Good Morning Folks. I spent most of the weekend playing Monster Hunter Wilds and I have officially crossed the threshold into mainline feeming over this game. For the first week or so I was also playing a copious amount of Path of Exile, but this weekend that mostly dropped and I am all in on hunting some monsters. I think it was Wednesday night that I hit the credit roll and transitioned into High Rank, and then this weekend I completed the rest of the main story quests. It is weird though because the game ends at Chapter 6.1 which makes me think that as they release content patches, they will add more main story this time around. I remember them adding additional story quests when they added certain major fights to the game. For example I remember a whole story arc surrounding the addition of Deviljho aka Pickle.
The levels have mostly been coming on their own, because I have been focused on gearing. Going into High Rank I crafted a full set of Guardian Arkveld armor and it did in fact carry me all the way through the rest of the main story. I am now turning around and trying to piece together a set of Arkvulcan armor which is built off farming the non-Guardian version of Arkveld. I’ve managed to pull together four pieces of the set as well as upgrading my defensive charm. I am going super heavy into defensive stats because my gameplay right now is to mostly get right up in the face of the monster and do guard attacks hoping to lock them up in a clash.
Going along with this play-style, I have crafted the Lala Barina Tier 8 weapon. This essentially allows me to play more of a support role in fights and build up to a paralyze. I am also working on the Arkveld weapon set and have crafted the Tier 7 version, but lack the tier 3 hunter tickets in order to craft it into the final tier 8 version. I figure for now if I make a full set of Orange gear I am pretty much going to be able to tackle anything content wise for awhile. I did not necessarily intend on building the Kut-Ku hammer but the previous version was available on sale at the shipment vendor which made it super simple to get that most of the other hammers. My REAL Hammer that I am working on is the Jail Hammer series which is also paralysis based. I’m essentially a few t1 hunter tickets and a bird wyvern gem away from crafting the Tier 8 version. I don’t play hammer a ton, but I do like the way it feels if I want to beat down some monster heads.
Right now my biggest goal in the game is to get my Arkvulcan Mail which is the last piece of the normal Arkveld set that I need. I had to take a break though because I was chain farming Arkveld… and there is only so much of that fight that I can take. I spent a bit of time last night farming the Fire Chicken event quest with my friend Ace because it rewards a ton of cooking materials. Additionally there was the chance of getting a drop from that encounter that I needed for crafting something else on my list, but for the life of me I cannot remember which piece. It might have been finishing out my Defensive Charm III, but I am not entirely certain. Mostly we were beating down the chicken for crafting materials since that is one of the current event quests.
Another thing that I have been doing is looking out for good tempered mobs and saving them as investigations. This is your reminder that this is a thing that you can do. Essentially when you make a quest into an investigation it costs a little bit of guild points but allows you to essentially chain farm them forever. Most vanilla versions of monsters have an optional quest associated with them that you can farm over and over for materials, but this is not the case with a lot of tempered or frenzied monsters. For those you have to effectively be on the lookout for them appearing natively in zones… where you can snapshot them as investigations. Last night I found a Tempered Arkveld for example and will probably make a run at it tonight to see how doable it is. I need to farm a bunch of 8 star fights so I can get those tasty Tier 3 Hunter Tickets.
All told though, I am having a freaking blast and feel like Sword and Shield is the weapon I have been looking for all of this time. In Monster Hunter World I was a Mall Ninja… aka a Longsword Andy. I mostly enjoyed it but I really wanted to be able to soak more damage than it allowed. I tried Lance, but it did not have the mobility that I wanted. I saw my friend Pizza Maid playing Sword and Shield to great success, but am not really sure why I never gave it a spin. At some point I want to make another run at Charge Blade, because it feels like it might be the super advanced version of Sword and Shield. For now though I am pretty happy with my combo of SNS and Hammer. I only really use hammer when a monster has gone to sleep because it hits harder than anything I can do with a sword or shield.
Where are you in the progression of Monster Hunter Wilds? Are you enjoying it so far? What weapon and gear are you running? Drop me a line below.
The post Fifty Two and Farming Gear appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. I spent most of the weekend playing Monster Hunter Wilds and I have officially crossed the threshold into mainline feeming over this game. For the first week or so I was also playing a copious amount of Path of Exile, but this weekend that mostly dropped and I am all in on hunting some monsters. I think it was Wednesday night that I hit the credit roll and transitioned into High Rank, and then this weekend I completed the rest of the main story quests. It is weird though because the game ends at Chapter 6.1 which makes me think that as they release content patches, they will add more main story this time around. I remember them adding additional story quests when they added certain major fights to the game. For example I remember a whole story arc surrounding the addition of Deviljho aka Pickle.
The levels have mostly been coming on their own, because I have been focused on gearing. Going into High Rank I crafted a full set of Guardian Arkveld armor and it did in fact carry me all the way through the rest of the main story. I am now turning around and trying to piece together a set of Arkvulcan armor which is built off farming the non-Guardian version of Arkveld. I’ve managed to pull together four pieces of the set as well as upgrading my defensive charm. I am going super heavy into defensive stats because my gameplay right now is to mostly get right up in the face of the monster and do guard attacks hoping to lock them up in a clash.
