A rather major Dauntless update will debut on December 3, 2020, changing the free-to-play Monster Hunter-like into Dauntless Reforged. It is essentially a combination of new gameplay elements that will change how people unlock new content in the game, thanks to The Slayer’s Path and weapon leveling and reforging, and how you play with Hunting Grounds islands where you can continue to stay and explore and gliders to help you get around. All of these were pointed out on the PlayStation Blog and official site.
The Slayer’s Path will probably be one of the more noticeable changes in the Dauntless update. If you want to unlock the main path, you play as usual. Your weapon skill experience opens up those 12 nodes. If you want additional abilities, experiences, and items, with hunt types and passive abilities described as two of the options by Phoenix Labs, you need to invest in the branching paths off of each of the 12 main nodes. These can appear on the left and right sides of them and involve currencies like Merits and Rams or you to complete certain objectives.
Weapons will be changed in Dauntless Reforged too. They will have a tier system, instead of levels, to help keep them useful and viable more often. Weapon skill levels will kick in as you use certain sorts of weapons in-game, making you better at them and move up The Slayer’s Path. You can reforge weapon skills at level 20 to go up reforge ranks and become more powerful. Your equipment can then be stronger by using the reforged aetherhearts to power surge the power score and abilities.
The other Dauntless update elements are more about making the game more enjoyable to play. For example, the glider seems to function similarly to ones we’ve seen in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Genshin Impact, allowing people to move about an area more freely and get a better view of behemoths and items. With the Hunting Grounds, people can go down The Slayer’s Path to get different islands and kinds of hunts. There are 18 islands total and, once you finish a hunt there, you can stick around. So think of it as being more like Monster Hunter World than the original Monster Hunter, where you would be kicked back to a hub or village (in this case Ramsgate) after a quest is done.
Dauntless is available on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Dauntless Reforged will be available after the December 3, 2020 update.
