Dauntless Previews

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Written by BuckGB on December 24th, 2017

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Dauntless takes place on the Shattered Isles — a fantasy realm spread across a drifting archipelago of floating islands. Giant monsters known as “Behemoths” have always been part of the world, but recent expansions of the frontier have provoked a deadly backlash, bringing horrendous monsters down onto vulnerable settlements. You are a Slayer, whose order has hunted behemoths for generations and is needed now more than ever. The game features a narrative campaign that unlocks progressively more difficult areas and behemoth hunts, but gameplay is more focused on short sessions than overall progress.

Our journey began in the city of Ramsgate, which serves as an MMO-style social hub where you can meet up with friends, craft gear, change your appearance, or take on new hunts. Ramsgate feels more like an old-school MMO public space than something you’d find in, say, Destiny 2: It’s populated with up to 60 real players (starting with your friends, followed by your guild, and then filling in the rest with people geographically close to you). Players will also be able to connect with friends or through standard matchmaking, so you’re never limited in with whom you can play.

First off, when I first logged on after the "Sharpen your Skills" update I found that my progress had been entirely reset so that I could more easily fall in step with the new progression system, which ticked me off but seemed fair. Full disclosure: the rest is a main reason I am not wholeheartedly recommending a founder's pack because I don't want to recommend what may be Sisyphean task for a while. I then found that the aspects are gone (but found out later they will be back so I can't complain) and that the new cell customization system is up. Though you get the cells randomly in slayer cores and I wish there was a way to perhaps combine some of the common ones to get a different cell, the system is pretty good. That coupled with the specific armor benefits could really help make sure that no two players have the exact same loadout. Also, the base armor stats of the beginning armor is a bit more equalized, which will really help the game seem a bit less linear with "first get the gnasher, then the shrike..." and so on and so forth.

Though many changes in this patch were awesome, one was a bit less so. They really cut back on cosmetic options. The armor and banner dyes are now extremely limited and the only way to get another color is to buy premium currency. I know that this is just cosmetic and it isn't locked behind gameplay, so this isn't something that breaks my opinion of the game, but at the same time I had gotten used to a decent enough variety of colors before they were all unceremoniously locked behind a paywall. Like I said, it's just cosmetic and doesn't effect the game at all, it was just something that was taken away for seemingly little reason.

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