Dec 6, 2024

Dauntless - dcmphoenix

Hi Slayers,

First of all, we wanted to say thank-you to all the players, new and returning, who jumped in to check out Dauntless: Awakening - it’s great to see Ramsgate so bustling, and people trying out everything included in our latest update!

We’ve seen a lot of comments and feedback surrounding this update, so we want to take some time to address these concerns, and a few other conversations we’ve seen so far in response to today’s update, as well as giving you a preview of what’s next for the game.

State of the Game: Awakening Launch

Quests & Progression

Our decision behind this change was rooted in the desire to ensure that all Slayers, new AND old, would receive the same instructions surrounding the new and modified gameplay systems. Trying the new weapons in Training Grounds before deciding what to commit to starting off with, encountering weapon levelling and talents as they become relevant in progression, etc. We wanted to ensure that even veteran players would have and take the time to dig into the new and complex systems before jumping straight into the hunt potentially with non-ideal gear set-ups, therefore encountering a degree of difficulty that would be counter to a positive gameplay experience.

For legacy players, based on the feedback we’ve seen, it appears this transition and "reset" back to the start has felt too abrupt or jarring, especially in conjunction with other changes. We want to acknowledge this frustration, and we hope that the speed with which veteran players will be able to move through these quests will ease some of this concern. Most of these quests require trying a mode or gameplay system once, separated by quests to reach particular weapon levels (which can mostly be accomplished using the Peerless Aetherite we granted to all players who had Reforged once before the update, which can take a weapon from fresh up to around level 50).

The TL;DR of this is that advanced players should be able to move through these pretty quickly both due to the resources we granted to help get you through them, and due to your game knowledge.

In addition to your feedback on the Quest reset, here are a few areas where it seems we’ve missed the mark:

Most returning players will have started off with no Chain Blades, Strikers, or Repeaters. There are absolutely versions of these that require no purchase, but they unlock from quests a few hours into progression, but having to invest precious Aetherite into a weapon you don’t really want to play with just to get to one you want to because it used to be your main, does not feel good. We’re sorry that this has created the impression that these classes are only accessible through Weapon Tokens.

To address this, we’ve made a server-side change that will grant all returning pre-Awakening players with the Golden Claws (radiant Strikers), Twin Suns (shock Repeaters), and Netherlights (umbral Chain Blades) from the start of the game, so you can get up and running with them right away.
For those who joined us from December 5 with the Awakening update, you’ll still obtain these through quest progression, a few hours into the game.

We’re also investigating some technical issues that are unintentionally exacerbating this ‘reset’ experience:

Some returning players ended up in a state where they completed the “welcome back” quest at Bosun Markus, but then did not have the first quest of the new Main Quest chain available at Trainer Rosk, blocking them from progression. While we continue to investigate why this occurred, we’ve already deployed a live change that disables the “welcome back” quest, meaning everyone safely starts with the “Basic Slaying” quest at Trainer Rosk and can proceed. If you were impacted here, please check back into the game now!
Some returning players lost some unlocked Slayer’s Path nodes when updating to the Awakening and its revamped Slayer’s Path. We apologize for this oversight, and are working on an automatic solution for players. In the meantime, please feel free to contact our wonderful SUPPORT TEAM and we’ll get you granted the items you need to repurchase these nodes.

Weapons & Weapon Tokens

In Dauntless: Awakening, as you’ve likely seen, we’ve significantly overhauled how weapons work. There’s been some conflicting information going about our communities, so we first want to recap:

The old-style weapons where each Behemoth had its own of each weapon type, that were only differentiated by element, unique effect, and cell slots, has been retired:

In its place are a smaller set of more unique weapons, more like our Exotics of old, that each have their own Passive, Active, and Legendary abilities.
For the launch weapons, many of these come from combinations of existing weapon and lantern abilities.

