MH Oldschool

By the topic, I'm specifically referring to: Moga Village right before Cedaeus and/or Loc Lac 1-3* quests

The news of the private server actually getting into a closed beta a few months or so ago did ended up motivating me to finally try out this game in particular, which would have been my full introduction to the 3rd gen games as I've only extensively played P3rd before this point. Overall I actually really enjoyed the experience and it's pretty easy to see why a majority of people are enamored with this game, especially when it comes to classic MH discussion.

What felt a bit surprising to me though, is that progression to this game was a tad more interesting to me compared to any other MH game I've played (Which at that point, was basically most games outside ones such as MHP2/MH4) Mostly in terms of the gameplay mechanics side of the game - the one I focused the most on was the weapon stat distribution. The very beginning was a pretty decent way of an opening, text dump-ish tutorials and the likes are probably a bit more controversial these days but I think Tri did a pretty good job of laying out the important stuff to keep note of once they let you out to the main gameplay loop. Once you get past Great Jaggi and needing to do some upgrades for stuff, I felt like the climb towards the end got quite strange.

I found it to be a weird mix of both being easier and harder? Obviously additions like their version of the Farm and the reworked gathering nodes definitely made it a lot more friendlier towards players, but things like gearing was notable to me. The armor selection is nice, once you get to the weapons it's quite wild - you actually stay on yellow sharpness for quite a good while here, and getting green sharpness seems like a luxury since so many trees honestly barely gives you a lot to work with and some trees has some pretty wack upgrades as well - One person pointed out that for the Qurupeco SnS, the first upgrade towards the path has no fire element attached unless you have element awakening, only when you get to the 2nd one does it get any without the skill. Another one of my favorites is when I finally unlocked the switch axe, and at the time the highest I could go was around the 2nd upgrade at the base level, and it had a very tiny level of green to use, the next upgrades not giving much more. My main playthrough I effectively stuck towards the Bone Hammer tree. Some weapons did offer better sharpness it seems,

It seems like a small thing to really hone in on the sharpness values but it really affected the pacing of the fights. It's clear to me that Barroth was a wall not just it's aggression but you also had pretty shit weapons. You really needed to sit down quite a bit to work your weapons up and honestly I think it is actually a bit cool since if anything, it really wanted you to actively hit good spots to maximize your sharpness per use and really punish reckless play. I'll have to admit the previous MH games it was pretty easy to get to points at times that I could just completely unga through fights just cause I had enough green to not care. But it was unfortunate in a way since I ended up sticking to a single weapon much more than any other games in the series and really only went to explore the other weapons way later than I would personally have. Another small point I do want to make is the monsters themselves, around the 3-4*+ mark. It's great to see how aggressive these monsters are, in which the exhaustion mechanic actually seems quite fair here although they are quite non-stop which puts a lot more pressure on the more slower weapons in the game. I also felt like for a lot of them when they escape to go eat to restore their stamina I always found by the time I sprinted with dash juice over there they were already done eating, not much time to even throw a flash bomb to stop it sometimes.

I don't have much to say on the online portion since I started much after doing Village content, although my current first impression seems that the HRP grind seems much more paced out to me, and you can't take lower level people into a higher tier of their current rank i.e. taking a HR6 person into a 3* quest like in MH1/G. The latter definitely bothered me a bit more, especially if you were already helping out someone who cleared out village as well.

That's just my blog post of my jumbled thoughts, what about you guys? In case someone was also wondering about how I thought about Underwater, simply put it's not a roadblock or anything but it is absolutely dogshit

Barroth is what a LOT of people got stuck on due to the lack of green sharpness and often people wouldn't have many healing items due to have very few to no upgrades for the farm. The game does show how useful certain weapons are against each monster if you experiment such as sns or swaxe being some of the best weapons against Uragaan due to each weapons inability to bounce via sns shield attacks or swaxe sword attacks, Uragaan can be a pain point for many players as you will still bounce off his chin even after you break it in Tri.

Blue sharpness is a luxury in low rank with only one weapon having access to natural blue sharpness until high rank being the Agnaktor long sword. Many players will bring helios armour into city due to helios basically being the only way to have good sharpness in low rank, it does make the HRP grind more annoying due to being fully geared for low rank. There are many low rank pieces that are worth getting in low rank like rathalos, lagiacrus, uragaan boots, and the skull mask (there are more, but I still need to experiment more). Some people will be struggle with helios armour falling off in usefulness due to not being able to upgrade until after HR 51.

Another interesting Tri fact is that there is 1 low rank weapon that can get white sharpness with handicraft being the Ceadeus great sword goes from green sharpness to white with sharpness +1 with barely any blue. Urgent quests have a lower HR requirement to join than the rest of the quest in that star rank so for example you can post Barroth for people to join at HR5+, Lagiacrus at HR14+, Jhen Mohran at HR 27+, Dual Raths at HR35+, and the final urgent for HR46+. These quests need to be posted by someone in the next rank where they randomly cycle in and out of what can be posted.

I've been working through every quest, and I'd say the progression feels pretty good.

Barroth is the third large monster of the game and appears at the perfect time to have a roadblock imo. You get some confidence fighting Great Jaggi, then Royal Ludroth, then you get a monster with more involved mechanics.

I can't really speak to other weapons other than greatsword, but the timing of upgrades is satisfying enough. Also I usually run the Jaggi set until I get the Baggi set. I'm not going to grind for low rank gear that's going to be replaced soon.

Other than that, I like the pacing of the farm and fishery upgrades.

I really like it myself. I need to hop on the online play soon.

It certainly does feel weird having to wait till royal ludroth for any kinda elemental sns, ur first fire sns is gated by giginox too. Other than that though the progression feels fine, even if the weapon upgrades do feel more expensive than in 3U