sword and shield Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

Fifty Two and Farming Gear

March 10, 2025 by Belghast

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.

A New Sceptre

March 4, 2025 by Belghast

Morning Folks. Essentially each night I am progressing a bit in Monster Hunter Wilds, and then wind up back in Path of Exile for super chill mapping and delve time. There is only so much directed combat that I can take in a single evening. Monster Hunter Wilds is cool but also feels like it has zero chill right now because every quest leads to another big boss fight. I did spend some time last night roaming around and picking up materials so that I could upgrade a few things. It is probably weird that Path of Exile is known for being this obtuse nut to crack… but that I also find it my super chill happy place. I’ve been slowly working my way through unlocking all of the Heist quests, which given that I tend to find two to three rogue caches in each map… it is going pretty quickly.

Over the weekend I recorded another one of my dumb little videos where I effectively documented the state of my Righteous Fire Scavenger build. I personally find these useful because as I look back on various builds it helps me remember exactly what the state of the build was when I stopped playing it. This one was especially important I thought because we will not be getting Scavenger for very long, and the whole chaos explosions thing is really fun to experience. Essentially I zoom into a pack and it more or less explodes and then proliferates out to everything else in the area causing them to either explode or at least get whittled down in health so that my Righteous Fire can finish them off. I still prefer RF Chieftain because it is way more sturdy, but this is pretty damned fun.

Yesterday I bankrupted myself and bought a Putrid Cloister which unlocked the 3 Crafted mods benchcraft. Then I liquidated all of my available chaos to buy two Divine Orbs so that I could take the Sceptre I had been sitting on and turn it into a Damage Multi/Fire Multi setup. When Righteous Fire lost its flat damage the whole gem levels thing became way less important in the long run, and you are generally better off just trying for as much damage multi on your weapon as you can get. The other stats are largely just useless but I had a few exalted orbs sitting on my bank and figured might as well slam something on it. I even used an imprint beast on this just in case the regal orb bricked the item, so that I had one more shot at it. I now have an imprint that is mostly useless, but I would rather use it and not need it than need it and not have used it given that I captured the beast on my own.

While I was in a video recording mood I also took a bit of time and documented the final state of my Pohx League build, which was Ice Trap of Hollowness Trickster. I really do want to revisit this build during a proper league to see how far I can take it. Right now I just lack the evasion to make this feel more comfortable. I would really like to be able to hit 90% evasion chance and the limited trade environment made that difficult… or at least unaffordable. During a proper trade league there would be way more gear available, and I would probably be able to find an Ice Trap Dragonfang amulet. I had a search running for a few days and none of them showed up on the market. If this says viable, I may legitimately start it during 3.26 just to see how far I can take it, given that I already know I can run up a RF character as a backup in a few days without much issue if it crashes and burns.

This morning I got the first Tabula Rasa that I have gotten in a few league events. I think Crucible was the last league when I was getting these constantly. I had a bank full of various corrupted versions because I kept getting them, and kept rolling the dice with Vaal orbs. Not that I plan on leveling anything else during Legacy of Phrecia, but a Tabula is always a good way to start out a build. Though over the last few leagues I think I prefer some of the other starter chests if you can throw enough currency on it to get it up to four links. It is really hard to beat Thousand Ribbons for starter gear.

Last night I took out the Black Flame and then continued on and took out a corrupted Doshaguma and then a corrupted Rathalos. At that point I wandered around for awhile until the itch to play some Path of Exile caught me. I seem to only be able to take about three or four boss fights before needing to do something else for a bit. I looked at a quest guide and it does not appear that I am even halfway through the main story quest yet. I am not exactly in a massive rush, but I do prefer the endgame loop of Monster Hunter games to the story driven leveling process. Mostly I don’t love the whole fiddling around with temporary gear sets and would prefer to invest my time in a final build. It is what it is… and I find it bizarre the games that I enjoy the leveling process in like Path of Exile and the games that I just want a skip button to zoom straight to endgame goodness like Monster Hunter.

Anyways! I figure I will be flipping back and forth between these two games at least until April 2nd when the new Last Epoch Cycle lands. Depending on how engaged I get with Monster Hunter I might swap from Path of Exile to Last Epoch and then alternate between LE and MHWilds.

Boosh and Barroth

April 16, 2018 by Belghast

It was a pretty great weekend as far as gaming goals go. Saturday I largely roamed around aimlessly in Everquest while hanging out with my wife downstairs watching various stuff on the television. Then at some point before the podcast I headed upstairs to see if I could knock out the megaman event. This entails fighting the most laughably small Odogoron you have ever seen… and one that is slightly larger than normal. In truth I am not completely sure it is larger than normal… or if it just seems massive compared to the tiny tiny one you fight first. Ultimately you need to get five tickets to get your full palico armor and I managed to finish mine up in three events… with the last one dropping three event tickets… something I was not sure could actually happen.

