At least on some level I feel like I might be playing this game wrong. I’ve put a little over eleven hours into the game at this point and I am just now hunter rank 4. At this point I have managed to take down Great Jagras, Kulu-Ya-Ku, Pukei-Pukei, Barroth and Jyuratodus. Now some of those I have taken down multiple times like I keep farming Barroth for bits and pieces to craft gear and I have taken down Kulu several times just because killing the angry chicken is fun. Side note… hunting Kulu in Wildspire Wastes is so much easier than Ancient Forest because it doesn’t keep running away up into the canopy of the trees. My mission for last night was to farm some Barroth and attempt to get better gear… and another Monster Bone M which I did in both cases. I don’t have a full set of gear yet, but I did manage to upgrade two pieces of Barroth gear and one piece of Jyuratodus. It is around this point that I decided to start using the Samurai cosmetic armor because wearing Barroth armor makes you look like you are a walking rack of prime rib. Jyuratodus so far has been the most annoying thing I have fought to date because it cannot decide if it as a Catfish or a Dragon… so from now on it will simply be known as Catfish Dargon. I never really got to a point where I was in danger…. I just found it terribly annoying to fight because being in the water and mud is dumb and I never want to do that.
On my Palico front I now have Kenzie kitted out in a full set of Pukei-Pukei armor which seems to be working well. I am completely in love with my Palico, and it sorta makes me sad that in the above screenshot she ever doubts that I will be bringing her along on the next hunt. Side note… I have no clue if my Palico has a gender but in my head canon Kenzie the Cat is female so Kenzie the Palico is also female. I feel like I am improving at the game largely because of the continued shortening of time it takes me to hunt certain things. My first Barroth kill was a complete bear and I wound up firing an SoS flare because I had run completely out of mega potions. On kill number two at the beginning of last night I still struggled a bit, but never really got close to either fainting or running out of resources. On kill number three… it finally felt like I knew what I was doing and simply executed a sequence of attacks I had rehearsed over time. The other thing that I finally started getting the hang of last night was mounting the monsters and going into rodeo mode. I think more than anything that has probably sped up my process because when I finally knock them down I can get in a bunch of really powerful attacks. When I took down Kulu last night after my first ride the monster was already limping. So far all of the monsters have been challenging, but I feel fairly comfortable in my longsword abilities and it is mostly me just executing on the same things I have learned to this point… which I guess is maybe the point of the game?
I love the cheesy grin and weird uppercut pose on my guild card, so you are likely going to keep seeing it over and over. The biggest thing I am not quite grasping at this point is how the hell multiplayer actually works. My theory was that I could potentially hop in on quests that folks were doing in the game session I happened to be in. However when I click on a name everything seems to be grayed out. I have no clue how social connectivity is supposed to work in this game and I have no clue what throwing someone a guild card actually does but I keep receiving a bunch of them. Connecting with other people to play the game just feels way harder than it should be. It should be as simple as… is a friend of yours on… okay click to join their game and kill monsters together. Instead it feels like this weirdly contorted system that makes absolutely zero sense to my western brain. I keep thinking back to the madness of Final Fantasy XI and World Passes… and trying to place my mind into that sort of mindset because I just do not get it. If someone could explain to me like I am five how this system works… I would greatly appreciate it. I would love to be able to just hop in on someone else’s session and kill monsters because at this point I could give a shit about quest progression and just want more crafting bits. Based on what I heard from Grakulen last night apparently people can’t join me when I am in an expedition, which seems sorta broken. Regardless I am having a lot of fun in my own little sandbox… but sorta want to start learning how to group to take things down.
1 more nuance about squads.
After the squad leader invites you, s/he has to stay online until you accept, and you can’t accept during a mission. It’s probably the most broken system in the game.
But say you and I wanted to hunt together. From the PSN dashboard I would pick JOIN SESSION next to your name and assuming there was room, I’d enter your session. Then, assuming you’re already in a quest, I would pick JOIN A QUEST rather than POST A QUEST and pick your quest and I’d drop in.
This assumes that when you POSTED your quest you left it at 4 players (or changed it to 2 or 3…if you change it to 1 I can’t join).
Additional comment: the big issue I have with Squads is that 1) only the leader can invite people and 2) someone has to first be in your session before you can invite them to the squad. After that, it’s a pretty nice thing to have.
Alright, it took me some time, but I’m pretty sure I got it all down now.
There are a few major concepts in MHWorld that need to be clarified: Sessions, Quests, and Squads.
Sessions are essentially best thought of as servers. In order to keep things from overloading one area, when you log into World, you are put into a general session. You can also search for sessions, if you so desire. You are not locked to any one session and can change between them freely. A session is basically where up to 16 players can gather to go off and quest together.
Quests are what you post via the board, the guildies, or your Handler. You have the assigned, optional, investigation and event quest. In most cases, each of these can have up to four players and no more. Some have further restrictions (but usually these are investigations).
When you post a quest, everyone else in your Session can see it and join in. In the case of assigned quests, usually those related specifically to the story, you have to get “past the cut scenes” in order for others to join. You’ll know when you are at this point when the game tells you “You can now send out an SOS flare.”
Expeditions are different. You go off on an expeditions and the only way for anyone else to join you is to shoot off an SOS Flare. However, SOS Flares are not beholden to a Session like quests are. When you search for an SOS Flare, it shows all currently available flares regardless if they are in your session or not. So if you sent one off, a friend would have to really look for you before they could join.
So how can you group up easier with friends? The first is you can invite players into your session, which then allows you to quest together. But there’s an even better way: Squads.
Squads are basically what we would think of as guilds. When you make a squad, you can invite others to it and what not. The real benefit of the squads though is this: When you start World, you may notice you have Start Session, Join Session, Join Squad Session. When you join a squad session, it will look for a session started by anyone in your squad. If there aren’t any, it creates a new pseudo-private session for you. Once in it, if someone else in your squad “joins squad session” they automatically join your session, preventing you from having to invite them or them searching for you.
You can be in up to 8 squads and each squad can have at least a hundred people. It’s not without it’s problems, mind you, but it makes doing games with friends a lot easier.
However, expeditions are still beholden to their rules and this does not help that. In general, an Investigation is probably better for just putzing around with friends.
I hope that helps some.