Dauntless, a cooperative RPG similar to the Monster Hunter series, will be coming out of early access and released for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on May 21. The game will be released to be PC exclusively to the Epic Games Store. There are also plans to bring the game to the Nintendo Switch and mobile. It was originally announced during the 2016 Game Awards.
Dauntless works very similarly to Monster Hunter. You take on Behemoths which are the game’s version of monsters, craft better gear and equipment, take on stronger behemoths and so on and so forth.
Ever since the game was revealed, it has gone through a number of changes with a closed alpha and open beta. Recently, a patch was released to the game in preparation for the launch on consoles. The patch notes list more than 6,000 changes that were made.
Over the course of its early access period, a number of changes were made to other aspects of the game as well. There have been major changes to campaign and crafting progression.
Before the changes, developer Pheonix Labs found that players would progress by only hunting very specific behemoths. The development team went back and adjusted all of the crafting requirements for gear so players would have to get components from multiple behemoths instead of a single target that would be farmed.
There will be a ton of new things that will be releasing on May 21 for Dauntless. Hunt Pass: Season 5 will begin which will transform the hub into a Moon Blossom Festival. The Hunt Pass challenges players to complete certain tasks to earn cosmetic rewards. There are two tracks, basic and elite, with 50 levels of content across each track. The elite track costs $10 to get into and rewards players with premium currency as it is completed.
The Hunt Pass was created after Phoenix Labs started talking to Epic Games. Nick Clifford, the Director of Marketing said “I would be lying if I said [the Hunt Pass] wasn’t [inspired by Fortnite],” Clifford admitted. “When we started talking with [Epic Games] late last year, they shared some insight with us that their Battle Pass was great for player value and player retention. So we experimented with it a bit and lo and behold, yes it was, it was an awesome way for us to roll out cosmetic items, and give players a reason to come back kind of week over week, month over month.”
Also coming is a new character customization system. It can be accessed anytime and there is a lot more to it compared to the system they had before.
Pheonix Labs also said that they don’t call this new release an official launch of the game. “We found with PC that when we did early access and got feedback early on, it just led to a much better product overall. So we kind of want to get console out the door and see what people think and allow ourselves some time to iterate on it before we call it launched officially.”