mhw Archives - Page 4 of 6 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Frying Pans and Nora Braves

February 28, 2018 by Belghast

Over the last few days I have had a hankering to play some State of Decay. This was a game that I originally started playing on the Xbox 360, then picked up when it was eventually released on the PC. When the Year One Survivor Edition came out I picked that up too… as well as buying it for a friend that I thought would enjoy it. Since I had not actually tried streaming from my Xbox One, I decided to pick the game up on that platform and give it a go. Basically Undead Labs is an awesome developer and I have no problem supporting them by picking it up on multiple platforms. We don’t officially have a release date for State of Decay 2… but based on the trickle of activity I am hoping we get some more news soon. My hope is the sequel takes everything that worked well about the first game, but adds in the ability to hang out and explore the zombie filled landscape with friends.

Watch Hanging out playing some State of Decay YOSE on Xbox One from Belghast on www.twitch.tvSo as a result last night I fired up the stream while testing out a few new screen elements and bashed some zombies. If you are for any reason interested you can check out the Twitch VOD here (or click the embedded player above thanks to Jaedia), but it involved a lot of me stumbling around trying to figure out what to do and a few gloriously brutal deaths. I also may or may not have run over the NPC that was following me around and bashing things with a frying pan. The kinda cool thing last night is I had a bunch of folks that were completely different from what I would consider the normal crew of people who take pity on me and hang out while I stream. It’s really bizarre for me to have someone pop in the channel that I don’t actually know. It was a surprising amount of fun to just hang out and publicly fail at playing a video game.

Right now I don’t have much in the way of stamina as far as “being on” goes. I lasted a little bit over an hour before needing to go do something else with less of an audience for a bit. I am not sure if it was just that I was tired dying in State of Decay and wanted to play something else for awhile, or if I was tired of interacting. I need to sort out a proper way to swap games when I am just not feeling the one I am playing, because in truth I wound up logging into Monster Hunter World and farming content and it would have been nice to have a little company doing so. I originally logged in with the goal of doing a little SOS Roulette, but noticed a note in the Login Bonus about the Aloy event going live. For those who are curious, the quest is titled “The Proving” and shows up under events as a 6 Star High Rank mission that requires the player to be Hunter Rank 11, so you may need to do a little bit of progressing to get there.

There are two pieces to the set, a full suit of armor similar to the Ryu gear that literally transforms you into the Aloy character model. Additionally there is a version of Aloy’s bow that can be upgraded to a Rarity 7 weapon with some elder dragon bits. The gear can be upgraded a total of 10 times allowing it to remain fairly relevant for a long while. If you want to craft the gear you are looking at collecting the following….

Aloy Armor

Nora Brave Trophy – 4 – Obtained from Event Quest
Anjanath Pelt+ – 14
Anjanath Nosebone+ – 6
Anjanath Gem – 1
30,000 Zenny

Aloy’s Bow

Nora Brave Trophy – 2
Anjanath Fang+ – 3
Monster Keenbone – 5
Anjanath Plate – 1
16,000 Zenny

Aloy’s War Bow – Upgrade to Rarity 7

Nora Brave Trophy – 3
Anjanath Scale+ – 7
Elder Dragon Bone – 3
Wyvern Gem – 1
32,000 Zenny

Now it should be noted that the only part of this that you absolutely have to collect during the event are the Nora Brave Trophies which drop at least one per mission… and there was one time I lucked out and got four in one shot. The rest of the bits can be gained from either normal High Rank Anjanath hunts or in the case of the upgrade by taking down Elder Dragons to get those bones. I ran the mission a total of five times last night and got everything I needed to craft both the base rarity 5 bow and the rarity 5 armor. The cool thing about this is that it not only makes you look like Aloy… but you also MOVE like Aloy. Not really sure how to describe it other than that, because it feels like you are playing Horizon Zero Dawn set in the Monster Hunter World setting. I have no clue how long this event is going to run, but personally I knocked mine out doing good ole SOS Roulette. That said more than willing to help folks get their parts if they need them. Honestly I might farm it a bunch while it is available because it seems to be a really good way to get High Rank Anjanath parts.

Bathtubs and Nonsense

February 27, 2018 by Belghast

I’ve been partaking in some serious nonsense of late, not the least of which has been Dragon Quest Builders… and streaming me playing Dragon Quest Builders. I figured I would lead off with this screenshot because it is absolutely amazing. My townsfolk decided to build me a bath tub… which I immediately installed in my private master suite. So the funny thing about Twitch in its most modern incarnation is… it makes it silly easy to be an Affiliate. From the moment you start streaming it starts ticking off little achievements, which in some bizarro world way made me want to get them. One of them is called “Path to Affiliate” and it shows up as a little quest of sorts in the sidebar of the achievements page. It includes…

Stream 8 hours in the last 30 days
Stream for 7 unique days in the last 30 days
Reach 3 average viewers in the last 30 days
Reach 50 followers

The last one was easy because I have had my account so damned long that I have more than 50 pity follows at this point if nothing else. In theory once you qualify and get that achievement checkmark… you are done. Lately I have been dabbling around with streaming, and one by one each of the boxes got checked… and now I am apparently an affiliate. I am not entirely certain why I did this thing, but it happened. Now I actually sorta want to try and come up with a proper schedule, which is super difficult because with my managerial duties my arrive home time is super variable, as is whether or not I feel like playing any games in “live” mode.