After the Podcast Thalen and I wound up hanging out and working on our Ryu costumes, which entails doing a challenge arena where you fight a massive Barroth. This thing is so large that really your only option is to wail away on the legs until it falls over…. then start scoring hits on other parts of the body. This event scores event tickets based on how fast you get the kill… if I am remembering right getting it in less than 5 minutes nets you a gold and three tickets, less than 9 minutes a silver and 2 tickets, and finally finishing at all before the 50 minute timer is up earns you bronze and a single ticket. You need seven tickets in total so we wound up running it four times in a row allowing us to craft the Ryu suit… that in all honesty we will probably never actually wear.

When Thalen and I both got on I created an open chat channel and we both joined the Greysky Armanda clan session, and at some point during our Barroth nonsense our good friend Shiana joined us in both. Thalen and I were talking for a bit about both needing Kirin and what sort of gear we were prepping for the fight. It was around about this point that Shiana offered to help us get some attempts in seeing as he was in the 90s rank wise himself. Granted this is like at 11 pm we are starting this madness… but my desire to kill the stupid unicorn was greater than my desire for sleep. So we continued forth with me wearing my mostly Xeno’jiiva set that nets 40 lightning resist with a veggie platter buff. In truth with multiple people the fight already seemed way easier because I was not having to spend my entire time trying to shed aggro from the lunatic horse.

One by one we each got carted… with me taking the last hit and closing out our first attempt somewhere around the 25 minute mark. On our second attempt we managed to get feline insurance, and in truth only managed to get carted the one time if I am remembering correctly. We had better luck as far as where exactly Kirin decided to fight us, shifting back and forth between two relatively open areas. When we managed to whittle it down to enough hitpoints to make it run back to it’s “nest” we barrel bombed it into oblivion then threw on our thunderproof mantles and proceeded to wale away on it. All the while this was going on… I was still very much on edge… afraid something would go terribly wrong and we would fail the fight once again. So when I saw the above screenshot… crediting a kill for Kirin I was ecstatic… making getting to sleep when I finally crawled into bed a little after midnight a bit harder than normal.

Sunday I spent the day swapping laundry and hanging out upstairs playing Monster Hunter while watching The Mighty Boosh on my second monitor. I am not exactly sure what prompted me, but for some reason I fired up Hulu to see what was available and it suggested to me this show. Now I had watched most of it some time ago when reruns were being played as part of the adult swim block late at night. This was back during my wow raiding days… and many of the sayings from the “Old Gregg” episode became constant quotation fodder during fights… especially “Fuzzy Little Man Peach”. So yesterday I hung out watching the Hulu feed of the episodes while doing random nonsense in Monster Hunter World. It was a day truly well spent.

I’ve been slowly adding weapons to my repertoire and then learning how to use them. It seems extremely bizarre but I have been crafting purple and orange versions of weapons that I have maybe never actually used… because I figure as I learn them I at least have an “end game” version to get used to rather than mess with all of the steps in between. For the moment I have solid versions of Charge Blade, Switch Axe, Great Sword and of course the Longsword of which I have developed quite the collection. One of the weapons that I have kept wanting to try is the Dual Blades which seem really cool when I see someone using them, but for whatever reason I have never actually tried.

I really really like the look of the Sin dual Chain Kama looking weapons, and thanks to farming the Odogoron quest I managed to get not only one but two gems. This allowed me to craft the weapon and the complete set of Alpha Odog gear to go with it. Sure it might seem weird that I have a full set of gear largely because I think its cool looking… but whatever. Now I am setting my sights on getting the Zorah blast lance… before giving that weapon a go. Sure I could just go into the training room… but as I keep being reminded I am the patron saint of bad decisions and that simply would not be my way.

Another project for this weekend was finishing farming the Anjanath claws needed to upgrade my weapon I can’t pronounce into the final form of said weapon I can’t pronounce. I then took the firey axe and shield out on a few test runs having really great luck with it. It could use a few more ranks of handicraft to give me more time in the blue zone, because it takes an awful lot of sharpness loss as you use it… but it also dishes out a lot of damage and is crazy fun to use. I am sure there are probably better options for sword and shield, but I like this one and it at least gives me an end game suitable weapon in that category. All in all it was a pretty great weekend… apart from one incident… but that is a tale for another day.