Right now in Monster Hunter World there is a brand new type of event happening called a Siege.  The idea is that an entire 18 player session is working towards one objective… taking down a Zorah Magdaros style massive elder dragon.  In order to start the process you need to find a gold pile somewhere out in the wilds.  By default this should be somewhere near the start of any of the outdoor zones.  In talking to the AggroChat crew last night I was told to do an investigation…  which absolutely worked… but I believe that Tam originally intended to tell me to do an Expedition which according to Ash also works.  The pile will be very obvious and very out of place and by looting it you will then have a quest as soon as you zone into Astera.  From there the quest takes place in the Gathering Hub and will show up as a unique quest type called Siege at the bottom of the quest givers list.

From there you join a party in progress or start your own.  There is no SOS Roulette for this so my standard practice of joining a clan session to hang out only really works if you are all focused on doing the event.  The AggroChat crew apparently did this with only four players on Wednesday night when it opened, but I largely just kept joining public sessions until I found one with players actively doing the quest.  For the most part every instance I joined had two active groups so a total of eight players chipping away at the progress meter for the event.  Functionally all groups are working in their own separate instances with progress made each time you meet a milestone… like knocking off a specific part of the body.

There are functionally four phases that I am aware of in the fight.  In the first phase Kulve Taroth moves around the zone completely oblivious to the players allowing you to hit it with canon fire perched atop cliffs much like the Zorah Magdaros fight.  During the second phase she is still covered in the gold plating but begins to take notice of your actions and will actively but very slowly attack you.  During the forth phase she enters a room where there are some magma eruptions that heat the gold up making her go significantly faster as well as allowing for better damage to knock parts off.  During the final phase she goes into a room where magma is dripping down from the ceiling and all of her armor is knocked off making her extremely fast and very Nergigante like in damage when she hits you.

Ultimately the goal is to survive until one of two things happens…  either she gets bored and wanders off “leaving the area” which counts as success weirdly enough.  The other option is that through the actions of all teams that her horns are broken…  which allows the team that broke them the ability to carve them for all sorts of tasty loot.  The other thing that makes this fight extremely interesting is that she is constantly dropping parts on the ground so you have to juggle fighting with looting on a regular basis.  Additionally there is a tribe Gajalaka that will constantly be getting in the way, throwing things at you, knocking you down…  so you will be dealing with this in additional to avoiding very wide sweeping attacks.  You can take them out however and the ones with gold shielding on their back drop Kulve Taroth bits… and the others have a reasonable chance to do the same.

This is a massive time sink, given that it often takes a full instance two or three attempts to take down the dragon.  What makes it worth it however is the interesting semi-randomized loot drops that introduce the relic system that has existed in other games.  While you are in the fight picking up drops, there is a chance that you can get a relic weapon.  These then are appraised at the quest giver after you have exited the instance in a fashion similar to decorations.  Last night I ran three complete Kulve Taroth fights and walked away at the end of the night with 22 blue rank 6 weapons, 5 purple rank 7 weapons and 3 orange rank 8 weapons.  The above screenshot is an amalgam of all of the best items that I got from the fights.  Apparently that Insect Glaive is good enough to make Tam our resident Glaive master general drool a bit over it.

What I am more interested in however is the fact that this is giving me an infusion of weapons that I might have not actually tried on my own.  The truth is I have played with a very small subset of weapons in the game and there are others like lance that I have wanted to try… but had no clue which one to work towards.  Last night I got myself a reasonable sleep lance to start taking down things like everyone’s favorite target dummy…  Great Jagras.  More than this, it is giving me a smattering of different elemental damage types which gives me more leverage when we start looking at other fights in the game.  The other big thing I am working towards is being able to craft a full set of the Kulve armor because it too is really nice…  but will involve a lot of elder dragon farming since each piece requires a gem.

Lastly there is both new layered armor and palico gear associated with this quest and I am wearing two pieces of the set… shoulders and waist in the above screenshot.  Kenzie my palico is wearing the full set of her gear.  This is crafted by combining Bushi Tickets that drop upon turning in the Kulve Taroth quest when your instance had defeated it and combining them with a bunch of varied monster parts.  I am working towards the Bushi Homare set which involves a bunch of elder dragon bits…  whereas the Bushi Sabi set has a broken down battle worn appearance and requires a bunch of parts from alternate high rank mobs like Black Diablos.  All in all I love the feel of this event because it is essentially Monster Hunter World doing a raid.  I’ve been extremely impressed with the sort of things they are continuing to patch into this game giving us reasons to keep coming back and interacting with content.  The event itself runs for a few weeks and I can already tell I will be spending at least some time each night farming Kulve Taroth for interesting weapon options.