How to Make a Monster Hunter

Do the prance, the monster hunter dance, and lets carve, carve, carve!

i just want the damn PC version :(

PalicoUnknown's Monstergrounds

Yah I hear ya. I've been staying strong but these streams have been making it difficult to keep holding out (it's a LONG wait) and I'm also worried that by the time it does roll around, everyone I know that I could potentially play with will have moved on.

@hauntyu: The PS4 version runs really well, feels like it can do 60fps, only major issue is load times, worse online with people who have bad connections.

I imagine a ps4 pro with an ssd would run better.

I was briefly horrified as I misremembered the Austin vs Rock beer truck incident to have been against the Nation of Domination but it was actually The Corporation. Austin spraying a bunch of black folk and a dark skinned Samoan with a hose of any liquid would look PRETTY rough OOC in 2018 even worse than Tri putting on brown face and becoming “The Crock”?

Got two different free game rentals from Redbox with a 3 day use window and was able to Cop this game and give it a try knowing it’s likley not my bag baby

I can't believe I live in a world where Jeff and Dan are watching DBZ and enjoying it, and Vinny is enjoying Monster Hunter and even picked up the Charge Blade as his first weapon. 2018 is fucking WEIRD.

I definitely went into a Destiny-like "min max" mode, and got to where Dan is now in about half the time (~20 hours). I actually don't recommend using the light bowgun which, like Jeff talked about for the dual blade, is effective but kind of boring.

*looks at title*

Welp, now I've got that remix of that Rob Zombie song stuck in my head.

I could take or leave Monster Hunter, but Abby-video-descriptions are the best video-descriptions!

Yeah I already have a buddy on PS4 that's already tired of the grind. Us duders need to make a pact to hold out for the PC and squad up!

Giant Bomb once again re-establishing Mondays as the best day of the week between Monster Hunter and All Systems Goku.

I love Mondays.

@lanechanger@humanity

It'll be far too late by then mwuahaha

Loving MHW and have been playing with some fellow Giant Bombers almost every day, crossed the 200 hour mark on my save..

..and I'm feeling the fatigue the last two days. Getting hard to go back in and kill the same stuff some more. I'm not sure if something will be able to top this for my GOTY. Putting this many hours into something at launch is kinda crazy for me.

I've actually been looking to buy an original PS2 copy because I'm interested to go back and try it out. See where it all began. I played through Tri on Wii as my first real MH experience a month before MHW release so I'm somewhat familiar with the old, less friendly format so I'm not worried about that. Of course, now prices are jumping a little bit and I don't wanna pay $30-50 for a used copy. Just curious about it and it'd make a nice little addition to my game collection.

Honestly, if you're going that far back, I'd suggest you just grab a copy of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite for the PSP and play it on an emulator. The engine stayed mostly the same but they fixed some boneheaded choices like making you attack with the right stick instead of the face buttons, and MHFU has one of the largest monster rosters in the series.

Get ready for some bullshit hitboxes, though. That was one of the main improvements when the third generation rolled by.

@dstopia: I tooled around with a bunch of weapons before landing on charge blade, and I have to say that its rep as being absurdly hard to get into is overblown. Reading the in game weapon guide makes it clear how to use phials and there isn't too much complexity beyond that. Sure the sword/shield charge up mechanic is a little more complex but it's not that difficult at all and is a lot of fun.

I just think its a shame that so many people aren't even giving it a chance because of its reputation. It reminds me of dark souls in that way, where the conversation around it is about how hard it is but in reality, going in and playing it isn't as bad as people make it sound.

As someone playing monster hunter for the first time, I think it is a lot like dark souls in the sense that the game has a reputation for its complexity, but that complexity stems more from the systems surrounding the core gameplay than the gameplay itself. But people have conflated the two so as to make the whole thing seem more intimidating to outsiders than it should seem.

Vinny is so excited to explain the Charge Blade to Dan...lol.

More Monster Hunter content please!

