The official servers were shut down on May 29, 2025.
Dauntless is a free-to-play action role-playing video game. The game can be played both as single-player, cooperatively in a party of up to four or in public cooperative instances of up to six people.
Dauntless takes place in a fantasy setting, where a cataclysmic event has torn the world apart, releasing monstrous creatures known as Behemoths that prey on the surviving humans. Players take on the role of Slayers to take down Behemoths, collecting loot that they use to craft and upgrade weapons and equipment as to take down larger and more powerful Behemoths. While hunting, the game plays as a third-person action game; the player uses a combo system to attack the creature, while monitoring their own health and stamina gauge. Such hunts can take upwards of twenty minutes of in-game time to complete.
In December 2024, the Awakening reboot changed gameplay to support micro-transactions by placing weapons and armor behind a paywall. Anyone with a game copy/save pre-Awakening had their gear removed and replaced with a transmog. The Reforge system was removed along with aethersparks/aetherhearts. Weapon mods and specials are gone. Aetherdust and middleman were removed. The Master questline was removed. The Reward cache and cosmetic hunt pass were retired.