Topic: Monster Hunter Rise

@JaxonH @Ralizah @Ulysses @TeeJay @Joeynator3000

I'll probably employ the same lobby p/w as @JaxonH and use '5477' also... so feel free to jump in if I'm online! Aiming this week to get through to MR7 and get my build/s up to scratch, so hoping I'll be fully set for next weekend.

Also, for anyone who hasn't added me - I'm SW - 6657 - 2171 - 6029

Happy hunting all

@CJD87 Good to know! I'll add you and hop on if I happen to see you online.

@TeeJay Decent mate, added you - cheers!

So, the MR30 urgent is the supremely annoying Allmother Narwa fight. I've been playing with randoms, and, while I was playing docked, I failed the hunt five times because people kept dying to it.

A little while later, I decided to play the game undocked and just listen to a podcast or something, since some group would eventually survive long enough to allow me to get past the urgent quest. Lo and behold, that first undocked playthrough was a success!

Lesson learned. Only play Monster Hunter off the TV from now on.

@CJD87 That's helpful. Let's definitely hunt together some time.

Boy oh boy did I make a killer mix set, and a version of it for online play with you guys that's gonna give you Wide-Range +5 to ensure you're topped up at all times!

Problem is, I don't have any MR layered armor at the moment, so I'm using the Black Belt layered armor- it looks good with Lunagaron Greatsword. But as soon as I farm out Malzeno's greatsword I can use the amiibo layered armor for Formal Malzeno until I can get enough tickets to farm his real layered armor (and then make other sets for other weapons too).

• Wide Range 5
• Earplugs 4
• Razor Sharp 3
• Focus 3
• Quick Sheathe 3
• Recovery Speed 3
• Stun Resistance 3
• Good Luck 3
• Wirebug Whisperer 3
• Handicraft 2
• Maximum Might 2
• Ammo Up 2 (useless)
• Weakness Exploit 1
• Spare Shot 1 (useless)
• Evade Window 1
• Evade Extender 1
• Spiritbird's Call 1 (max level)
• Charge Master 1

When hunting solo I swap out Wide-Range to max out Earplugs to 5 and boost Evade Distance up to 2

@Ralizah
Or only play solo (or with reliable friends) for super hard Quests. I had a dude join me against Lunagaron and carted twice within 10 min. I made sure to cap it asap to avoid failing the hunt. Randoms come unprepared fairly often, it seems.

@JaxonH This is the first time I've had issues with randoms in Sunbreak, tbh. Most of the people I've hunted with have been very capable. I think, being an expansion, a lot of the inexperienced players have been filtered out in the process.

Allmother Narwa is simply an annoying, brutal boss, and the best way I found to not die myself was to abuse dango buffs to stack +4 and +3 Defender skills so I could tank her hits, which often left me stunned.

I could have solo'd it, but, honestly, chasing that thing around the arena sucks as is.

Hopefully that's the last time I have to fight that particular monster.

Ugh, I'm so glad Rise/Sunbreak did away with the focus on multiplayer...all these monsters that one-shot you or you fail the quest if you're not doing enough damage or whatever. It isn't worth completing IB for me...

I don't care if this game is "the easiest and worst game ever because Nintendo lul"....it's a hell a lot more fun than Iceborne. >.>

My experience of multiplayer in Sunbreak has been a lot more positive than my solo experience. I know they make monsters significantly weaker if you are solo (in terms of their HP pool) but it doesn't reduce how hard they hit and you take all the agro, so I just find it more frustrating than anything else.

However, when I am with my hunting buddy, it seems we can't join join requests, this means people have to always join us and the quality of the people who join is usually pretty awful. For a lot of quests we just leave it closed, as we can't trust the randos who join to not be a liability, so in that regard I can understand why people play solo.

However, whenever my hunting buddy isn't on and I can respond to join requests, generally, it ends up being some of the best time I have in Sunbreak. I dunno if I'm filling slots in otherwise full stacks, but the quality of those hunters I end up being matched with are so far beyond the hunters that end up answering my join requests for some reason.

@Ralizah
I always gem in Stun Resistance 3. Too easy to die when stunned (even more so in World where stun lasted an eternity). Eating for Felyne Defender (Hi) and Felyne Defender on Hopping Skewers with a food ticket is also a must. Though I usually fill the middle slot with something else, like a Spiritbird skill or what have you.

Sunbreak definitely has more experienced players than base Rise, but it's also way harder and a number of players don't even have proper G-rank gear. All I know is, join request is a roll of the dice every time I try it. Sometimes I get a rock solid crew, other times not so much.

I actually love the All-Mother Narwa fight. But I haven't played the Master Rank version of it yet, so that could always change.

Generally speaking, I mainly echo the comments of others here - that the Sunbreak 'multiplayer experience' (with randoms) is much more pleasurable than base Rise. I suppose only the 'die-hards' will likely purchase the expansion, so the skill pool is likely to be stronger by design. During my time with base Rise, it wasn't uncommon for me to jump into a MP game that would have already incurred 2/3 carts within the first opening minutes of the hunt (!).

Its always more fun hunting with friends (or people you know, this site for example) but I'm still having a great time in random MP hunts, and its also proving a quick way for me to progress through early MR so that I can escape from the rank-cap.

Currently polishing off MR4, few main quests left to go... I made a MR2 build for GS (armor fully upgraded as well) but this is starting to show cracks now! The Strongarm Stanch skill is ridiculously OP when you actually manage to pull it off and then go into TCS, albeit the wirebug consumption (x2!) and general learning curve balance it out I guess.

