Topic: Monster Hunter Rise

@JaxonH got it thank you. I'll have to fiddle around some more with crafting and such. I've really only forged and upgraded weapons and armor at this point. So I need to start scouting around a little more.

@NintendoByNature
Oh ya, crafting is a huge part of the game. Just go to your item box and find the "Craft Items" option, and you'll see all the different things you can craft. Also, you can tweak your auto crafting options in the menu for out in the field. Things you do and don't want crafted on the spot. Sometimes you want those materials for something else so you don't always want to auto craft everything. Might use up every bitterbug for thing A which leaves none for your item box to make thing B

Remember when crafting had a fail rate, with the only way to mitigate it being to carry crafting books in your inventory if crafting on the field and keep them in your box if crafting from the box? Good times.

@TeeJay You know I actually hear some people say that MH is not crafty as they would like. Like dude STFU MH is one of the crafty'is games on the planet, its like idk its whole thing.

Book of Combos 1-5.

They never bothered me, but then again I wasn’t a gunner. I can appreciate the progression aspect they added, kind of like acquiring power charm and armor charm. But... let’s be honest. It wasn’t really that fun to craft something and have it fail and create garbage. So I think it was a good call to remove Book of Combos.

On the other hand, they could have kept book of combos and instead of negating a chance of failure, they increase chance of crafting x2 every 20 or so times. That would’ve been a neat way to keep them in the game but still remove the aspect people didn’t like. Ah well.

I think they’ve finally nailed the right balance for crafting and gathering. It’s no longer a game where you have to spend the first five hours gathering just to make sure you have enough potions, steaks and traps to last you through the next rank or two. But old habits die hard, and I still gather like a maniac just from the thousands of hours I spent in the older style games. I’m conditioned to over-gather, and that might also play a part in why I see higher play times. Most other people just go kill the monster and move on. But I mosey through the maps and collect, explore, stuff my pouch like a squirrel with a nut horde. That kind of approach used to be necessary if you didn’t want to run out of materials. But nowadays you can pretty much just play the game and you’ll get more than enough mats as rewards, gathered by your palico, and from the farm/argosy.

I remember in MH4U, me and TeeJay would be doing a quest in the desert map, and there were a few areas that had blue mining nodes, not purple. And you DID NOT pass by those mining nodes without stuffing pouch. It was an unwritten rule. Everyone knew- you pass blue mining node, you mine it. Simple as that. You’d see entire groups of hunters running in tandem, and all of them would run over to the same nodes, in sequence, one after the other. Ting ting, ting ting, ting ting, on to the next.

I focus on the green and orange spiribirds myself, but grab anything in the vicinity along the way. Typically I’ll go for any spiribird I see, but if it’s health or defense, I go out of my way for it.

Just beat Narwa solo for the first time today (beat her with Fatty yesterday) and got that orb! The streak of luck continues. It’s nuts. I’m never this lucky. It’s like the game decided to show mercy after all those hours of getting scratch.

I got a Narwa orb from a shiny drop on my very first hunt (a solo hunt). I'll never forget it, lol.

@TeeJay
Wow. That always feels good peeling gems from shinies. Doesn’t happen often though. I get a plate every now and then but orbs are a rarity.

Just crafted my new online farming set- Utsushi Visible. I’m rockin the following:

• Defense Boost 5
• Good Luck 3
• Quick Sheath 3
• Rapid Morph 3
• Speed Eating 3
• Wide Range 3
• Free Meal 3
• Stun Resistance 2
• Evade Extender 1
• Flinch Free 1

I find the bang for buck with Wide Range 3 is optimal. Since 4 only extends the radius but at the same 66% efficacy, and it takes two additional gem-2 slots to get to 5 for that last 33%.

I also find the bang for buck with Stun Res 2 to be optimal. It’s 90% stun reduction for 2 gem-1 slots versus 100% negation for 3. Why not stick with 90% for 2.

And Evade Extender 1 is perfect. It’s crazy how much farther you roll just from having level 1. I actually find the higher levels to be too much. You roll too far IMO.

And Flinch Free 1 only requires a single gem-1 slot, and negates tripping. It doesn’t do anything for knock downs but the majority of issues in multiplayer are trips. Just eliminating those takes care of the majority of issues.

I feel like this is the perfect multiplayer set. It had Wide Range, Speed Eating and Free Meal for keeping everyone else alive- people always love a team player after all, it has Quick Sheath and Rapid Morph for my Switch Axe, it has Good Luck for increased rewards, stun resist and Defense to keep me alive being a lower defense set, and evade extend and flinch free for quality of life enhancements not being tripped and/or repositioning.

Next set I farm will be Almudron. I love all 4 skills- it’s perfect for Switch Axe. While my Basarios is perfect for Charge Blade (Load Shells allows charging phials from yellow, and Rapid Morph I worked into it works for Charge Blade or Switch Axe- and quick sheath compliments it). I’m gonna need two of his orbs and tons of parts. Because the weapon needs an orb and the armor set needs an orb.

