Dauntless 1.0 released and as I like to play every now and then I hopped in to see the new changes. First thing to note, I went straight for the new weapon, Aether Strikers. I love martial arts so seeing there was a monk weapon I tried it and loved it. The Aether Strikers are good for staggering mobs if the hammer isn’t really your style. To use the weapon effectively you have to do combos in order to charge your “Mantras.” There are a total of three Mantras.
Charging and using one Mantra will allow you to invoke Tempest Form, which increases your attack speed. Charging two lets you use a skill that causes damage over time. Charging all three mantras lets you use a blast attack that deals bonus damage if you have one of the previous skills activated. Flying behemoths were harder to fight as they tend to move around a lot and the Aether Strikers doesn’t have a wide attack range. Also because they moved around a lot and sometimes I would find my Mantras losing charging when by the time I close the distance. I mostly main the Repeaters but for a melee weapon I’m going to always go with the Strikers.
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Dauntless 1.0 brought other changes as well which I found to be very much needed. Let’s talk the Bounty System. Leveling the Hunt Pass before wasn’t difficult but it did take long, for me personally. The new Bounty System tends to make it easier but also really give you a reason besides upgrading gear to go out on a hunt.
The Bounty System allows you to take bounties and complete them for progression points towards your Hunt Pass. The range of points varies depending on the bounty you take but you are allowed to have multiple bounties at once, up to four. The bounties range from hunting behemoths with certain weapons, and weapon types, to collecting a certain amount of materials that can be collected while hunting. The Bounty System has been great in providing another avenue to being able to rank up your hunt pass and get to the unlocks you want with in it.
This update also brings some quality of life improvements, which I feel are welcomed as well. The major one I want to mention is that behemoths max health will now adjust if someone disconnects from your group. Many a times I’ve been in a group where someone or more than one person have either disconnected or dropped out and the rest of us were left over fighting a behemoth that will take some time and effort to put down. This change will also take into account the percentage of the health already missing but it still makes a good difference.
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I have been enjoying the update and hope everyone else has too. We'll have our full review of Dauntless live tomorrow, but for now if you want to see a full list of the patch notes check it out here.
