rumikothefox

[rumikothefox]

Favorite Monster Hunter Monsters, Elder Dragon Edition

Alright, so here is the list of my favorite Elder Dragons. Once again, this is in no particular order. 

Please keep in mind that Elder Dragons are usually hidden or story-based monsters. There are bound to be spoilers for these games due to the nature of these monsters. If that concerns you, best to skip this list.

Let’s get this show on the road!

Ceadeus

As far as Elder Dragons go, let’s start with my first love. Ceadeus was my first Elder Dragon, before I even really understood the classification in reference to the series. He was epicly huge, really powerful, and honestly didn’t give a crap about me until I started being more than a mild annoyance to him and broke his beard. Fighting him was surprisingly fun for an underwater fight, albeit a bit frustrating at times, but I think it was the story aspect that really sold me on him. The beautiful music, the lead up to his fight (including the Lagiacrus fakeout), and the fact that this village’s future is riding on you at least driving this Ceadeus off, if not slaying it outright. It just made it feel ridiculously grand. The Goldbeard Ceadeus was kind of awesome too, but it didn’t have the same impact as fighting Ceadeus in the village quests did.

Oroshi Kirin

When I try to figure out if I like a monster or not, it usually comes down to the fact that monsters both frustrate me and enthrall me. So in which ones does the second happen more than the first? Kirin and Oroshi Kirin ride that fine line where it was hard to say. Both are frustrating as all hell, but they are such amazing monsters that it’s hard to stay mad at them. Oroshi in particular has an awesome-looking coat and I’ve always been partial to ice elements in RPGs. 

Kirin and Oroshi are fast and have really tough hides. They were the type of fights that made me glad I was a gunner mostly in MH4U, because bouncing is never a fun time. I sat back and let loose the pew pew right on that horn of his. To be honest, I initially kind of thought of Kirin as a joke. What is this tiny little horse monster gonna do to me, right? Theeen the carting began and I realized this horse got the title Elder Dragon for a reason. Despite the frustration though, I just felt more compelled to take him down.

Plus... I mean... you know... the armor?

Yeah... >.>

Gogmazios

Gog was our hidden Elder in MH4U. There wasn’t really a lot to him lore-wise, just a balls-hard fight. This is a monster covered in a very sticky, very flammable oil. So sticky, in fact, that this monster starts with a portable dragonator stuck in its back. If you can manage to dislodge it, you can use it against him in addition to the dragonator already in the arena.

Gog is surprisingly mobile for his size. Some of his movements remind me a little of Fatalis and he shares that annoyingly long tail trait. Gog fires explosive fire beams from his mouth that will burn you if you’re too close to the initial fire and, if you hang around the contact point too long, it will explode and send you flying with a ton of damage. He is also capable of flight, despite his size, and he occasionally goes into an enrage phase that involves him flying around the area firing his beam of death indiscriminately in every direction. If you can’t use the binders to bring him to the ground, you generally have to leave the battleground until he’s done rampaging.

My favorite part of him was mounting. I spent half my time in MH4U gunning and the other half with an insect glaive in my hand. And this guy was super easy to mount. It wasn’t uncommon to get a multiplayer room with at least two glaive users in the fight because most people knew that was his weak point. Mount him, bring him down, everyone does damage. Rinse and repeat. It turned a monster that was almost too hard to consider farming despite his amazing-looking weapons into a monster that was tough but fun. 

Lunastra/Teostra

Okay, so, I’ve only fought a Teostra, but I just love how the Lunastra looks and I had to include her with her hubby at least for that and the fact that in their original game, they fought almost the same way.

I love this lion-like, chimera look to them. Lunastra’s coloration speaks to me more, but I do love Teostra’s firey appearance. They look very regal in how they hold themselves.

In fourth gen, they added blast to Teostra and it is both awesome and sucks. In combat, you can get blasted around a ton and you practically have to have an enrage timer handy in a browser to time when he’s going to do his supernova move, because if you’re in melee range when that goes off, it’s gonna hurt. His blast weapons are some of the best in the game though, so I got used to fighting him pretty quick since we farmed him for weapons a lot. They tend to have less top-end than, say, Brachy’s weapons, but they have such an obscene amount of blast on them that with a quick enough weapon and enough hunters, you can just kind of chain explode a monster and cause them to flinch their ass off.

