MonHunLog #9 – All about that Grind

So, in November we were taking care of our feline companion in MHW: Iceborne and then I played a whole bunch of the game and had a lot of fun. Here’s another MonHunLog!

Alas, I actually don’t really remember where we last stopped playing. I did play it a bunch on Stream and made plenty of progress but I apparently may have thrashed the draft for this one and have to start a new… Oops.

Uh, last time, we did hunt Ebony Odogaron to be able to fight off Velkhana which is quite weak against Fire Damage and Elder Seals. We did it with the Nether Vajra that I crafted. It still took me two tries to actually slay it… but the Elder Seal was really good against it, blocking some of its attacks and patterns, which is quite nice. After that, we had to take care of the Seething Bazelgeuse that appeared… which took me three tries but we made it work! The Seething Bazelgeuse is like the normal Bazelgeuse: Annoying… The difference is that he’s more annoying thanks to his explosions and fire damage and the option to 100 to 0 you in seconds if you don’t watch your step. It also is beefier and flies more. Yikes.

Luckily that was over and just like in the main game, there is something wrong with the problems we’re facing right now. There are earthquakes and there is that song… and it didn’t stop with Velkhana’s slaying… Alas, we investigate different sites and find hints that three new Elder Dragons are showing up in unusual habitats while the other fleets are researching the songs and the earthquakes.

My favourite Elder to hunt is actually in this one: Blackveil Vaal Hazak!

I loved the normal Vaal Hazak already but this one’s quite a bit cooler. He’s week against Dragon damage (our Kinsect has that!) and Fire damage (our Nether Vajra has that!) and is immune to Water, and resisting Thunder and Ice. In the Rotten Vale, we fought against Blackveil Vaal Hazak and immediately got carted three times, failing the mission in the process. The problem was that we couldn’t fit in Effluvia Resistance 3 into our build (especially as I don’t have that quite yet), so our health got cut in half by its spores immediately once we got close. Nulberries helped against this but with it constantly spore-ing us, those ran out quite fast. Alas, we switched tactics and started attacking more aggressively, then using our nulberries and potions and just going back to camp to refill on items… Breaking its head actually enables it to get flashed. The other fungal patches can also be broken on its body… and eventually, we made it!

The next Elder dragon we fought was Ruiner Nergigante in the Guiding Lands. This one isn’t too different from Nergigante attack-pattern wise. It causes bleeding, which is quite problematic, and also regrows its horns faster. The biggest problem is that it can two-shot you rather easily but once we used some of our jump attacks with the Glaive, we were able to avoid a lot of its attacks and break off its horns. With Nergigante, you have to attack the white spikes as those are breakable weak points that eventually turn black and basically resist damage. When Ruiner Nergigante is enraged, the spikes just get black a lot faster, which is quite annoying. This was more of a “boost stamina and dodge a lot” type of fight. Once we’ve struck it down, it was then time to fight off the third Elder Dragon: Namielle

Namielle is incredibly beautiful and is weak against Fire and Dragon. Again, just the right type of weakness for our weapons! It uses Water attacks (annoying!) and Thunder attacks (super annoying!) in combination, which makes it rather deadly. Since we still didn’t have many health boosts, this fight was rather difficult. Luckily, we learned eventually that brightmoss is really good at draining its puddles. This is important since the water puddles basically arc the electric attacks it uses, resulting in a deadly combo. Hence, we drained those, sliced it up, brought it down, used some potions, and got it on our second try!

And now… for the last part… we realise that the earthquakes and songs are caused by the Old Everwyrm that our Handler’s grandfather searched for. Shara Ishvalda is basically a fully-grown Xeno’Jiiva and first appears in a rock-covered form that can be dealt with rather easily. The next part is the hard part, though, as it has resistances to Fire and Dragon damage and as I don’t currently have an Ice or Water weapon. I’d still like to try it with Vice+ and its upgrade but for that, I’ve got to farm up some Ebony Odogarons that are just not dropping that Ebony Odogaron Mantle for me.

Alas, I stopped playing as much MHW for now… I wanna get back into it again but the grind is just a bit tedious and I don’t have an Ice Weapon just yet, so I need to get a new Glaive for that… and I’m just a tad burned out from MHW right now, so I’ll have to continue the journey in the future again! I mean, I enjoy the grind but if the drop chances are so low, I’m just a bit frustrated with it. I wanna play more MHW in the near future tho! Just not right now!

Until then,…

Cheers!

This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!