Monster Hunter

Yeah, maybe that's why the quest is such a nightmare. It's probably meant for players who've been hunting Tempered Elders and have augments on their gear. Would explain why Teostra was on roids.

No excuses for carting to Val though. I really shouldn't have got up today...

Don't beat yourself up Omega. Monster Hunter is a series that takes a lot of practice. Shit, I had to put in like 80 hours in the first game on the Ps 2 before I could beat a Rathalos once. A lot of the game is learning enemy attack patterns and how to avoid em and getting better gear.

Yeah, I have some experience with Freedom 2 and 3 Ultimate. World is actually the first one I've completed. Couldn't get past Tigrex in Freedom 2, though it's literally been about a decade since I played it last, and I've beaten Dark Souls since then.

Chalking Val up to just having a really shitty day. Might have had to do with where I fought him, since in his assigmnent quest he sticks to his hill of corpses and the area just outside, both of which are open and not full of either effluvium or pools of acid. I was wearing Legiana gear as well, whereas I was wearing Nergy gear when I last fought him. Maybe it's the health siphon and damage buffs from the Nergy gear that made it so easy last time.

Actually I did a bit of reading, seeing whether Val had been put on roids with the update, and while it doesn't seem like he's changed at all, I did come across some reports that experienced players occasionally meet a Val who one-shots them with every attack from full health. Dunno if true or not, but why anyone would claim they were one-shotted by the easiest Elder in the game is beyond me.

I heard Vaal got a little buffed, which would explain some things...

Even then, don't worry too much about it. We all have our bad days and monsters that make us contemplate retirement. It's usually something that can be solved by getting used to them and/or finding good partners. I myself can't beat Luna by myself yet (especially because in some quests, she seems to have been scaled for multiplayer even when soloing, iirc), but I just help people on multiplayer until I feel comfortable enough to challenge her solo again.

Which should take a little while, due to my RL schedule...

Oddly enough I find the tempered Lunastra in the Thronetaker quest to be the easiest to beat by a fair margin.

Best guess at the reason is most of the damage I take coming from the environmental damage (which doesn't seem to get the tempered buff) and her health being significantly reduced due to being a 3 monster hunt; the free 1300 or so damage from her and Nergigante' s turf war doesn't hurt either.

the effluvia beam has always swept

i have fought vaal............... a lot.

Yeah, that was probably where I fucked up. I see him rearing back and think, "Oh, I'll just step slightly to the side and keep shooting him", and BOOM, there goes half my life bar and I'm freaking out. I'm freaking out so badly I can't even dodge his telegraphed lunge attack, and then I get stunned while standing in acid, and I die. Then I try fighting him in the area with all the Girros and Odogaron, and it's too cramped to avoid his huge ass when he lunges, and I die again. Then I try again, instantly get tagged by the sweeping beam, and abandon quest.

Guess I've been fighting Xeno'Jiiva too much, expecting a straight beam.

I think I'm gonna go back to basics and work my way up the rest of the monsters who I've killed once for their assignments and never fought again. Once I don't suck anymore I'll be back for a rematch with Val. But Lunastra will have to wait until I'm so near invincible that her bullshit doesn't even matter. I beat Ornstein and Smough by levelling up past level 120 in the Painted World, and I'm gonna cheese my way past Lunastra as well.

I can happily report that I just got finished killing Val. He was exactly as easy as when I killed him last time. Only hairy moment was when I carted to his effluvium breath. The bow really doesn't sheathe fast enough. But I got him, and that's all that matters.

The Nergy gear definitely helps things, with its healing ability and the fact that I can get attack boost 7 out of it by wearing my attack charm III. Mainly though I was more respectful of him this time around. He may be the easiest Elder and slow as fuck, but he can kill you in like two hits if you aren't careful. Honestly though, just don't stand in front of his head and don't keep too far away from him so you can run to his side to dodge his breath attack. Easy.

Now that I'm over my slump I can get to turning his corpse into clothes to make me fucking Immortal

Vaal can catch you by surprise with its effluvia beam if you end up in a bad position and can't run away in time. This is one of the reasons why I go melee with it: provided that I have Effluvia Resistance, I can simply stay under its body for the largest part of the battle and keep hacking at it until I have to evade one attack or another.