Edit: As of Monster Hunter World, I have now fought a Lunastra. I still love her, but that first unlock quest... well... I could have gone without that entire experience. lol

Hallowed Jhen Mohran

Jhen is yet another Elder that I fought early on and got that special sort of place in my heart. Monsters had always, until that point, been a toe-to-toe fight with the monster in question. Toe-to-claw? Anyway, it hadn’t even occurred to me that a monster this large could exist in this game. So when the villagers were like, “Hey, we wanna take on this monster, but we need to ready a ship to fight it with, can you get us some mats?” I was kind of perplexed but went with it anyway. The result was a ridiculously epic fight that involved firing cannons and ballista at a giant sand whale, climbing on his back to break parts of his spines, and a showdown with the monster creeping ever closer to the boat with only me between them. Having the MH main theme kick in when you use the dragonator on him during the showdown was also an amazing touch. It makes you feel like “omg yes!! I can do this!! LET’S GO GENTS!!!” I didn’t always get all my carves, but it was a fun ride.

Hallowed Jhen was definitely tougher, but god he’s pretty. Jhen has just this sandy, rocky look to him that is cool, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not all that fancy either. Then out struts Hallowed Jhen in G Rank, looking like some swaggering geode that says “Yeah, just try it.” I didn’t fight him often other than when I specifically needed mats, mostly due to his difficulty and also due to the fact that the epicness of the fight sort of starts to wear on you when you have to do it over and over for certain parts, but it was definitely amazing when we did fight him.

Akantor

Okay, first thing is first. Akantor is a Flying Wyvern. Yes, technically this monster isn’t an Elder Dragon. He USED to be classified as one, according to lore. You fight him alone in a volcano arena. He’s ridiculously powerful. His weapons are Elder Dragon levels of powerful. He’s an Elder Dragon, I don’t care what classifications say. :P

Akantor is like if you took a Tigrex and made him spiky and fire-based. He has most of Tigrex’s basic moveset when he moves and attacks. He has the added ability, though, to burrow into the ground and pop up elsewhere. Thankfully this is usually done rather slowly, so you aren’t likely to get too caught off guard unless you are just not paying attention. Which is bad news because if you’re not watching, you can end up with Akantor pulling himself out of the ground behind you and firing a beam that will absolutely devastate you. I guess I just have a thing sometimes for these big, slow, but intensely powerful monsters. He just looks like something you definitely don’t wanna mess with and, really, he isn’t. But he’s a fun fight. Certainly a lot more fun, imo, than his rival, Ukanlos. Shovelface can take a hike.

Alatreon

Ugh, okay, it pains me to break combo like this. I’ve been using the backgroundless renders of all the monsters so far, but I couldn’t do it this time.  I couldn’t find a proper render of him that didn’t either make him look much darker than he actually is, or make him look like he came straight out of a “brown game”. So you get this screenshot from the wiki instead.

Alatreon is a headache to fight. I hate fighting him. But he has some cool lore and his weapons look amazing. Sadly, I didn’t fight enough of him to be able to make his weapons in MH3U. They all have this theme of being black with glowy purple accents with some pretty cool shapes.

The idea behind this Elder is that he can use FOUR of the five elements. That’s Dragon, Ice, Thunder, and Fire. The only one missing is water. The problem is this makes him highly unstable. Monsters aren’t meant to have that many affinities, I guess. He uses all four against you in some capacity, though he can only use one at a time. The arena has a ballista binder, which is good because sometimes he will go into a flying phase where bringing him down is the better option to letting him fly around and have his way with you. In some ways he resembles the body shape of Kushala Daora and even has some of his moveset if I recall.

Chameleos

Okay, so you have that endgame set you really like, right? Got it all nice and gemmed up the way you like it with optimal dps skills? Yeah? Okay, cool. Now open five of those slots up, shove some anti-theft decorations in those slots, and suck it up. No, I said suck it up. Stop crying, you can have your skills back later.

Your enjoyment of Chameleos can be inversely proportional to how many of your items he’s stolen with that long tongue of his, as well as how rare those items are. The more he’s stolen, the more you want to cry and possibly throw something. You will not be getting those items back. R.I.P.

That being said, as a whole, I highly enjoy Cham. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I had to farm him excessively, both for my status blademaster set and for several of his top tier poison weapons. But I got pretty used to his antics. A dedicated anti-theft set specifically made for fighting him helped. I still had to contend with his poison stupidity, but it’s a small price to pay.

I think Cham may be one of the only goofy-looking Elder Dragons. He just has this expression that makes you wanna laugh. Like Kirin, he’s one of those monsters that if you don’t take him seriously from the outset, he will surprise you with the amount of ass kicking he gives you.

