Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate: Low Rank Edition

[dAfTiE]

Finally got my shit transferred from the 3ds to the new 3ds xl.
The nub works much better for camera control in mh4 than I thought it would.

 

[Dinkin_Flicka]

Good to hear. I plan on getting a N3DS XL so the kid can play with my current one and was curious how responsive the nub was for camera movement.

 

[dAfTiE]

Good to hear. I plan on getting a N3DS XL so the kid can play with my current one and was curious how responsive the nub was for camera movement.

There's not much movement to it, it pretty much feels like one of those Thinkpad nubs.
Only took one weapon training mission to get used to it though.
Don't think I'd enjoy playing something like a first person shooter with it, but for camera controls it works well.

 

[Dinkin_Flicka]

That's fine for the FPS's, Monster Hunter is pretty much the only 3DS game I plan on putting a bunch of hours into, possibly the Zelda's. Using the CPP now and loving that thing, just hate having to switch it in and out when the kid wants to play Mario.

 

[Gfreak]

So decided to try out an insect glave 'cause i had the mats for a decent one at my level...and is it just me? Or is this shit completely OP lmao. It seems so easy to use compared to a hammer lol.

Stealth glave (poison) is what i'm using atm.

 

[dAfTiE]

So decided to try out an insect glave 'cause i had the mats for a decent one at my level...and is it just me? Or is this shit completely OP lmao. It seems so easy to use compared to a hammer lol.

Stealth glave (poison) is what i'm using atm.

The movement speed with the weapon drawn and the ability to launch yourself on top of a monster from anywhere is pretty great.

Not fucked around with it all that much, but the little drips of information you get at the start of the game about the upgrade process and feeding kinsects and all that shit just made my eyes glaze over.

I think I'll have another go with it once I can get a new one built, will see.

 

[Crono139]

Today!

 

[Dinkin_Flicka]

Downloaded the DLC stuff, but going to be a while before I'll see any of it. 2 hunts away from hitting 4* guild, should hit that this afternoon. Guild rank climbing has been going pretty quick since I'm just burning through the key quests and hitting up canteen quests when they pop up.

Ended up ditching my cats too, monsters were just to unpredictable on who they were going to target and ended up missing to many openings. A lot easier to predict when you know they're going to turn towards you. Nothing worse then trying to get the monster towards the middle of the zone and the damn cats are busy fighting him right at the zone edge or at the top of the ledge when you're trying to lure him down a step to work on a mount.

 

[SeefourDC]

Alright so a quick update as to where my bro and I are at. We both made it into Caravan 8 and have online 5 unlocked. The game seemed very easy up until this point but I think we finally ran into some issues moreso with the choices we made gear wise than the mobs we were struggling with and combat length fatigue. The Pink Rathian that separates Guild 4 from 5 we beat on the second try but beating him the second time to advance him took 3 hours. I think that we started off with a couple bad fights the second time around and then got tired of how long it was taking so we took too many chances.

A big issue is that we haven't upgraded anything since guild 3 and caravan 4 really. We're both still wearing our LR armor for the most part (for the effects). I think we also had to adjust to the fact that we didn't really have to learn anything about mobs until now because we are both excellent twitch gamers. (thanks dark souls etc.) I'll be farming the seltas queen for a bit to get upgraded sharpness + 1 gear and then move on to finish out HR. I also realized that as much as my ideas on which weapon trees to follow for endgame make sense that those trees don't develop linearly so I need some other weapons to fill the gaps. The clear best hammer trees IMO are the tigrex line late and the gravios line early late game. Only problem is they both have terrible sharpness mid game in their lines and that's hurting me and my damage a lot. I am working up the seltas line atm and might do a nercsylla as well so that I get some earlier + sharpness weapons at higher tiers. It's also tough because hammer seems to require the sharpness ability mid game to really excel.

