I last started up Monster Hunter on November 28th, 2020. After a total of 144.6 hours, I haven’t been able to start it up again due to me burning out from the game and exams keeping me busy, but alas, I figured I’d post about it again today! The last time I played MHW, I ended up burning out because of that one material… the Ebondy Odogaron Mantle… not dropping after thirty + hunts. But then Naithin came to my rescue and told me that I didn’t need to do that. In fact, I could just melt it. Alas, we did that.
The Ebony Odogaron Mantle, needed for my weapon upgrade, is a very rare Ebony Odogaron material used to craft weapons powerful enough to take over the world. To meld it I need 500 Research points (got that!) and one Celestial Wyverian Print (that I already have). Now,… I feel stupid for grinding Ebony Odogaron but at least I got it now, right?
The Deadline is the upgrade I wanted. It has higher Affinity, damage, Element damage and it looks the same as the Nether Vajra I was rocking before. This apparently (according to a tier list I found online) is the second-best Insect Glaive as it doesn’t require you to use Free Element or Handicraft, really, due to it having the elemental damage portion from the get-go already and due to it already having a long white bar. Alas, I’m glad we got that now! It’s not the strongest build in the game, apparently, but it certainly is an upgrade with the increased damage, affinity and sharpness. The biggest thing for me is the Elder Seal that it has. Until I craft some better weapon, I will use this probably against Elder Dragon fights as it has a high Elder Seal and as most Elders have a weakness against Dragon Damage. I feel like that works quite well for me.
Now, eventually, I’ll have to get an upgrade but for now, I’ve got other matters to deal with… The Old Everwyrm needs to be slain after all!
The fight against Shara Ishvalda is a bit tricky, after all. I, at first, thought that it was a fully-grown Xeno’Jiiva but apparently that one’s in the game later on. The first stage features Shara Ishvalda in its rock-covered form while the second stage features Shara Ishvalda without its rock-shell. The rock shell is vulnerable at the head and body but takes reduced damage on all other parts. The arena has a rock-fall-trap that you can activate using bombs or by mounting Shara Ishvalda after luring it close to the wall and then slamming it into the trap, dealing massive amounts of damage. Apart from that, I also ended up calling a flare for support as I, frankly, am too out of practice to Solo this enemy. I had enough damage to get through the first form alone (the random player that joined ended up being AFK for a time, so I had to fight alone for quite a while…) – during the second stage, we had four people, though, which still took ages btw. We feinted once but eventually got it done.
The main issue with Shara Ishvalda was for me that I didn’t have enough damage to solo it and I still have to get some good gems with Vitality or Affinity/Partbreaker to survive and/or deal damage. It would be amazing if I could get to that soon… but for now, there are other things to be done.
The second stage of Shara Ishvalda features it without its shell, as I mentioned above, which means that it’s vulnerable in more parts. The forelegs are breakable while the head is breakable twice. The weak points are the wings and the head as well, so I essentially focused my kinsect onto the head in order to generate explosive powder spots around the general area of the head/wings for a lot of damage. The other thing I mainly did in the fight was using my downwards spin-anime-slash-attack (aka Jump + Y to do a spin-slash downwards) when it stood on its back legs while focusing my attacks on its body and head whenever it leaned forward. With the insect glaive, you can actually deal a lot more DPS while on the ground, so I tend to do that more often now. Obviously, the jump attacks are quite strong when there are a lot of powder spots around the upper area of the monster, as you can then proc multiple of them and deal a ton of damage! The jump attacks also allow you to set up mounts and potentially get the monster to the ground, so they aren’t useless… It’s just a bit hard to deal as much damage if you only do the jump attacks… That’s something that a few insect glaive users that joined me have been doing… and it’s whatever, I guess. To each their own.
Shara Ishvalda has some scary attacks utilizing nearly invisible sonic beams that carve through rock and armour like butter. The insect glaive allowed me to dodge them using some jump attacks but eventually, I ended just sidestepping those attacks and attacking its body/head while it was shooting those beams out.
As far as drops go… I honestly have no clue what I got. I ended up skipping past it as I’m tired and I want to go to sleep now. I’m sure I got good loot, especially as we got six or more carves out of the body.
After beating it, you get a cut scene where it actually is still alive and tries to kill you but then Nergigante shows up and defeats it, which is amazing. Then the credits roll and there’re a few conversations on how the Elders and the ecosystem are potentially destroying themselves by linking up with the Everstream and tapping into that power… Luckily, however, Nergigante is its balancing mechanism that culls those that get too strong, resulting in the ecosystem prevailing.
And yeah, that’s basically the story played through. I had a lot of fun with Monster Hunter World and want to play more of it, especially as I have a ton of Optional and Event quests to do, including the newest one for the movie! Apart from that, I have yet to craft my favourite armours and potentially craft every weapon in the game (not sure if I’ll follow through with that… but we’ll see), so expect more posts on that eventually. Shara Ishvalda was a nice boss fight and I’ve been told that there are more main quests later on as well as the tempered fights that haven’t tempered with (haha…) and then there are also Yian Garuga and the “deviant variant”/scarred version. I haven’t fought against a Silver or Gold Rathian yet either… Brachydios, according to the wiki, also has a sub-species, the Raging Brachydios, while the Tigrex also has a Brute sub-species, which is gonna be interesting… and I’ll have to fight this Rajang monster (big ape!) and this super pretty monster called Zinogre… and it’s super amazingly cool and lovely sub-species Stygian Zinogre (because the armour looks amazing!). Also, once we’re done with Rajang, we’ll have to deal with the “Furious Rajang”, which is going to be even harder… and then there are also quests that require you to take care of multiple of them… Oh, wowsers! Barioth also has a variant called Frostfang Barioth while Kirin has yet to be slain in Master Rank by me… so there is a lot to do! Amazing!
Not to mention, I have yet to defeat the hard version of Behemoth as well as Kulve Taroth (as I still haven’t completed that event thing… is it still up?). There is also this thing called Alatreon that apparently is really cool to fight against… and Fatalis…
Hope you enjoyed today’s log. I’m actually quite glad to finally be done with this quest… How are you holding up in MHW and do you want to join me on PC sometime? Let me know!
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!
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