In the world of Dauntless, you are a slayer tasked with fighting Behemoths to protect the Sheltered Frontier. In this beginners guide, I will give you a brief walkthrough for the first hour of the game, which is enough for you to get the basics. You can skip that part if you have already played the game for a bit.
After that brief walk-through, I will explain some of the fundamentals of the game, how things work, and how to advance in a steady manner. In this beginner’s guide, I try to briefly mention the things most important for newcomers. Dauntless is, however, far to complex to explain entirely with a simple beginners guide.
Your First Steps in Ramsgate (a brief walkthrough).
As a Dauntless beginner, you are run through a brief tutorial. In it, you are tasked with killing a single behemoth. For the most part, it is pretty straightforward. Just follow the path you are set on until you find the behemoth and slay it. At the end of it, you reboard the ship and head to Ramsgate.
Once you reach Ramsgate you need to talk to Katerin Sorrel. She will thank you for saving her life and reward you with a new weapon. She then suggests that you should learn to craft new armor.
To get access to the new weapon you need to locate the weaponsmith in Ramsgate. To find him go right from Katerin and up a couple of steps you will find on the right side (east side) of the plaza. The weaponsmith, Wils Bormen, is located to your immediate right once you‘ve gone up the second steps. Talk to him and you can change your equipped weapon there.
To change your weapon you need to find the weapon you wish to use from the list, click it and select equip which pops up in the lower right corner.
Each weapon type has a different set of combos. To see the combos for your active weapon you can press the escape button and select „Move List“. Here you can see both your basic attacks, your special attack, and your combos.
Crafting Your First Set of Armor
The next step is to find the armorsmith, Morya Heigsketter, which is located on the same plaza, left of the weaponsmith. Speak to her and start the crafting quest she offers you.
Next press the gold letter crafting button to open the crafting screen which is shown below.
Now, since you already have the required materials you can simply press the create button and you get your Gnasher helmet. Next, you should do the same for the cloak, gloves, and boots.
Once done you can equip them in the same manner as your weapon, that is to say, you select the items from the list to your left and press the equip button at the lower right side of the screen.
Error, group does not exist! Check your syntax! (ID: 11)Your First Hunting Quest.
Once you have our set of new armor you need to speak with Wils the weaponsmith again. He will give you a quest which, once completed, will allow you to get a better weapon. But before you head off you should first craft a Gnasher weapon. The process is the same as with armor, but you do it by interacting with Wils.
Now to start your hunting quest, simply press the escape button, select Pursuit, Blaze Behemoth, lesser Embermanes. And then press „Start Hunt“.
Once you have completed your first hunt you should continue completing the quests you get and going on pursuits from the hunting screen. Before you know it you will have become a powerful slayer.
Dauntless Weapons and Classes
The first thing I want to mention in this beginners guide is that there are no character classes in Dauntless. Instead, you can select between five different melee weapon types, swords, axes, hammers, chain-blades, and pikes. Each of these having a unique set of combos and different emphasis on damage types. You can also get and use repeaters.
You should familiarize yourself with them from the very start to find what weapon type you think you will use the most. The reason for this is two-fold. First, you will need to upgrade your weapons to be able to handle higher tier behemoths. This costs materials and other resources which are somewhat wasted if you later decide that the weapon type you started with is a bad fit for you.
The second reason is that you gain experience and levels for each weapon type. This means that technically you can become a master of them all, but at the start, it is best to specialize in a single weapon type. Later, you can add another weapon type to your arsenal and perhaps all of them eventually.
Dauntless Damage Types
- Slashing – These attacks can cut of horns, tails and limbs from behemoths. You should aim your attacks on those parts of a behemoth if you are using this damage type.
- Piercing – This damage type can deal a wound that increases all damage to that part of the behemoth
- Blunt – This damage type is good for knocking out or staggering behemoths. You should aim your attacks for a behemoths head if you have this damage type.
There are also seven elemental types of weapon and armors, each having an advantage and disadvantage against specific behemoths. These are neutral and three opposing sets, Blaze vs. Frost, Shock vs. Terra, and Radiant vs Umbral.
How to Use Opposing Elements
- Neutral: They are not strong or weak against any element. This is the best type to use at the very beginning.
- Blaze: Use blaze weapons against frost behemoths. Use blaze armor against blaze behemoths.
- Frost: Use frost weapons against blaze behemoths. Use Frost armor against frost behemoths.
- Shock: Use shock weapons against terra behemoths. Use shock armor against shock behemoths.
- Terra: Use terra weapons against shock behemoths. Use Terra armor against terra behemoths.
- Radiant: Use umbral weapons against radiant behemoths. Use radiant armor against radiant behemoths.
- Umbral: Use radiant weapons against umbral behemoths. Use umbral armor against umbral behemoths.
