Lockdown 2020: A Monster Hunter is Iceborne

Yummy!

Hi Jan! Excited to see you playing this. I main hammer not charge blade so I don't have tips that way, but I do have some more general advice.

1) Don't feel that you should only get attack skills. Skills that boost your attack damage or crit rate are great, but they don't do you any good if you're dead! Stuff like evade extender, earplugs, power prolonger (great for charge blades), health boost etc. can really make the difference during a hunt, especially when you're learning how to fight a monster.

2) Learn how to use the clutch claw. It can be a great way to corral a monster in a certain direction, expose weak spots, or send a monster running into a wall. When you get good at that last one you can really abuse the ability and do serious damage.

3) There's no rush. The Guardian armour makes it so you can bee-line right to Iceborne, but vanilla MHW gives you a steady hill to climb in terms of learning how monsters can behave. You don't have to complete every single quest or anything, but I've heard some new players being overwhelmed because monsters in Iceborne are a whole different breed from what you fight in vanilla in terms of damage, behaviour and abilities.

4) Pet Poogie!

@meissnerd: I mean, if he just never gets hit who needs any of that?

Oh sweet damn I am excited that Jan is following up on this. My favorite GB solo streamer playing my second favorite game of this gen right after he finished my first favorite.

Literal dream stream!

I haven't even watched yet but I will echo comments I see about the value of vanilla MHW. Playing some of the vanilla MHW will help you understand the monster achetypes (kadachi vs paolomu vs etc, etc) before you face more powerful and slightly different versions of those monsters later on. With the Guardian set you could play through those earlier monsters with a lot less fear of failure and 'download' some movesets.

Also, be prepared to do a lot of grinding. Get in the habit of pressing 'b'/circle whenever things are getting highlighted. I feel like if my inventory isn't full by the end of a quest I did something wrong.

Not calling this "Iceborne Ultimatum" or "Iceborne Legacy" is a crime. This is a pretty good title though.

@yoshimitz707: with evade extender he can do just that

I t s h a p p e n i n g

Grant us eye... Oops wrong game.

Thanks Jan! Love your intros (and your entire streams!)

@pythagosaurus: Yep Jan has become my most watched GB staff member these past few months putting Vinny in second, I never thought that would happen.

@meissnerd: For sure, for someone starting out skills like Health Boost, Divine Blessing, Steadfast (stun res) and Fortitude are a Hunters best friend. And the defender weapons are so strong you really don't need to increase there attack power for a long time.

Very excited about this. Charge Blade might be the most complicated weapon in the game but it's also the most satisfying when you master it.

Jan, you might want to look into some mods. They can really cut out a lot of the excessive grind. Also some quality of life things like light pillars on material drops and slinger ammo.

Ohhhh yeah baby, I was waiting for someone to stream some MH ever since quarantine started. There's already some good advice out there, so I'll just point out a few things I noticed in the stream:

• Make a habit of gathering the resources you run across, especially the mining spots. Those ores are very important for upgrading equipment, and you'll thank yourself later when you think "Oh hey I want to try out this new weapon/updgrade tree... And I need 5 malachite ores for one of the early upgrades! Good thing I have 100 of those!"
• Those plants or rocks that turn into items like "--- pods" aren't items you keep on you; They're just ammo for your Slinger. There's not much point in picking up more and swapping them out unless you have a specific Slinger pod you want to use (e.g. swapping out rocks for scatternuts because they can flinch the monster reliably). You can see which ammo type you have equipped at the bottom right of your screen. Also, important tip: Slinger ammo you bring with you as items, like flashpods, can be equipped without dropping the "natural" ammo you have, such as rocks. You can equip/unequip these "item" Slinger ammo whenever.
• You can carve most large monsters 3 times, and sometimes more if they're "Elder Dragons" or other particularly large types of monsters.
• Look into using the radial menu item shortcuts. It's very handy!
• You're going to hear this over and over, but you should go look for weapon tutorials on Youtube; You were having a lot of fun with the CB there, but you've only scratched the surface of what it can do!