@danryckert For the Zorah armor it's maxed out from the get go. It's a solid starter set for HR. The others you can mostly upgrade though. That's just an early exception.

THE ROCK SAYS

@dystopiax: I didn't realize it had this reputation because it totally feels like one of the best newbie weapons.

So much good stuff on GB these days. Love this.

All Systems Goku and Monster Hunter streams. Is Monday the new best day of the week now??

Vinny's stream-of-consciousness explanations of things are the best

Hysterically laughing at Vinny randomly exclaiming "Pukei Pukei!" at 4:13. Vinny is the best.

It's like an easy to pick up and difficult to master kind of weapon. It has a higher skill ceiling if you're taking into consideration the guard points, using the charged shield + those to stun charging monsters, knowing when to dish out a full combo with the phials and when to shortcut from the shield bash into the AED/super AED, hit boxes and range with both sword form and axe form.

And I don't even know what new moves there are in MH:W but sounds like there's a slide and that you can charge your sword now although I don't know how the sword charging plays into the axe form yet.

@dystopiax: Oh, I'm not bashing it for being complicated, I'm just saying that Monster Hunter is a lot to learn and you see a lot of new people gravitating towards the same weapons. It usually follows a pattern of people going either Dual Blades or Sword and Shield (or Long Sword if they're feeling adventurous). I fully support going for the crazy weapons in this game, as the newbie bait ones are usually incredibly dull and boring to play -- which is the reason why I firmly believe Jeff will never get super deep into the game, since playing with the boring but effective dual blades has gotten him through most of the LR content and he's too "path of least resistence"-minded to give the other weapons a try.

It makes me so happy to see Dan and Vinny come around to MH. I love this series and great to see how how enthusiastic they've become about it.

I also think it's hilarious that Vinny decides to start with probably the most complicated weapon in the game.

I honestly love that they started this video with Letterman Impressions! I fully welcome this new video series where the gang play MHW!

@lanechanger: Yeah there is definitely a lot to master but it's a really easy weapon to just pick up and do totally okay with right out the gate and isn't as mundane as the daggers or sword/shield might be.

If all you know to do is charge phials and discharge them with the axe that will work great for early monsters and you gradually pick up the more advanced combos and charges as you cement the fundamentals.

It's just also a very easy weapon I guess to try and explain everything it could do all at once and make it sound terrifying.

once you charge your sword you can hit a new super, O 3 times to do a super elemental discharge (I forget what they call it) that's dope as fuck. Hit one on an Anjanath and it went flying like 15 feet with its tail chopped off.

Brad said he tried it on the bombcast and it was "the worst weapon to start with because you can't use the sword form if you don't discharge it" (which is true but pressing R2+o is not complicated). Dan has referred to the charge blade as being really complicated as well, and I think Patrick and Austin have said as much on their own waypoint streams but not sure. On top of that, the IGN guide to weapons calls it the most complex weapon in the game and a lot of the weapon tutorials/which weapon to pick style videos on youtube that I've seen have also called the Charge blade the least beginner friendly weapon in the game.

It's just a bit frustrating to me because in my opinion finding a weapon that you like is the biggest thing that you have to do to be able to enjoy the game. I heard Abby's criticism of the combat being boring on the beastcast and totally said to myself "you need to pick a different weapon then" (that and the complaint about the monsters being too bullet spongy- I think you have to view MonHun more as a Dark Souls bossrush than viewing the monsters as average mobs). So all the talk about how you should pick a simple weapon/start sword shield or dual blades is just bad advice in my opinion, because a lot of people will do that and end up bored. In my opinion the best advice to give someone trying to get into the game is to just tool around with all the different weapons in the practice area, read about their basic usages in the monster guide, maybe watch a video or two about all the different weapons, until you pick one that you think is cool and feels good to play; I would probably have bounced off the game (and did bounce off the beta) unless I had tried the charge blade/switch axe, because before that the combat was a bit boring/simplistic/frustrating depending on all the other weapons I picked.