Crafting and Upgrading Gear
To get some better gear you need to craft it yourself from parts you get form behemoths you slay. As your mastery level advances you get access to better and more varied gear to craft. To craft a piece of gear you just need to have all the materials required in your inventory, talk to the weaponsmith or armorsmith in Rockgate, select which item you intend to craft and then simply press the craft button.
One of the things beginners miss is the fact that you gain Mastery levels from crafting armor and weapons. For each weapon, and each complete set of armor you craft you gain some mastery. And with higher mastery comes a higher slayer level which grants several benefits.
To upgrade gear you need to gather orbs by killing behemoths. To upgrade, you need to have a certain amount of orbs that correspond to the element type of the equipment piece you want to upgrade.
Where is Dauntless Inventory?
Surprisingly, there is no inventory in Dauntless where a player can look at all the stuff he has accumulated. Your items get stored in some sort of inventory, but you cannot access it directly. What you can do is see which items you need to craft a piece of weapon, armor or potion and if you have them available. In the image below you can see that I had 3805 rams, no rockscales, and 1 browscale when I was going to craft a Skarn helmet. Personally, this bothers me and I hope the creators of Dauntless restore the inventory which was available in beta or give us a new one.
Some Combat Tips for Beginners
Before every hunt, you get a screen that shows the damage types your opponent is vulnerable for and which damage type he inflicts. By tailoring your equipped weapon and armor to those damage types you increase the chance of a successful hunt considerably. You can do that on the loadout screen just before you enter the hunt.
When fighting a Behemoth there is no need to rush. Once you start pounding on it, your instincts might tell you to deal as much damage as possible in the shortest amount of time. Instead, you should always be ready to dodge an attack from a behemoth. The great thing about dodging is that it puts you into an invulnerable state while you are dodge rolling. This means that even though your dodge is poor and the behemoth actually hits your character box, it still won’t damage you as your dodge action prevents it. Just remember that this invulnerability is only active as your character is doing the dodging motions.
In the upper right corner, there is a danger meter while you are fighting a behemoth. This meter goes slowly up during combat, in relation to the damage players take and if they go down. Going down means that you “died”, and are in a state where you cannot do anything until you either revive yourself or a player does it for you. Should you go down in a fight you should first see if your fellow players won’t attempt to revive you. And vice versa, quickly move to a player with a red cross over them and revive them. However, if the danger meter has hit 100% players can no longer revive other players and you need to use your self-revive to get back up. The only way to lower the meter is to either drive the behemoth away or outright kill it. Of course, the best way to never go down is to dodge attacks. If you never get hit you will never go down.
Take note of the color of the damage you do to a behemoth. The best damage type to deal is the yellow-colored one as that is damage to a behemoths limb which you can cut off if the damage to that limb gets high enough. The second type is red which is extra damage you do to a wounded area on a behemoth. The blue damage is staggering damage, which can knock-out a behemoth when it gets high enough. The least useful damage is the white one as that is just “neutral” damage.
These few tips should give you a leg up in combat, but to truly excel you need to learn much more tricks and tactics, which are outside the scope of this Dauntless beginners guide.
Use the Middleman
The middleman is an NPC that allows you to combine cells, which are rewards you get from various activities. By combining cells you end up with a stronger cell. You can then place the cells on your weapons, armor, and lanterns depending on the type of cell you have.
You can have up to three cell combinators active at once, but you only start out with a single one. To get access to the others you need to pay for them with platinum.
Do Quests and Challenges
There are quests in Dauntless that you need to complete to advance your knowledge of weapons and armor. You should always accept every quest you can as you are able to complete more than one quest at a time. For example, let’s say that you are tasked with killing 5 behemoths in once quest and another quest tasks you with killing 5 lesser embermanes. By going on lesser embermanes hunts you are able to complete both quests at the same time.
This also means that it is worth it to study the quests and see how you can complete them in an efficient manner. Challenges are weekly tasks, such as the Hunt Pass Challenges that you can complete for Aetherhedrons. These challenges are highly varied, change every week and are worth pursuing.
Collect Your Daily Ather Collectors
Ten aether collectors can be collected in Ramsgate each day, with each one giving 5 hunt pass experience called Aetherhedrons. Aether collectors look a bit like a blue shield in the shape of a triangle with sparkles around it. You can see it in the image below.
Consider Joining a Guild
Finally, you should consider joining a guild. While the guild system Dauntless is not very sophisticated it is still the best way to find people to hunt with. You can also form your own guild if you enjoy the social aspects of games.
So that’s it for this Dauntless beginners guide. If you found this information useful then feel free to share it with your friends and allies in Dauntless and feel free to check out my other Dauntless guides.
Good luck on your hunting.
Error, group does not exist! Check your syntax! (ID: 13)