1683

That I don’t even know what this means (after 100 hours of play) says everything that need be said about MHW’s ability to explain its own mechanics. :) I really enjoyed this game but good lord does it need some tooltips.

This is correct, yes.

1684

The unlocking of recipes is such a fun process, aw!

You get introduced to all that in MHGU, but it is a bit unintuitive, as the help as to be read for it in the menus inside specific tutorials at the beginning of the game. It’s a bit counterintuitive and they may have kept this format in World as well. But the info is supposed to be all there.

1685

Ha, it is known for being a bit obtuse but most of the info is there. Somewhere. ;)

I just mean the Item Box, there’s a menu option there to combine items using the ‘crafting list’. In the old days you would experiment by combining ingredients to discover recipes (which you can still do) but the more modern games let you use the list, which is quicker and less wasteful.

All you really need to know for the traps is that you have to buy trap tools. Then if you’ve been gathering from each area the crafting list will let you unlock recipes pretty easily.

Personally I like exploring the game and letting it reveal itself organically. For a new player there’s no need to rush to capture everything or unlock certain things. Nothing runs out. :)

1686

Ah, OK, I was confused by your earlier description but this (obviously) I’ve done a fair bit of.

Yeah, that’s really the thing that needs a great big waving flag over top of it, because it’s super easy to miss those.

I got a quarter of the way through the game, realized I’d never been shown how to trap anything but that the game clearly thought I knew how, and looked it up. I’m pretty firmly unashamed of going to a wiki when a game utterly fails to explain a core mechanic.

1687

Can confirm smacking the snot out of Brachi is still jolly good fun. Tigrex still a butt munch.

Been busy with stuff and I am going slow through this, but have had some great PuG adventures (and a few scrub city mishaps, for whatever reason those are prettty rare in MH though).

1688

Played waaay too much Iceborne over the weekend. Like, a stupid amount. At this point it basically feels like a sequel, not just an expansion. There is just so much to do! I wrapped up the story Saturday and spent most of that night (and into Sunday morning) farming the final boss.

It’s an astonishing fight. From the music to the mechanics to the gear you can craft, it’s an appropriate cap to one of the best expansions of any game I’ve ever played.

I’m still getting my head around the endgame stuff. It’s completely different from anything in World, and I’m pretty damn excited about it.

Now that I have a pretty solid midgame set, I’m going to go back and finish all the quest chains and optionals. I really do hope they fixed elemental, because right now it looks like we’re going back to a Master’s Touch/Elementless meta.

I really want elemental to be viable, so I can craft all those sets/weapons.

1689

Yeah, I’m wish they would swing things to elemental damage being the way to go too. I feel like in older games it was pretty strong and having different swords to pair with monsters that were weak to those elements made it fun to use different weapons.

These days I just use a Jagras Deathsythe 2 and elementless for everything. Somehow that’s not as fun as a quiver of elemental weapons. Ah well.

1690

It’s such a bizarre choice on Capcom’s part do it this way. Sure yeah, there should be a viable raw damage weapon you can use to fight anything with, but that weapon shouldn’t also be THE BEST CHOICE to fight everything with.

What’s the point of even including elemental in the game?

Part of the reason I started using bow in vanilla world was so I could make a bunch of different sets and weapons to use. Element was always viable for bow and dual blades.

Jury is still out on whether they fixed element for Iceborne, but some of the raw elementless weapons I’m seeing are insanely good…

1691

Building/juggling elemental weapons is definitely one of the things I most enjoyed about playing bow, I’m distressed to hear the meta has swung the other way. On top of everything else, it’s just more satisfying to shoot a monster in the head with something that explodes or freezes or shocks or whatever.

1692

Not to worry, the meta for bow and DBs will still be elemental.

My post was worded poorly. I have high hopes that element will be viable for every weapon, not just bow, dbs, and bowgun.

1693

Yuck, I hope the jury comes back with a good verdict. Because if the neutral “equally good against anything weapon” is also “best weapon” then there really is no reason for elemental to exist.

1694

Yeah, exactly. They did buff elemental damage for Iceborne, but the numbers haven’t been crunched yet to see if it competes with the classic elementless/master’s touch/high affinity builds.

1695

I’ve been thinking about MHW vs Dark Souls while I play. MHW has more complex combat and I would say you need a greater breadth of skills to really be good. In general, it’s faster paced too. It’s funny because I don’t feel like I’m very good at MHW, but I die a lot more in Dark Souls. So far, there have only been a couple fights in MHW that have given me a pretty hard time. Granted, I’m still fairly early on - I think I’m level 8 or 9. In Dark Souls I have had bosses that I really had to try dozens of times to win. I play solo in both games.

I enjoy MHW, just not at the same level as Dark Souls. I prefer the architecture in DS, simpler move sets and somewhat slower pace. I didn’t like the speed of Bloodbourne either. Even when I was younger, I had trouble remembering button placement in arcade games that had multiple buttons.

1696

And that, in a nutshell, is why I vastly prefer MHW. I feel like there’s both a higher skill ceiling and less frustration.

1697

My problem is that if a game doesn’t require me to play better, I don’t know if I’m playing as good as I can :-)

I could be hacking and slashing inefficiently, but if I win I figure I’m doing it right, but I may not be.

1698

If you’re not doing it right solo, you usually figure that out later. I mean it’s not like you can just stand there, so you probably are doing better than you figure you are. If you’re learning the monsters and not getting slammed all the time… seems like you might actually be doing it right!

1699

Thanks :-)

Time to go to the bottom of the Rotten Vale

1700

The arc of difficulty in MH is different than in a souls game. As is the core gameplay loop. There are more systems to interact with in MH when the difficulty starts to ramp up. Souls games generally demand that you git gud right out of the gate.

I understand why MH does it the way that it does, because the game is sooo deep, they have to space out the gut checks/walls.

If you’re heading to the rotten vale, you’re about to encounter one of the early game skill checks.

1701

The first creature I fought now there, the one the player needs to hunt was fast - especially when he got close to dying. It was darting around like crazy. Next mission takes me back to the forest.

1702

I don’t think that’s the one he is talking about… is it? I think the other is… bigger.

This makes me want to play again. I mean I often do but so many games, so little time.