New to Dauntless
Steam Launch
They said it would never happen…and yet here we are - Dauntless is now available directly on Steam!
Dauntless remains, as always, fully crossplay and cross-progression. To bring your progress to Steam, launch the game and, when prompted, sign into the same Epic Games Account that you are using to play on other platforms - from there you’ll be good to go! As well as of course adding support for Steam Achievements, we’ve also added Achievements on the Epic Games Store.
New Behemoth: Karkonos
Uncovered as part of an Orrery mining expedition gone wrong, the fearsome Umbral beast Karkonos has arrived in the Shattered Isles!
First brought to life in direct collaboration with our community, Karkonos of course comes with a full new armour set to craft and upgrade, as well as a new dye Rumour, so head to Twilight’s Domain and keep an eye out for the Titan’s Awakening event!
New Hunting Ground: Twilight's Domain
Twilight’s Domain is an all-new Umbral Hunting Ground map, replacing the old Twilight’s Sanctuary. Full of mysterious caves and ill-advised ritual sites, Twilight’s Domain is where you’ll find Karkonos on both the Level 30 and Surged Level 60 versions, as well as many of your other Umbral faves.
New Weapon System & Weapon Swapping
The weapon systems in Dauntless have been significantly overhauled in this update - while there’s much more detail on our blog, here’s the highlights.
•Slayers can now carry two weapons at a time and swap them at a button press or as part of new swap combos mid-combat
•There are now 18 unique weapons and each come with their own passive, special, and legendary abilities. Weapons still belong to the broad 7 categories you’re used to, but they’re now much more distinct, with their own personability and abilities. Weapons are now unlocked, not crafted
•The first 7 weapons come from quest progression, with the other 11 available in the Store for Weapon Tokens, which can be earned from sources like the Hunt Pass and Challenges, or purchased with Platinum
After unlocking weapons, they upgrade to Level 60 via XP from hunts and infusing XP-filled Aetherite items that you’ll find from reward sources across the game
Weapon Talents are powerful customizations for to your weapons, unlocked at Level thresholds and custom to each weapon, allowing you to lean into the particular style of play you most enjoy
Armour & Cells Rework
Armour is returning to a 20-level upgrade system using Behemoth parts and Rams
Armour will be where you get all your resistance, as the only place to slot Cells
All armour now has Prismatic Cell slots, unlocked as you level up each piece, to help you reach Perk activation thresholds
Equipping a Cell (of which there are now only one tier, goodbye +3s) into a piece of armour is now a binding choice - swapping it for another, or removing it, will now discard the Cell
Note that Cells are more plentiful, and you can now target grinding for specific Cell categories from region Patrol Chests, as well as the Trials and Gauntlet stores
New Season & Hunt Pass: Awakening
It’s a whole new Hunt Pass! The Awakening season’s Hunt Pass is headlined by the Alluring Moons, a brand new pair of Umbral Repeaters with Chaox-summoning special abilities (yes, you can call them the raptor-peaters). Alluring Moons is immediately unlocked upon purchase of the Elite track. Also included in Elite at Level 50 are their cosmetic counterpart, the Alluring Suns repeater transmogs.
Elsewhere on the Hunt Pass you’ll find loads of Aetherite ready to level up your weapons, as well as the usual offerings of useful currencies like Rams and Bounty Tokens. In addition, going Elite with your Hunt Pass now also gives you gameplay boosts - 2x Hunt Pass XP earn rate, extra Weapon XP from Behemoth and Fauna kills, extra Escalation XP, and even a bonus loot roll!
Over in the Store, you’ll find a new armour set inspired by the Godhand radiant pike, a Canister full of brand new cosmetics inspired by the Deep Sea, another Canister bringing back the fan-favourite Arcslayer items, Weapon Tokens, and a weekly rotation of other limited time offerings.
New Quests & Progression
We’ve made a significant shift to how players unlock new gameplay, modes, and content in Dauntless. While the Slayer’s Path is still present, it is now exclusively for bonuses and boosts to enhance your slaying journey.
Instead, all main progression, modes, islands, and feature unlocks come from a brand new Quest flow that starts right at the Training Grounds and takes you all the way up to our end-game modes, with many adventures along the way.
For info about the migration experience for existing Slayers, see our blog.
New Fauna
Three new fauna are now present across the Shattered Isles - Chaoxes, Vespers, and Orquids, for a different challenge than you’re used to from fauna.
All fauna now drop parts that are used in consumable crafting with Granny Strega
New Buff & Perks Systems
There have long been a huge number and variety of different Buffs (and Debuffs) available across Dauntless’ many modes, systems, and gear. With Awakening, we are compressing (most of) them into six new core Buffs: Might, Speed, Critical, Defense, Endurance, and Vitality.
