The game is stupid hard. And it only gets worse the higher you climb. But, a lot of the monsters actually have a lot of tells that you slowly start picking up on as you fight them. They do specific moves after specific sounds or movements. They have cycles of animations. Nergigante has a lot of these. For example, after his spikes go black, you can’t hit him on those points, and at some point soon he will do a roar into his massive dive attack that is a near one hit KO in most cases. You can easily dodge this with your own superman dive timed right, so you gotta make sure to dodge that one move. Bring in 2 max potions and an ancient potion and use one of them the first time you get hit. This actually saved me from dying to a dive once, with my buffs and defense. There is also a defense potion.
One thing also i’d suggest is eating for feline moxie. 6 of the certain color gives you a chance at moxie (and you can use a voucher to ensure that its activated). It will let you survive lethal attacks once, very nice. You can also get defense M (L if you have every food item in the row unlocked) by using the fish category, i think. the 2nd category of things.
finally, consider doing Nergigante online. It’s a hard fight, it’s certainly a large wall even for experienced MH players. I actually find it a lot of fun online, whereas it is frustrating to try solo haha.
as for melee or ranged being easier, I always find it easier to be right up on the monster. You want to be right next to his legs and right up close. I’ve found its easier to predict and react to them if you are right next to them. If you are in front of them, it can be dangerous depending on the monster. but I also use the charge blade so it’s got a bit of leeway in how to handle things with the slide, shield, charged shield, and charge points.
Not an expert here but on PS4 when I hit the cannibal monster I had to stop for a bit, gear up, and practice. It was one of those as opposed to the ones I just kind of fought hard with. It seems like she<?> is a learning bump.
One of the skills that you absolutely should be taking in singleplayer if you’re just trying to push through the story is Fortify - particularly in the early stages of HR. Ideally you’d pick this up through a jewel but you can also get it via the Jagras Coil.
After your first death you’ll get +10% attack and +15% defense.
After your second that turns into +20% attack and +30% defense.
That’s an absolutely huge buff to defense and you’ll feel it. You’d be hard pressed to get a buff like that through any 1 point level 1 slot skill, and it’s one of the lowest rank jewels. Very useful for pushing through story walls like Nergi.
Fortify isn’t a great idea in multi because your carts are far more limited, but if you’re running an investigation solo and it’s allowing more than 1 faint you should probably be taking it as an insurance of sorts.
I’d also recommend stun resist (2-3, flash raptor arms and barroth boots will help with this) and fast eating as it will be a lot easier to recover when you do make a mistake. Fortify and stun resist will help you avoid getting deleted in one combo and fast eating will let you top your health bar up quickly. At the very least this should help you learn the fight with less frustration.
Jagras helm alpha, Jagras coil alpha, tzi-tzi gloves beta and barroth boots beta will give you 1 fortify, 3 speed eating and 3 stun resist.
Alternatively you could swap out the tzi-tzi gloves for ingot vambraces and barroth boots for the alpha version if you want more health.
Building health or stun resist via your charm is also a pretty good idea. Basically leave the attack-centric builds until after you’ve learned the fights.
Yes it is! Couple things about that, and forgive me if it’s already been mentioned, but the game not only throws skill check encounters at you, it throws gear checks as well. I’d never tell anyone how to play a Monster Hunter game, but if you’re having trouble working through HR you should try and craft a full set of fully upgraded HR armor ASAP. It doesn’t even really matter what you pick. Make whatever you have mats for (the zora set is super solid right out of the gate and if you do the zora quests whenever they pop up you’ll score enough mats quickly) and use your armor cores to fully upgrade each piece.
Defense is not a meaningless stat in this game. It’s HUGE. And the game never really stops reminding you of that. Even in the super end-end game I have to keep my eye on my defense stat.
And yeah, also armor buffs. They all stack. And the armorskin potion lasts till you die, so no need to worry about a timer on that one.
That may be the case but Anjanath kept wrecking me and I had done a ton of side quests already, so I had the most upgraded gear I could get at the time. That didn’t stop him from taking massive amount of health in a single attack.
Definitely. Especially when you hit high rank. I remember people being extremely mad about the HR Pukei Pukei (one of the earliest HR missions) and I had no trouble, but it was because I was already gearing myself up for encounters. Reading the monster guide, I knew that the pukei was weak to lightning, and I had just crafted a strong lightning greatsword. I also donned my poison resist gear.
