Games

Last night I spent a good deal of time roaming around in Monster Hunter World cleaning up all of the things I had been ignoring.  One of the problems with this game…  if it can be called a problem at all…  is that you get so many missions that you can run.  At any given time I have 250 investigations constantly swapping themselves out for newer investigations and a seemingly endless number of optional quests opening up as you do things in the world.  So yes…  I just called too much content a problem, which is ultimately why I backpedaled that a bit because so often we complain about not having anything to do.  The game is an endless generator of things you can do.

My play style is apparently not normal, and as a result I have ended up with tons of optional quests left unfinished and I am working through them slowly.  Last night for an hour and some change I hung out with my friend Ashgar as we tackled various missions that had been sitting there waiting.  The only problem is I am not sure which quests I am missing…  because a good number of the star ranks are giving me the indicator that I have in fact finished all of the quests I have available…  but that there are more I have yet to unlock.  Ash explained that these are probably quests for which I have not actually captured the monster opening up the special arena version.

The truth is…  Low Rank was a bit of a blur as I attempted to push forward to start doing the big kid content that I thought at the time was High Rank.  Additionally I have played like some sort of a maniac in doing my SOS Roulette thing way more often than actually soloing any optional quests.  Occasionally this finishes up missions but more often than not it is simply rerunning content I have already seen.  I tend to open up the SOS menu and pick out whatever looks to be the most interesting…  which tends to be the combo monster quests so oddly enough I have almost all of those finished.

What I am lacking in a major way however is anything that requires a capture…  or anything that requires me to take something and run it back to camp.  The delivery quests are maddening, and I just find it so frustrating to carry something slowly across the map only to get derailed by some nonsense along the way causing you to drop whatever you were transporting.  I should in fact make a set of Kulu gloves so that I can do this nonsense faster because I have a couple more sitting in my optional quest menu that at some point I will need to deal with.

So you might ask yourself… why do I even care?  Well the true end game in any title is the cosmetics… and at the end of doing every single optional quest is quite possibly the most nonsense of cosmetic items.  Apparently in Monster Hunter there is a proud tradition of a special rainbow pigment that you can die your gear with.  Upon completing all of the optional content you get another quest that ultimately rewards this thing, and apparently while using it your gear constantly cycles slowly through all of the colors of the rainbow.  Why do I want this thing…  I honestly have no clue…  but knowing it exists makes me want to collect it.

In truth I didn’t make anywhere near as much progress as I would have liked last night.  I ran around eight missions before needing to take a break…  and I have untold more to go.  It was more entertaining to do with a friend, but most of what I have left is not exactly extremely challenging.  The hardest part with low rank content is making sure you get the capture instead of just getting the kill.  There was a point last night when I thought I was just severing the tail off a Rathian…  but at the exact same time I wound up getting the kill in.  I mean I could in fact dig out a lower rank weapon…  but I am not going to.  Hitting things for big numbers is fun, and it will at the very least be a source of enjoyment while I retread this mountain of older content.

This weekend in theory was the weekend that I played catch up with Monster Hunter World.  For awhile now I have been stalled out at the final boss of the game the insanely huge elder dragon Xeno’jiiva.  First off… the fight is an annoying pain in the butt as melee.  I am not sure if this is just a longsword thing or if it is an “all melee” thing but you spend all of your time trying to avoid being stepped on while roaming around trying to hit weak spots.  Basically there are three glowing bits that seem to be weak…  the tail, the front paws, and the head.  Normally as a longsword you spend your time focused on the tail… but given this thing is about three times as tall as a normal monster it spends most of its time up in the air.

The fight as a whole is a lot of running around and avoiding breath attacks while attempting to pour damage into the front paws.  After a point this will cause the monster to fall down exposing the head for a few minutes allowing you to get off a combo.  The biggest problem I had was the monster has several things that can be a one shot if you are not careful, so my first attempt was mostly me sussing out what I should be doing and what I should not be doing.  I am one of those people who learn by doing, and I doubt that reading a guide would have helped.

The second attempt was largely a ballet of attempting to do the right thing at the right moment.  I managed to take down the monster but only had one faint left.  Its funny how when you know there are no more faints… you shift into a sort of hyper focused mode because every move has potential success riding on it.  Ultimately I really didn’t want to fail because the fight itself is cumbersome and has several phases of tedium while you are waiting for Xeno to finishing doing its nonsense and land so you can begin attacking again.  I am sure those air phases are way more enjoyable if you have any semblance of a ranged attack…  or if you are Tam and just playing the nonsense weapon.

Whatever the case I defeated a Xeno, and immediately shot up to 29 which was the next Hunter Rank plateau.  It turns out you are phantomly gaining levels while you are playing the game, in spite of it appearing as though you are presently capped by a quest.  I’ve talked about this before, but when you finish a game like this it always feels like you are obligated to sit and watch the credits as a sort of homage to the folks who poured all of the love into creating the game in the first place.  The credit roll was on the short side allowing me to get right back into the action and as soon as I zoned into my room and back out… I picked up the next quest that was gating me.

The real highlight however is that I managed to pick up enough pieces from Xeno to craft the Extermination’s Edge…  ultimately what is likely to be my primary end game weapon for awhile.  The next quest involved hunting my very first tempered monster, and what did they give me as a target…  a pair of Bazelgeuse.  Until yesterday I had not ever actually killed a single Bazel… or Bagel as folks seem to call.  It always seemed like it was more hassle than it was worth, and since I had never fought one… I personally found this quest insanely difficult and failed out completely on my first attempt.  This lead me to believe that I should do some research, and wound up answering a few SOS flares for Bazel fights to learn the flow of how combat against it works.

Before going to bed last night after finishing Walking Dead, I decided to give it one more shot.  It took me what felt like an eternity, but I managed to get both Bazel’s down and this time around I only managed to faint one time.  This fight is a mess because Bazels interact with each other much the same as you would expect Bazel to interact with any other hunt.  That means when they are dive bombing each other there are just giant fields of nope on the ground…  and I spent most of the time rolling out of the way of impending doom.

Ultimately I focused on detailing both of them which seems to cut down on the sheer number of bombs by a bit and then worked one down to skull, attempting and failing at a trap only to wind up killing it outright.  The other I tediously fought until it ran and finally managed to get a trap off finishing the nonsense.  While I still hate this encounter… in a way I get why they forced us to do it.  Fighting a Bazel as melee if nothing else teaches you that you absolutely need to call your shots and get in some strategic hits while you can…  even if the rest of your time is spent avoiding everything else.

Now I am sitting at level 41, which I believe leaves me in an uncapped state until 49.  In truth I have no clue how leveling works now… if I just gain some experience each time I take something down, or if I need to focus on tempered monsters to make forward momentum.  Whatever the case I have lots of things to be hunting and lots of need for cash considering I went bankrupt making the armor and power talons…  then rebuying the charms after getting bazel parts.  In truth I am pretty happy with my gear as it stands…  and I simply need to pour cash into it to level it up to maximum.  I believe at some point Thalen still needs a Nergi kill, and ultimately Grace will need a slew of elder dragons as well so there is likely much monster slaying in my future.  It was a good weekend and now I feel less lazy than I was for sitting high center on Xeno as long as I did.