This did force me to contemplate what would happen if someone actually subbed to me. As a result I named them appropriately to attempt to encourage people that this is not a thing that they should actually do. I keep expecting Twitch to lower some hammer on me for discouraging people from giving them money. Basically I would feel super awkward to actually take any money from anyone. This is mostly a thing I did for myself… and in part because it will allow me to create a spiffy twitch emojii if I so choose. I am not even sure what else Affiliate includes otherwise, mostly it was just… a thing I felt like doing because it was available.

Now however I find myself involved in all sorts of other nonsense as a result. I talked yesterday a bit about StreamLabs OBS… or SLOBS as apparently people are calling it… why people why. I’ve also been dabbling with their custom Chatbot that is apparently what happened when they gobbled up Ankhbot. As a result I now have the beginnings of a custom channel bot named MrAggroBot that will do some of the basic functionality you see in chat bots… and at least in theory also works on Discord.

Similarly I have set up a “BelStreamTime” Discord with the sole purpose of joining it while streaming, and as a result allowing anyone else who cares to hang out with me join as well. I realize no one actually needs a new discord to join… but I also did not want to dirty up any of the other discords I am part of with my streaming nonsense. The highlight of the night had to be getting everything actually working so that the Chatbot joined my quickie Twitch test stream, accepted commands and also announced that I went live through the Discord. It was more proof of concept than anything useful but I sorta felt like Doctor Frankenstein bringing life into the world… if that life was complete and utter nonsense.

As far as doing actual gaming stuff… I grouped up with Grace and took down some low rank monsters. I never really reached the point where I farmed Low Rank content the way I now do High Rank, and as a result I am missing a ton of parts to make lower level items required to make the higher level versions. I’ve been working slowly on building a Tobi Kadachi Longsword for its lightning damage, and we wound up farming Tobi a bunch of times for parts. From there we started doing more esoteric hunts, like an Anjanath and a Pukei Pukei with a 30 minute timer in which I tried to hammer. I am not exactly completely effective as hammer, but it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately I apparently completely phased out the fact that Tam was trying to invite me to a party and wound up heading to bed around 9:20. It was a fun night, but also one where I did a bunch of silly things with minimal use to anyone. So yeah… I am apparently a Twitch Affiliate now and am starting to build up the infrastructure needed to do “stuff and things” on that platform.

Angry Spiky Boy

February 22, 2018 by Belghast

Before I start this mornings post I have a deep burning question for my readers that may be more in tune with the Monster Hunter lore than I am. What are the flags representing that are displayed in Astera? There is one more banner that is not displayed in this screenshot that makes up the main sail of the ship I happen to be standing on currently. The only theory I have right now is that maybe that sail is the banner of the first fleet, and then each additional flag from left to right is the other four fleets? The symbols are the ones that we see on the loading screen, but those literally mean nothing to me… but I am guessing they are part of the monster hunter lore? The most prominent one that we see on a regular basis is the Sapphire Star displayed on the far right banner which sorta lead me to believe that maybe it is the symbol of the fifth fleet that we are part of. I’ve poked around a little bit online but have not really seen much talk of this heraldry.

As far as activities of the night, we spent a bit of time fighting with the multiplayer systems. I was under the impression that if I logged in and joined the squad session… that would be something easy for other squad members to do. However as the evening drug on we realized that all of us had done this thing… and we were in two completely different squad sessions. There were two players in one and four players in the other… so nowhere near the session cap of 16. Making life even more challenging was the fact that the group of two could not join the group of four without getting a network error. The four of us in the first session had to join the newer session, so it makes me wonder… do sessions eventually time out or something of the sort?

Mor and I spent a good deal of time farming nonsense, before a few of us decided on trying to get past the Nergigante roadblock. Ash had recently arrived at that step in the quest, and Kodra with a little bit of leg work was able to get there as well. So the three of us combined with Tam decided to make a few attempts last night. For the uninitiated, Nergigante is a fight where you simply cannot get hit. There is a one two punch move that he pulls off that first stuns you in place and then decimates you. If your team members are fast enough they can throw some crystal burst at him to distract him from pummeling your friends. However we were not always fast enough. The above screenshot is of Nergi just about to pound poor Ashgar into the ground.

