Dauntless Catch-All

vypre wrote:

One last note: at some point in the past several years, I created a second Epic account not knowing I already had one; I somehow managed to correctly link my PS4 to the older one that was apparently used with the Dauntless Beta, but it doesn't seem like there's a way to link a single Dauntless Beta account on both console and PC. I ended up creating a second account to play on PC after a fellow Goojer - I think it was Psycotoaster - suggested playing there would eliminate the lag issues I was having on PS4 Friday night. So, now I have two Dauntless accounts (and two Epic accounts) and would prefer to use my Dauntless Beta account for both systems. For that matter, a way to merge my Epic accounts and/or change usernames would be nice as well, but at least I only have Dauntless and one other game on the older of my two Epic accounts.

Edit: Final note, for now at least, I'm playing PC under the Epic username "vypre001" and PS4 as "vypre".

I would shoot Epic support a note and explain this. I've found 95% of my support requests to Epic/Ubisoft/EA to be super pleasant and incredibly helpful. Worth a shot!

!!!BREAKING NEWS!!!
We have a Discord Channel!

Look under "Monster Hunting" > "Dauntless"
Come hang out

We have fun
Pet Dogs
Stand on Goats

A convenient Discord link for your joining pleasure: https://discord.gg/TwQSjYV

Amoebic wrote:

Some information here featuring the perks of guild involvement in Dauntless.

As of yet, it doesn't seem to be possible for officers to invite to guild, so not sure what that means, exactly, you can do. We'll see if they answer to twitter.

That article is dated March 2017 - several months prior to the launch of the Founders Alpha and the slightly later Closed Beta. I didn’t see a “Last Updated” date, so I’m not sure how pertinent that info may be.

Regardless, had a ton of fun meeting up with some guildies this evening - chuckle-inducing, epic failed bug fight and all!

I’ll take a ginv as anyone’s able: mickGK on Epic/XBL.

A tip I realized too late: the Patrol missions give you 10 cores a kill up to 3 times a day (I think). You should grind these at the first level Patrols open up for you as much as possible, BEFORE progressing again in the main quest, to ensure you have the cores and parts to build/upgrade elemental weapons for the fights that will open up soon after. This can avoid some extraneous grinding of lower level monsters hoping for drops when you don’t have enough power in your elemental weapons to use them. The alternative is just using your highest-powered neutral gear but resists help a lot when you’re as bad at dodging as I am.

I was hunting a Nayzaga last night, the lizard that shoots out the spikes that shoot out shockbolts. It must be a tough one at my particular skill level, because I have twice failed to defeat the Nayzaga with groups, but last night it was going better. I was near death, having used all my health charges and two of my teammates downed but not revivable, but had a sense that the monster was likely near death too (any tips on how to tell enemy health?). Anyway, I'm wailing away on it and dodging the lightning bolts when suddenly I get the big popup showing me "Nayzaga defeated!" and I hit the Cheer emote in celebration...and the Nayzaga's apparently lifeless corpse falls on my head and puts me in a downed state. It doesn't stop the hunt from ending successfully, but I got a lesser reward for having been downed once, when I should've gotten the reward for not having been downed at all. So, watch out for falling corpses!

mrlogical wrote:

... when suddenly I get the big popup showing me "Nayzaga defeated!" and I hit the Cheer emote in celebration...and the Nayzaga's apparently lifeless corpse falls on my head and puts me in a downed state. It doesn't stop the hunt from ending successfully, but I got a lesser reward for having been downed once, when I should've gotten the reward for not having been downed at all. So, watch out for falling corpses!

Wow. That's both hilarious and infuriating.

I had a similar fight Sunday afternoon against Embermane. My armor was just at the recommended level, but was a 50/50 mix of Drask (shock) and Gnasher (neutral) pieces instead of flame protection and my Boreus frost sword was somewhere around 20-40 points below. Everyone was doing pathetic damage, but I was somehow (mostly) dodging like a pro while the rest of the group kept getting downed.

