Yesterday was more or less madness. The last few days have been super stressful for a bunch of reasons that I don’t really want to get into, but its a sort of stress that I am not used to dealing with. The sort of stress that takes what should be a super familiar and safe environment and makes everything seem weird and tense. Last night I had a very late meeting that ultimately went over the allotted time, and by the time I left… we had gotten some freezing rain. That meant that driving home was in itself a tense experience as well with everyone poking along at a snails pace. There is this whole judgement game that happens as well, because in theory my normal route is the least populated of the possible routes home. So I question if I should take it or try and stick to the busier route… and as a result more prone to be delayed by wrecks and probably much slower.
Needless to say my normal ten to fifteen minute commute was turned into roughly an hour. When got to town I also needed to make a run by the local grocery store around the corner from my house. Normally this is a massive pitfall because people go insane when there is even the slightest sign of winter weather. We were completely out of coffee creamer however… something I really didn’t want to go home without so I went against better judgement and walked into the grocery store. In truth it was not nearly as bad as I was expecting… there are times where even the lightest dusting of snow can cause the grocery store to look like the apocalypse hit with entire aisles of food missing. This time however it was just about three times as busy as normal, but no frantic rushing around and hoarding food. That said… it had been about three weeks since we had been to a grocery store so while there I decided to pick up considerably more than just coffee creamer allowing myself to succumb to a bit of the madness as well.
I got home and made dinner… which in our case was some piping hot frito chilli pies because I needed something to defrost. The actual temperature was in the 20s but with wind chill factored in… it felt like the low teens, which for the northerners that might be reading this blog is not that big of a problem. However those of us who are used to 115 degree August weather are not exactly designed for this sort of frigid weather. I don’t even have a proper coat because we need one so rarely, which meant I have been roaming around in this in my hoodie. The frito pies did their job however and warmed me up enough to consider actually doing something this evening other than huddling underneath a fuzzy blanket and staring blankly at the television. Considering the late hour… I opted to settle into my office and play a little monster hunter considering I was about an hour late for my other obligation and it would have been weird to drop in at that point.
One of the things about Monster Hunter World is that I seem like I am only really capable of handling one big monster hunt each evening. As a result I am progressing painfully slow through the quest content that ultimately gates everything in the game. Sunday I tackled Radobaan and to a lesser extent Great Girros while roaming around in an expedition. That mean’t a trip back to the Third Fleet Master to once again descend to the bottom of the Rotten Vale. Unshockingly we once again encountered a problem that required my attention. Our path took us straight through the hunting grounds of a Legiana, which is a giant frost dragon of sorts that seems to like to gobble up the flying bird/wyvern things that hang out in the Coral Highlands. We pissed it off… and as a result I needed to go kill it so we could continue downwards.
This is not a terribly easy hunt for a Longsword because it spends most of its time in the air. Sure I can chip away at it slowly by swinging up at it… but that also put me in prime territory for its two main attacks. The first of these is a claw dive of a sort that did about a third of my health bar each time I connected with it properly. The second is the more annoying because it has lasting effects in the form of laying down a line of frost on the ground. Getting hit with the frost itself seemed to take me down two thirds of my health bar, and getting into the frost seemed to have a lasting slow effect that made dodging everything more annoying. The other major problem is this monster runs way more often than your average bear… and like all flyers in this game can travel half a map away in a few seconds forcing you to traverse some truly awkward terrain.
I’ve only actually failed a single hunt so far in Monster Hunter World, and that was the first time I attempted Anjanath. That one I mostly chock up to not paying attention and not watching my health bar anywhere near as close as I should have. Legiana however… was painfully close. When I finally took the monster down I had less than five minutes to go on the hunt, and was down to my last faint. The thing about a close fight like this… is that when you finally defeat it… you feel absolutely exhilarated. I had originally intended to just do the one hunt and go to bed, but instead I needed something to do to sorta come down off the high of the really difficult encounter. As a result I popped downstairs and saw that Sushi was streaming, and hung out there for a bit while roaming around and doing minor things in monster hunter over Playstation Remote Play.
The night did not go at all how I had intended it. I did not intend to be super late getting home, and I definitely had not planned on the painful drive home. I also had not planned on fielding messages and emails throughout the night about a recent promotion at work. All in all however it was still a good night, and I was super pumped to move the story needle at least a little bit in this game that I am rapidly becoming indoctrinated into. Expeditions are still more my speed and I’ve spent a lot of time roaming around the newly unlocked areas like Coral Highlands and Rotten Vale. I believe there are two more areas of the game but supposedly those do not unlock until I officially get into the “high rank” hunt territory.
My favorite part of the night however is that all of my shenanigans allowed me to upgrade my weapon to the Hard Bone Shotel II which with my current gear layout gives me a base attack power of 505. That is honestly the biggest problem I am seeing with switching weapons is the fact that none of them are even close to the attack power I currently have available to me through the “bone” weapon line. I see longsword folks running around with much cooler looking weapons… but ultimately they have not been able to compete with the raw attack power of my bone weapon.
At some point I want to jump ship to the “dragon” line of weapons… but that is going to require silly amounts of farming of fairly difficult fights like Rathian. For the moment I am happy with my damage output and the rather homely looking bone weapon hanging off of my back. I think my big focus over the next few game sessions is going to be trying to farm the ore needed to get the next real set of upgrades over the gear I am wearing. I feel like I am pretty close to the next “big” fight, so I might attempt that tonight as well. All in all still loving this game and still wanting more of it.