@dstopia: I completely agree actually, I started longsword but after 3 hunts switched because it felt like there wasn't enough complexity. Went to insect glaive but thought it was a bit too much actually, because I understood what hte kinsect did but not how the charge combos worked. Went to greatsword but hated how slow it was; having to be able to predict attacks seconds in advance and stuff felt bad when you're that slow. Tried Heavy bowgun but thought the ranged nature made it too simple, you're basically just shooting for minutes until something dies (though the chaingun/special ammo totally looks dope as fuck). Then went to charge blade after that and finally found the weapon I wanted to main from there.

It's really weird because I thought about it, and it's not like the longsword is any less complex than a weapon in Bloodborne or Dark Souls but I totally felt the simplicity here. Maybe it was just the wealth of options available to you in MH: W at the start, or the knowledge that there was more complicated stuff out there.

I've commented on this elsewhere but I don't think the Charge Blade is actually that hard. In my opinion the Insect Glaive is harder to use effectively. A lot of press people have gone with the switch axe and the charge blade isn't really that much harder to execute.

Anyway the charge blade is DOPE AS FUCK and more people should try it out.

I'm trying to hold out till pc version come out but that palico watcher costume is not helping..

I thought the Video Description was A man with the Iron Fist Reference But i guess not

So happy to see more MWH content, keep it coming please! Also, it's very cool to see Jan join the group to play.

Someone should embrace the poor old Hunting Horn. It's really good! You get to club people, play sweet songs and then club them some more, and it's not actually as complicated as it seems

@kishinfoulux: regarding the Zorah armour. It does become upgradable at a point doesn’t it? I just made the helm and was bummed it was at max as it’s starting Defense value wasn’t any better than my upgraded legania. I just assumed it would be upgradable later. If not probably won’t bother with the rest of the set.

That Barroth armor reminds me of the Alexander summon from FF.

Sucks that Brad and Jeff aren't in this one, but hey we got Jan!

It's stuck at level 1 but it's the strongest armor set of low rank, but yeah it's a fine armor, wore it for quite a while.

I'm so happy - Vinny is playing monster hunter and using the charge blade.

@dystopiax: I agree. I haven't played MH since that first one on PS2, but maybe I've gotten used to games like this elsewhere because I kinda already knew that I needed to spend the first few hours experimenting with different weapons until I found one that I liked. I'm glad I did because the ones that initially appealed to me were not my style at all. If I stuck with those, then I probably would have had a bad time as well.

I tried longsword out at first, but really did not like how it felt and eventually found my way to the hammer and heavy bowgun. I thought I would dislike the hammer, but it actually has a lot of variety in how you can attack and that somersault attack is so much fun. I also like using the bowgun a lot when I wanna switch it up or am fighting something that's annoying with the hammer (like a kirin, at least for me).

I'm genuinely impressed how much Vinny knew about the Charge Blade!

Yeah Vinny! Rep the CB.

Not trying to be a MH Elitist or anything - things might be totally different in World than in 4U - but I thought using the hammer spin was way less effective than a neutral charge attack?

Glad to see the Charge Blade making it's way into GiantBomb! It feels like the perfectly designed weapon, everything flows so well.

Also extremely happy that MonHun Mondays seems like a recurring thing.

Yep, it's got really poor motion values, save for the golf swing.

The only argument I could think of for it is that he's trying to proc status via the faster hits, but considering its a hammer, it's a poor choice overall IMO.

@staff Hi Vinny :D

In case you wanna know more about the charge blade:

In Sword mode:

R2 = shield. It's a very good shield! In between the Lance shield and the sword&shield shield.

△ + moving = forward slash.
△ = weak slash,
△ again = return slash,
△ again = a strong spinning slash.

If you dodge roll and then hit △ you will do the second move in that combo, the return slash.

O + moving = a sliding slash that repositions you.
O = a charged double slash (you want to hold it till your weapon flashes).

