Topic: Monster Hunter Rise

@Jrpglover
Zora Magdaros skull. Still had the dragonator sticking out.

It was the mountain like elder dragon in the base game of Monster Hunter World.

@JaxonH AHH right I was hoping it was some new monster/ super powerful old one since I just completed the frost island relics and the story sounded cool.

If Zora's corpse is in rise does this mean that rise+ world are somehow linked. Considering a being as powerful as Zora isn't something that shows up often

@Jrpglover
No more than any other previous games, I don't think. World had the Dalamadur skeleton you were inside of for Rotten Vale, and that was a MH4U monster. So they've done this type of thing before. I think it's just a cool callback for fans.

It's a strange game, Rise, and by extension the whole series I guess.
Basically it's kill monster, go back to village, kill monster... sounds awfully dull, but it's one of those rare games where it's totally up to the player to get as much out of it as they want.
Like @JaxonH said about getting all the weapons and armour - you can just play to progress through the monsters or collect everything, I guess that makes it a true RPG.

Personally, 45 hours in, it hasn't quite grabbed me, the whole setting my own goals and collecting everything thing. Be that because of time constraints or the playstyle. I've two level six village quests left, I'm purely working to finish those then dunno, maybe I'll try the hub (level one done already).

I can totally see why the series is so loved, bit still not sure if it's for me. Maybe I'm so used to combat in games like Dragon's Dogma that I find it hard to get into a groove with this.

Now excuse me, I need to go and farm Diablos more for its tailcase...

@Mii_duck
Dont forget, Hub is for solo play as much as it is MP. Half the game is in the Hub, in fact, village is more of a tutorial than anything. Hub is the meat of the game.

You'll still have to do Hub low rank, but can skip it if you've finished the village by testing out. I played it just for fun, but it's an option.

There's a lot of monsters in the Hub that don't appear in the village, as well as a ton of unlockable mechanics and tools, arena Quests, challenge Quests, most of the event Quests, etc.

I would just focus on completing the game, beating the end boss, and unlocking the final arena map quests by completing all 7 star Advanced Quests.

That alone will provide plenty to do.

I played World for hundreds of hours, I was done with Rise in under 60. The sort of “make your own endgame” is not for me. However, I would say I had more fun in my 60 hours with Rise than I ever did in my hundreds of hours of World. I know it isn’t a popular opinion, but the fact they made Rise an easier and faster game, really allowing you to keep the pressure on and play it more like an action game than a chess match, just makes Rise a much more enjoyable moment to moment game to me.

I do think, however, Rise took a step backwards in terms of the gear game. The gear was never all that interesting in World, but at least you got the set bonuses which sort of captured the monster they were made from. The removal of the set bonuses from many sets and replacing it with the resistance bonus system, just kinda shows what a muchness a lot of the gear in MH is. Not a lot of it does anything all that interesting or even boosts stats all that meaningfully. It is a power game of increments, slowly stacking tiny dribbles of power on top of one another. I find it very dull.

Hell, even with the set bonuses they leave in, I think the only one that was all that memorable was the Magna one, as those little explosives were actually really useful if you spec’d entirely into that one monster for all your gear. I also think it sucks that despite all the weapons and gear, MH doesn’t really allow you to spec into proper roles. Like you can sorta do some CCing, or support or tanking, but not really or fully and otherwise it’s just different flavours of damage.

Like unlocking new sets for the first time is always exciting, but the vast majority of the sets never gave me any incentive to grind or chase for them, as they do next to nothing of note outside of minmaxing some niche builds you make just to squeeze some more hours out of the game

@Mii_duck
Oh, and while setting your own goals can be incredibly addicting, especially for me as I love the gameplay so much so it never feels like a chore, the core of the addiction still lies in just overcoming Low and High Rank and beating the game. Village is pretty easy, but later in High Rank Hub it gets pretty challenging, and overcoming that challenge to beat the game will become the driving force of incentive to play. And naturally, to overcome, you'll need better armor and weapons along the way. So that feedback loop will naturally arise as you go.

@JaxonH - interesting, I didn't realise the Hub unlocked more mechanics, I maybe judged the game too soon then.

I'm certainly going to keep on going with it.

Oh, and the level six village quests where you fight two monsters is challenging me plenty! Hence going back to the drawing board a bit and grinding monsters, my current armour is fully upgraded so I need to go to the next level.

Weapon choice is puzzling. Like my current has an attack of 150, frost(?) of 18.
Would a weapon with an attack of 170 but no Frost or blast or whatever and a minus affinity be better? No idea, frankly.

Depends on the monster you are fighting. Status effects are universal damage bonuses (unless the monster has immunity) but their proc rate will depend on your weapon/build, so sometimes higher damage with no status effect will average out higher overall.

Elements, as I understand it, offer no additional damage at all if the monster isn’t actually weak the element in question. So using a weaker frost weapon against a frost monster, rather than an elemental less higher damage weapon would be pointless even if the base damage on the elementalless weapon is lower on paper than the weapon damage plus element of the other weapon.

I actually can’t remember what affinity even does, I think it effects either damage on weak points or your crit chance on weak points if I remember correctly? You can correct lower affinity pretty easily with gear though.

Oh and make sure you are paying attention to weapon sharpness, too, when it comes to maximising your weapon damage overall. If a weapon has say higher base damage, but only goes up to green sharpness, than a weapon with lower base but up to white sharpness for example, the white sharpness weapon will on average do more damage.

Thank you @Pizzamorg, that's kinda what I was thinking and that's good to know about sharpness, I was curious about that.

It seems everything has good and bad points, so there is no glaringly wrong choice, as such.

Yeah, pretty much. As you get into end game, you will effectively start building an arsenal because different weapons and gear sets will have different bonuses/weaknesses against different monsters. So you will make sets for specific monsters and swap between them depending on what you want to hunt. There isn’t really a way to create a catch all set in this game, not if you want to maximise potential.

