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.
The post Dark Knight Mode 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.
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.
Featuring: Ammosart, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! We are down an Ash this week and start the show down a Kodra who slips in while we record. This week we talk about the press tour for Last Epoch Season 2 and some of the new information that came out on a podcast with Raxxanterax and Zizaran. From there we talk about the fatal wound that is the upcoming Season 8 in Diablo IV because Season 7 was apparently too fun and Blizzard cannot stomach that. Tam shares his experiences with Megamek an archaic way of playing Battletech Tabletop online. From there we dive into our further experiences with Monster Hunter Wilds as Bel has finished all of the story content and the majority of folks have hit the credit roll that transitions to High Rank play. Kodra shares some thoughts about Finspan and also engaging with Chess.com as a way to learn better chess play.
