Arty's Monster Huntin' Misadventures - Part 2: Freedom Unite

[Artylo]

Hey, everyone,
I've been thinking of going through the whole series as of late. Mostly out of some morbid curiosity on how and when certain mechanics were added along the way as the franchise grew. Something like being interested in the series' history but still having the option to go take part in that yourself, ya know. Do note that I'm not really one of those people that prefers older generation titles to the more modern ones. I've had my fair share of fun in both, just very radically different types of fun. I suppose I should get my bona fides outta the way: I have 150+ hours in MH1-JP and about 400+ in MH Rise. Add another couple of hundred playing 3U and 4U while on the dunny with my 3DS in hand and the miscellaneous Portable game here and there.

I recently finished MH1-JP and played up to high rank online and had a pretty damn good time with it. Some of you might have even seen me along for some of your hunts.
Anyway, I didn't feel like immediately jumping onto G, but I also didn't feel like continuing onwards with the plate grind and the Fatalis prep, so I took a break for a while. Recently I got the urge to revisit Freedom Unite, which I haven't really played since I was a kid. I think I pretty much got as far as the Training School and thought that that was all there was to the game. Nowadays, I'd like to think I'm a bit wiser, so I thought MHFU might be a good way to kill the time while Dos' server comes up or I feel like going back to MH1 again. Being able to read proper also helps I suppose.

This thread will mostly be a log for all the trouble I get into and some musings that come along with that. Though I do suppose I should establish some of the ground rules I've setup for myself as I go along with this little long-term project of mine:

• No looking things up. Just figure things out as you go. Or find about it through word of mouth at gathering hubs.

This might seem like an unnecessary stipulation, but I assure you that it adds a lot to this sense of immersion I'm chasing after. Trying to figure things out via the information that the game gives you alone really adds to that whole sense of early 2000's gaming and is accurate as far as how things were around the time of each game's release. This somewhat goes for you (the reader) as well, i.e. don't spoil things for me and try to refrain from giving me advice.

• Try to use a new weapon each game. Preferably ones that were just added to that iteration.

This one, I feel, is pretty self explanatory. I started MH1 with Greatswords and moved on to Lances for some of the harder fights and had to make a Sword & Shield for certain Vespoid quests. Moving on to second generation games, I get to pick stuff like Gunlances or Bows, then Switch Axe in third generation games, etc. This is mostly so I can actually try out new weapons and find the right tools for each job instead of sticking to a single one for the whole game. I feel like MonHun games intentionally incentivise you to use a lot of different sets of gear and a lot of different weapon archetypes. No weapon has all you need, but if you invest in having a full toolbox, there's nothing you can't do.

That's pretty much it for now as far as preamble goes. I'll add more as time goes on, pictures included.

[WEEK 1]
My current playthrough started on the 25th of June, 2023. My current weapon is the Gunlance and I'm experimenting with the skills to figure out what I like and what I don't. So far I've gone through the 3★ village quests with a set of gear that gives me Guard+1 and Auto-Guard, which I've found are a pretty potent early-game combination, which allows you to use the gunlance slightly more aggressively, ironically enough for what I imagine are conventionally defensive skills. I've also found that the Torso Inc. skill comes really handy, particularly early on. The Blackbelt Vambraces were a real plain to grind for in the Training School, I'll give you that.



Currently I'm sporting the Hellsting as my primary weapon, since it seemed to have the highest raw out of all my currently available gunlances, even if the numbers are inflated. The additional elemental damage doesn't hurt either. To top that all off, I've been trying out the Gunnery skill, since I have some faint memory if it increasing the gunlance's shelling abilities by some amount. (Maybe I'm just thinking of later games, but it doesn't hurt to try.)
I still wanted to fit in at least Guard+1, so the combination I figured would be to use the Hermitaur Helm, Steel Mail, Guardian Vambraces, my old Giaprey Tasset and Hi-Metal Greaves. Besides the massive amount of Machalite Ore I needed for most of it (which is starting to come easier thanks to having the Volcano area open along with its ruststones and higher tiers of ore), the real kicker was getting the Springnight Carp, which took me more attempts that every other material for those damn gauntlets. Lightcrystals? Mine 'em or get some Gypceros hunts in. Blackbelt Tickets and Cephadrome Coins? I got some left over from grinding the Arena quests. But carp came surprisingly hard. So far my only clue was that I was getting them from my fully upgraded fishing pier over at the farm, but it took a lot of reloading and miscellaneous quest completions to actually get a couple of those to spawn. I only needed the one, but it feels like it took several hours for it to show up. The desire sensor was really kicking into gear.
My goal as of now is to clean up the remaining 3★ quests and figure out which of the 4★ quests are going to let me progress. Hopefully it isn't the Kushala Daora one, because I'm pretty much dreading fighting an elder dragon with this dinky gear.

