It's monster hunter time. These photos are brought to you by my phone's not so terribly bad camera, because capture cards are expensive and, as I've previously demonstrated in several other posts, I am a poor Venezuelan man that lacks the monies to get said means to record/take pictures.
So, I've been playing Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate extensively (it's the only thing I've played for WEEKS) and I'm pretty much burned out already because of the pace at which I'm going.
While most people spend their time playing Monster Hunter World (the newest entry) I decided to play an oldie, because most Monster Hunter players wouldn't shut up about how 4 is the greatest thing ever made since toast bread and not because neither my PC or my wallet can't handle World.
What I'm showing you here today is the product of several weeks of constant and painful grinding, time I could have probably spent doing something more productive or better with my life, like; taking advantage of this quarantine and learn new stuff, or work out or something.
I regret none of it.
For those that have no idea of what I'm talking about why are you here Monster Hunter is a series of games where you go hunting monsters over and over again until you have enough monster body parts to make a set of armor out of them.
The game has different "ranks" that you go through which have stronger monsters in them. You start with Low Rank and then move on to High Rank, which is where the first "separation" in gear comes (basically you get to make the same set of armor you made in Low Rank again but now it's stronger).
After High Rank comes G Rank, which is "Dark Souls in Hard Mode" difficulty and what I've been working on unlocking for the past couple of weeks.
To get to hunt in said ranks you first have to unlock them, you do this by clearing "Key Quests" which pit you against progressively difficult monsters. It's easier said than done, seriously.
Because the monsters get more difficult you have to get better gear (otherwise you'll be obliterated) which is also easier said than done.
Getting a cool set of armor in High Rank can be difficult when you realize you need rare drops and that, because the game has been designed by masochists who know that their fans are also masochists, the rare drops all have drop rates of 1 to 3% or so.
Of course, you could also do Mixed Armor sets, where you combine parts from different armors to get one with the best skills for your playstyle, which is what you have to do once you reach the strongest monsters of the game, but you still need the rare drops for some armor pieces...
...Did I mention that once you jump between Low to High/High to G you have to craft a different armor set from the same monster(but now on this new rank) because the version from the other rank is wet tissue paper compared to its higher-ranked counterpart?
Yeah. Fun times.
That armor there? I worked on that for several days of nonstop hunting. Thankfully, the monster I fought was fun (and frustrating enough) that it wasn't so bad (I'm lying of course).
Why are you playing this if it's that frustrating you ask? Well dear reader, that's because I like suffering!
...And because the feeling of overcoming the most stupid monsters and crafting that one weapon or armor you've been working on for a while is like a drug to me.
So, back on track. I've been working on reaching G rank for the past couple of weeks as that's where the "true" game technically begins, it's also where the suffering begins, as everything can one shot you and you need to be properly prepared for every single fight.
Instead of rushing through the key quests (like I usually do) I decided to take my time and slowly grind all the stuff I need to make my weapons stronger, because while High Rank armor is not so good once you get to the meat of G rank, weapons aren't affected by the armor rule and are instead upgraded with the new, stronger, monster parts.
This doesn't mean I don't need the rare drops to upgrade my stuff.
So here I am, day after day, killing stuff until I get them to drop their crystallized poop so that I can make a sword I can use to kill the other monster's face faster.
It's a grueling process.
So, to get to G rank I need to kill a monster that's weak to the Dragon Element and to get my Dragon Weapon up to snuff I need to genocide a species of gentlemen who are weak to fire, so first I need to make a better fire sword and for that I need to kill me some Raths.
This here is a Rathian, they're all female and they usually stick around their own nest to protect their eggs.
She's not really my target, the other monster of this quest is but I'm taking this one because I don't have a High Rank quest that only has a Rathalos.
Rathalos are the boys of the relationship (Literally, all Rathalos are males), and who I want to grind right now. I have to kill him and his wife however, such are the demands of this quest.
Because I'm an idiot, I didn't realize the "solo Rathalos" quest appears in "Caravan Quests" which are like the story mode of the game and which eventually reaches High Rank difficulty, with all of the rewards that entails.
Once I dispose of the wife I head towards the widower, who by now has realized that I killed his bae and is, understandably, very angry.
By this point I realize that I'm single-handedly responsible for orphaning more than a dozen baby Rathalos/ians.
Meh, I've probably done worse by now.
This process is repeated several times, until Rathalos gets me a Rathalos Ruby or until I give up and go do something else until I inevitably come back to do the same thing over and over again.
After a couple of fights (and no Rubies) I went the other way and finished a couple of Caravan Quests (to get the solo Rathalos experience), eventually getting the parts I needed, after a long while.
Then comes the suffering. See, I wanted to upgrade my stuff until I could no longer do it with the High Rank materials, in other words, until the moment it needed G Rank parts.
Rath stuff just so happens to, eventually, pit you against their "subspecies" which are more annoying than the others...
So, while I did get to upgrade my stuff I now was presented by an ever more difficult grind. Now I had to prepare for a different monster and that meant grinding for different stuff.
First I had to go hunt a Zinogre, which is admittedly one of my favorite monsters, if it wasn't for the fact that his drop rates are absolute dung.
Thunderdoggo goes woooooooooo!
His fights are fun, most of his attacks are heavily telegraphed so you know that they're coming and can prepare accordingly, but the real love I have for him comes from the constant action and reaction that the fight has; You're always moving, reacting and acting and exploiting whatever openings he has while making sure you don't give any yourself.
It's a fun monster to fight. Makes the grind easier.
Then there's the other dude. Black Gravios.
I hope whoever made this thing stubbed their toe on something and that it was really painful.
Not much to say about this big boy, except I hate him.
Your weapon needs to be sharp to hit his legs, otherwise it's going to bounce off several times until his legs break under the pressure of your sheer stubbornness and refusal to hit something else.
He also farts fire, like, all the time, so you have to keep an eye out for that.
He's not a hard thing to kill, he's just designed to be annoying. Easily my least favorite monster.
The worst part here is that I had to kill him a couple of times... He just wasn't giving me the right drops.
Eventually I got em and made the weapon I needed to kill a Silver Rathalos, which is like a normal Rathalos except silver and faster.
Your weapon can also easily bounce of his body just like Gravios but I played it smart and made a Switch Axe, which comes with a "screw your iron skin I have hax" mode and lets me cut through.
The worst part of hunting Silver Rathalos is realizing you need to hunt more Silver Rathalos...
...At this point things got a little out of hand and I had to hunt even more progressively annoying monsters.
Here's a Rajang.
Here's an angry Rajang.
So I said "screw this" and went for High Rank's final boss. Dalamadur.
Big snek is angery.
I would like to say that I did this fight first try but I won't because I didn't, it took me two tries because his fight is absolute crap.
The music was cool yeah, but he sucks. Hope I never have to fight this thing again, thank you very much game.
Big snek is ded.
I had to kill another thing before finally getting G rank but it was easier compared to this hellish snake.
...Not that it matters because I still need to work on making my gear better, but hey, at least I'm at where I wanted to be.
Come join me next time, when G Rank inevitably eats me alive and spits me out broken and battered.