Also, here are some basic systems tips that I like to tell people, mostly about the options menu:

• Under "Game Settings", you can adjust how your character shows up when obscured, whether to show your headgear or not (gotta flaunt that pompadour), and whether you want your Scout Flies to snap your neck around every time they acquire a target.
• Under "Controls", you can turn on/off "auto-sheathing" (I like turning it off). But more importantly, change the "radial menu settings" to Type2. This means you use items in your radial menu by pressing in R3 instead of when it flicks back to neutral. I have no idea why they made the latter the default, but it's SO PRONE TO ERRORS.
• Under "Camera", change the camera style to "Target Camera". The default, Focus Camera, is absolute garbage for this game. When you lock on to a monster with R3, Focus Camera will automatically keep it in the center of the screen, which mean you get to have your orientation f*ed up every time the monster lunges. Which is to say, VERY OFTEN. Target Camera means your camera can be snapped back to the locked on monster by pressing L1. On a related note, I suggest you change the "Target Settings" to "Large Monsters Only", which will only let you lock on to large monsters, and setting the "Camera Distance" to "Far", which will zoom out the camera a bit and let you see more of your surroundings.
• Bonus: Under "Audio", I suggest setting the voice and sound effects a smidge lower, and bumping up the BGM relatively (and set the Dynamic Range to Wide). This might only be good for your personal enjoyment since you have to set most of the volume pretty low for streams; But I think the music in this game is top notch, and letting it get a little more breathing room from the sound effects makes the fights feel SO good, IMO.

Sorry for the wall of text... Hope you have fun with the game Jan! It's hands down my favorite game of the past few years.

This looks fun. I bought the game after watching the stream but as someone who games solo I am worried that I will hit a wall. Is it even possible to solo this game?

@dcav: Totally! Some fights might be harder or easier based on you going solo. There are a few fights late-game that were made for multiplayer but even those can be soloed at a certain point.

@Jan

Charge Blade is so fun to use and you haven't even seen half of what else it can do. Some basic things to know

1. Use sword to charge your phials if you have none get them to orange before you store them if you have two or more just get them to yellow this will give you full phials.

2. I recommend getting your phials charged before you start a fight you can do this by attacking any small or large creature even after its slayed you can still charge them on there corpse.

3. The fastest way to charge is on PS4 controller triangle, hold circle (until you see the blade flash red) then release, and triangle.

4. You can also charge your sword and shield you will need to have filled phials and the more you have the longer they stay charged so you will want to have all your phials filled most of the time. First you need to charge the shield by pressing triangle, triangle+circle, triangle+circle, then when your sword goes into your shield you will see a spark that's when you press R2 transferring all phials into you shield. Now for the sword charge up your phials then store them and press and hold triangle until your sword is all the way in to your shield then release.

5. Time for the fun stuff

Super Amped Element Discharge when your shield is charged and your phials full press R2 then triangle to get your axe out then when your ready triangle+circle you can aim it a little by holding left or right

Savage Axe mode you can activate this the same way you charge the shield but instead of pressing R2 press L2 now pressing circle once will use 1 phial pressing circle again will use another 1 and pressing it a third time will discharge all your remaining phials a basic combo is circle, triangle, triangle.

6. You can evade attacks instead of guarding them by sliding and hoping (need to be in sword and shield mode not axe) for sliding after you do an attack press circle and either foreword, back, left or right to slide in that direction. Hoping is done by attacking then pressing R2+X and left or right.

7. Guarding is basic but can be enhanced by Guard points basically your sword has different attacks that put you shield in front of you during the animations and by the right timing you auto block a monsters attack and receive less chip damage and knockback. They can be hard to pull off consistently but the easiest one is the sword to axe morph or axe to sword morph like a counter you want to press R2+triangle right before the attack hits you practice in the training room with the barrel that has a fuse on it.

8. Some skills that compliment the Charge Blade

Focus - charges your phials faster

Guard - less chip damage, less stamina usage and less knockback

Artillery - increase phial damage on impact charge blades (the defender CB is Impact)

Power Pro Longer - keeps sword and shield charged up longer (good for beginners)

Capacity Boost - adds 1 extra phial

Guard Up - lets you block some attacks that would be unblockable without it

Evade Extender - increased roll and hop distance

Evade Window - increased I-frames for dodging an attack

I know this seams like a lot to keep in mind but you will get it eventually if you look in the hunter notes you will see a section for weapon guide worth looking at. Have fun and hopefully you stick with the Charge Blade and I didn't type all this for nothing LOL.

The hammer is always my weapon, The mix of heavy duty power and mobility while charging gets you right up on the monster.

Most important tip, you can hide helmet in the start menu. Let that Pompadour free

Support local businesses = cramming loads of fattening pizza in my mouf, correct?