Gunlance overall is a bit of a break from what I had imagined. It's definitely similar to lance in some sense, but it's also not. I feel like I'm not using shelling enough, especially when it comes to faster monsters that just run circles around me. I'm definitely switching to my Auto-Guard set for those. For the slower and bulkier ones, I really just sit there and charge at them whenever I get a direct line to their face. The shelling's ability to reset the combo is really nice whenever I do get into the proper position to execute a string of twelve or so lunges, but most of the time, I just rely on getting a simple shot in every once in a while before lunging again so I can backstep away from whatever is most definitely winding up an attack at me at this point.
There's also definitely some favouritism for the primary MH1 weapons over the alternates. Splitting weapon archetypes into these dualities of main and alternate are kind of a neat idea since you can upgrade from one tree into the other, but it would have been nicer if there weren't about 12 lances to only 4 available gunlances. The overall tree seems to feel much smaller and more restrictive, especially with some upgrade paths veering into what looks like HR materials and increased costs of up to 40,000z. I'm not struggling as much financially as I did in MH1, especially considering that I seem to have circumvented the whole Special Mushroom picker stage of character development, which I had grown to love and hate in MH1. Then again, I'm still not going to pull out 40k out of nowhere, no matter how many small goldenfish and steel eggs I fish and hunt up.

I do seem to be much more hesitant to sell off older monster parts as well, since there seems to be a habit of adding a random minor monster part in more complex forging requirements this time around. That and having nine whole pages of stash space! Holy shit, did having that one 10x10 stash space in MH1 condition me into running triage on every single item that ever made its way into my bags. Now there's just this massive weight lifted from my shoulders and I can keep all the useless trinkets I want. I even keep the Garbage from failed combinations around to keep me humble.
The farm has also contributed to my immense wealth quite heavily and I've been focusing on upgrading it as quickly as possible, considering the ease of use and the amount of good stuff you get for relatively little investment. It's made it so I rarely have to go out on gathering quests. Volcano Gathering is pretty much the only exclusion.

I'm also experimenting with the food combination and the Felyne Comrade and cook skills. It seems like a neat and highly customisable system, but I don't seem to completely understand how the experience gain and training system works. I do somewhat get the idea of having one active and the others passively gaining some experience from training in the kitchen. I also get that there are some hard limits on the number of felynes you can have, which seems to expand as the village quests get completed. It's a bit dense, but I'll get it in time.

That's pretty much all for today. I don't know how often these updates are going to be, but I'll try to get one in at least weekly for now. Thanks for reading and I hope you take an interest in what's coming along next!

Read the weekly issues:
[WEEK 1] [WEEK 2]

[Artylo]

[PLACEHOLDER]

[Grender]

Very well written! Thanks for sharing your journey. Where's Part 1 though?

[Artylo]

Very well written! Thanks for sharing your journey. Where's Part 1 though?

Thanks, glad you like it.
Part 1 was all the stuff I was doing back in MH1, but the forum wasn't up then, so I couldn't have written about it. That and I think it's funny.
I might even write it retroactively whenever I decide to give G a crack just to really mess with everybody.

[Artylo]

[WEEK 2]

Hey there Readers,
It's been a week, so it's time for your somewhat regularly scheduled update. Yeah, I know - exciting stuff. Got up to some exciting stuff since last time, of which you will hear about shortly. To put it briefly, we cleaned up the remainder of the Village Elder's quests, unlocking a whole new slew of content in high rank, seeing some new sights and sounds, and getting a whole lot of new gear.
For now, let's get into some of the general impressions from this week:

The first big hurdle of the game is upon us! Or, I suppose, several of them!
I'm not going to lie to you and say that I didn't feel like quitting the instant this started happening. That is, of course, because I did quit. For a couple of hours that is.
The cause of this disturbance would be no other than the Plesioth itself. I spent a whole damn afternoon waiting for it to finish skinny dipping in my Training School quests, only for it to perform its ultimate trick - the hip check into tail spin combo. This performed irreparable damage to my health in-game and out every time it happened. I average about eighteen minutes on a Plesioth, not because I particularly want to give it that time, but because I spend most of my time watching soaps on my other monitor, while it tries to power wash me from its watery ivory tower. Fishing it out of the sea and instantly flinging it into a pitfall trap might be one of the few joys in life I know at this point. That and barbecuing its ass with lightning rods like a pathetic approximation of Zeus casting bolts from the top of mount Olympus. Even then, spending minutes repeating the same motion to bait out its water beam and instantly going in for the kill gets really tiresome very quickly. Farming for the Black Belt Vambraces might have just cost me my sanity; and then again I never finished them. Thankfully, at this point I no longer have to get them.



