Monster Hunter

Alright, Magnamalo quest is out and it's tough. Apart from no one really knowing the monster very well yet (which is normal), our armor feels like cardboard and the time limit is ridiculously short (around 15 minutes or so).

I can relate. I hope the actual game doesn't have such a short time limit, or at least allows you to repel the monster.

It's gonna be your usual 50-minute time limit, it's alright. It's just that Capcom has been beefing up their demo quests in recent times. Nerg's battle in the demo for base World already had a very short time limit and the barely functional armors did little to help. The Gore Magala fight in the 4U demo was the last one that felt tough, but fair. Magnamalo seems doable, but you will fail a lot to get there.

Heads-up: videos of hunts from Monster Hunter: Rise are starting to pop up on YouTube. Those who want to avoid spoilers might want to be careful; I personally haven't seen anything super spoileriffic yet (just a video of a Great Izuchi hunt), but I figured a warning for those who want to be completely unspoiled would be helpful.

It's also reviewing pretty well already, too.

Ooh, just saw the proper Great Izuchi intro. Looks like they're all gonna have some extra "poetic" touch...

The monster intros so far are great.

I can't wait to see the intros for the more dangerous monsters.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Mar 23rd 2021 at 2:37:35 AM

I've been playing Monster Hunter: Rise for a bit since its release, and I'm really digging the setting.

I just did enough quests to get the first urgent quest where you have to fight a Great Izuchi, but I'm going to finish up all the 1-star quests first before I tackle that one.

Also, apparently the previous videos of Mizutsune vs. Zinogre did not show the entire turf war, since someone posted a video of the turf war and there's quite a bit more:

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Mar 26th 2021 at 10:48:14 AM

I've been playing for a couple hours, just hunted down the Great Izuchi. I have a couple questions.

How do I switch ammo for my bowgun?

Can I relight the boss monsters to farm materials?.

Can I re-edit my character's appearance?

Edited by RAlexa21th on Mar 26th 2021 at 5:59:08 AM

To answer your questions in order:

• I can't answer this one, since I've never played with the bowgun
• Yes, you can refight monsters to farm for materials
• Your edit options after character creation are very limited, but you can make small edits

Go into your item bar select mode (pretty sure it's "hold L" by default), then use the ammo/coating (for bows) type select controls (X or B to scroll up or down the list).

Where do I find more iron ores?

Iron Ore can be found in the Shrine Ruins and Frost Islands. Use the detailed map to find out where the mining nodes are.

So as a newcomer, here's my impression of the game and by extension the series.

The biggest impression of me is the monsters' behaviors. I wouldn't call them realistic, but they feel very alive. They are beasts that act like they have other things to do aside from fighting the PC. Their animations are pretty cool too, which is very appreciated because I need to learn the cues to anticipate their attacks. It's very satisfying to have two monsters fight each other while I attack one of them or lay traps.

I do enjoy planning and laying out traps, it feels so good to trick the monsters to stand on my landmines and start blasting at them. Though I don't think there is any way to detonate exploding barrels from afar if I use melee weapons. Those kunais are hard to aim.

One disappointing thing is that this isn't an open world game with the village as the Hub City. I thought the concept of being a hunter-gatherer would make it perfect for an open world game. The areas aren't even implied to be connected with each other unlike the first Xenoblade game.

I learned that the dog is a new addition for Rise. Did older games have mounts or did you guys just drag the Hunters' slow ass across the map?

The hunter always had to walk. You did have Felynes assisting you during battle in most games since PSP's Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (the exceptions were Monster Hunter Tri for Wii and 3 Ultimate for 3DS and Wii U, in which your sidekicks were Shakalakas).

World let you call small monsters like the Jagras to give you a ride, but you didn't have direct control of them (they would just automatically go toward your selected waypoint) and you had to complete a sidequest for each area you wanted to use it in. It's also something the game never really tells you how to unlock, so I suspect a lot of people don't know about it.

Most melee weapons can't, but the insect glaive has a projectile you use by, uh... in World, you hold the trigger to aim your insect, then press the other trigger and you'll shoot this little stone from your glaive, and I'm assuming that's how it works in this game too (I haven't gotten that far yet, so don't quote me). It's normally used to mark a monster so that your insect can start attacking it, but it does minor damage and it can set off barrel bombs.

Edited by Serac on Mar 27th 2021 at 12:10:10 PM

Heh. It used to be normal to just kick the barrels and facetank the damage if you didn't have a shield.

These days you can, in fact, use Kunai with very precise aiming. Just hold down ZL to go into aiming mode, same as you'd do with Wirebugs. Add in gyroscope aiming, and it's a pretty decent auxiliary damage option against monsters that spend most of their time in the air.

You still want to slam a greatsword, or whatever the heaviest hitting weapon in the party is, into barrels on a sleeping monster. Sleeping monsters take double damage.

Well, yeah, but wouldn't they also take double damage from the explosion? Only the first hit that wakes them up gets the bonus, so using your weapon only works out if you can exceed the damage output of the Mega Barrel Bomb in a single hit. Which is just the Greatsword's True Charged Slash, really.

At least, that's how it used to work. Haven't done much sleepbombing in Rise yet.

I mean, its a free meaty hit. Either the weapon gets double damage, or the explosion does. Either way, you get the free meaty hit.

GS's TCS into the barrel also carried the risk that if you messed up the positionning, you'd hit either the barrels or the sleeping monster with the leadup hit that does pitiful damage instead, losing a big chunk of damage in the process. There were ways to set yourself up for it to work, but sometimes the terrain would work against you.

Well, yeah, but you still want the biggest hit to get the double damage. Mega Barrel Bombs deal 150 fixed damage, so that's another 150 damage if it gets the wake-up hit. That's a lot, and very few weapons can get anywhere close in a single hit. In fact, I'm pretty sure it is just the Greatsword.

So yeah, unless there's a Greatsword around, just hit the bomb with the Kunai. It's just bigger numbers.

And there's that as well. Getting the True Charged Slash is... a process that doesn't always work out. I don't play Greatsword myself, but I can see myself going with the Kunai anyway just to make sure I get the 450 damage from the Mega Barrel Bombs.

Come to think of it, there used to be this exploit in the demo where you could throw a Barrel Bomb from the air even when you've already put down two on the ground, thus allowing for an additional explosion. That would add another 80 damage to the pile, for a total of 530. That still a thing?

So I'm thinking of getting Rise on the switch, but I'm also considering hypothetically waiting for it to come out on PC instead.

I'm sure my switch has been feeling lonely and neglected though.

Just finished my first rampage mission. It was certainly something. I was down on my last gate and had to dismount a ballista to just attack the monsters with my gun.

So does Rise have aesthetic armor?