Alright, 5th times the charm. Got Shara down with 6 minutes to spare, and was able to break off and carve a scalp.
I had to totally reconfigure my armor to go for more jewel slots, then add in mirewalker, vitality, stun resistance, partbreaker, and some other things. Had to give up guard but guard was useless for him most of the time.
I don’t think he was hard, it was just a battle of attrition, and my feints were almost all cheap shots (e.g. clutch claw the head, and I jump off right into a laser). I should have one more damage but I was trying to hit the head for maximum damage, but tenderizing his backside and poking back there was just much more consistent.
Went through about 4 far casters every time he tried to do the explode the whole arena stupid thing.
Oh well. Time to figure out if I progress more or move on.
Only took me 148 hours to beat the base game and Iceborne stories. I probably wouldn’t have gotten to the end without my steam deck giving me additional play time.
For whatever reason this has gotten pretty popular again as of late. I got about 20 hours when I first played it and it didn’t jive. This was before Iceborne came out. So I’m not about the same amount of time in and I’m loving it. It’s the perfect game to play when you don’t know what you want to play. Always another carrot to chase after. I don’t like the big set piece missions, but otherwise I really love the QOL stuff they have that isn’t in the older games. Having to stock pick axes doesn’t improve the game. ;)
Not sure this would be appropriate for a first playthrough, but also consider the ICE mod somewhere down the line. It appears to do a great job of rebalancing things to be a bit more solo/“modern” friendly (ie., reducing the reliance on clutch claw, making certain areas less grindy that don’t make sense to be grindy now that the game is past it’s prime, etc.).
I ran a couple mods and it worked fine online. Unlike a true online game like an MMO where all the important calculations are made on a server, in MHW it seems a lot of that takes place on the client. Which makes sense, since it’s a game that can be played offline in singleplayer.
I think the mods I was running were to make broken monster parts (the lootable part on the ground, like a scale) more visible and a tweak to deco loot tables.
So true! The last time I tried to play Skyrim I was kind of tired of it by the time I got the 137 mods working correctly and never actually bothered to play the dang thing. :)
MHW isn’t quite as bad as Skyrim. There are a few performance/QoL mods I use, and ICE is the only real ‘big’ overhaul-type mod. It does auto-backups of your “real” saves so you can easily switch between ICE and regular game at any time (and it does work online, but only with other ICE players so it isn’t cheaty or anything).