My favorite part of fighting him was his mist. He creates mist in the area that he can vanish into unless you’ve broken his horn (at which point he’s very visible when he THINKS he’s invisible). When the mist kicks in, it does this awesome effect where his battle music become muffled, like the mist is blocking your hearing somewhat.  I liked the effect a lot and it kind of added to that immersion, like you were surrounded rather than your hunter character. His music is also ridiculously awesome imo. 

Dalamadur

I’m not sure if I’d put Dally as my absolute favorite, but he’s very much up high on the list for me. Dalamadur is the largest monster in the series so far. As far as I’m aware, anyway. He sits at 44039.7cm (1444.8 feet) long and is fought with his body wrapped around a mountain. At any given time, you can only reach a couple of his claws, his tail, and his chest. You can hit his head if you’re ranged or an insect glaive user. He occasionally will move in such a way that you can hit his body for a minute or two.

This guy is so big and powerful that his movements can shape the landscape. When you find him, he’s covered in this layer of stone, just kind of sleeping wrapped around a mountain peak. He wakes up, cracks the layer off himself, and comes down after you. I love his roar in particular, it just adds to this whole idea of his monster so much bigger than you. It reverbs around the whole area.

Initially, I hated this guy.  There is a lot to remember when fighting him and if you’re unfamiliar with the fight, expect wipes. Our group watched videos about how to fight him before we took him on (WoW raiding habit) and we still got toasted a lot early on.  Once you learn his phases and tells, though, he becomes manageable and kind of fun.  You definitely want to be working on different things than other people. Have someone break his tail while someone else goes after a claw. A third person can be breaking his chest, while someone else could be trying to get on his head and set bombs up there. Learning to Superman dive through his beam of death helps as well.

He’s a difficult one to carve because his body takes a long time to settle during its death throes and you could end up somewhere where his body isn’t actually landing.  That takes practice as well.  Still, taking him out is extremely satisfying.

Honorable Mentions

There are some Elder Dragons that didn’t make it on this list, but I feel like deserve a special mention, or at least an explanation as to why they didn’t make my list.

Fatalis: Fatty just never appealed to me much. I mean, he’s a large dragon and kinda cool looking, but he doesn’t stand out to me. It might be partially because I never played the original game and don’t have that nostalgia for him. I also played MH3U first and so Fatalis feels more like a more plain clone of Dire Miralis, even though I know Fatalis is the one that came first. Crim and White are too frustrating to even consider.  I don’t really have fun fighting any of these three and only really fight them when one of my friends (or myself) needs his parts.

Dire Miralis: Speaking of this guy, he almost made the list, purely based off him being the first hidden Elder I ever came across, but... he was just too aggravating for me to actually like him. There were underwater parts for no real reason other than I guess he needed to cool off his body? He also seemed to home in on you with his projectiles, even when you were doing your best to avoid them. I don’t know, I guess he just leaned too heavily on the frustrating part of things for me to love him all that much. Still, he looks pretty awesome.

Kushala Daora: This was an odd one. I juggled the idea of adding him to the list, especially with his rival Teostra making the list. But I guess rather than anything being bad about him, it was just that he didn’t stand out for me quite enough. I love Daora, don’t get me wrong, but he is a metallic, regular-ass dragon model. He uses ice and wind and his methods of using them are pretty awesome. I also like that he’s one of the Elders that has part of his mechanic crippled by poison. But in the end, I felt like I didn’t want this to be a mile-long list like the normal monsters were and in a lineup of standouts, he just didn’t stand out as much for me? Sorry Daora, I still love you. Rusted can go to hell though.

Amatsumagatsuchi: Amatsu looks fantastic and I love how his armor looks. But... while I’ve played Portable 3rd, I never actually finished it.  I never even got far enough to actually fight an Amatsu myself. So, as much as I would have liked to include him, the fact is that I haven’t fought him and also know very little about him as a monster.

Nergigante: Very similar to Amatsu.  I’ve tangled with Nergy a few times, but it’s only really been in the beta or in a few quests I don’t want to speak of where he invades for a short time and you drive him off. I have yet to get a quest to actually take him out, nor do I know anything about his lore. I feel like Nergy might become a monster I truly love once I get to know him, but for now, he’s just too much of an unknown factor to include on this list.

And that’s the end of my posts on my favorite monsters. If any of the Monster Hunter World monsters really stand out to me, I may make separate posts for them later to gush about them a bit. 

I am still considering a favorite music post, but there’s a lot I need to consider and re-listen to before I make a decision on that. Thanks for reading!