It's all due to the reappearance of my old friend Lao Shan Lung and his surprisingly affordable Borealis armour! I need two pieces from him - the vambraces and the tassets. To get those, I'd need to essentially solo him over and over, since as of the time of writing I only have him unlocked in the Village Elder's quests.
The first go at trying to get the big ol' mountain dragon went about as good as you can imagine. I conjured some of the instructions my drill sergeant in MH1 from deep storage. Mostly the ones about being the lance guy that has to stay in front of his face and continuously stagger him over and over while the other guys in the back swing at his feet and tail. That's all well and good, but I don't have those other guys around, so I guess the just head will have to do for the whole shebang.
The other trick, that I had absolutely now concrete idea on how to do was the part where you can jump on his back and carve some scales off. The first time I did it back in the day, I got slapped off of a bridge for being too eager. Timing wise, I had no clue outside of maybe trying it once or twice per attempt for the whole hunt and eventually I'd probably nail it. You can imagine the smoke coming out of my ears as my brain tried thinking about that a jump arc might even look like in a Monster Hunter game, let alone account for one and use one.
The other words of wisdom that became permanently etched into my neurons were "GET BACK UP THERE! YOU'RE ON DRAGONATOR DUTY, HUNTER!", which was pretty ironic considering that I didn't even get to press the big red button back then, because the ol' coot passed out while I was half-way up the ladder.
Now, of course, it was a bit different, considering that there was no way I'd dealt enough damage to make him kick the bucket. I somehow wrapped my brain around how to use the ballista, but trying to account for the drop of the shots made that familiar smoke start coming out again as I was essentially shooting blind into the thickest of depth fog known to the computer graphics industry.
Needless to say, when the time came to press the big red button, I'd fumble through every single conceivable combination of buttons to activate it. One of my genius thoughts was that it was a physical button that only hammer users could super pound on, making it inaccessible to gunlance users such as myself with no downwards thrust. Eventually I did figure out that it was indeed another big red button on my controller that made all that spinning metal come out, it's a shame that it happened to completely whiff. Completely outside of my control. You know how it is.
Anyway, despite how crude the execution was, half an hour steadily runs its course and I get the notification that this is indeed a "Victory!", despite all my attempts to make it otherwise.

Second time around is much cleaner. I get the jump on his back gracefully, I unload a salvo of all the ballista shots into him as he's coming up, I hit the Dragonator. All that good stuff.
Even with that, it turns out that the damage just isn't there to completely kill him off, so it's back to another thirty minutes of just whacking on him to get repel after repel.
I'm somewhat limiting myself to doing at least a single Lao Shan per day, just so I don't completely lose all sense of time, and/or desire to continue playing this bootleg From Software title dubbed in Swahili.
As of the time of writing, I have gotten enough of Lao's resources to make the vambraces. It'll take another run or two to get enough for the tassets and then I can finally ditch the lobster helmet armour I've been wearing since pretty much the start of the week. It's been losing its effectiveness against the higher rank monsters and I'm really hurting to get this new set finished.



How did I find out that my armour needs an upgrade? Well I had to fight a Tigrex at some point and that pretty much elucidated a lot of the shortcoming of my current approach to hunts. Struggled against the damn thing for almost a whole afternoon. I tried traps, running away, corpse running my way through it. The second it's hands turn all red, I was just in for a world of hurt.
Ultimately this is where ol' lobster head made things work for me. Auto-guard is honestly such a crutch in this game when it comes to skills. It will catch just about ninety percent of all the actually ludicrous attacks that you'd never in you life think of guarding. I still get punished if I'm greedy and keep attacking, so I don't think it's unbalanced or anything. Its real utility is when it catches that one corner of something's hitbox that seems completely disconnected from the rest of its body, or whenever the monster randomly turns or takes a step and takes about ninety percent of your health for services rendered. Auto-guard also has the benefit of making you more mobile through the simple fact that you can just walk and regenerate stamina the second the blockstun wears off, not whenever you make the random decision that you feel safe enough to let go of the block button. Guard+1 and Auto-guard pretty much single-handedly turned the Tigrex fight from a completely losing battle to a complete stomp in no time. I'm also thinking that that might be roughly the skill combination that will serve me best against more mobile monsters in the future.





For my efforts, I unlocked the real showstopper visual of Freedom Unite. I don't want to say much about it, just in case someone out there becomes intrigued by its enigmatic nature, but needless to say it gave me access to some new materials that I used to make a rather eldritch looking gunlance, which eventually promises to be highly effective versus dragons, but I didn't have the materials to get it that far. For now, it's just a cool looking thing that will be gathering dust in my chest until I find it fit for purpose in some manner.
That and I'd need way more Elder Dragon bones to really make use of all of the new feature, so I'm slowly working my way up to being able to tackle those without completely falling apart at the hinges. I tried fighting a Kushala Daora and it only took about two carts for me to go and say yup. Got it, have a nice day.

