1964

It’s an awesome weapon and the only one I’ve used to date.

1965

Just built that one yesterday before going to bed, but I haven’t tried it yet. I’m using Mighty Gear I so far (the first MR bone one) and it does have higher raw damage than the pukei-pukei one, but it has dragon phials and no white sharpness, so the pukei-pukei does sound like an upgrade.

1966

I’ve been Dual Blades for my entire career with a bit of Horn on the side. I’ll have to look into this Axe business though.

1967

I went up against barioth last night, quaking in my boots expecting a 30+ minute fight, and while it did end up being a brutal 35 minute slugfest that burned through all of my consumables, it wasnt significantly harder than coral pukei pukei or nightshade paolumu. i used the base MR iron escahton longsword and the base MR kulu armor.

i had multiple turf wars during the fight, so i think it’s designed to have barioth run into other monsters to soften him up.

1968

Turf wars in (solo) hunts usually have me using dung pods liberally, but sometimes I’ll wait to see if the other monster helps me somewhat.

BTW, it was fun to see Nightshade Paolumu putting a Barroth to sleep, and I never noticed how similar the Coral Pukei-Pukei and the Paolumu are when flying until I saw both of them flying away in the same direction. ;)

This game is awesome. ;)

1969

Turf wars would be cooler if the other monster did not inevitably somehow decide you are a bigger threat than its natural (and much larger) enemy, and usually pretty quickly, too.

1970

Well, to be fair, you are. ;)

1971

But they can’t know that!

1972

Considering most predators who have contact with humans learn to fear humans (and the fifth fleet isn’t the first one to get to those islands), they can.

1973

I really enjoy this game but it has some irritating quirks. One of the worst at the moment is the way as I’ve ranked up interactions between monsters have gone from an occasional, neat interlude during hunts to a near-constant annoyance. I can’t hunt any damn thing without at least one other monster showing up, sometimes two, and it just happens over and over during a hunt. Want to hunt a Tobi-Kadachi? Well too fucking bad, the Bazelgeuse that’s hanging around is going to poke its nose in every five minutes to disrupt the hunt. Jesus, just…go away.

1974

Sometimes that works to your advantage - turf wars can do a boatload of damage to the monster you’re hunting. Just make sure you always bring dung pods and you should be ok (most of the time).

1975

I’m planning on finally diving into Iceborne this weekend. I usually play MH with a friend, will I have to put up with all the annoying “you can’t play with your friend until they’ve watched the cutscene” issue again, or did they listen to the negative feedback and avoid doing that again? Because it’s easily the worst part of the game, IMO. So disruptive when you’re trying to play together with friends or family.

1976

You’ll have to endure that, I’m afraid. I wasn’t affected by that personally, since I like to play the story solo, but I can see how it can be annoying for many people.

1977

That’s really too bad. Oh well, it wasn’t a dealbreaker in the base game so it won’t be here. I was just reeeeeeally happy to see the end of the story so I didn’t have to put up with it anymore. :)

1978

Speaking of Iceborne, I’m loving it so far. I’m now using the Datura Garden II Switch Axe (final upgrade in the Pukei-pukei tree) and I love it. Purple sharpness (with a little handicraft), high poison, good raw damage… it’s awesome.

Anyway, I’m playing the story missions (as I usually do) solo, and the most difficult battle so far was against Barioth. Took me 41 minutes, that one. In terms of faints so far, hardest battle was against the Acidic Glavenus (2 faints, and had to use a farcaster to save myself from the third).

I’m about 60% into the story content, it seems. Hopefully I’ll get it done in the weekend. We’ll see.

1979

I’ve converted from LS to hammer in IB and I’m loving it. Killed Glavenus and Narcagua so far, still using a mix of Bone and Beo armour and Defender Warhammer V. Most hunts are ~15 minutes, arena Barioth was 11 yesterday when I ran it. At this point I feel like any change in weapon I make would decrease my kill times because I’d have to heal more (Defender weapons take pre-IB augment stones). I think I will also keep Earplugs 5 on all my builds going forward, it’s just so nice to have, especially when your hunts frequently get interrupted not by one but two invading monsters at once.

1980

Most of the time they don’t seem to do anything much to each other before turning on me. I know about dung pods, but it’s like, ok I dung pod this monster and it goes away, and then a couple minutes later my monster runs, and what do you know, the other one is right there and the whole annoying scene plays out yet again. I’ve come very close to losing quarry to timeouts over this, and it’s doubly frustrating when you’re hunting a flying monster, because they go halfway around the world, and when you finally get to them, blammo another monster shows up and ruins the whole thing, rinse, repeat.

1981

Well, I usually throw dung at them when they are unwanted, and when I run into two monsters in the same area (and neither has seen me) I usually wait because, as I said, turf wars can actually help you - and since they are usually brief, you can just follow the monster you’re after when they’re done. Of course, if time is a concern, then it complicates things, but (with dung pods) other monsters are rarely a nuisance in my case, and often an asset to be used, another tool in the hunt.

Of course, I haven’t met Savage Deviljho yet, so that feeling could change soon enough. ;)

1982

I have no augments, and without healing (or having to run away or go back to camp for restocking) my times would certainly be considerably lower.

I should try hammer again someday.

1983

This is very far from my experience, I’m afraid. The wars are brief only in that they fight each other for a short time before turning on me, and they just. keep. coming. back. Like I said, this was not an issue in lower ranks and has only begun to rear its head around HR13 or 14. I’m not sure if it’s just a long string of bad luck or what, but it makes the maps feel very small, when there are only a couple of monsters and they just can’t seem to keep from running into each other (and me) time and time again. Maybe it’ll get better again, but right now it’s really harshing my buzz.