Buffs can come in positives and negatives (yes, you can get negative crit chance!), and in two versions: Held or Temporary. A Held stack is always on, never expiring, and often comes from effects on your weapons and gear. Temp stacks will expire after a duration, and you’ll see the ticking down on your buff icon - these might come from a Behemoth’s attack, or a Cell with a trigger condition. You’ll see these new Buffs across the game, from weapon abilities to tonics.
Perks have been changed too. As well as adding some new and removing some old, Perks no longer scale in power based on your equipped gear and cells, instead requiring a hard threshold to activate (with no benefits to being higher than that threshold).
Umbral & Radiant Status Effects
“Finally”, we hear you cry. Umbral and Radiant elements now have their own status effects:
Radiant: If a Behemoth does an Unstable Move, the effect explodes, dealing minimal damage, but interrupting the Behemoth. If the Behemoth doesn’t do such a move, the effect deals a small amount of damage as it ends
Umbral: An umbral cyst appears on a random part of the Behemoth, for 30 seconds. The cyst has 3,000 health and, when hit, deals part damage in an AoE explosion. When destroyed, they explode, dealing umbral and heavy part damage in an AoE
We’ve also adjusted the Frost elemental effect - instead of slowing Behemoths, it now freezes them for four seconds.
Content Removals
With all the changes made in Dauntless: Awakening, a number of pieces of content and systems have been retired:
•All previous gameplay weapons, including legendary weapons, have been removed, with the exception of Exotic and Event weapons (which are part of the new lineup)
•“Gameplay” Lanterns have been removed, and the slot is no longer present in the My Slayer screen. Lanterns are now cosmetic only (with many of their previous gameplay features now moved to some of the weapons), and so are in the Customize screen
•The three Exotic helm armours - The Skullforge, Prismatic Grace, and Tragic Echo - have been removed
•The Neutral “element” is no longer present in the game - Shrike is now Shock, Quillshot is now Frost, and Gnasher is now Terra, with all of their gear updated to match
•The “Multi Hunt Pass” feature, the repeating “Slayer Commission” currency passes, and the purchasable Vault and Event Passes have been removed from the game, in favour of the One True Hunt Pass
•The Hunting Grounds Restless Sands, Frostmarch, Thunderwatch, Fortune’s Folly, and Twilight’s Sanctuary have been removed. In addition, Emberthorn Cove has been redesigned into more of a tutorial hunt
•The Reforge feature has been removed, and Slayers no longer have an overall “weapon category level”, with each individual weapon now having its own upgradable level that cannot be reset
•The Middleman has left Ramsgate, and taken his cell fusion systems with him
•The “Far & Away”, “Spore Problems”, and “Call of Kaltauga” Mission Hunts have been removed. Kaltauga will return…
•The Reward Cache has been retired
•Aetherdust, Aethersparks, Aetherhearts, Chronostones, and Cache Coins have all been removed
•Many Reforged-era quests have been removed from the game, and replaced where relevant
•For more on the how these removals will work for existing Slayers, see our blog.
Quality of Life
My Slayer & Armour Crafting Refresh
While you’ll see a new coat of paint across much of Dauntless, the My Slayer screen and Armour Crafting in particular have been fully rebuilt to better support and highlight the new systems.
Of particular note, and inspired by feedback from our Awakening Beta, you can now preview every level of an armour piece to see its resistance, perks, cell slots, and crafting materials, before you invest in it!
Cosmetics on Loadouts
It isn’t just your gameplay gear that is tied to loadout slots, your cosmetics are now too!
Moved from the old Personality screen to a Customize option in the My Slayer screen, you can now set custom emotes, flares, titles, and even unique character appearance to each of your loadouts
Trackers
With the new weapon system now in play, we’ve taken the opportunity to refresh how Trackers work.
Still purchasable from the Research Lab, your Trackers now get equipped in the Customize screen and track across all your gameplay once they’ve been unlocked, not just when they are active on a specific weapon
Trials and Gauntlet Store Refreshes
Lady Luck’s “Lucky Break” has a new look, joining the rest of our modern stores, and both it and the Gauntlet Research Lab now offer targeted Cores for categories of cells, as well as being home to a Lantern Core (what used to be called Omnicells), and some returning dyes
Achievement & Rumour Changes
A number of achievements/trophies have had their requirements updated so they remain unlockable with all the other game system changes
This is also true for many rumours, which have had objectives removed, replaced, or updated to match the new game progression and currencies
Engine Upgrade
Dauntless now runs on Unreal Engine 5, better setting us up to support the game for the future.
Things should mostly be the same, but if you find you are having any new performance or stability issues, please write into our wonderful Support team so we can track any issues
Bug Fixes
Bug Fixes
With such a large update, with a long development period, we are not compiling a full list of bug fixes and balance changes this time round (suffice to say, there were lots!). Expect this back for future updates
Armour is even more critical to your builds than ever.