Sep

9

Diabolical duo

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I’ve now played Monster Hunter Freedom for 190-plus hours. That’s a lot of gaming time for a title that doesn’t charge a monthly fee. Even more amazing is the fact I’ve yet to play a lot of the game.

Parts of the game are either inaccessible to the solo gamer (e.g. Treasure Hunter quests) or very challenging without a partner or three (e.g. the high-level guild quests).

The tougher quests are made more difficult without high-end armour and weapons, and these are difficult to procure without raising your Hunter Rating (HR).

To raise your HR, you need to complete guild quests designed for a multiplayer party. You can attempt these quests solo but some of them will tax your abilities to the max.

I recently finished the last guild quest required to level up to HR2 after failing numerous times. It was easily one of the most difficult missions I’ve ever played in a game.

Hard and horny

The quest in question is called Four Horns and you need to clear it in order to raise your HR to 2 and gain access to the 5-star guild quests.

It’s identical in structure to the equivalent village elder urgent quest (which is a toughie itself) but raises the bar since the two Diablos you will face in the guild quest might have triple the health of those in the village elder quest.

So what is a Diablos? Picture a creature the size of a bus capable of tunnelling through the ground at tremendous speed and sending you flying with a casual toss of its twin-horned head.

Oh, and it’s constantly in a foul mood. No, wait, that’s not quite accurate. It’s mostly in a foul mood; it’s sometimes in a murderous mood.

Still, killing a Diablos isn’t too difficult. The difficulty lies in slaying two of them within the quest’s 50-minute time limit.

Half the battle

There’s a really good guide on the Capcom BBS that will serve the solo hunter well with advice on tactics and suggested inventory items. I followed the guide for the most part but used the following inventory items for my successful attempt:

Book of Combo 1
Book of Combo 2
Book of Combo 3
Mega Potion 10
Potion 10
Max Potion 2
Honey 10
Flash Bomb 5
Sonic Bomb 10
Gunpowder 20
Screamer 20
Armor Seed 10
Power Seed 10
Well-Done Steak 9
Mega Juice 4
Demon Drug 2
Whetstone 20
Psychoserum 3
Armorcharm
Cool Drink 3

Gear: Frost Edge+, Piercing Helmet, Rathalos Mail, Rathalos Vambraces, Rathalos Tasset, Rathalos Greaves.

The above items shouldn’t be hard to acquire for the HR1 hunter who’s only played offline. The main problem I faced was getting a suitable weapon.

Water’s Edge+

I tried the quest with the Upper Battleaxe but found its lack of sharpness to be a real problem since my blows would often bounce off the Diablos’ thick hide. These blows do still damage the creatures but the bounce factor and recovery time makes stringing together combos difficult. It took me far too long to kill the first Diablos and I would invariably run out of time while battling the second.

I ended up going with the Frost Edge+. This has green sharpness, which is good, and inflicts water element damage, which is better because Diablos is susceptible to it.

(It’s not that straightforward, however, because the game’s damage model is remarkably complex. There are separate hit-boxes for different parts of the wyvern — for instance, Diablos is 90 per cent water resistant on its legs and 60 per cent resistant on its head — and on top of that, damage is also dependent on the weapon type, armor skill modifiers, damage type and type of blow struck.)

Crafting the Frost Edge+ is no easy task, though. The key component is novacrystal, a mineral that’s very hard to acquire for the HR1 hunter. It took me 180 hours to stockpile three of the four novacrystals I needed but there’s a simple way to gain some and I used this method to get the final novacrystal.

Aug

17

Taking stock

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Hunting wyverns in Monster Hunter Freedom requires planning and preparation, and the inventory system plays a key part in that process. I’ve often failed a quest simply because I neglected to pack an essential item or sufficient quantities of an item.

Like the rest of the game, the inventory system is quirky. There are 20 slots for 20 different items and there are limits for individual items. Just to complicate matters, these limits differ from item to item. For instance, you can carry a maximum of 10 potions but you can only carry one pitfall trap at a time.

It is possible to work around these limits and a successful hunt often hinges on doing so. For instance, pitfall traps, which temporarily snare wyverns, are a combination of nets and trap tools. Since you can carry a maximum of two trap tools, you can potentially have up to three pitfall traps in total (though not simultaneously). The key word is “potentially” since the success rate for creating a pitfall trap is 65 per cent.

This is where the books of combos come in. When stored in your inventory, the books improve the chances of combining items. I would strongly recommend packing Book of Combos 1 through 3 whenever you’re planning on combining pitfall traps since these dramatically lower failure rates. The downside is these three books take up three separate inventory slots.

