The Dauntless Roadmap

Zylafone
Oct 16, 2020
3 min read

Updated: Nov 6, 2020

For the unfamiliar, the Dauntless Roadmap is how Phoenix Labs communicates with players and people interested in the game about what changes are coming to the game. Some of these are in progress, some could be years away, but others could come out in the next patch. I want to talk about the roadmap as well as some of the items on it.

What I want to see

Sky Fishing is the one feature I really grabbed onto and still won't shut up about. I really like fishing mini games and this feature was legitimately unique. Almost every other feature that is on the Roadmap is already in Monster Hunter World (which is Dauntless' greatest competition). The real kicker is that sky fishing was supposed to release with the new Ramsgate, which came out several months ago and now sky fishing has been shelved entirely.
Pets should have been attached to sky fishing in my opinion. What better way to introduce non hostile fauna than pets you fish yourself? The game has taunted players with sheep and dogs in Ramsgate and emotes for ages, but players like original content.
Reconnect to Hunt is a quality of life change that should have been added years ago. The game can be frustratingly buggy and getting disconnected at the start of the hunt and not having the option to reconnect while your teammates are in the airship at minimum is a crime.

What players are talking about

Cells 2.0 is a complete rework of cells and the Middleman. This change was announced a very long time ago and since then the Middleman's shop has been locked. It is frustrating because I have collected a nearly perfect set of cells and I don't know what will happen when they get reworked.
Weapon Reworks have been on the horizon for a while. There have been minor changes to the weapons for the sake of fixing bugs and balancing, but Dauntless promised major reworks and the Sword has already happened. I hope it gets shelved.
Weapon 8 is a bow if you listen to the rumors. There have been "leaks" about it for years but it's on hold officially. One player told me that it was already done and ready to go.

What is actually coming

New Hunt Type is basically an exploration mode where you can walk behemoth to behemoth without it being a scripted thing like an Escalation.
New and Revamped Islands are being added because of the new hunt type. Slayers that played early in development will remember that the islands have already changed. The old map showed more difficult monsters closer to and inside of "the storm" in beta.
Gliders are being added because the new hunt is drop in and drop out. I guess you'll have to glide back to the airship or something to leave.
Slayer Skill Tree would expand the basic levelling system that's been in the game a long time that has a clear cap. There is also very little reward for levelling so a skill tree would be a welcome addition.
Event Vendor will house all the event quests and rewards as well as an event shop to declutter the existing one. This will be the first NPC added to Ramsgate in quite a while.

Here's the problem

The timeline is a joke and "reprioritizing" happens suddenly and without warning or input from players. This is deeply frustrating as a player that has put hundreds of US dollars (don't judge me) in the game to support it because I really love it. But if something isn't going to happen, I think I'd rather not know about it.