Embermane ends up going into his Warning stage and everyone but me is downed with no self-revives, but I've got two remaining and no potions. My team was obviously new and had been blowing through theirs willy-nilly instead of letting teammates revive and saving them for this occasion.

Just a hair over 10 minutes of fighting him solo and I'm slowly whittling away his health with a mix of regular melee and special attacks when they come available. I'm dodging all of his projectiles and only getting hit sporadically during his charge attack while trying to stagger him. Fortunately, I'm staggering him more than he's hitting me, but we're wearing each other down and I'm now out of self-revives. He charges, I stagger him and my sword's frost special pops at the same time as my earth lantern AOE. I salvage the hunt with a fist pumping roar and the dog gives me an irritated stare that says I've interrupted her nap and likely lost my mind.

StrayTanooki wrote:
mrlogical wrote:

I played a surprising amount of this over the weekend. I feel engaged by it but am not sure if I like it, if that makes sense.

I feel much the same. The combat/weapons are much simpler than Monster Hunter. There are some interesting things behind the masteries, like mods, but getting to some may not be worth the grind for me.

I played a bit a couple of weeks ago and felt much the same way. I don't mind a grind, but the grind didn't feel like it had much to keep me interested. I ended up uninstalling it because it didn't seem like anyone else was playing, but that seems to have changed now. Also, the tips people have been posting have filled in some important gaps that weren't really covered by the quests (like some details on repeaters).

Anyways, I've reinstalled and would like a guild invite.

I'd take a guild invite too!

As it seems this is picking up steam, I'll see about promoting a few more folks to guild officers so we can spread around the guild invites.

Edit: Also, please provide your epic name if it's different from your forum name. I don't know how to find people for guild invites without friending them first.

Amoebic wrote:

As it seems this is picking up steam, I'll see about promoting a few more folks to guild officers so we can spread around the guild invites.

Just as long as it's not one of those hammer wielders...!

I need some advice/help

I hit the grind to move from +5 to +6 and higher weapons. What I'm struggling with is literally EVERY (except the frost repeater barrel) needs parts from Behemoths I don't even have unlocked yet. So I'm assuming they're all 325-350+ level. So how the heck do I figure out how to grind and get there?

I did 6 level 300 Behemoths tonight and force quit out of 4 of them because someone dropped or was AFK. Another fight it was clear I was the only one remotely at level and some [REDACTED] slayer decided he'd just kite for 5 minutes instead of wiping when we were all down and danger was at 100%

The FINAL fight we won was an E rating and I got a B so I guess everything else was pretty awful. I'm feeling match making with randos given their current system (not penalizing leavers being the primary offender) is going to make me sour hard on the game.

staygold wrote:

I need some advice/help

I hit the grind to move from +5 to +6 and higher weapons. What I'm struggling with is literally EVERY (except the frost repeater barrel) needs parts from Behemoths I don't even have unlocked yet. So I'm assuming they're all 325-350+ level. So how the heck do I figure out how to grind and get there?

I did 6 level 300 Behemoths tonight and force quit out of 4 of them because someone dropped or was AFK. Another fight it was clear I was the only one remotely at level and some [REDACTED] slayer decided he'd just kite for 5 minutes instead of wiping when we were all down and danger was at 100%

The FINAL fight we won was an E rating and I got a B so I guess everything else was pretty awful. I'm feeling match making with randos given their current system (not penalizing leavers being the primary offender) is going to make me sour hard on the game.

I saw your message last night, but was wiped out from an unexpectedly late Dauntless night Monday evening and ran off to bed. I hit that point myself and just unlocked the fights you need last night. I don't think I have anything going this evening and can help you if you're going to be on. I can tell you, the fights you need to progress your gear past +5 are tied to one of the quests. I think it was one of the two Maelstrom quests, but we'll figure it out.

mrlogical wrote:

I was hunting a Nayzaga last night, the lizard that shoots out the spikes that shoot out shockbolts. It must be a tough one at my particular skill level, because I have twice failed to defeat the Nayzaga with groups, but last night it was going better.

