Dauntless New Frost Escalation

The News season pass for dauntless is up and running since Thursday. It brings with it the new Frost Escalation with its normal and hard mode.

Frost Escalation is different than other escalations because it has a new play mechanic. The longer you play and the more behemoths that you kill, the faster you get Frostbite. When you raise your frostbite bar to 100% you freeze and someone has to lower the frostbite level doing various tasks.

When I played the normal frost Escalation, it was very easy. At one time, my teammates killed the behemoths before I arrived at the battleground. The hard Escalation, was way harder especially being level 1 in that Escalation. You need to pay attention to the Frostbite level when you play hard Escalation.

There are a few ways you can prevent frostbite or lower it.

There’s a new pylon that you can craft that stops frostbite from filling up your meter but it does not reduce it.

There are things called boons which are things you have to do in each battle that vary, like attacking the behemoth when you are glowing yellow or standing in a yellow circle.

You can defeat the current behemoth and it lowers your frostbite.

You can use your avatar ability which varies depending on the ability you chose at the beginning. It can be getting critical hits on the behemoth or staggering it.

The avatar abilities are the most interesting part of this whole Escalation.

You select 1 of 4 Avatar Abilities at the start of the Escalation.

Avatar of Destruction — Increases your critical strike chance. Your critical hits reduce frostbite for all.

Avatar of Control — Increases your stagger damage. Reduce frostbite for all when a Behemoth is staggered.

Avatar of Unity — Grants a small chance to reduce frostbite when you hit and creates a shield for all party members. Two-second cooldown.

Avatar of Subtlety — You deal bonus wound damage. Reduce frostbite for all when a Behemoth is wounded or has a part broken.

The most important thing is to choose an ability that suits your weapon and playstyle if not, you’ll be in trouble. That’s what killed us in the hard frost escalation mode.

After a few failed attempts at the new Frost Escalation Hard mode, I finally did it. Here are some tips on how I was able to beat it with a random group.

Play the Normal Frost Escalation until you are about level 14 in the Frost Escalation tree. Don’t even try the hard mode since frostbite will take you down pretty fast.

Grab the Insulated Gear Passive upgrade in the Frost Escalation tree. By level 14 you should have 30% slower frostbite generation, which turns out to be a lifesaver.

Get Bottled Warmth. Braziers continue to prevent Frostbite buildup for 8 seconds after leaving their radius. It makes a huge difference.

Heated Blade. You absorb the flame from each Brazier causing your next attack to deal 50% more damage. It stacks up with all the braziers you absorb.

Have your weapon at level 19–20. I did it with a war pike at level 19.

The random team I finished it with was not that good, they kept dying. I won’t say I carried the team but at a lower level we would have wiped out. Getting paired up with a better team will make it easier.

I was able to beat it with a level 13 weapon but to be honest, it felt like the team carried me and I was doing very little damage. Level 16-17 still feels like I'm not doing enough damage and I was taking a bunch of damage. 1-3 hits and I was dead.

We did get a few tougher enemies than on the normal escalation like a Shrowd, so have that in mind.

Let me know if these tips help you out or if you have better ones.