Monster Hunter World Catch-All

I'm not very far into the game, I just completed the expedition to set up the 2nd camp in the forest region. I think there were two quests before that which I completed. I'm kinda interested in seeing how they make the monsters behave differently in combat. This last one liked to try and do some rapid-fire pecking. I liked when he picked up a rock to try and bock my shots.

The combat feels a little like Dragon's Dogma to me, unless I'm just not remembering that correctly.

Checked on my PS4 to confirm and, yes, preloading has started!

Good thing I don't have a million things to do this weekend.

First impressions have been really solid. I took my time with the first couple story quests/hunts and had a fantastic time. I always have more fun if don't rush hunts, which I have a bad habit of doing.

The new fade slash and overhead slam from wild swings on slash axe are sweet. Clutch claw is a lot of fun, but doesn't seem overly abusable. If there isn't a clear opening you'll just get knocked off, especially around the head, and your stamina plummets while latched.

I dig the new town and gathering hall. I knew it was coming, but I'm going to be sad to give up my endgame sets full of nice armor skills to survive with higher defense in G rank.

I haven't looked at new weapon designs if I have any open yet, but I've been pleasantly surprised by the new armor sets I've seen. They look nicer than a lot of the base game stuff, I thought.

Full changes:
https://www.monsterhunter.com/update...

You won't be giving them up, though. They'll always be there for use when you want to gear down or fashion-hunt.

Sadly, I won't be joining in on the fun until next week I have a ton of work and a seminar to attend. Oh, well. Here's to delayed gratification!

LarryC wrote:

You won't be giving them up, though. They'll always be there for use when you want to gear down or fashion-hunt.

You're right, and armor, like weapons, may be upgradable to Master Rank down the line. I'm not too broken up about it, really, but until I get into weapon upgrades it would be a downgrade in damage. Reminds me I need to check if I have any blight resist gems... .

I haven't had a chance yet to check out the multiplayer damage scaling changes. That was another main thing I was excited about. Or to see if they've made any other changes to cooping story since that was something people had a lot of feedback on (at least you could coop in World, but it didn't sound ideal by any means).

SO if i put the game down after defeating the main dragons but not moving on to tempered, how tough will it to be to get into the new areas of this expansion?

thrawn82 wrote:

SO if i put the game down after defeating the main dragons but not moving on to tempered, how tough will it to be to get into the new areas of this expansion?

The game will move you forward to where Iceborne begins and mark all required quests as complete. (I was in a similar situation.)

bobbywatson wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:

SO if i put the game down after defeating the main dragons but not moving on to tempered, how tough will it to be to get into the new areas of this expansion?

The game will move you forward to where Iceborne begins and mark all required quests as complete. (I was in a similar situation.)

Edit: Make sure you bring good gear on that first snow expedition, you'll need it.

I'd say just max your defense as much as possible with what you've got, expect the first fights to take some time and don't be overly aggressive. Then make rare 9 armor ASAP, which won't take too much.

That 3rd mission was a bad choice for trying to learn charge blade. I made it through, but only because it was an expedition quest that allowed more than 3 carts

Dyni wrote:

That 3rd mission was a bad choice for trying to learn charge blade. I made it through, but only because it was an expedition quest that allowed more than 3 carts :lol:

Spoiler:

Viper Tobi? If so, I didn't realize I had more than 3 carts there. After the first two I got serious. Made me think I need new armor though. Some range on his aerial tail spin.

I'll share more thoughts tomorrow when I'm not so tired, but I must at least share the ending to my night. It was quite good.

That's a pretty classy claw finisher for the horn.

I've changed over to Switch Axe and am starting to get the hang of it. It seems pretty brutal, but I guess isn't the easiest necessarily. If you miss timing on a morph attack you easily get clobbered. It also lacks a strong draw attack.

I like the bow's new Thousand Dragons slinger burst attack, although I have a feeling other options out damage it.

That was a beautiful move. I dipped in last night and discovered that what i'll be doing this morning is rewatching Arekks' weapon tutorial videos. I was a beautiful areal ballerina with my insect glaive a year ago. I am a bit rusty, but i'm super excited to be getting back into it. The claw thingy seems like a particularly interesting addition.