I ran this fight for the first time last night - things went poorly! I assume someone should be dedicated to quill cleanup, but maybe it's just a matter of DPSing hard.

PS This game is good and hammers are good.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
mrlogical wrote:

I was hunting a Nayzaga last night, the lizard that shoots out the spikes that shoot out shockbolts. It must be a tough one at my particular skill level, because I have twice failed to defeat the Nayzaga with groups, but last night it was going better.

I ran this fight for the first time last night - things went poorly! I assume someone should be dedicated to quill cleanup, but maybe it's just a matter of DPSing hard.

PS This game is good and hammers are good.

My first fight against Nayzaga was with other hunters that had clearly never fought it before. We didn't destroy any of the quills... it was a short battle.

Very good tips here, explains a bunch of things I did not know -

I also watched this guy's video on hammer tips and found them super helpful.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
mrlogical wrote:

I was hunting a Nayzaga last night, the lizard that shoots out the spikes that shoot out shockbolts. It must be a tough one at my particular skill level, because I have twice failed to defeat the Nayzaga with groups, but last night it was going better.

I ran this fight for the first time last night - things went poorly! I assume someone should be dedicated to quill cleanup, but maybe it's just a matter of DPSing hard.

PS This game is good and hammers are good.

When I’ve run it with pugs, hardly anybody else seems to focus the quills. So, I usually end up picking up that duty. When you load in, there’s a tip that says you can knock those lightning balls back at him - to stagger him, I believe -, but I haven’t tried it yet.

staygold wrote:

I need some advice/help

I hit the grind to move from +5 to +6 and higher weapons. What I'm struggling with is literally EVERY (except the frost repeater barrel) needs parts from Behemoths I don't even have unlocked yet. So I'm assuming they're all 325-350+ level. So how the heck do I figure out how to grind and get there?

This stage in progression felt a bit awkward to me.

I threw some spoilered ideas out about this point in things earlier in the thread, but the key thing that helped me was learning that Drask armor can be upgraded to +7 with just regular Drask parts. I think this may be the only armor that allows this. It's the only one I found anyway.

I don't think you need all pieces at +7 to hit the first armor level requirement and open some more Dire stuff up.

I stuck with repeaters around this stage so I must've found a way to mostly upgrade standard barrel. I did hit a wall at some point because I think the first weapon I got fully to +7 was Embermane. (Edit: it looks like standard barrel needs Moonreaver parts, and Moonreaver is maybe the most manageable of the first Dire monsters).

A Valomyr weapon is probably good to have around this time, but it also takes the Dire patrol orbs to upgrade even to +5. Not sure how painful that is.

Guild invite, please? ruhkFuture on Epic.

My progress from the alpha carried over so I found myself with a ton of upgraded gear from sometime last year and little idea of how any of it worked anymore. Even with all the new stuff it looks like hammers are still the best weapon though.

I did 4 or 5 patrols last night, and I think my ranks were something like S++, E, A, E, A. I either really know what I'm doing or have no idea what I'm doing! To be fair to myself, my poor ratings were with behemoths I'd never faced before that were doing some different and weird stuff. For those (a lion-y looking creature with a whippy tail that drops lightning bolts around the map, a wasp-like creature) it seemed like my usual hammer techniques were not very effective as I just had a really hard time getting in front of them and staying there. Things to learn, I guess. This feels like a game where your skill can increase pretty dramatically by spending an hour in front of youtube.

StrayTanooki wrote:

A Valomyr weapon is probably good to have around this time, but it also takes the Dire patrol orbs to upgrade even to +5. Not sure how painful that is.

Not very. I just got a quest to farm 40 or 50 of these yesterday and I got them all very quickly just by doing a couple dire patrols and pursuing Valomyr (almost typed Valkyr... Warframe, anyone?) for its armor and weapon parts.

mrlogical wrote:

I did 4 or 5 patrols last night, and I think my ranks were something like S++, E, A, E, A. I either really know what I'm doing or have no idea what I'm doing! To be fair to myself, my poor ratings were with behemoths I'd never faced before that were doing some different and weird stuff. For those (a lion-y looking creature with a whippy tail that drops lightning bolts around the map, a wasp-like creature) it seemed like my usual hammer techniques were not very effective as I just had a really hard time getting in front of them and staying there. Things to learn, I guess. This feels like a game where your skill can increase pretty dramatically by spending an hour in front of youtube.