Man I love this game so much put many many many hours into it

Also Jan, Long sword is quick and in your face as well as the dual blades both are very fun I spent the majority of my time with the game using the long sword that is my main and I used the dual blades when my friend bought the game for Iceborn they are also super fun

Also tip with the clutch claw if you have a full slinger you can blast the monsters face if they are not enraged (with R2) and stumble them into a wall doing a large amount of damage and knocking them over (if they are not facing a wall you can turn them by flinching them with circle). Also when you are doing your normal attack (triangle) it will weaken that part of the monster making critical hits more likely.

Also you can pay attention to the monsters heartbeat (down near the minimap) to have a better idea how hurt it is it if is skulling you can trap it because that means it is close to death

@Janman : It's true, Prosciutto prices can be costly but it's a small sum to pay to be naturally cured :).

@ripelivejam: I've been doing by part for years.

This is going to be amazing.

@dcav: On PS4 I soloed up to the end of the main game, never got the DLC. The game does scale up and down to party numbers and although I died (carted) a fair few times it was just because I needed to learn the best way to take down certain monsters.

@dcav: A lot of people play these games solo, fights might take longer but you'll learn more and just take your time studying the monsters and mechanics. Don't worry about dying too much.

Monster Hunter as a fantastic community that's always willing to help fellow hunters too so never be afraid of asking for advise. :)

Haven't watched yet but I'll be interested to see how Jan likes the game. Personally, Iceborne's silly grappling mechanic ruined it for me since it feels like a wonky shoehorned in mechanic that you're obligated to do because otherwise the damage you do is pathetic.

I have over 500 solo hours in this game. It was my podcast game for years. I need to dig back into my PC version and get it up to iceborne.

And the grappling hook rules and keeps the fights interesting. Prior to that you were dancing around to much waiting for the monster to do a specific attack.

Edit: Omg, I didn't know he started with the chargeblade. Someone teach him about godpoints so he can spend hours practicing free blocks.

Jan lot of great tips mentioned here already. I will leave Gajin Hunters Charge Blade tutorial vid here.

https://youtu.be/4_whBZGkXmc.

Try out weapons and play it your way. Look forward to seeing more!

I would like to play it again.

Ah yes Monster Hunter content. Im in👏👏🐊

Charge blade so fun to, so combo-ey lol

Hi Jan! I'm glad to tried out the Charge Blade, it's probably the most versatile and fun weapon to master, very powerful in the right hands, and I hope you stick with it.

If you don't mind, some tips from someone who plays it a lot:

There's plenty more to say but it comes down to experimentation and practice, have fun with it while looking cool, Jan!

Best thing about this whole pandemic mess is more screen time for Jan. Period.

He thinks he can skip cutscenes. Heh.

Edit: Nevermind!

I can't wait until he finds out about SAED from a guard point.

Hell yeah Jan! Excited for this series. Looks like the comments section has plenty of excellent tips for charge blade. I rarely play charge blade so I won't be much good there.

The thing I do regularly is switching up weapons to spice things up, especially when I'm grinding out the same monster. It's even easier to do this in Low Rank/High Rank since the Defender stuff is pretty easy to get, and it's not like the old games where armor was split between blademaster and gunner.

YUM YUM

Jan, so hype to see you go through this! GB MH community is great

Aw man, super excited for this. Gunlance is my secondary, and man, I'm bummed you didn't see some real fireworks with some combos. Still, glad you're really taking to the charge blade!

@chipmnk I did all the low rank hunts with Gunlance, then switched to Charge Blade for High rank and beyond. Gunlance really needs evade extender to overcome the low mobility. Maybe when Jan has some armor and deco options he might come back to the boomstick.:

There is a low-rank quest on the quest board that teaches you about the new clutch claw changes that came with Iceborne.

When an enemy flinches back 90 degrees away from you and starts drooling you can clutch onto them and extend that flinch by 4 seconds. This lets you do a wound attack(Y) or yeet(R2(requires slinger ammor to be equipped)) the monster into a nearby wall/other monster.

Man, this game looks damn good. I'll admit, the voice acting and cutscenes are pure JRPG and it's awesome! But the graphics and animation.... Wow! I care little for the actual game but I'm very impressed by the look of it.

I just started playing this as well! Arekkz gaming channel put out a great series of weapon tutorials for each of the weapons https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHc2Wj95htvMxZR7dvgYwevupNBy9imiu which really helped me. It really helps to see the weapon mechanics rather than just reading about it.

Yum Yum hypeee