Wow I'm so rusty trying to relearn these things after a year are alot harder then I was expecting.

Ok admittedly I'm rusty but I'm starting to wonder if I'm just not geared up enough for the expansion yet. I am at the moose horned Trex (can't remember the name) and can get him limping and running away but he beats me consistantly. I'm an IG user and once in a blue moon it will one shot me.

My armour is a decent mix of some of the elder dragons, I am using the kinsect with the highest speed and blast on it. I can't remember the name of the glaive it's red looks a bit like a devil trident or something with a glowing tip. I never got into fighting the new monsters that they released post launch and didn't dabble with tempered monsters much either, I don't have any augments and maybe my gems aren't good enough.

Should I go back and start grinding on those other monsters? Are augments and high level gems needed? I figured my gear would be decent enough but I'm being worked. Is there a better IG I should be using? I do have the Neirgigante(sp? Spikey elder dragon) glaive that seems to have a much higher damage output but I assumed the red glaive was equipped for a reason when I came back.

I love this game I'm sure it will click again for me but it's been pretty hard to come back

Rave wrote:

Ok admittedly I'm rusty but I'm staying to wonder if I'm just not geared up enough for the expansion yet. I am at the moose horned Trex (can't remember the name) and can get him limping and running away but he beats me consistantly.

If it's limping you can try capturing it, this will end the fight early.

Rave wrote:

Should I go back and start grinding on those other monsters?

GaijinHunter on YouTube posted a video on how to get a Master Rank armor early, so you don't have to grind:

Yeah I guess capturing is an option. I died 4 times to this guy last night though, this particular encounter it has to die, capturing feels like admiting defeat at this point.

I'll check out GH video when I get home thanks!

Thanks bobbywatson that was the answer purchased myself a nice new set of dual blades and proceeded to kill it first try. Progress is being made again yay!

Master Rank is no joke. I just returned to my PS4 save for Iceborne and holy hell am I undergeared. On everything! Beta armor, Damascus Mail, Diablos Chargeblade. Don't even have a Magazine deco.

First thing I did was what I did for Low Rank. I hunted me some Great Jagras and made basic Master Rank armor and weapons. Didn't help that much, honestly, but Banbaro isn't one-shotting me. All my carts to him are fair and square. It's annoying that he's so damned big because I'm playing on VR, but that's about it.

With my basic Rarity 9 Great Jagras weapon, I'm averaging about 15 minutes per hunt. I'm hoping to farm me a rarity 9 Kadachi Chargeblade and see what all the hoopla is about Savage Axe.

It's very fun to use even on an Impact weapon, but I can't say it's super effective. It needs a lot of skill to weaken a monster, down it in the right position and then have the phials and Savage Axe already in place to capitalize.

I am running the Xenojiva IG and same bug as Rave. I haven't been carting much

Spoiler:

until i got to Viper Tobi

but i feel like the fights are taking a long long time. The master rank Great J and Juryatodas fights for the melder took nearly the entire alotted time.

First fight that really felt like a slog was Nargacuca, I was beating it up pretty hard early on but once it started Enraging it just kept being enraged for the large majority of the fight. It's not that hard of a monster but it's the style of just throw it's self all over full body hitbox style when enraged. Went from being fun and fast to just a total slog. First fight that made me feel like my Rarity 8 weapon was maybe falling short. I haven't made much master rank armor yet, just 1 piece so I'm around 480 def or so which has felt fine, just feels like fighting Tempered monsters. Haven't felt the need to make a MR set just for the def stats, still keeping with my Behemoth set for now.

Really enjoying the Palico equipment enhancements and new gear.

Been wanting to play more with people but PS4 is such a pain to communicate. Is there any group chat we want to do for the guild for easy grouping? Looks like there is a built in voice chat function now too outside of PS4 parties but I can't tell if it actually works.

Also I did the Witcher 3 content for the first time which started out as a cool colab but really turned into maybe the most boring and garbage fight I think I've done in this game.

Hope you're all having fun!

