Author note: I play Dauntless on PS4.
Recently, I have been on the hunt for a game that I can really dive into. Something to hold me over until Cyberpunk 2077 arrives. As we all know now, CD Projekt Red has delayed their much-anticipated game until later this year. So finding a game to get into felt more urgent. I have found myself just scrolling through my PS4 library looking for something to play but nothing stood out to me. However, a few days ago I booted up Dauntless for the first time since it was originally released for console back in May of 2019. What I found was that Dauntless has really become something I enjoy. There is much more going on now in the game now that it makes hunting the same monsters over and over again less mundane. Let’s dive in.
The first and probably my favorite new game mode in Dauntless is Escalation. In Escalation, you go on a series of hunts that get progressively more difficult, and at some points, during this mode, you will fight two behemoths at once. So it can get pretty chaotic with four slayers and two behemoths running around booping each other. While you run Escalation you can upgrade your lantern to obtain certain permanent perks or amps in this case, that only carry over to Escalation. Each time you collect enough aether from a run you can level up your lantern and make the next run a little easier. I like Escalation because it feels like its own environment in the game and you can really stock up on behemoth parts along the way, making farming somewhat easier, although going for a specific part may be challenging as the monsters you face are random.
Escalation also gives you something more to play for. How Escalation works is that you move up in tiers of threat level depending on how well you do on the hunt. I have only just begun to scratch the service of Escalation but once you beat a level forty threat, you can then fight the dragon behemoth at the end. I’ll let the Dauntless team tell you all about it:
“Slayers who prove their worth in Escalation will earn the right to take on the Malkarion – a quick-striking, aerial menace with the power of lightning at its call. With the ability to hover just out of range, this sky serpent will have you reaching deep to overcome its shock assaults.”
Again, I have yet to experience this but the thought of being able to fight that behemoth is enough to keep up the grind. The cool thing about fighting the dragon behemoth, Malkarion, is that you can mount the monster and craft legendary weapons from it. So there is some solid incentive there to really grind Escalation.
The next biggest thing that I noticed when I logged in was that the game was much more stable. I remember when I first played Dauntless, running around Ramsgate was very glitchy. There was a ton of lag and it just seemed as though the hub space was very unstable. Also, Ramsgate was not the only thing that was buggy at the beginning. When I would go into hunts I would experience extremely bad lag. In some cases the whole game would stop then, about ten seconds later, it would catch me up and this happened a healthy amount of times. But I can confidently say now, that the team has cleaned up that side of the game. I have only witnessed minimal connection issues.
The final thing I would like to touch on are some things coming in the future for Dauntless. With a game like Dauntless, there needs to be a constant refresh or something new to keep players into the grind. Currently, the team is working on a new weapon to the game. Adding something like this will be good because it gives players a chance to experiment with something new while they slay monsters. Another thing coming, supposedly this spring, is Blaze Escalation. This will alter the environment, the amps and looks to provide new legendary weapons. So it seems the team has really hunkered down since console release to continue to support the game. I look forward to spending many hours hunting behemoths, climbing the escalation ladder and decking out my slayer in some cool gear.
If you are looking for something to get into I would definitely recommend Dauntless. It’s free and cross-platform. A win-win.
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