Yeah, from my own experience, my ranking isn't going to be that great any time I'm facing a new behemoth. It gets even worse once you hit the +6 tier of gear behemoths. The totally new one's will get you for sure, but they also update several of the mobs you have grown accustomed to and make them tougher with an additional ability or two. I actually find those to be worse because you go in assuming they're going to be the same. It could just be me, but I thought they were a bit faster moving as well and my timing was off.

mrlogical wrote:

I did 4 or 5 patrols last night, and I think my ranks were something like S++, E, A, E, A. I either really know what I'm doing or have no idea what I'm doing! To be fair to myself, my poor ratings were with behemoths I'd never faced before that were doing some different and weird stuff. For those (a lion-y looking creature with a whippy tail that drops lightning bolts around the map, a wasp-like creature) it seemed like my usual hammer techniques were not very effective as I just had a really hard time getting in front of them and staying there. Things to learn, I guess. This feels like a game where your skill can increase pretty dramatically by spending an hour in front of youtube.

I'm in a similar boat. I did the quest to run 3 neutral patrols while also working on the quest to get a kill with each weapon type. Due to the random nature of patrols, I was just undergeared for some of them. I also tried out the axe and hammer for the first time. They seem slower than the sword, and that meant I got hit a lot.

Even so, the tips and videos that were posted came in handy. I knew not to use any self-revives until the HUD meter hit 100%. One of the more well-geared people ended up out of one fight shortly after the meter hit 100%, and I managed to bring myself back 3 times and was still standing at the end.

How do fights adjust based on the size of your team, if at all?

Last night, I was queued up with a crew of 4 to take on an Embermane, but as soon as we'd loaded into the world, one of the crew had dropped. Then, just a few minutes into the fight, I noticed one of the 3 of us was standing still in the middle of the battle area, and not long after that he disappeared too. Me and the final remaining crew member still seemed to be doing okay, so I figured we'd finish the fight, but then he dropped too. So it was down to just me versus the Embermane. I figured I might as well plug away at it, though, and it was actually fairly helpful training. It's a lot easier to practice staggering a behemoth when you're the only one it targets with its charges. I felt I was doing great against him, staggered him a dozen times or so, was repeatedly getting my four hit X-X-X-Y hammer combo raining down on his head, kept myself reasonably safe for the most part.

After about 10 minutes of that, when I felt like I must be close to finishing him off, I landed a big blow only to see him trigger his "I'm running away to another area" animation. Drat. So I ran off, found him again, and continued working on him. I staggered him so many times and landed so many high damage combos on his head, I really thought I would get to him eventually, but at about 22 minutes, I was downed and found that I had used all 3 of my revives, so the mission was done and I had failed. I felt like I got a lot of good practice out of it, but it was discouraging that I got virtually no in-game reward, and I'm not sure how I could've played it much better.

Was I doomed from the start when teammates started dropping? Did the Embermane just have 4 players' worth of HP and so the chances of me as a normally-powered player killing him in time were always stacked massively against me? Or would each player dropping from the game rebalance his power and health and I just needed to get a little bit luckier to have finished him off? It seemed to me that his attacks may have been adjusted (I feel like I saw fewer flame balls fly out when he launched those?), so maybe it was adjusting for group size, but I'm not sure.

Also, FYI, there is Twitch Prime loot available now for Dauntless, get a code via Twitch and enter it at the Dauntless website.

mrlogical wrote:

Was I doomed from the start when teammates started dropping? Did the Embermane just have 4 players' worth of HP and so the chances of me as a normally-powered player killing him in time were always stacked massively against me?

