Mohran farming!

Just now I’ve been farming Mohran stuff with a couple of guys I met online. In case you’re not familiar with the term “farming”; it basically means hunting the same monster over and over again to get as many parts and items as possible. Usually to create a certain armor or piece of weaponry. Anyway, farming the Mohran was really fun. I remember my first couple of tries were kind of frustrating since many of the hunters didn’t exactly know how to fight it. In fact it’s quite simple, we even managed to kill the dragon within less than 15 minutes, which was pretty amazing.

Anyway, there are only a few basic rules to follow in order to take a Jhen Mohran down, the most important of them listed below.

• Mohrans is very weak to dragon-element weapons. If you don’t have any of those, ice still deals a decent amount of damage. Don’t use fire-element weapons though, they’re as good as useless against him.
• When you have the chance to get on Mohrans back, attack the two cracks on his fin. Remember that you can attack them from both, his right and left side which deals major damage. After hitting them for long enough the cracks will open, providing a passage to the other side.
• Don’t be greedy with the special-attacks of the ship.  The gong, the ballista-binder as well as the dragon-spear are all powerful weapons. The gong is usually used shortly before Mohran is threatening to tackle the boat. The binder draws him closer to the ship and keeps him steady, so he can be hit easier. The most powerful though is the dragon-spear. It deals massive damage and forces Mohran to retreat for a short while.
• Use the ballistas (apart from binding) to damage Mohrans fangs (horns?). Remember that you can also carve there when you manage to kill him.
• The most powerful weapon that is available at all times is the canon. Don’t attack Mohran with a regular weapon, even if he’s close. The canon deals way more damage. That especially counts for the “end-phase” where mohran draws nearer to the stranded ship and tries to destroy it with bodyslams. First attack him with ballistas as long as he’s out of reach for the canons. As soon as he is close enough though, switch to canons.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. It’s usually a good idea to boost your defense before the encounter. Some of Mohrans attacks are close to fatal.

Lances – because size does matter!

I’ve been playing the Monster Hunter series for half a decade now and there was one thing I always kind of diskliked: lances. Especially in the first few parts of Monster Hunter (Monster Hunter [PS2], Monster Hunter: Freedom [PSP]) this weapon just didn’t seem all that useful. For starters it was way too slow and despite having the possibility of blocking most of the enemys attacks with your shield, it was just too hard to handle. Also the moves seemed kind of absurd. Take the “charge” attack of the lance for example. How on earth can you actually use this in a fight? So as a reaction to this most players were kind of scared off.

Then a couple of Japanese guys invented that awesome thing called “headlocking” and lances were all over the place. “Headlocking” was (and still is) a strategy in which you make the opponent stagger by constantly hitting his weak spot (usually the head). Among the weapons used for this was, beside the hammer, mainly the lance. It’s popularity grew steadily and especially veteran players started using the lance as their main weapon. Still, the weapon or rather its attacks had some flaws as they were rather unflexible and hard to master. For that reason Capcom introduced a more beginner-friendly type of this weapon: The gunlance.

While the lance already had a huge attacking range, the gunlance took it even further. By shooting projectiles at the monsters you now had the perfect mixture between short- and long-range weapon, especially the wyvern-fire (a special attack in which you first charge and are completely open to attacks for around 2 seconds before you fire a devastating blast) made this weapon top notch. The gunlance became one of most popular weapons in the series, but at the same time many of the monsters became tougher and the headlock was harder to complete, in some cases even became impossible.

With Monster Hunter Tri however, Capcom decided to “start from scratch” and exclude most of “newer” weapons, figuratively reinventing the game. That also meant that the gunlance had to go. I myself, being a huge sucker for hammers and LS, wasn’t really all that sad about it. Anyway, a couple of days ago I needed to clear the Jhen Mohran quest in order to advance in HR. Unfortunately my only weapon with dragon element happened to be a lance (Model: The Undertaker). So I involuntarily had to go with it. It turned out to be not so bad though, in fact it was quite enjoyable to use it and completely different from what I remembered. It was a little hard to judge it though, since fighting with Mohran is like fighting a mountain. So a while later a couple of friends and I decided to take down a Rathian and Rathalos. I wasn’t really sure what weapon to use, normally it would probably have been a hammer but this time I wanted to try something new – the lance was the obvious choice. The first thing I noticed at our encounter with Rathalos, was that the lance had become a lot faster. Also Capcom added some new moves that made fighting alone much easier, such as the swing in which you strike your lance from left to right and get rid of the small fries.  But there was another attack that impressed me even more. The biggest advantage with the lance, is that you can always hide behind your shield and then pierce your opponent with the lance from a defensive position, which is basically what everyone does when he wields a lance. So instead of inventing another useless running move Capcom decided to go for a counter-attack. In this attack you charge while defending with your shield and then thrust the tip of your lance into your enemy will brutal force. You can also expand the attacking by dealing some more blows after that. While getting a better grip on the abilities and possibilities of the weapon I decided to go for the obvious: try to headlock. And guess what, it worked!

Conclusively I can only tell that the lance has become a monster of a weapon. After defeating several Uragaans and Rathians/Rathalos with it, I’m really impressed with what you can now do with a weapon that was initially more of a hindrance than acutal help in a hunt. Go ahead and try out!