I killed him like 7 times, I can't believe he actually made me ragequit yesterday. He hits hard, but he's so SLOW that it's rare that he ever tags me now. The only thing to worry about is the effluvium breath, but unless you're a mile away from him it's easy to run around his side every time and get free damage on him.

The only annoying thing about him now is that his fangs haven't really felt like dropping for me despite breaking his head every time. That said, I now have three pieces of his set.

Which brings me to my next question: In the video I linked last page, the build was Guild Cross Circlet, Vaal chest, gauntlets, waist, and Kushala legs with defense charm III. Only thing is, the beta version of the Vaal set, which is the one used in the video, doesn't go up to rank 3 in the skills it gives, Kushala legs only give Evade Extender, and although I haven't got it available to make yet I can't see the Guild Cross Circlet giving 4 ranks of Defense Boost. So I have to assume all that gear is augmented, which I don't know how to do because I haven't unlocked that feature yet. Someone explain please.

EDIT: -sigh- Ignore what I just asked, I'm an idiot. I watched the video again and he shows what decorations he used halfway through. Derp.

edited 4th Jun '18 6:27:09 PM by OmegaKross

Once I managed to get the full set of Vaal Hazak armour (and yeah, those fangs are hard to get) he became way easier, because the armour makes you immune (or at least highly resistant) to the effluvium effects.

Though, in all honesty, Miasma Jewels (which give Effluvia Resistance) shouldn't be hard to come by over time...

There's also an easy to pick up Effluvia resistance effect from Great Girros's pants that make dealing with Val really easy.

I've got two Miasma gems anyway, so effluvium hardly bothers me.

Just cleared the dual Tempered Bazelgeuse quest with minimal effort (he really does not like thunder), and now I've been given the Tempered Kirin quest. Which is supposed to be the hardest monster in the game. I've got the full Kirin beta set, so should I prepare anything else? I'm not gonna even try it until I have more Thunder Res gems at least, but I'm trying to unlock Augments for my gear, and I read the way you do that is by getting rare Streamstones off Tempered Elders.

i used a guard up jho lance for tempered kirin with 3 thunder res gems. I was hunting with rando SOS folks, but iirc, the successful hunt basically had me and a glaive bro trading mounts to keep kirin occupied. When I wasn't mounted, I'd just park in front of kirin's face to poke off the horn and keep a steady stream of elderseal going.

Yeah, I can't use lance. I've tried and I just can't adjust to it. Mainly how the only big move it has is the jumping stab off the charge and I always get demolished starting it at the wrong moment. Gunlance is better since it's more damage oriented, but it's so damn complicated that I just piss about with it and don't use it on high rank quests. To be honest I've never had any real trouble with Kirin as a bow user, but Tempered Kirin can apparently one shot you with his lightning if you aren't careful, and I usually take a few hits fighting him.

Got the full Vaal set anyway, looks awesome. Should not have had it's inaugural run be against Xeno'Jiiva though, it does not like fire one bit. Didn't help that Xeno just wouldn't die this time, and my game tried to sabotage me by disconnecting me from the online session while he was flying around firing lasers at me. Also, his horns won't drop. I've had his gem twice, got my first on the first run even, but I've only had two horns out of about 6 fights.

I'm thinking that the Immortality set gets a lot of its power from the health recovery augment on the weapon, as just using the Vaal set with triple speed red health regen was appreciably faster than normal, but nowhere near "BWAHAHA, I CAN'T DIE!" levels. Don't have another recovery gem either. Is there a way to get better gems faster than just spamming HR quests over and over again and hoping to get something good? I don't even have enough to really use the Elder Melder to make better stuff, and she doesn't even have the really good gems available anyway.

Also, any reason why the Immortality set uses the Guild Cross Circlet when the Legi helm gives two ranks of Divine Blessing and doesn't require chopping down mighty trees with a herring in order to get it?

EDIT: Also, I found that Vaal's effluvium beam can be negated entirely by flashing him. Now he's no threat whatsoever. It also helps to bring along a second Felyne as a meatshield.

edited 5th Jun '18 4:46:49 PM by OmegaKross

For prep; fully upgraded Kirin beta armor, lightning, stun, and paralysis resist jewels (max all 3 skills if you can; if you still have open slots add vitality jewels), your best fire element weapon, a decent stock of max and ancient potions, thunderproof and vitality mantles, eat for elemental resistance, and spare controllers.

