Hey so it’s Monster Hunter time. If you’re not interested in reading what I have to say about Monster Hunter, now would be the time to go enjoy what exists of the Articles archive.
I spent pretty much the entirety of last weekend playing Monster Hunter 3. For some reason, I felt compelled to go back and hunt Cedaeus, the final boss of the offline mode. I thought that maybe time and experience and better gear would make the fight less frustrating. Not so. Underwater hunting is still awful, and is exacerbated by the fact that Cedaeus is a gigantic (and surprisingly speedy) whale monster. It took three separate outings to get him, but I did it. It’s strange, I guess I’ve never slain him before either, because my hunt log says I only have one Cedaeus kill to my credit. Oh well.
Following that, I got annoyed that my Jaggi+ armor set still wasn’t strong enough, and decided to go online to challenge some high rank monsters, whose item drops would allow me to create better armor.
Monster Hunter 3’s online mode has a ranking system that governs what levels of hunts you can play, called Hunter Rank. I’m currently stuck at the point where I can only play up to 4-star hunts, which is the first tier of high rank quests. What that means is that it’s the beefed-up versions of the easy(ier) boss monsters. The problem here is that you need quite a few HR levels to unlock the next star level, and you need a lot of experience points to go up a rank. Also, hunts take about half an hour in general, and don’t dole out a whole lot of experience. So if you want to play MH3 to its full extent, you’ve got a lot of grinding in your future.
That’s not so bad though, because Monster Hunter is pretty darn fun.
After popping in an out of a few different groups*, I eventually decided that my focus should be to earn a full set of Barroth+ armor, which is the next-to-strongest armor I have access to until the 5-star quests unlock. I could have gone for the strongest set, but I don’t feel confident enough to tackle a high rank Gobul or Rathian yet. Barroth, on the other hand, seemed like a perfect target.
I may have miscalculated that though. Barroth+ is, to quote one of my fellow hunters, “srs bsns.” Serious business indeed. Barroth is commonly referred to as a cross between a tyrannosaurus rex and a bulldozer. I figured I could take the monster on my own; I’m not great at Monster Hunter, but I’m not helpless either. For the first time in what feels like forever, I actually ran out of time while fighting him.
To solo fight was a big mistake. Barroth is not only tough, but he is fast. Like Tigrex before him, he seems to be able to snap into rage mode at anytime, which makes him even faster. When you’re a little man with an oversized sword going up against a speedy monster that hits really hard, you’ve gotta know when to strike, and Barroth doesn’t give you many easy openings.
He also loves to combo you to death before you can react. Barroth’s signature move is a charge attack, where he lowers his head to the ground and steamrolls anything stupid enough to be in front of him. The thing that takes this move from “dangerous” to “doombringer” is the fact that he likes to do it twice in a row, and unless he’s tired out and moving slow, it is incredibly hard to recover from the first one fast enough to dodge the second. And with the armor I was wearing, the attack took off almost half of my life bar. You can see why I needed to be careful.
After my ill-fated solo attempt, I logged onto the recruiting server and made a room devoted specifically to hunting Barroth. We must have taken out a good dozen of them before I realized it was 5:30 AM and I should probably get a little sleep.
The thing about playing with other people is that not only are you (ideally) getting in two, three or four times as many hits, but you’re also dividing the monster’s attention. I don’t know if all Monster Hunter games work this way, but in MH3 it’s incredibly rare for a monster to attack the same hunter twice in a row. It’s not an automatic win state or anything, but it does relieve a lot of pressure. That dual charge that Barroth does? Not a problem anymore. Unless of course the hunter he targets next is standing right behind you after you land from being hit by the first charge. But then it’s your fault for playing with retards.
The next hitch in my plan was that I hadn’t considered just how many rare materials you need to forge high rank armor. Looking at the requirements for a full Barroth set, I was ready to give up and go back to helping newbies with their easy hunts. Then I remembered that you could upgrade a standard piece of gear into a high rank piece after you’d sunk enough armor stones into it. Lo and behold, when you hit that upgrade threshold, you need considerably fewer materials to improve your old armor than you do to forge new stuff. I don’t know if there’s any drawback to doing it this way, but the way I see it, I was able to score the Barroth+ helmet, mail, and vambraces all at once, so I’m happy. The faulds and greaves will have to come later, because I still have to level them up with armor stones, and armor stones are stupidly hard to come by in this game. But progress was made!
I don’t log onto MH3 very often, usually opting to play the much more robust Monster Hunter Freedom Unite instead (MH3 has 18 boss monsters, MHFU has fifty-eight). But it’s always nice to play on a TV with a proper controller. Being able to plug in a keyboard for online chatting is a nice bonus, too. Maybe I’ll be playing MH3 instead for a while. Despite the stifled monster count, I still haven’t properly fought a Deviljho, and haven’t even seen Alatreon.
On a somewhat separate note, spellcheck highlighted all the monster names I typed, with the exception of Rathian. I have no theories on why.
*The worst of which was one n00b who would post tougher hunts, and then hide behind a tree while everyone else fought the monster. Fortunately, in the two years I’ve been playing the game, this is the first time I’ve seen someone do that.