My thoughts on Awakening as a new player

I've seen many people say "this update probably feels great for new players" so I just wanna share my thoughts and experiences as someone whose both new to the game and the genre (Only other games I've played like this are MH: World, which I despised, and MH: Rise, which I loved). Also fair warning this might be a little all over the place as I'm just listing off things I can recall in my 42 hours of playtime. Skip to the last paragraph for the TLDR.

The first issue I recall was when I was doing the combo tutorial and half of the weapons weren't available for some reason? This was especially disappointing to me since I usually go for martial arts in games so the strikers immediately caught my eye but I just went with the pike and hoped that I'd unlock the strikers soon. Also another issue is that the weapon swap combo shouldn't be in that tutorial with the rest since you physically can't do it at that point. I just kept trying and failing without any clue what I was doing wrong until way later when I unlocked strikers and tried all of it's combos and realized. Also I guess since I'm talking about weapon swapping I should mention a HUGE issue I found with the update. When I first saw/heard about weapon swapping I was really hype especially since the way Wilds handled it was really boring imo but Dauntless' method seemed really cool and fun... on paper. After unlocking strikers I devised a strategy to use the attack speed buff from strikers to get the crit buff from my pike super fast and then swap back to the strikers, max out my mantras, and then use the laser attack for big damage, sounds cool right? Using both weapons to compliment each other and get the most out of them both like the devs intended. That was when I found out that any weapon related buffs you have instantly disappear the moment you swap weapons... Words cannot express my disappointment at this. I hope this is a bug and will be rectified soon but honestly if they made an error this big it makes me very worried about the competency of the devs. Like is this not the first thing you'd test when making a mechanic like this? To be fair though I did report a bug on the megathread and the devs resolved it in a matter of hours and even directly replied to let me know it was fixed so they aren't totally ignorant of what's going on I suppose. Maybe I'll leave another comment about the weapon buffs and see what happens (I asked in the discord about this and one of the mods told me that some buffs are exclusive to the weapon but some of them do transfer over like the speed buff from the strikers' special. Pretty lame imo but at least I now know it's intended). Another issue I've noticed is that the game kinda expects/hopes you read many things in the journal to understand some of it's key mechanics. Like maybe I just missed something but are wounds, aether rush, buff stacks, etc explained outside of the journal? Also the game tells you about part breaks and how tails require slash damage and horns require blunt damage but it never actually tells you what attacks deal what type of damage and that may seem obvious but apparently pike can cut off tails and sword can break horns? Also speaking of part breaks I've heard that they're glitched and sometimes you physically can't break a part no matter how much damage you deal which is lovely for progression.

Speaking of, I guess I should talk about the progression next since my current yellow quest is to get a level 30 weapon and complete a level 10-50 escalation, so I think I'm nearing the endgame. So the two biggest issues I've seen in the community in regards to this are the lack of weapon crafting and the game being very grindy and my thoughts on this may appall you. I actually don't mind any of it at least not what I've experienced this far. For me personally weapons were never the highlight of these type of games, although I'm sure I'm in the minority there. Armor always felt more impactful and meaningful both build wise and of course for fashion and that sense of progression is still fully intact so I personally don't feel like anything is missing. Especially since I'm the type of person who finds a build/playstyle they like and just uses that for the next few hundred hours before even thinking about trying something new so it doesn't matter to me whether there are 12 or 1200 weapons because once I find what I like I become blind to everything else and the starter pike and strikers both feel really good to me. As for the grind... I currently have 42 hours of playtime and note that I started from scratch with little guide or direction on what to do/how to optimally farm and in spite of that I still have 3 pieces of armor maxed out soon to be 4, almost all the cores I need to complete my first build, and my weapons are 23 and 26 without using any aetherite. Like maybe I'm missing something but almost having a full build and my weapons a third of the way to max level just within the first 40 hours doesn't seem like crazy grind, especially since MH and presumably games inspired by it are supposed to be super grindy. The community having such a visceral reaction makes me wonder how easy it was to get things before Awakening, but once again maybe I'm just missing something as I haven't messed around with weapon talents much so maybe that's where the obscene grind lies. An issue I do foresee though is that I believe Awakening was the 2nd time they've reset everyone's progress which has been a big issue for many veteran players and that actually is very alarming for me as a new player cause there's no guarantee that any of the things I'm working on will still be relevant a year from now if/when we get another big update.

Moving on to the actual combat/gameplay side of things, I really like this game's selection of weapons. Strikers and pike feel really good to play, and I've used axe and hammer while grinding for parts and they feel really fun too. Repeaters feel kinda ass but I've never been big on ranged playstyles so maybe it's a me issue. I haven't tried sword or chainblades yet but from what I've seen of friends using them I feel like I'd enjoy them too. As for the behemoths, most of them are fun to fight especially Sahvyht, Riftstalker, Koshai and Skarn but there are some that're pretty bland like Quillshot and Nayzaga. I also really like the interrupt mechanic because it's a fun and unique way to give the player a sense of mastery over the behemoths. Like at first I used to dread Riftstalker's portal attacks but now after farming it I get happy whenever I see it's portals cause I know it's a free DPS phase that doesn't trivialize the fight (hopefully that never changes as I get stronger) and there's also so many tools to do it with from weapon attacks, lantern cores, and cell abilities that you can interact with the mechanic without having to play a certain way. Also I really REALLY love escalations, the rogue like aspect with the random behemoths, buffs and hazards is really fun I just wish it was longer but hopefully that's what the 10-50 difficulty will do. Also while I'm rambling about stuff I enjoy, the overall aesthetic and lore of the game is really cool to me. To my understanding, scientists discovered this new energy source called "aether" and used it to make bio weapons known as Behemoths that they lost control over which led to the destruction of the world, leaving what's left of humanity in the Shattered Isles to fend for themselves against said bio weapons. It's a really cool concept and I hope we learn more about the creation of the Behemoths and the other nations in the Shattered Isles but beyond journal entries the game doesn't seem to dive into the lore that much.

I can't think of much else to say at this point, so I'll just try to summarize and conclude. I think Dauntless is a fun game that has a lot of potential but there are some key things that make me worried about the game's health in the long run like the aforementioned progress resets, lack of clear tutorials, and some very obnoxious and intrusive bugs, but ultimately I don't think Awakening update is as bad as people say. I'm sure many people will tear me apart in the comments or downvote me but I gave Dauntless an honest try and my expectations were mostly met and so I'm looking forward to the future of the game. In fact as I write this the devs released a blogpost last night about the feedback they've received and how they plan to address it, some of which are things I touched upon in this post, so I think in spite of the rocky start they're trying their best and I'll stick around, for now at least, to see how they do. Thank you for reading this whole thing and bearing with my ramblings, if there's anything you'd like to say or ask me about feel free I just ask that you do so in a respectful manner.