However, while most of my grievances can be attributed to how early Dauntless is, there are enough fundamental problems with the combat and progression-the primary hooks-that I can’t recommend anyone buy their way into its beta. Chat is unusably laggy and the matchmaking system is unintuitive, but both will surely improve with time. Like most everything else, multiplayer is so unfinished that it’s difficult to critique. You can also revive fallen teammates infinitely, which is good because you can’t carry many healing items. Teammates will crowd around whoever casts an AoE heal, for instance, and likewise flock to flares signaling a behemoth’s location. Not only are fights easier with a group, several items and mechanics smartly encourage cooperation. I started having more fun with Dauntless once I realized I shouldn’t try and play it alone. Quillshots and Charrogs are huge, lumbering beasts, and great complements to spry, leopard-like Embermanes. Then there’s the Shrike and Skraev, towering, winged bears with the heads and talons of owls. The first one you encounter, the Gnasher, is a jeep-sized beaver. Happily, the behemoths themselves are colorful and interesting. As it stands, choosing a weapon to craft comes down to choosing the biggest number. Yet here, too, I wish weapons were more involved. You can also craft equippable lanterns with active abilities like a temporary heal or stamina boost. Mixing and matching armor to unlock specific Aspects is fun and preserves the usefulness of old gear. Armor pieces come with ‘Aspect’ points that unlock passive buffs. Whereas other games let players passively duplicate stuff or take on dedicated gathering quests with consistent rewards, Dauntless asks you to scour maps for random materials.Īt the very least, Dauntless does have some cool gear to craft. There isn’t a fast (or fun) way to get the iron and cobalt you need for crafting. Crafting a new behemoth’s armor set and weapon takes hours, and only partly because monster parts themselves-even low-grade ones-are scarce. Dauntless just has no respect for the player’s time. I once soloed Shagaru Magala 26 times to get his gem. I have no problem hunting rare monster parts. Well, I say that, but realistically you’ll need to do that another eight or nine times to get anywhere, because Dauntless is incredibly stingy. ![]() You’ve got to take that box back to the hub town, Ramsgate, and crack it open to start crafting. Crafting purposeĭefeating a behemoth nets you a handful of parts as well as a loot box filled with the real goods. For me, the kicker is the absurdly slow stamina recovery and the short-lived, expensive items that augment it-which leads us to crafting, the other half of Dauntless. Between the awkward lock-on camera and oddly short weapons, I regularly wind up pulverizing the air in front of behemoths. Where weapons consistently disappoint, the basics of combat frequently annoy. In this sense, the frustrating lack of damage values-you aren’t actually shown how much damage your attacks deal and behemoths have no health bars-is arguably to the game’s benefit, otherwise players would surely ignore some attacks entirely. These rarely involve mashing more than one button, and worse still, every weapon has at least one redundant combo or attack. There are no running, jumping or rolling attacks, and rather than invent your own combos, you have to spam a few baked-in options.
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