You can go from the △ combo to the O combo and back. But when you go from O to △ combo you will immediately do that powerful spinning slash. So you can for example do O charged double slash and then △ spinning slash, O charged double slash, repeating indefinitely.

After any of these attacks you can press △ + O to do a shield bash.

From the shield bash you can press △ to go back to weak slash, O to go into charged double slash, or press △ + O again to go into your ultimate attack, the amped elemental discharge. That move is important so remember the couple ways to get there. So the shield bash kinda connects these combo's. It can be used to create many different never ending combo's.

Example combo: roll + △ return slash △ spinning slash O+moving sliding slash O charged double slash △+O shield bash O charged double slash

Your Sword builds up heat as your Sword hits things. The level of heat of your Sword is indicated by the color of the charge phials in the upper left. White = not enough. Yellow = enough to charge 3 phials. Red = enough to charge 5 phials. So you don't need to wait till the weapon bounces to charge all 5 phials. The phials will turn red before that. When you charge phials their icons will fill up.

Your Sword can change into an Axe which uses those phials in some attacks.

R2 + △ = morph slash.
R2 + O = charge phials,
+ O = a right swing lvl1 elemental discharge in Axe mode.
If you instead hold △ during the animation of R2 + O you will do a strong overhead sword slash.

In Axe mode:

△ + moving = far reaching dash slam,
then or while idle △ = high reaching rising slash,
△ again = overhead slash.

Unlike the Sword △ combo, this combo can be repeated on its own.

But your real power of your Axe is in the O combo's as they use a phial and will do extra phial type damage (depending on your Charge Blades phial type this can be the element you have times a lot, or KO + Exhaust + raw damage if your Charge Blade uses the physical phial type. You can find this in the weapons information window on the right when you press the Options button.)

O = elemental discharge lvl 1 (right swing),
O again or after a △ attack = elemental discharge lvl 2 (double round swing),
O again or pressing △ + O at any time = that amped elemental discharge. So that's 3 ways total to get into this very important attack. All these O attacks use a phial and without a charged phial they are weakened.

Example combo: △ rising slash O double round swing △ rising slash O double round swing O amped elemental discharge.

R2 does a morph slash back into Sword mode.

R2 from unsheathed will have you immediately take out your weapon in an Axe slash.

As you found out Vinny, you can charge your Shield and your Sword.

Any time you do that big amped elemental discharge move you can hold your Shield (R2) to cancel it into a Shield charge. The more phials you have charged when doing this, the longer the Shield charge will last for.

And once your Shield is charged, you can transmit some of that energy to your Sword. The R2 + O move that charges your phials will have you place your Sword into your Shield for a moment. Hold △ during this move (and let go when your weapon gets smallest) to do a souped up overhead Sword slash and have your Sword charged for a while.

Every Sword attack will now do phial type damage and I think your Shield will have a better Guard. I don't use Charge Blade that much so I don't know super well what it does exactly. While your Shield is charged, your amped elemental discharge attack will become even more powerful, but it will use up all the phials. To cancel out of it and do your normal amped elemental discharge that uses only 1 phial, hold back and press △ during the attack.

Done!

The hammer is next on my list to learn after Charge Blade/Switch Axe!

I like the heavy bowgun in theory, like i said, but the nature of what you're doing is too boring to me, at least solo. A lot of picking the right ammo type then holding down the trigger. The gatling mode is dope as fuck though.

To Dan:

You don't need to change your equipped gear to upgrade it. ;)

And at the end of a quest you can hold X instead of tapping X repeatedly, to get all the items very quickly if you want to.

And if you press the Options button while the monster is busy dying, you can take back camera control and start carving faster.

Dude you could not be more wrong. Not even the pro version gets anywhere close to 60 fps.

Eventually everything is able to be upgrade to 70 DEF so you can basically wear what you want.

I am so glad these videos are a thing. Please keep them coming.