Going along with this play-style, I have crafted the Lala Barina Tier 8 weapon. This essentially allows me to play more of a support role in fights and build up to a paralyze. I am also working on the Arkveld weapon set and have crafted the Tier 7 version, but lack the tier 3 hunter tickets in order to craft it into the final tier 8 version. I figure for now if I make a full set of Orange gear I am pretty much going to be able to tackle anything content wise for awhile. I did not necessarily intend on building the Kut-Ku hammer but the previous version was available on sale at the shipment vendor which made it super simple to get that most of the other hammers. My REAL Hammer that I am working on is the Jail Hammer series which is also paralysis based. I’m essentially a few t1 hunter tickets and a bird wyvern gem away from crafting the Tier 8 version. I don’t play hammer a ton, but I do like the way it feels if I want to beat down some monster heads.
Right now my biggest goal in the game is to get my Arkvulcan Mail which is the last piece of the normal Arkveld set that I need. I had to take a break though because I was chain farming Arkveld… and there is only so much of that fight that I can take. I spent a bit of time last night farming the Fire Chicken event quest with my friend Ace because it rewards a ton of cooking materials. Additionally there was the chance of getting a drop from that encounter that I needed for crafting something else on my list, but for the life of me I cannot remember which piece. It might have been finishing out my Defensive Charm III, but I am not entirely certain. Mostly we were beating down the chicken for crafting materials since that is one of the current event quests.
Another thing that I have been doing is looking out for good tempered mobs and saving them as investigations. This is your reminder that this is a thing that you can do. Essentially when you make a quest into an investigation it costs a little bit of guild points but allows you to essentially chain farm them forever. Most vanilla versions of monsters have an optional quest associated with them that you can farm over and over for materials, but this is not the case with a lot of tempered or frenzied monsters. For those you have to effectively be on the lookout for them appearing natively in zones… where you can snapshot them as investigations. Last night I found a Tempered Arkveld for example and will probably make a run at it tonight to see how doable it is. I need to farm a bunch of 8 star fights so I can get those tasty Tier 3 Hunter Tickets.
All told though, I am having a freaking blast and feel like Sword and Shield is the weapon I have been looking for all of this time. In Monster Hunter World I was a Mall Ninja… aka a Longsword Andy. I mostly enjoyed it but I really wanted to be able to soak more damage than it allowed. I tried Lance, but it did not have the mobility that I wanted. I saw my friend Pizza Maid playing Sword and Shield to great success, but am not really sure why I never gave it a spin. At some point I want to make another run at Charge Blade, because it feels like it might be the super advanced version of Sword and Shield. For now though I am pretty happy with my combo of SNS and Hammer. I only really use hammer when a monster has gone to sleep because it hits harder than anything I can do with a sword or shield.
Where are you in the progression of Monster Hunter Wilds? Are you enjoying it so far? What weapon and gear are you running? Drop me a line below.
The post Fifty Two and Farming Gear appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks. Last night I hit the first credit roll in Monster Hunter Wilds which marks the end of the initial main story quest. I remember something like this happening in Monster Hunter as well when I transitioned to the High Rank hunts. Essentially my Hunter Rank was uncapped up to level 25 and as soon as I completed the quest I zoomed from level 7 to level 11. I am going to try and keep this relatively spoiler free, even though the Monster Hunter Wilds story is not really anything to write home about. I did get treated to a few really cool cut-scenes as I prepared to fight a boss which appeared to be coated in Plaster of Paris. What made the effect even cooler was the fact that I was essentially decked out in a full set of gear that matched for both myself and my Palico.
This is honestly part of what took me so long before I transitioned to High Rank is that I wanted to craft a full set of Arkveld gear and two matching weapons. Additionally I wanted to upgrade my defensive charm to the next step. This was easier sounding than it actually ended up being, because I had to kill so many Chatacabras and Guardian Doshagumas trying to get one specific part each. I almost had a freakout because when Chatacabras finally dropped a Jaw… I suffered an immediate crash and was scared that the game had not saved my progress. However when I got back in I still had the Jaw and was able to craft the precursors that were required to make the Arkveld Hammer. Similarly it took forever for the Guardian Doshaguma to drop a claw and when it did… I was finally as upgraded as I could possibly get going into that final fight.
I spent some time last night hanging out with my friend Ace on chat, but they lacked the spoons to actually do group content. So instead I fiddled with my various item collection hunts what we chatted about the awful state of the world right now. Hopefully this weekend I can spend some time helping to catch them up on the various boss fights and transition into High Rank hunts. All told the more I play… the more I want to play. Initially I was struggling a bit to reattach to the game, but I kept poking at a few boss fights each night and eventually over time… it started to get in my blood again. If you read this blog in 2018…. you will remember just how into Monster Hunter World I ended up getting. I think I even did some streaming and spent time joining a few streamer friends on their streams doing some group hunts.