For the fight itself: go slow, you've got 50 minutes, use them. The first couple times I tried I went in way too aggressively and triple carted in all of 15 minutes; third try after I slowed down and picked my openings to attack I cleared it in ~40 minutes with only one cart.

It's really not as hard as a lot of people make it out to seem provided you prep well beforehand and fight cautiously.

Edit: As for the immortality set the key is the synergy between the recovery jewels boosting each tick of healing, the recovery speed boosting the rate of ticks, and super recovery allowing the passive healing to go beyond the red health; without all 3 levels of both recovery and recovery speed you get significantly reduced benefits.

The health augmentation on the weapon is also a huge boost; it does nothing for passive healing but it benefits just as well from the recovery up skill.

For getting jewels your best bet at the moment is probably the G.Jagras/G.Girros/Dodogama event quest that's currently availablec it gives a ton of jewels in the rewards. Other than that the best source is the purple rewards from tempered investigations.

edited 5th Jun '18 5:21:09 PM by Jaustin89*

When I fight Kirin I usually aim for the Critical Draw and Critical Boost skills as a GS user. After he uses a lightning blast, I hit em in the head once, sheathe my sword, and go back to avoiding attacks. Hit and run tactics are your friend against Kirin.

Okay. I'm not going anywhere near the thing until I know I've got enough resistance and armour to tank a lightning bolt to the face without carting instantly. And I want to be better with my bow anyway. I'm not terrible, I mean I solo'd the entire game, wouldn't have gotten anywhere if I was shit, but I'm kind of sloppy and bad at picking my openings for the full R2, R2, R2, O, O, O combo. Hell I only recently started using the power shot at all after watching some youtube videos, and my brain is still getting used to it, so trying to take on Tempered Kirin now will likely only result in a smashed controller and ragequitting.

I'll have to try that event quest, while its still available anyway. Two of those three monsters are crap anyway, and the only reason Dodogama poses any threat is because of my lack of experience fighting him.

BTW, Vaal bow or Nergy bow, which is better? Nergy has more raw and higher Elderseal, Vaal has slightly less raw but quite a bit more Dragon element and only average Elderseal. To be honest I don't know whether having higher raw damage or elemental damage is better, elemental damage beat everything in Dark Souls, but you see people using the Cera Coilbender a lot and that's -30 affinity and a crapload of raw damage.

Pretty sure the choice between elemental damage and raw damage depends on the monster you're fighting.

For Kirin I'd say your best bet is the Rathalos bow; It's far weaker to fire than dragon (per Kiranico for a headshot it's 5 dragon weakness compared to 25 fire weakness) and I don't think elderseal makes that much of a difference.

edited 5th Jun '18 6:25:58 PM by Jaustin89*

Elderseal's actually a pretty big deal on Kirin - shutting down his electric aura means more damage over all and fewer OHKO lightning bolts.

edited 5th Jun '18 6:27:30 PM by Hashil

I'd argue that that still doesn't offset the extra damage from fire since with Kirin you should be hitting the head most of the time anyway.

Granted It's been long enough since I hunted Kirin with a dragon element weapon I can't say I have a great hands on experience of the difference. It's probably one of those items that comes down to personal preference in the end; depending on your play style, how reliably you can target It's head, and how reliably you can dodge the lightning.

With a bow, targeting the head is all you do. As for dodging the lightning, that all depends on how much he spams that attack where he covers the floor in a lightning grid. The hitboxes are way bigger than they look and I get caught by it a lot.

yeah, that was the biggest adjustment from maining charge blade in that i had no spike damage. but after a while, i realized that spike damage wasn't necessary; as an immovable object, you're constantly in striking range instead of running around trying to avoid attacks or waiting for openings. definitely not a playstyle for everyone, though.

regarding the gunlance, i really don't like it. the lance's charge makes the weapon deceptively maneuverable, and the gunlance just doesn't have that. especially when fighting fidgety monsters like kirin, being able to sprint back into DPS position is important. also when fighting monsters that like blasting the entire battlefield, like kirin, being able to do a shielded advance to get into position is super important

edited 5th Jun '18 8:33:16 PM by ch00beh