armour models.
  • Added new Quillshot sword, axe, hammer, and chain blades.
  • Added new Hellion sword, hammer, and chain blades.
  • Added new Shrowd hammer, and chain blades.
  • Added new Rezakiri sword, axe, hammer, and chain blades.
  • Added new Nayzaga sword, axe hammer, chain blades, and armours.
  • Added new Charrogg sword, axe, chain blades, and armours.
  • Added new Stormclaw axe, hammer, and chain blades.
  • Added new Kharabak sword, axe, hammer, chain blades, and armours.
  • Added new Skarn sword, axe, hammer, chain blades, and armours.
• All Radiant and Umbral weapons now have custom elemental audio.
• Adjusted weapon hitboxes so Slayers using the sword or hammer should feel like they are connecting more accurately.
• Added the ability for players to ‘prime’ all hammer hits with an ammo charge by quickly pressing the secondary attack during the wind-up of an attack. If the player times it right and presses their special attack during the end of the hit, they will immediately ‘quick reload’ and replace the shot they just used. This helps make the hammer combat more skillful by offering a higher risk-reward benefit for players.
• Added new quick and normal versions of the hammer secondary attack blast. The quick version of the attack can be executed after dodge rolls. The normal version is available at all other times.
• Made improvements to the chain blades pull so that players will no longer end up behind or shoot past the Behemoth when using special attacks.
• Balanced the chain blades 'Blender' attack so that it will now do double damage per hit but it will only perform one hit per spin of the blades (instead of three).
• Standardized armour and weapon progression. All weapons and armour can now be upgraded to tier 5 (maximum). Except for Borrowed pieces which will only go to tier 3.
• Redesigned Weapon impact audio system. Sounds are now more reflective of the amount and nature of the damage inflicted to the Behemoth.

Behemoths

• Added new Behemoth — Skarn.
• Added new Behemoth — Kharabak.
• Various balance changes to make Behemoth staggers work more appropriately with the new damage types.
• Added new systems that better show damage progression on Behemoths for exposed parts, severed limbs, and scarred tissue on parts that have already been broken.
• Slightly increased the stagger time and cooldown for Shrowd's Doomsday Orb and Clone (when at low health) to make it less spammy.
• Adjusted Pangar's hitboxes to more closely match the model and make hits from its rolling attacks more fair and accurate.
• Tweaked Shrike's four swipe attack so that it can no longer juggle players for all four hits.
• Players will no longer be damaged by Drask when it’s consuming aether to heal.
• Added new VFX and SFX to make the difference between a stagger and a part break more clear and apparent.
• Reworked Blaze VFX across all Behemoths to improve appearance.
• Added multiple new Skarn and Kharabak Flares and Sigils.
• Fixed a bug that caused Nayzaga's eyes to have incorrect visual effects.
• Added shock VFX to Drask's patrol roar.
• Fixed a bug that caused Charrogg's broken vent VFX to remain after the Behemoth was slain.
• Fixed a bug that caused Stormclaw's shock VFX to remain after the Behemoth was slain.
• Fixed a bug that caused Embermane's blaze VFX to improperly load.
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused Moonreaver Shrike to not damage players with its backhand attacks.

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