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.
