So, apparently, you can't just kill everything here willy nilly because you end up running out of supplies half way through and end up not having enough potions for when the big scary pineapple monster shows up.
Who would have though? Not me, that's for sure.
Again, there's some bad words here so keep it away from children.
So this time there's nothing much exciting going on, it's just me grinding.
Except I lied, because something exciting did happen. It's monster hunter, exciting stuff is bound to happen if you stick around long enough and just so that you get an idea of what I mean by "exciting", I wanted to name this post "Angry Pickle Extravaganza" instead of "Grinding experience" for reasons that will be described later.
This time I'm not "exactly" grinding, since it's not about killing the same thing again and again, this time we're doing an Expedition.
Some Monster Hunter games have a "free gathering" mode, which lets you run around gathering stuff without having to worry about a time limit. Your only enemies here are the monsters and the space in your pockets. 4u's "free gather" mode is called "Expeditions"
Expeditions are like "radiant quests", in the sense that you'll always be able to go on one and that you'll fight random monsters (taken from a specific pool of monsters) in it.
Normally, you'll be able to see at least two of the monsters that will show up in an expedition (sometimes you only get to see one) and after one monster dies another one will spawn, up to a maximum of 5 monsters in total can be fought in an expedition.
Through these expeditions, you can get some basic materials and some other cool stuff that looks too boring to grind but is actually part of the endgame, but you can also just go on these to kill monsters and get Resource Points, which everyone trades for other items so that we don't have to grind for them.
Here's an example of an Expedition's "start" screen.
The best thing about the expeditions is that the monsters there aren't scaled for multiplayer, which means that they have just enough health to be killed by one hunter (that's you).
According to this thing, I'll find a Seltas and a Tetsucabra as the first two monsters, as well as finding some wild cats I can hire. The equipment bias thing isn't important, right now that is.
This is what I've been doing. Just enter an expedition and kill the five guys that show up. There's probably a faster way to build up Resources for trade but this one is fun.
It also brings me to the "exciting" part...
The other three monsters that show up are selected randomly, there's a chance that the first monster that you killed shows up again, but that's a chance...
It's exciting because you can get a thing like Seltas.
Or you could get Deviljho instead...
THE PICKLE COMETH
Look at the chompers this boy has...
I got Deviljho.
I always got Deviljho...
Deviljho, also known as Pickle, Jhon Pickleman, The Devil's Pickle, and so on... he's a monster that first shows up when you're hunting stuff on High Rank to interrupt your hunt, makes you go "I can take him" and then takes half of your health with one bite. Why do they call him Pickle? I'll tell you later.
Needless to say, Jhon here is an enemy that's not to be taken lightly, because he can fuck you up! and fuck you up he will!
Realistically speaking he's not hard, he just hits hard. After fighting him for a while you get used to his attacks and can tell when he's going to do something from a mile away. It doesn't make you invincible, you can always mess up...
Jho was scary the first time I fought him, both in High Rank and G Rank, because this is G rank and, jokes aside, things in G Rank were breed to kill people, so in my mind I had made up the idea I was going to be obliterated by the devil's pickle.
...Which didn't happen.
Live footage of a dead pickle.
I'm still not sure about what happened, am I actually getting better at this? Did I cheese it? Whatever the reason, I actually managed to kill the beast. The first time I had ever killed one in G Rank too. Needless to say, this was a confidence boost.
Turns out, Pickle boy here gives a load of resource points once he dies, so that means that he's a good thing to kill to build up those points and that means that I've been looking out for him whenever I go out on these expeditions!
Now, why do they call him a Pickle? I honestly don't know. The western fans always call monsters by what they apparently look like, so far the only part of Picklejho that actually looks like a Pickle is his tail. Here, you can see it better on this picture:
Just look at this boy, he's so beautiful...
I've killed a few of them now, so I can probably kill myself an expert pickle cutter.
After the first Jho showed up, more and more started appearing in my expeditions, to the point that they basically never left me alone anymore.
He can also vape!
After completing a couple of expeditions you can get a "Rare Expedition" which has monster variants, inside of these you can find Savage Deviljho, which is a Deviljho that's more Deviljho-er than the rest.
There's no pictures for that lad because this time I was turned into chunky salsa and decided to not do Savage Deviljho's until I got better (read: could cheese it).
Aside from performing Pickle genocide I was also farming charms. Charms are an "extra" part of your equipment that come with specific skills, you can use them, in conjunction with the slots and skills of your armor, to get stronger skills.
In short, I was looking for better charms for my armor so that I could cheese stuff so that I could kill Savage Pepino- er, Deviljho
I found a rather easy way to do this in reddit, of all places.
All you need is the right armor (back to grinding I guess) and an Insect Glaive, which is a lance that has a bug as well, which you use to suck the monster's blood/essence/fluids? and strengthen yourself.
I am now one with the bug.
This is my Kinsect, Kimchi. Say hi to Kimchi.
The next part of this involves going on a mining trip at the same time a Rathalos decides to take a stroll.
All you need to do is make out a "route" and mine everything as you go through it and, once you can't put any more charms in your pockets....
...All that remains is to clip this thing's toe nails.
Well, what you have to do is break its back but saying that doesn't have the same "oomph" as what I said before.
This is the reason behind the Insect Glaive, as that weapon as a "vault" button that lets you spam jumping attacks that results in you (eventually) mounting the monster, succeeding twice will break its back.
You can, also break its back without mounting it, but this is technically the fastest way.
Why break its back? Doing that completes the quest's subquest and, after completing it, you can just choose to "End via Subquest"
That let's you come back home with all of the things in your pocket, it's as if you completed the quest, except you didn't. This makes it easy to do the quest over and over again until you get the charms you want.
Now you have to do it again, and again. Because the RNG is masochistic and won't give you the right charms.
A good idea (that I wish I had before I tried this the first time) is to look up "skills for X weapon", because most people don't even know what to farm for and may end up throwing away some good stuff.
Because I did!
Why bother with all of this? Because I enjoy suffering I want to have enough stuff in my inventory to do the rest of G Rank without having to go back over and do expeditions all over again. The endgame is when you're supposed to do that.
You also may have noticed I changed my character's armor... If, you've read the other posts that is.
Me and the Boys.
I was already working on it, I just needed to fight an oversized pineapple monster to finish it. One I'll probably talk about at a later date, because this is the Jhon Pickle episode.
The grind is still going, I wanna make sure I have enough stuff on my boxes so that I can hunt without fear of running out of drugs, because just killing things aimlessly gets boring after a while and killing cool monsters and finding out you can't keep going because you ran out of mojo sucks.
So I'm going to go back to my pickles and hope that I'll get enough from them no never worry about grinding again. And just so that I can kill two birds- er, pickles with one stone I'll also grind for their armors! Because they look cool, no other reason behind it.
Come join me next time, once I'm finished genociding the entire Pickle populace of the world, when I return to hunting cool things and posting stories about the bullshit cool moves they pull.
Here we can see a Huntus Interruptus on its natural habitat. About to eat a drugged meat I put there so that he dies and never bothers anyone again.