Scroll 2: Hunting Preparations

Every experienced hunter knows: a hunt isn’t just about hunting. The right preparations are essential and decide upon success or failure of your quest. Making the right preparations can boost your hunting-efficiency up to 200% Again there are different aspects one must consider before stepping out in the wild and facing the enemy. We’ll divide the preparation-process in 6 steps:

• Intelligence gathering
• Choice of weapon & element
• Abilities
• Felyne support
• Objects

It may look like much, but once you get used to it, hunting will become a lot easier as you can focus on the fight without having to worry about supply or other things. So let’s start with the first aspect:

Intelligence gathering

Before doing anyting, you should decide upon what kind of quest you want to make and/ or what monster you will be facing. Depending of this you’ll want to find out what the monsters weaknesses are or where certain items can be found. Hitting a monster at the wrong spot will not only result in you getting pushed around, but also your weapon getting dull. Here are a couple of lists and charts to help you prepare.

• Weakness Chart (cutting weapons)
• Weakness Chart (impact weapons)
• Maps (with informations on item-locations)

Choice of weapon and element

Now that you know what monster you will be fighting, you need to choose the right weapon. Important here is to not choose the weapon that is suggested by most, but a weapon you feel comfortable with. Let’s say you have no experiences with lances and use a great sword instead, but the suggested weapon to slay a certain monster is a lance. The chances of succeeding by using a weapon you have no experience with is way lower than by using a weapon you’re accustomed to. If you should find out that using that weapon is unrealistic or useless, you’ll want to finish some training-quests with the other weapon.

Anyway, you can find plenty of information on the right weapon for a monster on either youtube (just type in the name of mosnter + kill) or the monster hunter wiki. Make sure you use a weapon with the according elemental attribute or (in case you don’t have one) one that has enough raw damage to compensate for the lack of additional damage. The easiest weapons to handle are long swords and (for gunners) bows. Both have good balance of speed and power.

Abilities

Now this is the tricky part. Abilities are a great thing, they can amplify your fighting-potential considerably. However choosing inefficient abilities is only a waste of slots. Some gears come with useful abilities while others make up for that by offering a greater defense. However you can still add others by using decoration. Some abilities can be compined to create deadly powers. Here’s a list of all abilties and what advantages they have.

• Abilties & explanations

Felyne Support

Felynes are your friends! They help you in two ways, once by offering meals that help you further improve your status and by covering your back in solo-battle. They offer an ideal way of making up for potential weaknesses. If your armor is weak, strengthen your defense, If your elemental guard is low, get it back up, or if you just need more attacking power, go ahead.

As for your felyne comrade, he is a great help in battle. Make sure his abilties and his training reflect his personality. If they do the little furball will hell to every wyvern you’re facing. Enlosed you find a guide on how to get the right status-improvements in the kitchen.

• Felyne Fighter Guide
• Felyne Cooking Guide
• Felyne Ability Guide

Objects

The last point. Again there are two categories. Items that improve your status by just carrying them (amulets or books) and items that change your status by using them. Again check your opponent and make sure the items fit your needs (whetstones, steaks, potions, lifepowders, etc.). Nothing is more annoying than running out of important items during a quest that you could finish easily if you had them.

• Combination List

If an item is essential to succeeding, you should take other material with you to combine new exemplars of it (bombs, traps, etc.) When you have free space in your bag and are unsure what to take with you, flashbombs and traps are always a great idea, remember however, that traps don’t work on dragon elders. Other useful items are the teleporter and amulets.  Don’t get “overprepared” though. Taking useless items with you is worse than not taking any, as you might have to throw them away when you carve the dead monster.

That’s pretty much it. If you follow these simple guidelines hunting should become a lot easier and you will face less tight-spots.

Scroll 1: The art of swordsmanship

Many hunters choose a sword as their first weapon. Longswords and greatswords are very popular in that prospect, so in this article I’ll try to explain some fundamental as well as some advanced stuff on how to use your weapon most efficiently. Even though i will only talk about GS (Greatsword) and LS (Longsword), pretty much everything will apply to SnS, DS and lances too. As for our primary weapons, the GS is the one that will let you block enemy attacks, not only physical but also screams and Gypceros’ flash-attack. Additionaly it deals quite an amount of damage.  On the other hand the weapon is relatively slow and hard to maneuver.

The LS offers more flexibility. The attacking power remains the same, but different from the GS you don’t deal damage by executing violent blows, but quick strikes that match the current situation. It can be said that while the GS uses raw force, the LS is the one that relies on technique. Each and every cutting-weapon has three primary properties, damage (incl. elemental damage), affinity and sharpness. You have to understand how those three work in order to choose the right weapon for a quest

Damage

I’ll start with damage. Every weapon has a certain raw attacking-power, meaning it deals this exact amount of damage to a monster (not taking sharpness and affinity into account, we’ll come to that later). There is also a formula to calculate the damage dealt:

[ATP x TYPE x CRITICAL x SHARP x HITZONE x DEFENSE x RAGE x VAR]/[CLASS]=Total

+

[ELEMENT x ESHARP x ELMNZONE x DEFENSE x RAGE x VAR] / [DIVIDER] = Total

But this is rather complicated and theoretical, so we’ll stick to the fundamentals. Let’s assume this “basic power” is 100, then this damage will be dealt regardless of the monsters affinity. The conclusion is that weapons with a high raw power are equally efficient against every kind of monster because the damage will be the same for every opponent.