Weapon crafting and upgrading with Behemoth parts has been removed:

Instead, players get 7 weapons from Quests (one of each type, and covering all elements), there is 1 new weapon per season in the Hunt Pass Elite Track, and a number of other weapons are available with Weapon Tokens in the Store.
Weapon Tokens can be earned from a weekly challenge every week (in the Challenges tab of the Quests menu), on both the Free and Elite tracks of the Hunt Pass, as well as purchased directly with Platinum if you choose.
Returning players were also granted up to 500 Weapon Tokens to start with based on the number of weapons they’d crafted and Power Surged pre-Awakening, which allows them to unlock a good number of the new Token-obtainable weapons from the start.
Behemoth parts are then used instead to make Essences, which unlock Talents to make weapons more powerful and more personalized

We want to acknowledge that these changes mean that there are less weapons per type, per element, and per gameplay use (Cutting etc.). The design intention behind these changes is the creation of more unique weapons that then allow for much more variety in gameplay styles. We’ve already seen positive feedback from players that have spent the most time diving in with the new weapons so far, and this opens the door for us to offer much more differentiated weapons in future seasons. We recommend, and intend, for players to mix-and-match these new weapons into their two weapon slots, and experiment with combinations that you can switch between in combat to best fit the situation.

At first glance, it may seem like there are fewer weapon options available. However, with the addition of Talents and the unique abilities of the new weapons, we believe these changes provide Slayers with greater depth and variety in gameplay, allowing for more meaningful and personalized choices

We hope this information makes it clear that there are a number of routes available (free and paid) to obtaining weapons, and that they are not all locked behind a paywall.

On Hunt Pass Weapons

Another question we have seen come up often is “when and how players will be able to access the Hunt Pass weapon in future seasons”. Our current answer is that weapons which originate from the Hunt Pass will eventually be added in the Weapon Token store - we’re still working on the exact timing that balances the value of purchasing the Hunt Pass for them (and everything else you get in that purchase), versus broader availability and integrity of modes like Trials, but Weapon Tokens will be how you get them, so if you wish to save them up in advance, here’s your heads-up!

Something we want to make especially clear that we have no intention of making the Hunt Pass weapons de-facto “better” than weapons we offer from other or free sources. We think of them as an opportunity to do different and exciting (and maybe weird) things - you can look to the Alluring Moons’ fauna-spawning abilities as an example of how we plan to continue here. Over time we intend to fill out the matrix of weapon and element types - for example, Season 2’s weapon will be a new Radiant Sword.

Another aspect of feedback we’ve seen on the subject of weapons changes, is that many players don’t feel they have enough information to make a decision on which weapons they should be picking up with their Weapon Tokens.

Based on this feedback, we’re exploring ways to let you “test drive” weapons before purchase to help better inform your decisions. We don’t yet have a timeline for this as we’re just kicking off these explorations, but this is something we want to address and provide further clarity on.

Armour & Cells

Before Dauntless: Awakening, Cells were an integral part of players’ builds. In the Awakening world, with all the changes to buffs and perks, the core part of what makes up builds now comes from armour, with increases to the perks they provide (as well as extra cell slots) coming from upgrading that armour to max level. Our hope is that once you’ve got a build you’re feeling good about, this is when you socket in your Cells to hit a perk threshold you’re almost at. This system is definitely designed to reward continued investment and upgrading of your armour, and so we’re wanting to collect and reflect on feedback over a longer post-launch period.

Similarly, we’re also closely watching how many Cells players have and how they use them, whether the number of them that come from various sources support experimentation enough, and whether we want to adjust those sources, or on the flip side, if we need to be providing ways for players to get an alternative value out of cells they have far too many of.

While we’ll be looking at the data around these armour and cell changes in this update carefully from our side, we feel it’s important that we’re accounting for how that changes feel to you, so as you continue to spend time with your armour and cells in Dauntless: Awakening, we do invite you to post your feedback in this area to inform future plans.

The New Hunt Pass

With the launch of Dauntless: Awakening, we changed how the Hunt Pass system works, refocusing on just one Hunt Pass per season, anchored by the new gameplay weapon, and supported by a whole lot of Aetherite and other resources to help with your progression. At the same time, we retired the Slayer’s Club that used to be an additional purchase and added many of the boosts and benefits from that subscription over to be part of the Elite Hunt Pass too.