There are certain areas and situations in the game that require strict inventory management. Take, for example, the Smoke Clad King, a four-star village elder quest to kill an Azure Rathalos, an even tougher variant of the challenging Rathalos.

The quest takes place in volcanic areas which means you’ll have to pack cool drinks to avoid your health being gradually depleted. As the Azure Rathalos is capable of poisoning you, you’ll also have to pack antidotes. In addition, the Azure Rathalos recovers its health by sleeping in area 7 and you can only awaken him by using throwing knives since his sleeping spot is inaccessible.

You’ll quickly find yourself running out of inventory slots and you will have to make some hard choices about what to omit. Leave behind the wrong items and you might find yourself ineffectually swinging away with a blunted weapon or gasping and wheezing as your stamina runs out during a hunt.

If you do happen to forget an essential item, consider abandoning the quest. This will dump you back at the Kokoto village with all the items you had at the start of the quest, saving you the trouble of acquiring those items all over again.

Aug

3

King of the Heavens

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My hunting adventures in Monster Hunter Freedom continue.

I finally managed to slay Rathalos after umpteenth attempts. I felt like a superhero, World Cup winner and a rock god combined when the wyvern slumped to the ground.

The Attack of the Rathalos is an urgent village elder quest available when you’ve cleared every three-star quest and you need to complete it in order to gain access to the four-star quests.

The quest is a toughie for a variety of reasons but mostly because of the time factor. Fifty minutes will just fly by as you’re hunting the Rathalos. The problem with Rathalos isn’t its offensive or defensive abilities; its most aggravating characteristic is its cowardly nature.

This is not a brave creature despite its majesty and size. It may be dubbed the King of the Heavens but Gutless Wonder would be a more apt description. It has an annoying tendency to fly off at the most inconvenient moments — for instance, when you have the upper-hand — and on top of that, it heals itself as well.

You’d think it didn’t want to die at your hands.

There’s a GameFAQs guide specifically for hunting Rathalos which I found useful and I’d like to add my two cents’ worth of advice.

I had planned to use Pitfall Traps to snare the wyvern but unfortunately, wily ol’ Rathalos was on to me and flew away as soon as I set a trap. This happened twice and my attempt to combine my last Net and Trap Tool failed.

I was not pleased.

I had no way of keeping the Rathalos stationary which meant I had almost no chance to use the Small Barrel Bombs and Large Barrel Bombs in my inventory.

So I did it the old-fashioned away: repeatedly bashing it on the head.

This is easier said than done since the head is the business end of Rathalos. It has a painful bite for close-quarter combat and a powerful flame breath to blast you at range.

With experience, however, you’ll not only be able to anticipate his attacks but you’ll be able avoid them and counter with a few swings of your own. Try to curb any impulse to mash the attack buttons. Launching into complex attack combos is not advisable since it leaves you vulnerable.

There are those who would recommend wielding a Great Sword for its high attack value but I found it much too unwieldy and cumbersome a weapon. I much prefer the sword and shield combo and thus relied on the Poison Axe to hunt Rathalos. The Poison Axe only has an attack value of 224 but it’s good enough. It’s also capable of poisoning targets but in my experience the chances of poisoning the target are so slim as to be negligible.

For defence, I would suggest using a Piercing Helmet for the head and Velociprey gear for the rest. The overall defence value of this set is low but the skills conferred are useful.

Piercing Helmet confers the Auto-Guard skill which automatically guards against attacks with your shield as long as your weapon is drawn. Be warned, however, Auto-Guard doesn’t activate if you’re attacking yourself or if you’re hit from behind.

The Velociprey gear, meanwhile, negates knock-outs which is critical since you cannot afford to be seeing stars when Rathalos is in the area.

You’ll be provided with a few Paintballs (two, if memory serves) but you may need a few more since they wear off after about 15 minutes or so. I’ve failed numerous attempts in this quest because I just couldn’t locate Rathalos before time was up. I’ve also been left frustrated when I’ve missed with the Paintball so pack extras.

Happy hunting!

Jul

31

Monstrous links

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I may have put close to 70 hours into Monster Hunter Freedom but I’m still learning new things about the game’s subsystems. The basics of the game are covered well in-game and in the manual but beyond that a lot of the game has to be discovered through experimentation. Fortunately, there are a lot of guides online.

The official site is Flash-powered with no HTML links on the front page but this link will allow you to navigate through the site. The most useful part of the site is the weapons guide which (unlike the one found in the manual) provides suggestions for attack combos.