@DarthNocturnal
Ya, as soon as you get to HR4 in the Hub. But you don’t unlock all of them at once. With every rank, it seems you unlock the ability to craft better and better decorations, finally culminating in the creme de la creme after beating the final HR7 boss.

Same goes for talisman crafting. You unlock better and better talisman crafting methods all the way up to the end boss. For now, it’s good to get tons of cheap ones that you can use in the Rebirth Option, and tons of materials to use for Wisp of Mystery. You can do Moonbow but it kind of limits the level of the skill you shoot for. I find it better to just roll the dice with random ones, take the best one and make a build around it.

Usually I do evasion and earplugs, but I haven’t gotten any talismans with those yet. Nothing good anyways. But I did get some good talismans with other skills that I have actually come to appreciate just as much. Skills that I normally wouldn’t have prioritized. So it can be a blessing because it gets you to try out different skills that you may have otherwise ignored. I feel like every game I play I discover new skills, where I’m like woah, why did I never use this skill before?

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm really struggling in 6* hubs trying to solo with HBG. Every time I fight a returning monster, my muscle memory wants to dodge with the old bowgun dodge-roll. Just getting used to the new dodge should be simple, but I'm having to completely relearn every old monster from scratch! It doesn't help that all the monsters are dialed up to 11 for aggression. Embarrassingly I must admit that I failed the quest twice in a row against Nargacuga! Even Barioth took 26 minutes because I kept healing. Muscle memory is a strange thing; only against older monsters like Barioth do I accidentally tap A to fire, and start loading up the Special Ammo when the monster's winding up an attack.

After testing it, I discovered that unlike with the old dodge, when trying to dodge through Nargacuga's double tail swipe, the new dodge is so slow and cumbersome that when you dodge through the first tail swipe, you are still stuck in the animation by the second swipe.

With HBG's old dodge, I had practiced dodging through every single one of Nargacuga's attacks. This is proving to be a completely different story in Rise...

Getting to Ibushi's Rampage urgent was a slog, but I managed it finally! I wanted to join someone else's quest to play it with others, but unfortunately I didn't double check to see how far they were in the quest. I jumped in right when they were already having the final showdown with Ibushi! The last fight was still fun even though I accidentally skipped out on the rest of the rampage. Now I'm wondering how soon I can replay it...

@TeeJay Pepperidge Farm remembers! But I do miss Combo Books, and the more involved crafting system of old. I've talked about this before though, regarding my reservations for the numerous simplifications. I miss all of the extra items you used to craft, and I miss taking actual tools with you in order to hunt for resources like fish, ore and bugs.

Do people online tend to not join rampage quests? I’ve been sitting for over an hour in a lobby waiting for literally any one of the millions of players to join me for the 4* urgent quest. Even tried going it solo and Apex Arzuros completely wrecked me 😣

Ugh, why is high rank locked behind this!? </3 /endrant

@Danondorf You should just do the SOS call, its much faster. or you can go to the online quest thingy, go to find quest, select your quest, and it will match you up with people doing that very quest.

@Danondorf Yeah nobody really does random lobbies anymore. Like Snatcher said the SOS call is the way everyone plays online now.

I enjoy the convenience of the SOS calls but I do miss the rando lobbies as well, makes the game feel a little less like a community, people hardly ever gesture or send messages either as well. I always give people a little wave at the end of a quest but have yet to be reciprocated...

On the plus side less people appear to be instantly going for the capture, which is nice.

@mr_somewhere Completely agree. Once again, SOS can't help but ruin the lobby system. It's just too convenient for the millions of players who are trying the franchise for the first time.

The other problem is that when I look for lobbies, absolutely no one names them or gives them specific titles to narrow down my search. So I just have to join each lobby one by one until I find a good group.

@Northwind I'm experiencing the same thing, where monsters are so overturned for wirebug usage that they seem overly aggressive for solo play. I'm just going to have to switch to a Spread build soon. That, or make a Sleep Wyvern / Speed Run set as quickly as possible lol

I hope we get more monsters than what they announced pre digital event to keep us going as a nice surprise

Oh ya lets get the hype train going, I will have to get my battle plan ready.

FINALLY WE'LL BE ABLE TO HUNT APEX MONSTERS IN NORMAL QUESTS AAAAAAHHHH

And Layored Armor already, wow! Wasn't expecting that so soon!

I'm HYPED AND READY TO GOOOOO

Pretty happy with this update overall. I really hated having to do boring Rampage quests to fight the Apex monsters so being able to fight them normally now is a very welcome change. I was also disappointed that layered armour wasn't a feature at launch like it should have been so it's a pleasant surprise to see them add it this early in an update.