To the confusion of some players, developer Phoenix Labs has announced that Dauntless will be leaving early access on September 26. This is not to be confused with the end to the open beta this passed May, when the game was accompanied by the launch of the Season 5 Hunt Pass: Hidden Blades. Adding to the confusion, the Hunt Pass was already on its fifth season because the game was in open beta for a year prior.
The game has been in a closed beta, open beta, is now in early access, and on September 26, will launch officially with version 1.0. The formal launch of the game brings several improvements and content updates. These will include changes to the Mastery system, achievements, and rewards to pursue. A campaign rework is also expected, with an overhaul made to crafting, character interactions, questing in general, and the addition of an “End of Hunt” screen that will provide more detail on Mastery card progress, quest rewards, and Behemoth break parts earned.
The update will bring a new expansion, Aether Unbound, to celebrate the previous five years of Dauntless development. In this new expansion, players will have access to a new weapon that was first teased during the last Nintendo Direct event in early September, which appear to be a pair of gauntlets for close-quarters melee combat, presumably with the shortest range of all the currently available weapons.
A new Bounty system is also being implemented into the game to replace the current system of weekly quests, and players seem ecstatic so far at the news. Right now, the weekly quest forces a player into a narrow style of play that requires too much repetition. At worst, a player may feel corralled into using a weapon they dislike and are not effective with. As a result, the rest of the team needs to pick up the slack, and this creates an unhealthy environment for all.
Players will continue to have the opportunity to open their Quests tab and choose how to interact with the system, which relies on Bounty Cards and Bounty Tokens. From here, players spend a token to draw three random Bounty Cards and choose one to add it your active bounties, providing far more control over what tasks one needs to accomplish each week to progress further along in their Hunt Pass.
While the Nintendo Switch was announced during E3 this passed June as the next platform to receive the game, the Dauntless website also lists a mobile version of the game as coming soon. The roadmap on the official website still states that a mobile version will be made at some point in the future, but that it is not being actively worked on right now.
While Phoenix Labs seems to love launching Dauntless in different ways, it has been quite nice to see how the game has evolved for the better over the past year. Hopefully they keep it up and continue to work towards making the game a great experience.
Source: Playdauntless.com