I figured I would probably share a few things that I have figured out, since everything in a Monster Hunter games seems to be way more cumbersome than it should. I’ve shared my friend code a few times (3N88N5TP) but never actually shared how you actually friend someone. There might be multiple ways to do it, but the easiest method I have found is to open your Communications menu, choose Member List, and then click the final tab at the top. This will bring up the dialog that allows you to search for a specific hunter and then once found you can throw them a friend invite. You can also do squad invites off this menu. I’ve found a few places that allow for you to search for hunters, but did not seem to allow me to take any actions based on it.
The other thing that makes the game infinitely more enjoyable is to make it so you always have three NPC support hunters joining on you solo hunts. One would think this might be located in the game settings menu, but it is not. Instead you have to talk to Alma and open up the dialog like you are posting a quest. This then allows you access to her settings menu, which has the configuration for various grouping parameters. If you choose Automate SOS Flare it will fire off an SOS any time you get into combat with a major monster. Additionally if you choose “Only Support Hunters” it will fill your party instantly with the NPC hunters making it so there is no delay in them showing up. Often times by the time I get to the monster they will all be there waiting on me to start the fight. If you allow player and support hunters both… the game will attempt to fill your party with players and as such have a significant delay, and when they do show up… they will show up one at a time.
Last night I did the first High Rank hunt, but hoping between lunch and this evening I will make a proper dent in the content. I’ve heard that the Arkveld set can pretty much take you through all of the High Rank hunts, which is part of why I spent time assembling a full set. I really like the heal that procs off the armor, and I have to admit will probably replace it with the high rank version at some point pending it has the same perks. I will likely replace my weapon before I replace anything else, but I am not really share what the next best weapon to go for is. A bunch of upgrades showed up last night when I moved over to High Rank, but not really sure what the early availability is going to be like.
The post Full Arkveld and High Rank appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. I should warn you that if you are spoiler adverse, then maybe don’t keep reading because I am going to talk about the flow on the main story quests.
I did my usual play through a few monsters and then call it a night thing with Monster Hunter Wilds, and I think I am creeping up on the transition to high rank monsters. I believe I am just about to head into the final quest monster fight of the first half of the game. I’ve checked a few quest lists just to see where I am in the grand sequence of things and it appears that I am just about to chapter four after the next big fight. This is the point where gear actually begins to be worth holding onto, but also knowing the sizeable jump up in difficulty I want to be able to reach a decent state with my current gear before shifting over.
Yesterday I took down the Guardian Arkveld which opened up a bunch of good gearing options. One thing that I really love about the wound break system in this game is that you wind up getting a ton of materials if you are focusing on breaking things pretty regularly. As such I exited the Arkveld fight with enough components to craft a new sword and shield, and a handful of pieces of armor in that gear set. I’ve also collected enough decorations to be able to outfit my gear with some helpful stats to round out some of the weaknesses. This morning I took out another Guardian Odogaron which allowed me to craft the chestpiece.
Essentially I need to now track down some Guardian Seikret in the open world and then take out at least one more Guardian Rathalos in order to craft the last two pieces of the set. This should put me in a decent place to finish up Chapter three and transition over into High Rank land. So either today over lunch or early this evening I am going to be answering the call of SOS quests to knock out a few more boss fights and collect some more bits. Similarly I probably need to take out a few more Chatacabra so I can craft up the Arkveld Hammer so I have that as a decent backup weapon. I’ve spent almost no time playing Hammer so I should probably do some of that especially as I go after something relatively easy like the Chatacabra. If I can ever connect up with Ace and their game performance improves… I would love to spend some time tagging along and helping them catch up in the quests as well.
Probably the highlight of the most recent quest series is that I found Poogie. This will now become my side mission to keep petting the piglet until I become their friend again. I’ve not found any costumes but I am sure they are available. Poogie is very important to my enjoyment of the game. There was a patch yesterday and it seems to have improved some of my janky performance issues. I expect that we will continue to get regular patches until all of the issues have been resolved. Reportedly there is also a game update coming that Carth and Ammo told me about which will add back in cooking. Mostly I am just ready to move into the proper endgame and begin the process of kitting out my character in a gear set of my choice, rather than needing to wear whatever nonsense I can craft as I level.
I look a bit like nonsense right now, but will look much better once I have a matching set of gear. I crafted Graciebutt my Palico the set of Arkveld gear so that we will eventually match. One thing I need to figure out is how to turn on the Auto-SOS system. I’ve decided that the fights are infinitely more enjoyable when I have the support hunters with me. It just drops the time to kill by quite a bit making the fights feel way less tedious. Additionally I am not left tanking the boss 100% of the time, which is good. I probably need to figure out a place to move my guard bind because right now it is a bit awkward to hit it in time to actually do any good. I can’t say I am actually good at this game, and have lost whatever moxie I once had with Longsword as I shifted away from that weapon. I am however having quite a bit of fun.
Like I said above, I really want to find a time when Ace and I can connect up and do some shenanigans together. I’ve also added a handful of people to the Squad aka Guild, by play times don’t seem to really be synchronizing since I am only really playing early in the evening. I am trying to decide if I care enough to create a Monster Hunter channel in the Super Dungeon Friends discord. I always hate fiddling with the bot commands, but it is probably a good call since this type of game seems to be something that I keep returning to.
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