Dauntless brings beasts and slayers to PAX West

Last week while at PAX West 2018 I had the pleasure of becoming a slayer of gigantic and gorgeous behemoths in Dauntless. Dauntless is a Free to play co-op action RPG that is currently out in open Beta on PC. In Dauntless you’ll not level up per say but fight along side 1 – 4 other players to take down one of several (more to come) behemoths. As you progress through these beasts you’ll acquire new items and craft better and more legendary gear and weapons to grow in your character.

Behemoths not only come in one form but a variety of instances, depending on the weather of the terrain you may get a frozen beast or a fiery one that you must learn attack sets of. Like several other games Dauntless keeps the game interesting by throwing curve balls in attacks from each new behemoth but It may be tricky to exactly learn the tells of each behemoth. Through the battle sequence the behemoth will change attack style and you and your crew will need to change your attack to respond to the new challenges.

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Knowing your characters weakness’s and strength are a must for players of Dauntless. Battling behemoths are a relentless and challenging experience especially depending on what items you have crafted. Dauntless has a in depth crafting system that rewards you for battling alongside friends and solo to acquire much needed items to craft armor and customize it to make it your own with dyes. As well unlike other games where you acquire weapons from battle to progress in Dauntless you craft weapons like swords, Axes, Hammers, Chain Blades and War Pikes to progress on to harder and more challenging behemoths. During my time at PAX I also saw the upcoming Ostian Repeaters which are handheld and allow us to down a behemoth. Though with this in mind great power comes great dedication and players will need to give their time and achronite to wield this truly powerful weapon. The Ostian Repeaters will be coming to the storm Fall 2018.

The combat of Dauntless is fun and can be as complex or as simple as you prefer. Each class can go between light and hard strikes. Depending on how you use these against the behemoth will also effect how quickly you gain a special attack that just may end the battle in one blow leaving the behemoth with one final death cry that is as rewarding as it is produced.

Through my time match in Dauntless I found myself entranced not just by character or behemoth design but also the depth and details they put in to the world. The artist and vibrant colors, the world scape and verticality of the land and the distance in which you can traverse the space is unlike many other games I’ve played. Another awesome feature about this is that you have a flare gun. You may be asking yourself why a flare gun? Let me tell you shooting a flare when someone finds the amazing behemoth not only is a great way to regroup it looks amazing and sounds amazing while blasting off in the sky. I can’t imagine not having a flare when the landscape is so large you all must split to find the intended boss.

Let me emphasize that the audio in this game matches it’s beauty. The sounds of the world are vibrant and lived in. Each behemoth has stomach sinking vocalizations and the combat effects are on point beyond what I’ve seen in other free to play games. From running through different terrains to different combat actions they nail the audio just has well as they nailed the art.

I am proud to say that although I just got a taste for Dauntless I will deffinently be downloading this and adding it as my go to game night game for our community so please head over to playdauntless.com to download and install this masterpiece. Follow us on twitter and facebook or myself @The_Darklegend to get in on a game night and maybe just maybe we’ll give away some awesome Dauntless gifts if we can get a good crew rolling. Please check out the gorgeous art of Dauntless below.

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Zach Auld

Explosive, outspoken Podcaster/ Streamer