Considering that I was not at an impasse of either doing Lao Shan over and over or just beating my head against monsters that were way tougher that I am equipped for, I decided to branch out a bit into different weapons.



Similar to what I did in MH1, I decided that the first course of action might as well be making an Ogre Tusk. If most of the Lance/Gunlance tree was going to be lances, then I'd go for broke and get the one I know work really well. This in and of itself required another familiar weapon - Hydra Bite from the sword and shield tree. What ensued was probably an afternoon of mostly hunting Vespoids for their fluids, on top of skinning every single Iodrome and Ioprey to come across my line of sight. It is at some point while I was upgrading the lance that I noticed that there were some new gunlance option hidden in the middle of the lance trees. What followed was several uninterrupted minutes of profanity, as I slowly came to terms with the fact that some of the weapons I could have really put to use were there all along, just hidden in a different weapon's web of intrigue.
When I was praising the weapon layout last week, I was absolutely not prepared to have to go through roughly eight to ten levels of lance upgrades just to uncover the one gunlance hidden in between them all. This made it evidently clear that I'd have to pick up the slack and start hunting more monsters, especially ones that have the chance to drop Monster Bone+, which as far as I can surmise was a rare quest reward in low rank quests, but would otherwise become common once I got access to a high rank gathering quest.

This newfound need disguised as bloodlust led to the creation of two new longswords, which I'd absolutely abuse to quickly dispatch a lot of monsters I'd usually find pretty annoying. Though I was pretty surprised to find myself going back to gunlance soon after, rather than succumbing to the high damage high octane longsword lifestyle.



The real comeback tour of the whole week was the instant I got access to good ol' Forest and Hills. This of course meant that I'd soon meet my old buddies Los and Ian. I'm kind of proud to admit it, but I completely destroyed those two. Not only did I hunt them, but I hunted them at the same time, capturing both in a singular quest. Then I went to their newly tinted cousins' houses and captured them two.
It was honestly such a rush to finally put all that MH1 experience into play and school on some mons. I didn't get any new useful gear from them, but considering the way some of the forging requirements in this iteration are structured, their parts would come into play sooner rather than later.
What I found particularly funny was how the new variants felt like they were just the old originals, while the new base monsters felt toned down in comparison. Azure Rathlos was flying around so much, I was getting such a distinct sense of deja vu. It was unmistakable.



The rampage didn't stop at that, of course. I was riding on such a high, that I proceeded to blast through most of the 6★ quests.
I say blast, as at around the time the dual hunt of a regular Diablos and a Black Diablos was on the chopping block, my brain finally came to the full realisation of why gunlance actually works. It probably won't come as a surprise to you, but it is... in fact... the shelling.
Up to this point, I was using it mostly as a way to reset my forward lunge combo, but once it finally clicked that I'd never seen in bounce off of anything, I realised the power I held in my hands. Suddenly Khezu were no longer a thing, Diablos horns were dropping left and right. Sharpness be damned, I was about to unload entire clips into every single hard point on every monster I see. Believe it or not, hunts started speeding up about twofold after that.
It seems like such a simple and fundamental part of the weapon, but until you see it, you just can't fathom it.



Since I've somewhat wrapped up with doing the single-player portion of the title, excluding the new high rank Nekoht quests, I've been dipping my toes into the Gathering Halls and I have some impressions on Freedom Unite's idea of multiplayer. One really big disappointment to me is the lack of any real social features in Freedom Unite. Yes, you can still use gestures and make vaguely rounded threats or compliments by vigorously crouching like your forefathers before you, but the whole sense of community is fairly limited by the lack of centralised servers and the reliance on the PSP's ad-hoc local network multiplayer. Having twenty four guild halls, housing one full party of four hunters each is a bit of an unpleasant system. Not having any build in chat also results in multiple minutes of just vague gesticulations in the direction of what each member wants done. This is somewhat circumvented by the advent of new P2P networks and emulation's ability to provide a separate network chat, but it is still a work-around for what I can only assume was a pretty terrible multiplayer ecosystem outside of Japan.
You'd need to have a group of people, all with their own independent systems and copies of the game be physically around you, people that you can sit in a room or loiter somewhere outside so you can play a couple of hunts together. And then again, if you didn't know each-other, you'd have to sift through twenty four guild halls to see which one they've connected to, lest their option was set to automatically connect to the first empty one.
Being able to talk with one another physically might explain the lack of actual chat systems, but I'd also imagine you wouldn't exclusively be playing with people you know, so shouting "Can we capture this one!" across the train, might not be the most efficient way to divulge such deeply held desires as far as being sociable is concerned.



That's about all for this week! Thanks for reading and see you soon!

[Shincry]

I love these kind of threads! (Long time ago I made one for FU in Spanish)

Please keep on keeping on!