Beating bosses isn't so much the issue... it's taking 20 minutes to beat them because my sharpness is so low my target options are minimal and then I get tired and do stupid things.

BTW Dinkin if you want some assistance on speeding up Guild let me know when your playing times are. I need to look up my nintendo friend code/figure out where that is so I can post it here. I keep forgetting to when I have my 3ds in front of me.

 

[SeefourDC]

The movement speed with the weapon drawn and the ability to launch yourself on top of a monster from anywhere is pretty great.

Not fucked around with it all that much, but the little drips of information you get at the start of the game about the upgrade process and feeding kinsects and all that shit just made my eyes glaze over.

I think I'll have another go with it once I can get a new one built, will see.

As someone who is new to the entire MH game experience your thoughts echo my own. That weapon is horribly complicated! I was reading up on it today and the worst part seems like if you build the insect wrong you have to make a new weapon each time. I can't imagine how awful that would be late game when your last create is 4 terrible bosses ago!

 

[Dinkin_Flicka]

Alright so a quick update as to where my bro and I are at. We both made it into Caravan 8 and have online 5 unlocked. The game seemed very easy up until this point but I think we finally ran into some issues moreso with the choices we made gear wise than the mobs we were struggling with and combat length fatigue. The Pink Rathian that separates Guild 4 from 5 we beat on the second try but beating him the second time to advance him took 3 hours. I think that we started off with a couple bad fights the second time around and then got tired of how long it was taking so we took too many chances.

A big issue is that we haven't upgraded anything since guild 3 and caravan 4 really. We're both still wearing our LR armor for the most part (for the effects). I think we also had to adjust to the fact that we didn't really have to learn anything about mobs until now because we are both excellent twitch gamers. (thanks dark souls etc.) I'll be farming the seltas queen for a bit to get upgraded sharpness + 1 gear and then move on to finish out HR. I also realized that as much as my ideas on which weapon trees to follow for endgame make sense that those trees don't develop linearly so I need some other weapons to fill the gaps. The clear best hammer trees IMO are the tigrex line late and the gravios line early late game. Only problem is they both have terrible sharpness mid game in their lines and that's hurting me and my damage a lot. I am working up the seltas line atm and might do a nercsylla as well so that I get some earlier + sharpness weapons at higher tiers. It's also tough because hammer seems to require the sharpness ability mid game to really excel.

Beating bosses isn't so much the issue... it's taking 20 minutes to beat them because my sharpness is so low my target options are minimal and then I get tired and do stupid things.

BTW Dinkin if you want some assistance on speeding up Guild let me know when your playing times are. I need to look up my nintendo friend code/figure out where that is so I can post it here. I keep forgetting to when I have my 3ds in front of me.

You guys are making some good progress. Just hit 4* guild quests and had to shut down. Going to try and clear some more quests in the morning. Hoping to hit 5* guild by the end of the weekend. At 6* it opens up the Zenogre U armor which has Evasion and Focus, and I have a charm to gem in Quick Sheath. This set will be a nice upgrade from the Tetsucabra S set, and will last me up to G Rank.

Is your brother still sticking with the Great Sword, and if so how does he go about attacking? Is he spamming combos or using hit and run with charage attacks?

When I was new to the Great Sword I would spam combos until I read how the damage was calculated. The fastest combo you can pull off with the GS is probably an unsheathed overhead slash > slap > over head slash. This combo can be repeated over and over, but does roughly the same damage as a single level 3 charge attack.

Once I changed my tactics up and got my timing down to land charged strikes instead of combos, my monster clear times went down as well as healing items.