I had more trouble with the HR feral palicoe guys throwing bombs than the pukei pukei.
Also, don’t forget flashbugs, palico flashes, traps, bombs etc. Those are all very fair to use. I know in RPG’s it is tough to break the habit of using consumables, but man the game is rough if you aren’t trapping, bombing, using consumables, buffing. You are basically putting yourself on hard mode.
That is one thing I love about this game. Farming isn’t too bad, I put on a podcast run around the environment picking up the items I need, killing monsters randomly if I feel like it. If you have a hard time with a monster, a lot of times it really helps to change up your tactics. I was getting creamed by the HR rathian, and when I switched to the longsword, it was a piece of cake. Turned out getting that tail cut off was super important, as well as having built a dragon longsword. Sometimes you just have to change it up to get out of that rut. Also, going online helps a lot too… most of the time. You always can get that dual blades guy that gets killed 3 times and fails the mission.
I am, but that still puts me at ~240 defense at this stage. Enough vs regular monsters like Rathian, Anjanath, etc, but I just carted like 6 times vs Black Diablos before I finally captured it (Expedition mode). If the hitboxes were a little better I’d be perhaps less tilted but I think the game throws a little too much BS at the player to be enjoyable.
I think I’ll have to find a good hit&run solution because standing next to monsters, trying to string even basic combos together isn’t really working to me. And LBG is boring as shit.
Congrats on downing the big guy! But like, carting on difficult monsters (and black diablos is one of the hardest hitting monsters in the game) is just the way the game goes. But if you managed to down a black diablos I think you’re well on your way to mastering the mechanics.
And defense aside, there are tricks to every encounter that makes life way easier. Screamer pods and baiting Diablos into charging at stone pillars for example.
The Steamlink and controller worked quite well. And the game is very nice, reminds me of the psp days where I will spent hours hunting for weapons and armour uogrades.
BUT I realised I just cannot afford the time anymore to enjoy games like this. 1 hour in and I have still yet to start a mission because of the walking and compulsory cutscenes.
My estimate is that each game session even after all the compulsory stuff will last at least 30mins because of the setups and travel distances.
So I refunded. I’ll just have to experience MHW through the sharing of you guys and gals. :)
Yes I understand that. It’s just that the formulae didnt change so much. Everything is much more polished but the changing of equipment, setups questing, forging, upgrades etc all require lots of time.
So it’s sadly a no go for me. But no worries, I can live vicariously through you.
yes, usually you have to hunt a monster in a specified time (i think for the most part the time limit is 50 minutes) or else it will leave the area and the quest is failed
If you ever get a little more time, saving your sets and switching between them saves a lot of time. The cut scenes and updating your gear calms down a bit of a ways in.
I find it worthwhile when I only have an hour or two some nights, everyone is easily ranking up faster than I am, but yeah it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
Saving sets is especially useful if you’re running elemental setups or you main one of the bowguns. It also comes in handy when you’ve built a set to deal with a mechanism of a specific monster.
Note that you can save both the inventory setup and the equipment setup, and the equipment setup will remember any jewels that you’ve slotted.
Your pouch isn’t large enough to carry all of the ammo types at once if you’re a HBG or LBGer (why Capcom, why???) so you’ll basically want a seperate inventory setup for every bowgun that you use regularly.
I don’t do range weapons, although I really should try a few different weapons while I am progressing so slowly with my sister, but I imagine anyone who is under a tight time schedule, the saving sets would be especially handy.
I read that MH games were super popular for breaks and lunch hours which suggests quick sessions are totally possible. I don’t know if the cut scenes are as long though. I don’t recall Tri having such long ones.
I think I have finally broken through the invisible ceiling yesterday - friend helped me farm Nergigante a few times, so I was able to make a few pieces of high end game armor (Dragonking patch, 2x Dober, 1x Nergi) as well as Nergi’s Charged Blade, which made all the difference in the end. Sadly I realised I’m not good enough (yet, anyway) to play without a shield so damage wise this was the best solution. In any case - took down Black Diablos (investigation this time) again and I only carted once!
edit: I will say this though, trying out many different weapons made me a lot better at handling the CB. Greatsword in particular was a great learning experience on how to time attacks, which is a huge help when you want to unload the super amped elemental discharge on the monster’s head.