Similarly here is a screenshot of him completely wrecking my world. The problem is you have three faints before the quest fails, and unfortunately things seem to go from “perfectly fine” to “oh god why” at a moments notice. I’ve been told that this fight is a little bit more predictable solo with only you and your Palico to worry with and the buffer of two faints for yourself instead of having to share a pool for the entire group. I will probably try this thing tonight, but whatever the case the fight feels really stressful because I simply cannot get in and deal much damage before needing to roll out to safety. At first I wondered if ranged fighters had a better time of it… but since I have been playing bow quite a bit lately for fun… I am guessing not. The biggest problem I personally have with bow is the lack of ability to dodge out of the way in the same manner as I do with longsword.

I’ve been on high center for the last two weeks and would really like to move past Nergi and on to other fights. So in theory tonight if I actually make it home from the current icemageddon, I will likely spend the evening working on trying to get through this one on my own. In other interesting news… Byf has started releasing lore videos for Monster Hunter World. The first one came out yesterday and talks about the fall of what seems to be a pretty technologically advanced civilization that existed in the Monster Hunter universe before the current relatively primitive one we have currently. Byf and Myelin were a good deal of what made the original Destiny so special for me, because they dug deep into the lore and assembled the fragments into a cohesive narrative. I am hoping that Byf can do the same for Monster Hunter seeing as I am coming in so late into the series. There is clearly a bunch of interesting stuff here, and I am looking forward to learning more about it.

Bludgeoned with Adorable

February 21, 2018 by Belghast

I have been a horrible person and should feel bad. One of the usual suspects missing from the Monster Hunter madness has been my good friend and often partner in crime… Grace. Her original line of logic was that she was going to wait until the PC release, and I was largely cool with that because when I started playing Monster Hunter World I absolutely intended to do what I did with Destiny 2. That is to restart when the PC version came out and focus on that from that point forwards as my primary platform. However the longer I have played Monster Hunter World the more I have doubted if I could actually do this thing.

Quitting Destiny 2 on the console and restarting on PC felt like it was a no brainier… and at the end of the day I was not really giving that much up. However I already feel way more attached to what I have on Monster Hunter World than I ever did to a handful of weapons that I easily regained the moment I started grinding things out again on Destiny 2. The other core problem is the fact that there is no announced date for Monster Hunter World for the PC. When I decided to restart Destiny 2 only a month had passed since the launch of the console versions, and really… it allowed me to redo all of those things I maybe should have done differently.

When Monster Hunter World finally launches on the PC something along the lines of six months or more will have passed and that is more than enough time to get acclimatized to a game and pass the threshold of being willing to give all of that up to go elsewhere. In part Monster Hunter World feels more like an MMORPG than Destiny 2 did, and those are the sort of games that you really move into. I love my gear and my weapons and having to give all of that up would feel extremely alienating. While I might have every intent of trying out the PC release, I have a feeling I would bounce pretty hard without my stuff. Now in Destiny 1 I reached this point and it was in part why I had so much struggle getting any measure of traction on the Xbox One client. I am not saying never to Monster Hunter World on the PC… just that I doubt it will become my primary platform over night.

As a result Mor and I have been waging this guerilla campaign of deluging Grace with pictures of Palicos and Poogie. Last night for example I sent her the above image of the two Palicos in my room playing harp music for me. I think the final straw that broke her with adorable… is when I sent one of the Tailrider Safari cutscenes. Whatever the case she relented and downloaded the game last night, installing it and joining the madcap community of folks playing Monster Hunter World. When she first started Destiny I made the mistake of trying to drag her around to experience all of the content that I loved. However this wound up with a really choppy experience so for the most part I am going to be around to answer questions, but try my level best to just let her experience this game.

That is not to say that shortly after taking down the Great Jagras I did drag her through a Kulu-Ya-Ku kill for completely “pure pure” reasons as PizzaMaid would say. The Great Jagras costume for palicos is not exactly a good one… so instead I figured that a single kill of Kulu would get her more than enough parts to make that set of armor for her Palico so she could begin the process of dressing it in increasingly ludicrous costumes. As a result she is now the proud owner of a lute wielding fake moustache cat, and I think the barbs of the hook are officially set. The game is completely nonsense but has a charm to it that is undeniable once you experience it. I also think that while taking down that Jagras, she got a taste of the other side of the coin that makes the game super fun to experience.

Regardless… I should feel bad by bludgeoning my friend over the head with adorable pictures from the game until she caved. However I don’t really because this is absolutely the sort of game that she would love and was only waiting for an undetermined PC release date that might see her playing alone. For awhile I had said that Horizon Zero Dawn was worth every penny of buying a PS4 just to play it. I feel like Monster Hunter World is also sort of in that category, with the exception being that it also exists on Xbox One. The problem there is… my core base is on PS4 and as a result I see very little reason to play anything but the scant exclusives on the Xbox platform. Most Xbox exclusives eventually see a PC release apart from Forza and Halo, and in the grand scheme of things at least in that scenario I would rather wait. PS4 is my console and ecosystem of choice and I am pretty happy about that.