These new Hunt Passes do not directly include Platinum (with the exception of if they include a pull from a Canister if you’ve already emptied it). This is a decision we’ve made for the overall health of the game - purchases of the Hunt Pass will be directly funneled back into continued development of future gameplay content for Dauntless.

Canisters

As our community has pointed out, Canisters are indeed loot boxes, however, our team has taken a very careful approach to the addition of Canisters to the game.

Dauntless: Awakening Canisters are cosmetic items only. They do not contain items that will give players more of an "edge", and they do not contain items that are "mandatory" for players to have as part of the ideal gameplay experience within Dauntless
Slayers will never receive duplicate items from Canisters. This was an especially important ethical concern to our team as part of ensuring the value of Canisters.
All Canister odds are transparently and accurately reflected within the store, so Slayers can make an informed decision surrounding the value
In the end, Canisters are all about choice. Slayers don’t have to utilize them if they don’t want to, but the Dauntless: Awakening Canisters also don’t contain anything that would prohibit game progression if Slayers opt out of engaging with them

Next Steps

As with any major update, we have some reported issues to address in future patches. And with an update of this scale, and particularly with the update to Unreal Engine 5 to support ongoing development, despite the best efforts of all our internal teams and external supporters, things are less polished than we’d like them to be.

We have already deployed server-side hotfixes to address the following issues:

Karkonos was spawning with part health that was far too high, and so parts could not be realistically broken before it was slain.
Some returning players could not progress with the Training Ground quest after completing Bosun’s “Welcome Back” quest.
Fixing an issue where some Tracker data could be lost during the Awakening migration.
Unreliable recognition of Steam players’ language settings.
And as mentioned earlier in this post, we’ve granted all returning pre-Awakening players with the Golden Claws, Twin Suns, and Netherlights from the start of the game.

We continue to work on potential hotfixes for the following:

A small number of returning players who did not get the expected Crowns or Weapon Tokens during the Awakening migration.
Returning players who unlock all new nodes in the Slayer’s Path before accepting the side quest “The Slayer’s Path” cannot complete it, blocking consumable crafting. Please note that this issue does not affect new players.
Investigating a couple of server crash and disconnect issues in certain gameplay scenarios.

We also want to broadly address issues with performance and graphics following the Awakening update. While best efforts were made following our engine upgrade to get the game running performantly on all our many platforms, feedback from our players following launch have made it clear that we have further work to do in this regard, and have more work to do, particularly on current-gen console platforms and PC. While we don’t have anything concrete to share today, we are prioritizing this work and looking at both short- and longer-term solutions in this area.

We are compiling a visible list of Known Issues, and we’ll be working our way through the list in future updates. Speaking of…

Update 2.1.1 & Frostfall 2024

Our next update is currently planned to roll out on December 19.

Because of the process of launching Awakening across our various platforms, this update will include not just fixes to issues reported from the live game since launch, but also fixes from the last few weeks of internal development.

Amongst many other fixes and adjustments, this update is currently planned to address:

Fixing a server-client desync that could result in Behemoth attacks hitting you before they visually should.
Moving the Karkanos main quest to be non-blocking, so players can get to Dauntless Trials and Heroic Escalation modes faster.
Improvements to usability in the newer screens such as My Slayer, weapon infusion and talent crafting
Many fixes and adjustments for reported issues with the new weapons, as well as targeted buffs to The Hunger, The Living Branch, The Silver Sword, and Fury of the Mountain.
A variety of text and localization improvements.

Also launching alongside Update 2.1.1 is this year’s Frostfall, Dauntless’ December seasonal event. Expect lots of cosmetic rewards available for earnable Frostfall Coins (including three stylish new holiday sweater transmogs), as well as an all-new gameplay activity featuring The Cheerless Charrogg, and a new limited-time Crown to earn.

In conclusion, we want to extend our thanks to all our players and community surrounding the launch of Dauntless: Awakening. We consider this a new opportunity for the game, and are committed to continued support in bug and performance fixes, quality of life improvements, and new content.

We’ll be continuing to monitor your comments, feedback, and bug reports, and want to remind players that if you have an account-specific issue, it is best to reach out to our Support team directly so they can investigate.

-The Dauntless Team