Going to try and get to Malzeno with my existing MR gear, as I don't want to waste any £££ or armor spheres on a 'middle-road' set.... I'm too excited to start farming some end-game setups

Glad to hear everyone seems to be having a positive time with the expansion though. This is my first MH game, and my first taste of G-Rank, and I'm enjoying it!

Towards the end of my time with the base game I switched to a Wide-Range SnS set for multiplayer and now I can never go back. Still need to build a new Switch Axe set to play around with solo but when playing with randoms it just feels so much smoother when I can keep my team's health topped up. I don't worry too much about min-maxing my DPS for multiplayer because everything dies so fast anyway, feels smarter to prioritise safety as the only way to lose is to triple cart. When playing solo I feel like I can be a bit more risky with my sets and playstyle as I know I'm not going to cart three times regardless.

I do think the difficulty in Sunbreak, especially later Master Rank and Anomaly quests, does kinda break the balance of that push and pull, somewhat.

Your natural instinct would be that if the monster is kicking your butt, you add a bunch of comfy and survivability skills where you can. However, I find that stuff hits so hard, the difference between say a full stack of defence boost or not, is maybe an extra hit versus not wearing it. But now most monsters have multi hit box attacks and greater speed, that extra hit isn't gonna make a lot of difference.

Crucially, if you also have now had to gut your damage to run defence boost, a hunt that might have been under 15 minutes, now might take closer to half an hour. That is twice as many opportunities to make a mistake and fail a quest. Not to mention, if you are hitting those damage thresholds and the monster falls down or gets tired more frequently, this again increases survivability over hitting these less frequently and over a longer hunt.

That isn't to say I am suggesting the answer isn't to just double down on being a glass cannon to the point where you become a liability, but usually in games like this, I like to be nearly invulnerable, damage comes second. But in Sunbreak, I feel like damage is the greatest survivability or comfy skill you can have.

@Pizzamorg That's interesting because I've had kinda the opposite experience. In the base game I'd mostly focus all my skills on damage and would never consider Defense Boost and stuff like that as I never felt in much danger without them but in Sunbreak, I like a bit more survivability to be able to potentially take that extra hit. If I can survive two hits from near-full HP then I won't cart without making a really bad mistake.

Yeah, that is kind of my point. If I make a mistake and am going to cart regardless, I'd rather only worry about that over 10 minutes, rather than 25 minutes. Of course, a longer hunt doesn't necessarily mean more carts in a flat value, but it's just more time for my concentration to slip and for me to make that serious mistake that gets me killed, so I am slowly stripping away all of the comfy skills for more damage (except for stuff that affects my shield).

@Pizzamorg In solo play where one or two carts don't matter I'm with you but in multiplayer my aim is to never cart at all which is why I like a bit more of a balance there. I actually don't have to play very well at all to survive with my current multiplayer set, which is nice because I'm often just playing late at night when I'm tired and watching YouTube at the same time so I'm barely focused. The rare tiles I do cart now is usually just when the camera is stuck up against the wall and I can't see anything or something dumb like that.

You must be much more skilled than me then, @BenAV! Sunbreak's endgame is basically at the extreme end of tolerance for me with in game difficulty. Like I am basically at my limit. I can't play this casually at all, I have to be 100% focused all the time during the hunt or RIP.

@Pizzamorg I don't think I'm particularly skilled but my set is just built around safety to the point that it's probably a bit overkill and SnS is a pretty safe weapon in general.

I solo'd Allmother. At first I wasn't paying attention and she clapped me like, within the first minute of the hunt, and since it was literally the first minute I decided may as well restart the whole thing. Came in again and destroyed her.

I still find the difficulty of Sunbreak to be not nearly as intense of some other MonHuns. For example deviants in Generations Ultimate. I'd say the final levels of those quests are the hardest fights I have experienced that don't include cheap gimmicks like Iceborne's end game stuff.

Like don't get me wrong I'll still cart every so often in Sunbreak, but that's mostly due to getting too cocky, again owing to the general easier difficulty of Sunbreak. I have only ever triple carted one time and that was when trying out a new weapon, meanwhile in those older gen G Rank games triple carting would be a regular and expected thing.

As for the multiplayer experience with randoms, I rarely get a dud. (Ironically the last quest I did was a big dud where they all triple carted but that's a rarity I swear). Generally people seem to know what they're doing!

I deffo agree this is still easier than previous MH games, but to me they got to the point of being oppressively difficult to the point where they weren't fun at all, so I think it's a good thing they are easier.

However, what I really enjoyed about base Rise was how playable it was, you could enjoy hunts, feel powerful and in control, you didn't really slam into walls in the same way as you would in say World as you levelled up. And those oppressively difficult quests still existed for those who wanted them, they just weren't mandatory. I thought this was the best and right way to balance the difficulty in the title.

However, it does feel Sunbreak - at least the later portions of MR and the end game - leans more into shutting those up who said Rise was too easy, rather than doing more of what base Rise did so well. Undermining a lot of it's own design decisions in the process. At least to me. Is it as hard as some of the past games at this stage? Maybe not, but again, I see that as a good thing, not a bad thing.

This is absolutely massive. We're getting Qurios Crafting, where any armor piece can be augmented to change its stats. Be it number of slots, defense, resistances, skills... it can all be changed. Sometimes it's a tradeoff though. Two extra 1-slots at the cost of defense.

This... well, we've never had a system like this before. This is a whole new tier of endgame. Imagine the hours we'll be pouring in trying to min max our perfect dream build mix set with the perfect stats and skills and slots, with the perfect layered armor and weapon to match...