Dauntless - Co-op Action RPG - Ex Bioware devs

I realize this game doesn't get a lot of love here, it is Monster Hunter's F2P little brother. The last couple patches have made this more of a complete game with long term things to unlock. Hunt (Battle) passes, weekly quests, a mastery (endgame progression) system, and just today received a PS4/Xbox version and will have crossplay on all platforms. The game has moved to the Epic Games Store as well, if you have a Dauntless account already go to the subreddit to see how to link.

If you enjoy the hunting style games and feel like you've accomplished everything in MHW, this is a good alternative. It has its own quirks that take some getting used to but its worthy of a try and I doubt this will be going away anytime soon, its just going to get bigger and better.

Xbone and PC play together but PS4 cross play is TBA unless something changed since this morning. I suppose I'll check it out on PS4 anyway, but from what I read on the subreddit it's even more grindy than mhw and much less solo friendly.

Vorph said:

Xbone and PC play together but PS4 cross play is TBA unless something changed since this morning. I suppose I'll check it out on PS4 anyway, but from what I read on the subreddit it's even more grindy than mhw and much less solo friendly.

Click to expand...

Full crossplay and cross-progression is implemented, at least that is what the community manager said a few hours ago.

As far as solo friendly, they recently changed from 1 self-revive to 3 self-revives so that solo players have a smoother experience. Its entirely possible to solo but it will definitely be a harder experience. They also just recently streamlined the progression and matchmaking so that more people will be put together.

As far as grind, not sure about you but I've been playing MH for 10ish years. Its always a grind. The real extreme endgame stuff has more grind for sure, but for the people doing Kulve a dozen or more times for random weapon drops it'll feel like home. Edit: Dauntless does have less monsters so there is less variety which could possibly add to the grind. These things will most likely feel better as they continue adding monsters but who knows. That is kind of the joy of having an ever-changing hunting game unlike MH. Not saying this is better by any means, just a nice alternative especially while MH is hitting a low point until the expansion.

Delly said:

Full crossplay and cross-progression is implemented, at least that is what the community manager said a few hours ago.

Click to expand...

Ah, ok. Guess I was reading posts from before the 0.8 patch notes were posted.

As far as solo friendly, they recently changed from 1 self-revive to 3 self-revives so that solo players have a smoother experience. Its entirely possible to solo but it will definitely be a harder experience. They also just recently streamlined the progression and matchmaking so that more people will be put together.

Click to expand...

You happen to know if any weapon classes are more suited to soloing than others?

As far as grind, not sure about you but I've been playing MH for 10ish years. Its always a grind. The real extreme endgame stuff has more grind for sure, but for the people doing Kulve a dozen or more times for random weapon drops it'll feel like home. Edit: Dauntless does have less monsters so there is less variety which could possibly add to the grind. These things will most likely feel better as they continue adding monsters but who knows. That is kind of the joy of having an ever-changing hunting game unlike MH. Not saying this is better by any means, just a nice alternative especially while MH is hitting a low point until the expansion.

Click to expand...

I've played a few MHs but never for long because I couldn't stand it using 3DS controls, and even the PSP/Vita wasn't much better. I like the idea of cross-progression carrying over to the Switch version of this when it is released though. I've got a lot more tolerance for grindy shit on a portable, provided I'm actually able to play it effectively. Even MHW only held my attention for a couple months on PS4.

The thing I read about grind being worse than MHW was that you apparently need to grind out mats to upgrade armor including stuff you may never use because it's a requirement for quests or something like that.

There are some quests to unlock some things but I wouldnt call them grindy. I don't upgrade anything I don't want. The mastery system takes in account everything you craft which may be more of what they meant. If you create the base level of every sword it'll level your sword mastery to a certain level. So there is some of that, but it's not required to do that for every single sword or anything. You can see the requirements in the mastery tree.

Edit: The way to mastery system works is there are thresholds you have to pass before certain things unlock. For the most part it is relatively generous, but I will admit I passed the majority of thresholds before the mastery system was implemented so my knowledge is a bit limited for newer players.

As far as weapons, swords have been the go to all around good weapons since forever and pretty much remain that way. They used to be the best weapon but the gap has closed a ton recently. Swords are just easier because they dont have long animations or complicated combos, so you can focus on learning the behemoths. Repeaters aren't too bad either for newer players but they're slower to upgrade so that might be a turn off.

Hot damn. They even took the servers down for two days to prepare.

Pyros said:

Might give this a try after I'm done with Operencia. How are war spike and chained blades?

Click to expand...

Greatly approved from the earlier versions. Warpikes are my personal least favorite but they are useful in a team due to wounding. I'm just not a fan of the playstyle. Maybe some similarities to MH lance but the right click has a spinning attack that feels more like a spinning Ninja Turtles Donatello attack. Chain blades have a MH dual blade feel and can be powerful.

Just notice that the more you level up your specific weapon mastery, the more new skills/perks unlock that can change the gameplay.

meStevo said:

Sheesh, first fight with Shrike and it took 17 minutes. Team rank of D (personal S+) That was brutal.

Click to expand...

It gets better, I imagine the influx of new people will make the beginning somewhat hard. Most randoms I queue with vary between finishing the fight in 4 to 7 minutes unless it's new content.

Pyros said:

Hmm trying to play but their servers are a bunch of garbage I guess. Took me a while to log in, tutorial starts, 3secs later not responding, kicked out due to timeout, 2-3mins to load tutorial again, unskippable cutscene, off to a good start.

Click to expand...

Yeah it's pretty clear they didnt plan the servers well. Though I'm a little surprised it's that bad this early in the day.

Pyros said:

I'm kinda unclear on masteries, do you get the listed 300xp at the bottom after doing everything? And what is 300xp compared to the bar, can you see that anywhere? I get that the general thinking is you use the weapon type and it'll automatically increase stuff, just would like some details on the process. I'm also not a fan of gating skills or whatever behind progress but we'll see, if I can ever get in a hunt.

Click to expand...

So what I believe you're referring to is the 300xp within the weapon itself? There is very little information on these but I believe there is an experience bar in the individual weapons and a prestige bar in the behemoths. This is basically a "use this weapon so many times" or "defeat this behemoth so many times" and once you reach a certain threshold of XP/defeats you check a box. Its similar to "do X damage to behemoth" but instead you get it for just completing the mission with a weapon or fighting a certain behemoth.



So as you check things off it gets added to your overall mastery for that weapon(or behemoth in the behemoth mastery section). You have to earn so much experience with each weapon to check things off. Most weapons I don't have any experience with (tho I have crafted a lot to level 6) and I'm level 16 of the hammer mastery.

No queue but stuck in "Matchmaking in progress..." AKA the loading screen.

Often crash / jams at loading screen. Needs ironing.

I imagine a lot of that has to do with the servers. Before the move there was zero issues with it. Though I did have a matchmaking in progress error once or twice over the last few months during NA primetime.