Here is a damage table from MH3U that hasn't changed much. So as long as you guys arn't using the new weapons should be able to calculate how much damage your doing for your weapons.

http://monsterhunter.wikia.com/wiki/Monster_Hunter_3_Damage_Formula

 

[SeefourDC]

He primarily uses charge attacks and attempts to finish the combo that follows them. I actually think the damage problems are more on my end atm. I don't so much think it's strategy either as I finish most mobs fairly quickly in general; however, some of these last few mobs have had a bit higher sharpness barriers and that's been a real problem for me with hammers. I'm using a green sharpness weapon atm because by my calculation it has the highest damage possible; however, I would have a plethora of weapons if not for giving up on 2 weapon trees that don't end very well late game too early and one other odd situation. I killed S. Magala no problem, and then I went to kill it again but lately I've been forgetting to food buff myself for some reason so I abandoned to redo that. Now I can't retry S. Magala anymore for some reason... Because of that I also don't have the best of the Magala line of weapons either which would provide another line of weapons with white/blue sharpness for the hardier mobs.

This is really the issue. My hit boxes are very small atm so I have to REALLY know exactly where my hit windows are to get any damage in. It's interesting because when we killed R. Khezu he had to afk and I basically killed the whole thing by myself in 10 minutes but P. Rathian's hit box options are really damage limiting during many attack animations. Basically anything where the wing blocks the head I get a deflect on non-charged attacks. I also can't hit the legs so essentially the mobs belly is a no go as well. This is also a problem I face on the upgraded Gravios. I can essentially not hit anything without a deflect. The funny thing is if I could kill the Gravios I would have an upgrade 6 gameplay hours ago but to do it will be a 30ish minute fight for each kill just hitting the head... no fun =(

Edit to add: Being an MH noob I think I undervalued how sharpness could possibly effect weapons outside of pure raw damage output. Damage wise I have the most damaging weapon for my tier of weapon and I have access to the mob to upgrade it... the only problem is the mob I need to kill to upgrade it is locked behind my current weapons sharpness deficiency. This irony would be funny if it wasn't so darn frustrating...

 

[Dinkin_Flicka]

I gotcha. Green sharpness starts to get a lot of bounce back in high rank. You could make the Centaur Head Axe right now with the mats available. You would give up a little bit of the raw damage for some water element damage, but it has a good chunk of blue sharpness(without hadndicraft) to last through an engagement through a single zone before the monster flees. Not you're ideal weapon, but it could be a descent bridging weapon to farm the materials for the one you're shooting for. You can either create this hammer from scratch or evolve from a lower tier hammer. You may have the parts on hand now to craft and don't realize it since the primary materials needed to be traded for at the Wyporium.

 

[SeefourDC]

Man I'm really in a boondoggle atm cause everything requires farming. Luckily the seltas queen HR is an easy kill for me and drops all the mats for a white/blue weapon and the high rank armor I need. I just have to kill it about 12 times lol. It's also weirdly non sharpness resistant for a monster literally covered in armor... So strange what is and isn't armored up...

 

[Dinkin_Flicka]

I'm not sure how up to date the Kiranico site is for armor skills, but looking at the Seltas S gear, only 2 pieces have Handicraft on them for a total of 4 points. Not sure if that's the set you're trying to build, but you may have to mix and match to Handicraft up.

Looks like you can still piece together Handicraft on a HR set of armor pretty easily with.

Gravios S helm +1
Velosprey S chest +2
Seltas S arms +2
Seltas S flauds +2
Zenogre S legs +2

This would give you 9 points to Handicraft without gems or a charm. You wouldn't have much of any other skills though, but Sharpness would be sitting at 5 points and could be gemmed in.


Also, fuck the Purple Gypseros. I spent half the fight climbing up and down to get on the same plane as him. His poison was stupid strong too. His flash attack was also a bit quicker, and before I got the timing down from it he KO'd me once from a string of attacks from almost full health when I was stuck in a corner. Just couldn't create any distance when he was in rage mode and the poison was just draining my health down.

 

[Dinkin_Flicka]

Bleh! Had a knock down drag out fight with Pink Rathian. I almost had her and sent her running away limping, but had run out antidotes and potions and she had poisoned me right before she left. Didn't have enough life left to weather it out and died on my way to the final zone.

