Madison hung her feet over the edge of the roof and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She wasn’t an early bird by anyone’s measure, but on days when clear skies were in the Orrey’s forecast she’d make an effort to shuffle out of bed and catch the sunrise. The cool, early twilight was broadening from below the lower cloud cover, and crisp upward currents found the Slayer pulling a quilt around herself. Within minutes a canvas of clouds, endlessly wide and fathomless, bloomed with pastel yellows, oranges, and pinks. The horizon burst with a crescendo of colours, a rich golden light pooling in hazy focus. The sun rose slowly from the undercover, shafts of light and shadow casting Ramsgate in the stark relief of morning. She smelled the stoking of ovens and heard the first clanging of the smiths as warmth ebbed toward the town. Out beyond the horizon was adventure, fortune, duty, and hope. Madison was wide awake now. She was ready to embrace them all.

2018 will be a huge year for the Shattered Isles and the Slayers who call it home. Months of invaluable hands-on information, collected throughout the Alpha and Closed Beta, have honed our insights to help shape the future of Dauntless.

We’re excited to share specifics and previews of these features as we work toward Open Beta. Moving forward, expect regular, feature-focused updates and previews on all of the new content and ideas that are coming to Dauntless.

You can expect more details, in-depth articles, developer interviews, and previews of what’s to come. The goal of Open Beta is in sight and we are excited to bring to life the game that we’ve been waiting for and that you’ve supported.

SEVEN CHAMBERS

There are seven elements of Dauntless that we’re focusing our efforts toward in the lead up to Open Beta. Chosen based upon community feedback and their impact for the most players, we’ll be keeping you up to date on their progress and how these elements improve your experience. Each one has a dedicated team will be providing insight and updates as we go.

These seven elements are essential to the future of Dauntless, but they are by no means exhaustive. We are always looking for new opportunities and ideas that can expand the Shattered Isles into the place you’ll love calling home for years.

As always, you can track these changes and enjoy a deeper insight into the development of Dauntless at the Development Roadmap. You can expect to see more frequent updates to the roadmap as well as additional insights as elements of the game progress toward Open Beta and beyond.

USER INTERFACE

While the Sharpen Your Skills update included improvements to some menus and interfaces, we’re turning our attention to a refinement of the UI that will serve Slayers through Open Beta and beyond. These improvements will impact everything from your health bar to crafting interfaces and everything in between. And we’re planning on making them pretty damn slick while we’re at it.

We’ve heard community feedback that while some aspects of the current UI work well, some elements like navigating hunt boards or cells still need work. We also know that players looking to spend hundreds of hours playing or showing the game off to their streaming audience would like something easier on the eyes.

Look forward to previews and hands-on experience with both improved visuals and functionality. We’ll be continuing to gather your feedback as we make huge strides forward with UI.

EVERGAME

Dauntless is about forging a legend by crafting exotic weapons and armour from the power of deadly Behemoths. But determining which legend is worth pursuing? That’s for each Slayer to decide for themselves. For our part, this means creating the world, challenges, story, and content that will make coming back daily, weekly, and monthly worthwhile.

We’re dedicating design and creative resources to the ongoing expansion of the activities that are available in the Shattered Isles. This means more ways to hunt, new activities to engage in, and new social features to explore. We call this combination of content the “Evergame.”

We know that Dauntless players and curious gamers want to know what the “end game” will consist of. But instead of creating a terminus for Slayers, we’re dedicated to creating compelling content for long-term, high-skill players. We’re also working to create content that players of all skill levels can engage with and invest in at their own pace. This means an experience that will grow and change with the Dauntless community over time.

Look forward to deadlier Behemoths, new mechanics to master, and opportunities to hone your skill. As a participant in the Closed Beta you’ll have a huge opportunity to help us shape these systems with your feedback. We’re excited to share work-in-progress versions of what’s to come and to get your feedback.

ISLAND GAMEPLAY

Every island holds the promise of adventure and a place for people to grow and thrive. A Slayer’s job isn’t just to defeat Behemoths, but also learn more about the world in an effort to give humanity a fighting chance.

We’ve heard from players that they enjoy the setting of Dauntless, but that they’re looking for more reasons to invest in the islands themselves. Behemoths should interact with islands, and islands should react to Behemoths. We agree and are working on ways to make exploring islands more rewarding and fun, as well as building systems that make the world feel more alive.

SLAYER EXPRESSION

We learn more about the dyes, accessories, and customizations that Slayers love with every day. We’ve enjoyed having lengthy, personal discussions about investing in a game that they want to play for years to come

We’ve committed to no pay-to-win and no paywalls since day one, and we proudly stand by that promise. Skill is a cornerstone of Dauntless and we’re committed to ensuring Behemoths can only be brought down by Slayers, not their credit cards.

We are expanding the customization and style options available to players through the in-game store and unlockable through progression. Much of what you see today is placeholder, and we’re excited to solidify and expand these offerings.

PERFORMANCE AND SCALE

You’ve locked in your GTΩ 1190 Quartz Edition into your liquid-nitrogen-cooled quantum motherboard, right next to your 100 gigawatts of DD7 RAM. You download Dauntless with your quad-axial, 10-Petabyte connection so quickly that (in a flagrant violation of the laws of time) you get next month’s patch before we’ve finished it. Truly, you have ascended.

But before you can become a Time Lord master Slayer, we need to make sure that things are running smoothly both behind the scenes and on your own beastly box. And even if your machine has more in common with a hot plate than an instrument of interactive ascension, we want to make sure that you still have a great experience by expanding the minimum requirements.

We know that city, island, and overall optimization needs to be addressed and we’re getting to the point with development that this process makes sense. We’re also working to expand the availability of regional servers (which you should be hearing more about in the coming weeks.)

COMBAT

We’ve been keeping a close eye on community feedback when it comes to combat since day one. We acted quickly to improve combat impact in the early days of the Closed Alpha and used your feedback to improve the versatility and feel of the hammer, for example. We’re looking forward to bringing the quality and breadth of these updates to other elements of combat going forward.

We’re digging into the different ways that weapons and gear interact with Behemoths and the world. We’re digging deep into this relationship and the opportunities for teams of Slayers to coordinate and optimize for specific challenges.

Look forward to more details about improvements to the fundamentals of combat, improvements to existing weapons, expanding combo variety, and continuing to iterate on the cell system.

TUTORIALS

Being a Slayer is tough enough without needing to worry about having the details straight.

We’re working on new systems and flow that will make it easier to get your friends playing like pros while keeping the action moving - all without slowing you down.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

These are huge steps forward and we can’t imagine accomplishing it without the devotion of our Founders. These changes are a reflection of the effort you’ve put into playing and sharing your feedback with us. From all of us at Phoenix Labs, thank you for your continued support and for joining us on this journey. We wouldn’t have it any other way.