Even if Dauntless is an easier Monster Hunter, it's still not that easy, that's why we give you some tips to help you in beginning.
Gameplay: the basics
Dauntless can be intimidating at first: the principle is inspired by Monster Hunter games. Concretely, you will be teleported with 3 other people in an island to look for your prey. Beating them will offer you items which are used to build and upgrade stuff (armors and weapons). It's for the players who like farming, clearly.
Ramsgate, Slayers' Home
After the tutorial, you will enter Ramsgate, the hub where you will be for the most part outside the fights. The village has everything you need to build new weapons, upgrade them, merge cells... there also are many NPCs who give you quests to fulfill. Some collectibles are also hidden in the city, so you may want to wander in the streets.
Weapon choices
Each kind of weapon has its own combos and abilities, so you can find what suits you best. Before going on a hunt, take some time to see the combos available: using them in the fight will help you to make more damage to the creatures.
For Monster Hunter amateurs (who must wait for Iceborne), Dauntless may look too simple: the game hasn't the ambition of dethroning the master, it's another offer based on accessibility and shorter hunts.
Hunts and Behemoths
After having chosen your target, go to the sky island to farm some mobs. All Behemoths have different patterns and learning is the heart of gameplay: even if stats are important, managing to determine the attacks of one monster is important all the same. Moreover, fights are generally quite long, offering time for the Behemoth to exhaust you. Remind to take tons of consumables when you go hunt, to heal you, but also to upgrade some stats temporarily. The objective will be to optimise your moves and attacks: going in there without thinking doesn't work every time.
There are 19 Behemoths total, each monsters having an element, you will have to take note of that during your setting up in Ramsgate. In order to grant the most resistance against monsters, you need an entire armor set of the same element and a weapon of the opposite element to make more damage.
Equipment: how to manage it
We will have the opportunity of knowing more about cells and other personalization items to optimize your Slayer's progression, but the first hours of playing don't need you to be interested that much: if you know the art of hunting, you should beat easily your first Behemoths.
The best advice we can give you for a successful beginning is to save as much money as possible: take the most materials and money during the discover of the game, it will facilitate the next things to come, when you will really have to optimize your gear, you will be able to count on a stock which will allow knowing more about the challenges to come.
Business model and hunt pass
With a free download and cross-platform servers, Dauntless is based on a business model with hunt pass pretty much inspired of Fortnite. You will have the choice between a free experience with small rewards, or to pay and get more rewards, faster and cosmetics. It's also possible to pay speed mergings for your cells (it takes several days otherwise).
Written by Bastien "Lloyd" Dubosq-Luyer. Translated from French by Millenium.us.org