@Pizzamorg @Mii_duck
Affinity is your proclivity to land a critical hit (be it positive or negative crit) which does 25% more damage (or 25% less damage). So 50% affinity means, on average, every 2 hits will crit, with 125% damage on those critical hits. Which averages out to an extra 12.5% damage per hit over the long run.

Also, listen to the advice about sharpness. I always use skills like speed Sharpening and Razor Sharp to ensure I stay in the blue/white or can get back to blue/white in the middle of battle (ride palamute to sharpen if needed).

And like they said, elements affect each monster differently, not only that, they affect each part of each monster differently. An ice monster probably isn't weak to ice. But maybe fire. And the legs will have different elemental motion values than the wings, and the head, and the tail, etc.

If you open the menu and check your monster notes, it will show a diagram of any monster you've fought, and show which parts they drop and what elements and status effects they're weak to. This game is about being prepared. And knowledge is half the battle.

Also, upgrade your weapons as far as possible and/or craft different weapons and upgrade those. Always good to have several different ones so if you can't upgrade one at any given time, maybe the others can be. Plus it gives you variety of elements, etc.

Use traps to your advantage, collect spiribirds to max health, defense, attack and stamina at beginning of quest (or at least significantly increase), use flash bombs, use endemic life, use all the tools you have to your advantage. That's what they're there for.

Also, make sure you're constantly recruiting new palicos. If you bring one palamute and one palico on hunts, you get the advantage of both. Work toward recruiting a palico that provides shock traps, poison traps, extra wirebugs, healing bubbles, etc. Stuff that's really useful. Don't underestimate the power of a good palico to help in the hunt.

@JaxonH - cheers, the affinity stat is clear now. Sounds like it's not a good strategy to swap my weapon for one with a higher attack but -24 (or -14, not with my Switch at the mo) affinity then.

Must admit I've never looked at the monster notes! If I needed a specific thing I've just been googling it.
I've been sticking with my original palico and palamute (must look at seeing if I can upgrade their kit) and didn't think to swap them out. Seems a bit disloyal! I have hired a few meowsonaries(sp?) to send out but that's it.

I'm wary of traps as I've died a few times trying to put the damn things down (wrestling with my wheel/action bar) but yes, always collect as much help as I can on the way to a fight.

@Mii_duck
Those numbers can be deceiving. Do the math.

-24% Affinity actually only equates to 6% less damage output on average over the long run. For a 150 Attk weapon, that’s only 9 less attack. So as long as the other weapon is more than 9 higher than yours, it’s a winning trade off.

@Mii_duck
You’ll always have those Palicos and palamutes. They’re not going anywhere. The game is built around collecting a ton of them and trying to find one with the perfect set of skills. I still have my original palico, but I’ve got four others I’ve maxed their level on and have better skills to boot. And another 20 or so that are pretty high level.

Really gotta get the weapon wheel down. Set it to not have to click the stick. So that simply pointing and releasing executes the action. Makes it easier to do that way, then memorize where everything is that you need. When I need to use a mega potion I don’t even have to look at the weapon wheel because I can do it from muscle memory. You can also pan through your item list holding L, using Y and A to pan left and right. I typically just run away/around the monster as I quickly pan through to the trap, then once I have it selected, I can easily lay it down with Y once I think I have a 3 second window. Make sure your tranqs are next in your item list, so as soon as you lay the trap, you can pan over to your tranqs and get ready to throw them with Y. Using traps is a crucial skill. You can bring two on every hunt, and if you save one to actually capture the monster which will make your hunt go faster and less likely for you to die, that still leaves one trap for you to use to get free damage in.

Also, wyvern ride whenever possible.

Maths 😉

Oh I enjoy a wyvern ride, been known to entice monsters to follow me to the target. They don't seem to do 'that' much damage though, a heavy attack can give half of what a single (critical) hit can deliver. The main benefit seems to be knocking the target to the ground so I can wail on it.

Yeah, I get memorising the wheel - it's just sometimes it doesn't seem to register when I 'flick'. There is a knack to the action bar too, scrolling with y or a and not getting hit by an attack while doing so.

Thank you for the advice - I think I'm at the stage where I've been progressing with the minimum of effort put in and only a bit of a struggle at times, but now is the time to really get into the nitty gritty of the mechanics.

@Mii_duck
Indeed.

When I first got into the series with MH3U, I was constantly learning, reading the Kiranico wiki (back then monster weaknesses, attack values, weapon trees, etc didn't exist in game). I'm still learning to this day. The depth is part of the fun.

For affinity, multiply the %affinity as a decimal with your weapon attack value and 0.25. That's the average extra damage (or average less damage done if it's negative).

example

• Weapon Damage: 150
• Affinity: 30%
• Crit Damage: 25% (this never changes)

150 x 0.3 x 0.25 = 11.25 extra damage

As for mounting, you'll get heavy attacks that can do 200-300 damage in a single hit. There are 4 attacks. X, Up+X, A, Up+A. I believe the A attacks do heavier damage. Dodge into the other monster with B if you're about to get hit, and it'll stop their attack and do some damage, and set up up for an opening for a strong attack.

Also, if you ever mount the monster you're hunting, and another monster is in the area, rather than ram it into walls, use Y to ram into the other monster. It'll immediately throw you off, but it'll leave the other monster in a mountable state, which you can then mount and attack your target monster with. You'll do way more damage that way 😉

I think it's time for sleep... set out to farm a Diablos and after 10 minutes battling realised "hold on... why am I fighting a Tigrex..?"

Finally managed to find all of the old messages. I did cheat slightly and they hadn't found any in the sandy plains or frost Island so I decided to Google them