Hey Folks. I’m in a bit of a weird place right now with Monster Hunter Wilds. I am 56 hours into the game and HR 66 and essentially “done” with the game. That is not to say that I have stopped playing it, but I am also sort of out of stretch goals. I’ve completed the set of gear that I want and the weapons that I wanted… and have taken down the hardest tempered fight currently in the game. I feel like either Monster Hunter Wilds is a much easier game than Monster Hunter World was… either that or my muscle memory kicked in and I am just much better at the game than I was when World launched in 2018. I am also playing from the beginning on my platform of choice (PC) with my control scheme of choice (Mouse and Keyboard) so I figure some of it has to account for that.
Here is an attempt at a Photoshop image that pulls together all of the relevant data points about my gear load out. I am wearing the full Tier 8 Arkveld Alpha armor set and rocking a Guiding Artorious Sword and Shield and a Binder Mace Hammer. I’ve gone hard into defensive stats because I really enjoy being up in the face of the monster and “tanking it” in a manner that I would normally Tank an MMORPG boss. I spent a good chunk of last night running around with Ace and doing various hunts that happened to be up, and it was delightful. They are far better at breaking parts, and my job was to attempt to hold the attention of the monster as best as possible while they peppered it in the butt with arrows. I remembered there being some form of taunt in this game, and I need to look up to see if there is a gem I can add to my weapon that does that.
The most important part of my daily routine however is going to Suja and petting Poogie. In this version you get random items from petting the recurring pig. So far I have not uncovered any outfits and the only customization seems to be the ability to rename Poogie… which would be blasphemy. Hopefully in future patches we get the proper retinue of outfits to deck out our piggie pal. I do love the frog on head though with this rendition. For those who have not found Poogie yet, you have to get to chapter 3-2 and from that point forward you can port to Suja and pet until your heart is content… pending you know when you stop.
I also spent a bit of time and updated my hunter profile. I was still wearing Chatacabra armor up until this point, which was the first set of gear that I made when I started playing the game. The profile name system is a bit awkward so I attempted to come up with something sufficiently stupid. I think it mostly has a cohesive feel now. I am not sure that anyone actually looks at hunter profiles. I’ve not really checked any out of my friends and squadmates other than Ammo when she first joined. I should really do that, to see if anyone has something brilliant on theirs. At some point I need to finish up all of the optional quests that I have yet to run at least once. I lost momentum when I hit the endgame and focused entirely on getting my gear. Now that I am geared… I am a bit rudderless until more content is added.
Mostly I have been chipping away at various gear sets for cosmetic purposes. Essentially once you hit High Rank, any gear set that is blue, purple, or orange can be used for transmog. There are generally two color channels on each item and there is a wide variety of looks you can choose from, as well as some relatively crappy gear that seems to exist purely for cosmetic purposes. I wish however you could transmog your weapons, and dye them. I find it annoying that I was able to dye the entire Arkveld set, but I still have a glaringly white weapon that no longer matches it. Fashion Hunter is probably the true endgame, and I am slowly chipping away at the Jin Dahaad set. I’ve also crafted the full Odog set which I have always thought looked cool. I do kinda wish the Red variant from Worlds still existed. Maybe in a later update we will get the non-Guardian Odog.
I have no clue why… but in every game I end up with what feels like a default activity. For me it is beating up this dumb chicken. I have no clue WHY I like killing it so much… but I really do. I always “feel like chicken tonight”. It doesn’t hurt that Tempered variants are up almost constantly and they all seem to have really good rewards. This morning for example before I sat down to write this post I knocked one out and got three Wyvern gems from it. Basically the rewards that I have been getting is what has been dictating what monsters I hunt. I think I have largely collected a full set of the Tempered monster Investigations, and the Frenzied variants seem way less common. Maybe as I knock out some more of the two monsters at once optional quests, other things will open up. I should probably set my focus on doing those soon-ish just to see if the landscape shifts at all.
Monster Hunter Wilds is a phenomenal game… but also one that I find myself lacking the desire to grind for grind’s sake. I’ve got a couple of friends in the 70s, one in the 80s… and one that is 119 as of this morning. My guess is that they are playing with a fixed group of friends, because the act of doing group hunts is way more enjoyable than solo hunting. I could happily log in to do group content with my friend Ace every night, but my will to keep pushing just for myself is waning. I am likely going to take a break from the game for a bit, at least until the April update that adds new content. I will probably keep doing weekly quests as they show up. However I knocked out most of those in a single evening. I remember all of this taking me so much longer to get to in World, but again… that was really my very first Monster Hunter game.
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