I can't say with 100% certainty, but this has definitely been my experience so far. I've had similar things happen to me quite a few times now where it just becomes near impossible to complete the hunt after the second dropout. With only one dropout it adds a decent amount of difficulty, but is still doable. It'd be great to have some kind of way of discouraging drop-outs, as there doesn't seem to be any consequence for it at all at the moment.

mrlogical wrote:

How do fights adjust based on the size of your team, if at all?

My general understanding is that the difficulty, behemoth hp, etc increase based upon each person in your party. The downside is it does not appear to decrease if one or more people drop(s) - whether intentional or unintentional (server/internet issues) - and there's no way to reconnect to a dropped session. So, if you go in with four and three drop, you'll definitely have your work cut out for you. Especially, if it all happens prior to them running to their second or third area.

Thanks for the Twitch Prime tip!

Thanks for confirming, next time I will know to drop when I see that happening. I can't complain too much about the lack of a dropout penalty, because as the parent of a 6 month old who is not a reliable sleeper, I have had to drop unexpectedly at least once to deal with a screaming baby, and it's always a worry hanging over my head these days. I would like them to penalize people only if they are not dropping for my specific reasons

Yeah that happens more than I would like and especially with Dire Patrols. If it’s one of the tougher ones people will drop or just not engage. Usually I just drop as well as it’s not worth it.

I just spent over an hour brainstorming how I think Patrols and Pursuits could be changed to alleviate the issue of people dropping from Patrols they don't like/want, but I've come to the conclusion that there's a fundamental issue with the Patrol mission type itself.

For starters, other than the obvious behemoth randomization, the only difference between the two types is that patrols offer elemental orbs and daily orb bonuses, Pursuits do not. Again, the underlying issue appears to be with randomization.

There are always going to be people that don't want to take on a specific fight and will drop when that fight is loaded. Yes, you can offer penalties for dropping, but you're just forcing players to remain in fights they don't want to be in and that increases the likelihood they will just afk and/or reduces the fun for everyone else in the group. Less fun = players leaving the game or avoiding the mode - either of which just makes it more likely there are less people available to populate group for those that do enjoy the randomized nature of Patrols.

Now, the game does allow players to cancel loading in, but that function is currently broken (supposedly fixed in next patch). Even then, what happens when a large number of players always avoid certain, harder behemoths? At that point, you might as well remove them from the rotation. So, maybe you could try to incentivize behemoth-specific loot in patrol mode; and that brings me to my next point.

Right now, there are two reasons to run Patrols: elemental orbs and daily bonus orbs (ok, one reason really). If you add or move orbs to Pursuit mode and offer the daily bonuses on a randomized daily rotation for each element, you've just removed the only loot reward for playing a randomized Patrol. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I'll get to that later. So, maybe you offer increased Behemoth-specific part drops in Patrol. Sounds good, but then again, not everybody is working on the same gear. So, you queue Patrol, one of your group members doesn't get the mob they wanted for the gear they are farming, and they drop.

Almost any way you cut it, behemoth reandomization and loot generation seem to be at odds with each other. So, I have come up with the following possibilities:

(SPOILER ALERT - there's nothing revolutionary here.)

1.) Completely remove loot differences from the equation so that the only difference between the two modes is in allowing the players to choose for themselves if they want to select a specific behemoth or if they want to be surprised.

2.) Make Patrol a continuous mode where each consecutive fight completed offers increased rewards. If playing in a group, allow individuals to drop at-will and replace them with new members. Adjust difficulty up or down based on the number of players available at any given time. Consecutive reward increases are on a per-player basis.

Like I said, nothing revolutionary, but then again, Dauntless isn't breaking new ground on any front. Personally, I'm enjoying it for the combat-centric Monster Hunter Lite that it is.

Thoughts?

I’m not sure it happens that much to warrant wholesale changes. Especially with queue times being so short these days I just drop and queue up again.

I need so many orbs that unless I’m doing something specific I just grind patrols and kill whatever. You should complete every piece of gear for Mastery purposes so it works out.

So not only is Dauntless crossplay, but it’s cross-save as well. I’ve been playing on pc the last few days but on a whim installed on Xbox and seamlessly picked up with my pc character. This is the goddam future.