Brady Games has a few free mini-guides in PDF form covering the controls, item combos and monsters. The controls guide repeats information found on the official site and in the manual but the guides for item combos and monsters are essential. The separate guides weigh in at a hefty 200-plus megabytes but the 5MB single-file version is good enough.

The most useful of the GameFAQs guides would be the Armor Skills guide and the Rathalos guide. The former explains the inscrutable skills in the game while the latter will help a lot of frustrated hunters as they try to make the difficult transition from three-star quests to four-star quests. The Weapons Guide would be a contender if it had included the material requirements for the weapons as well as their attack value.

The Skills, Attributes and Felynes guide mostly covers the same ground as the Armor Skills guide but it goes further in that it also covers Felyne whim skills obtained after eating in the Felyne Kitchen.

Capcom, for whatever reason, opted to omit the Infrastructure Mode connectivity that was available in the Japanese version, Monster Hunter Portable. However, a workaround does exist. It’s meant for users of Xlink Kai and Datel WiFi Max but others will find it invaluable.

One final tip for those who haven’t got the game yet. The game is available in Malaysia in both Region 1 and Region 3 flavours and I’d recommend getting the Region 3 version since it includes a booklet with a lot of semi-useful game data. I say semi-useful because the booklet is in Chinese but it’s easy to make out the important data. It may seem redundant since it has the same information as most of the guides above but it’s good to have a hard copy close at hand when you’re playing.

Jul

25

Take me down to Kokoto

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I’ve put in about 60 hours into Monster Hunter Freedom now and I can easily believe the game has double that amount of gameplay left undiscovered.

This does not take into account the fact the game is replayable ad infinitum. There’s no real ending and the game can, if you should choose, be an endless treadmill of hunting, upgrading your armour, weapons and ranking. I’m not sure if I would still want to be playing once I’ve finished each hunting quest at least once but it’s nice to know the game I’m enjoying now still has a lot to offer.

Hunting party

This is one of the few games that makes me really wish there was someone in my neighbourhood with a PSP. Hunting wyverns with a partner would a lot of fun, I’m sure, (not to mention much easier) but more to the point, there are quests in this game that are only accessible to a multiplayer party.

To complicate matters, the US version of the game is somewhat hamstrung since Capcom curiously did away with the Infrastructure Mode support that was present in the Japanese version, Monster Hunter Portable. There is a workaround for those who really want play the game online but it involves jumping through some hoops.

MMO lite

In play, Monster Hunter Freedom resembles a MMO. There are upgrade treadmills for weapons and armour and like most MMOs, upgrading requires crafting which in turns requires drops in the form of materials carved from monster kills. The grind in this game comes from randomness of these drops. Upgrading a sword or a piece of armour might require multiple runs of the same quest.

Instead of accumulating XP to level up, players will need actual experience in order to tackle the more difficult beasts at higher levels of difficulty. The difficulty ramps up at a decent pace but there are a couple of quests which might frustrate players.

The first Yian Kut-Ku hunt might prove troublesome and once hunting the bird-dragon becomes a piece of cake, players will be taken aback to find the Gypceros a much tougher opponent.

And then you will know the pain that is Yian Garuga.

It may look like a Kut-Ku but the Yian Garuga is a right bastard with a variety of different offensive abilities at its disposal to put you in a world of hurt. The real problem with the Rage of the Yian Garuga quest, however, is its 20-minute time limit. The journeyman hunter will find it difficult to down the beast fast enough.

The key thing to remember is the quest is not necessary despite its Urgent Quest status. Skip this optional “Urgent Quest” until much, much later.

I actually think “Urgent Quest” was a translation error. What the developers probably meant was “Pain-Inducing Quest That Will Leave Ignorant Foreign Barbarians Hitting Their Heads On Hard Flat Surfaces In Frustration.”

Language, language

There are a few other translation oddities here and there. Getting a good meal (Cubesteak plus Spicy Sausage) in the Felyne Kitchen saw my avatar receive a boost to his Vitality which is referred to elsewhere as Health. If the avatar’s Health/Vitality dwindles down to zero in a quest, he’s said to be knocked unconscious but the tally at the end of the quest lists it as a death.

KOs (be it Knocked Out or Killed Off) are part and parcel of a hunter’s life but the thing I really dig about the game is that if you’re careful, thoughtful and patient, victory is possible no matter how dire the beast.

That doesn’t make the Yian Garuga any less of a bastard, however.

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