G-Rank has always been a pretty significant difficulty jump over High Rank in previous Monster Hunter games. So far, Master Rank seems no different in World. Monsters hit harder, move faster, and have significantly increased health pools. If you're struggling with staying alive, priority number 1 is to upgrade to a set of Master Rank armor, even if you have to sacrifice a bunch of great armor skills to do so. My fully upgraded high rank armor had 415 defense, while my Master Rank Beotodus/Bonbaro set started with 620ish before any upgrades. 200 defense makes a gigantic difference in survivability.

Mapping out a new weapon is priority #2. You can coast on your high rank weapon for Master 1/2 quests, but it's going to start feeling pretty weak by Master 3/4. Even a rank 9 bone or metal weapon is going to be as strong or stronger than your augmented rank 8 Deviljho/Nergigante weapon, so start planning for an upgrade. I'm using the Viper Tobi Kadachi charge blade for now.

I'm really enjoying having longer fights that last more than 10 minutes again. My average solo hunts have been taking me about 15-20 minutes, though that Narga fight took me a little over 30. He did seem particularly beefy for some reason. Killing end game elder dragons in 5-7 min was fun for a while, but fights feel a lot less dynamic when monsters don't live long enough to get more than a single status effect on them. It has been a while since I've seen a monster live long enough for exhaust to kick in. Also, it's nice to be able to use traps again.

FedoraMcQuaid wrote:

Been wanting to play more with people but PS4 is such a pain to communicate. Is there any group chat we want to do for the guild for easy grouping? Looks like there is a built in voice chat function now too outside of PS4 parties but I can't tell if it actually works.

Party chat is usually fine for me, but my headset broke over the weekend, so I'll be mic-less until Tuesday. It seems like most of us are on PS4, so we could just create a PSN message thread for now to communicate if people want to group up on the fly.

After jumping into some hunts on Saturday without any real communication I was going to look more closely at the in-game shoutout options and stuff. Generally it was pretty OK though.

I suppose voice would be nice, but I haven't tried that in-game before. I'm not really able to use Discord easily while on PS4. I also find the system OS really slow on PS4 while I'm playing, so even party chat can be a hassle. I'm not sure if that's from not being on a PS4 Pro or what.

A couple other random things:

I had Velkhana (after I finished investigating tracks but before ever fighting it) show up during another hunt. This was pretty surprising and cool, especially coming up to the ledge from an upper level of Coral Highlands to see it below.

I upgraded a bow I had previously augmented. When doing so, the game asked if I wanted to refund money/materials from the augment or keep it. I refunded and I believe it gave me back the zenny and streamstones.

Well, I finally started Iceborne and dit not kill Beo-watchamacallit. It left the location... I think I need more damage output or something. To my defense I did play rather defensively and very conservatively, so I'm thinking that did me in.

In any case, loved the little bit of the area that I was able to play around in before failing to kill the beastie. Said failure, however, doesn't seem to mean lack of progress, as I was able to look at and opt into quests in the MR range.

Really enjoyed Flaming sword tail dino fight. Felt like a lot of back and forth and the AI seemed very smart in how the monster created space, was a challenge to keep myself under it with the slow gunlance speed but once I got that down was consistently tripping it and flinching. Only weird thing was it kept running to a new location every couple minutes, really threw off the pace of the fight.

Haven't really gotten down how to use the grapple very well. I think I miss the flinch window or just am not understanding the mechanic well. Need a Gaijin hunter grapple video, either I get thrown off immediately even when they aren't enraged or the O redirect and the blast doesn't actually make them move at all.

Don't think I'm going to be picking this up right now, but I still enjoy watching Gaijin Hunter videos. Hope you're all enjoying your hunts. Wish I didn't feel like I was so terrible at this game as World was really great for awhile until I just hit a skill wall that I didn't have the energy to go through.

Rybowl wrote:

Don't think I'm going to be picking this up right now, but I still enjoy watching Gaijin Hunter videos. Hope you're all enjoying your hunts. Wish I didn't feel like I was so terrible at this game as World was really great for awhile until I just hit a skill wall that I didn't have the energy to go through.

I felt that way with the top elder dragons. I'm looking forward to going back and saying hello to them in rarity 9 and 10 gear and decorations