I would have had her, but Gypseros kept showing up and between the 2 of them I would get poisoned and chewed threw my stack of antidotes. Kept hitting him with dung bombs and would run off, but P.Rath would escape to a new zone and the damn Gypseros would be there.

I had brought gear to make more potions, but didn't think to bring stuff to make the antidotes. Next time I'm going to go in loaded to the gills with consumable potions, antidotes, mega neutriants, flash bombs, and traps. I got to greedy a few times too trying to get one last hit in off jumping attacks and ended up eating to many poison tails. Will definitely play smarter next time. This is really the first hunt that has given me any problem.

 

[SeefourDC]

Ugh Dinkin trust me when I tell you I know what you are going through on the Rathian. BTW I will say this... if I ended up with two bosses I would just abandon quest. I don't know if this was always an MH thing but there is really almost no disadvantage to just restarting when things go totally sideways as all you lose is your entry fee and the money on food. That's pocket change IMO.

So I'm basically following your gear plan you laid out for a HR armor set with only one difference. One really nice thing I recommend taking advantage of is Torso Up on Tet legs. It doubles whatever your chest bonus is and you can really work that to your advantage on early armors. But basically I'm doing exactly what you suggested atm.

 

[SeefourDC]

Also I wanted to thank you for posting that damage chart. I made some rather small modifications to my strategy based on that and it's radically reduced my kill times. Primarily making sure I don't drop out of the double charge before it's golf swing time to get the extra 30% damage. I've also been using more charge attacks on downed opponents. I had read someone say they like to use R1+X into the triple pound on downed bosses and thought that was the way to go but I've realized it's MUCH better to double charge into 5x spins+ golf swing and then you get a triple pound anyway. It's SO MUCH MORE damage in the same span of time. I tested this on Seltas queen and was able to cut about 33% of the fight time off. YOU ROCK! The other advantage to this method is that it rarely matters what my weapon sharpness is since hammer charged attacks have a severe DGAF attitude about mob armor. Pretty awesome.

 

[Dinkin_Flicka]

Right on man, I'm glad you found it helpful. There is just so much to learn about MH, it's impossible to pick it all up from the start learning it fresh. You really need to take it in chunks as you've put all the other pieces in motion. I love how deep the game is, but I can see where it would overload people and turn them away.

 

[Dinkin_Flicka]

Ugh Dinkin trust me when I tell you I know what you are going through on the Rathian. BTW I will say this... if I ended up with two bosses I would just abandon quest. I don't know if this was always an MH thing but there is really almost no disadvantage to just restarting when things go totally sideways as all you lose is your entry fee and the money on food. That's pocket change IMO.

So I'm basically following your gear plan you laid out for a HR armor set with only one difference. One really nice thing I recommend taking advantage of is Torso Up on Tet legs. It doubles whatever your chest bonus is and you can really work that to your advantage on early armors. But basically I'm doing exactly what you suggested atm.

Was going over the gear plan since I thought it might be nice to make it as well and there was an issue with my original post. It will get you to 9 with Handicraft and 5 points to Sharpness, but you wouldn't be able to gem them both in since Handicraft Jewels and Sharpness Jewels work against each other. A +1 to Handicraft jewel has -1 to Sharpness, and the opposite stats on the Sharpness jewel.

With your mentioned set using the Tetsucabra S legs for the Torso Up, you would hit +6 to Attack Up and 6 gem slots(2 dual slots and 2 single slots), leaving you with a few more options. You could either gem in Attack Up Medium and burn up all the gem slots, or you could gem in Attack Up Small using 3 gem slots and the other 3 gem slots could be used with a good charm that has something with +6 to a skill and activate that.

Then you would still need 1 final gem slot for the Handicraft gem which would either go in your weapons gem slot if it has one, or in charms gem slot if it has one. If neither do, it kind of cuts your options down.