[rumikothefox]

Favorite Monster Hunter Monsters, Part 2

So here is the second half of my favorite normal Monster Hunter monsters. Once again, these are in no particular order.  Let’s get right to it.

Lucent Nargacuga

I put Lucent because it is definitely a very cool rare species of Nargacuga, but really, it could be this or the original Nargy. Green is pretty cool, too. I often say that my true favorite monster is either Nargacuga or Zinogre (way to go spoiling an entry on this list, right?). Nargacuga looks very much like a black panther in many ways, along with the roar to match. Despite not fighting him in the game he was the flagship of, I fell in love with him when I fought him in 3U. His movements are sleek and I love how fighting him makes you wonder just who is hunting who. Lucent takes it a step further by being able to go completely invisible when he enrages, only letting you track him by his glowing eyes. His fight is on top of a tower in basically a small arena, so it makes it very difficult to evade him.

I love the Nargacuga set, especially as a gunner set. 

It has very high evasion and has this cool ninja look to it. The Lucent armor looked especially cool, but sadly, I was never able to get it. Lucent was just TOO damn difficult for me to want to bother farming him. It was like “spikes for everyone” Opera-style, plus the fact that they could poison you and there was NO way Lucent was going to give you an opportunity to deal with that poison while you were on the screen with him. Lucent is highly fast and aggressive, so reprieve is something you rarely get against him.

Stygian Zinogre

So I mentioned Zinny was hitting this list, but I have to say that Stygian JUST pulled ahead on this one. OG Zinogre is awesome on so many levels, but Stygian, as frustrating as he can be, just amazing as well. Zinogre is a giant lightning wolf monster, basically. He was, at the time, the only canine monster I’d seen in this series and was very cool. I loved his vocals, I loved his style, I loved his moveset, and MAN did I love his music (I may have to cover music in another post, because that is another cool topic to put out). Stygian swaps the lightning element for a dragon element and man is he hard. For those unfamiliar, dragon element will cause dragonblight, a debuff that causes the element or status on your weapon to be disabled until you cleanse it. It can get really frustrating. 

This dog will do everything he can to get you. Claw stomps, throwing elemental balls at you, flipping through the air and either smashing you with his tail or attempting to do a back flop on you, shoulder checks... He isn’t too bad when you first fight him, but as with normal Zinogre, he has two levels of charge above his base level that he’ll build up to. Each charge will make him faster and more aggressive.  And hope and pray to the MH gods that you get out alive if he enrages while on a max level charge. 

I also love his blademaster set on females.

It has that thing going where it gives you its own hair and you have these adorable little dog ears and I really just can’t help myself. >.>

Azure/Silver Rathalos

So we have another instance where I really couldn’t decide and just listed both. Rathalos is a cool monster, but Azure and Silver have such cool colorations to them and have interesting twists on the normal moveset. It’s totally not because my favorite colors are blue and silver. >.>

Ahem. Azure is one of the first subspecies I ever saw, being on the US cover art for MH3U. He’s faster and hits harder than your standard Rathalos and hangs out in the air a bit more. He also seems to really have a homing instinct for those poison claw attacks, moreso than normal Rath. He also had one of the best armors for blademasters in MH3U skill-wise and I remember wearing his set a LOT with my Brachy switch axe.

Silver is a rare species (the difference between subspecies, rare species, and variant has always been kind of dumb to me) that basically says “Fuck this, I’m just going to be airborne about 80-90% of the time. Deal with it.” He’ll start on the ground like any other Rath, but once you get that first enrage and he goes airborne, it feels like nothing short of a flash bomb or him finally running out of stamina is going to get him down. And that very well might be the case, to be honest. You fight him on top of a tower, so there are no other maps to escape to.  You’re trapped with him and he’s super pissed about you intruding.

I have to give an honorable mention here to Rathian and her sub/rare species, the Pink Rathian and Gold Rathian. Rathalos is the male counterpart to the exclusively female Rathian. She didn’t make the list, only because Rathalos pulled a bit ahead and it felt redundant to have them both on here. She focuses a bit more on poison than fire and likes the ground a bit more than Rathalos. You also tend to fight her earlier in any game they appear in. In World, you find that these two are difficult to deal with when spawned together in the Ancient Forest, due to the fact that Rathalos is very protective of his mate. I found instances where I’d use a dung pod to shoo him away from her, only for either her to seek him out or for him to come right back, at which point if I hid, he’d proceed to hover over her like a mother hen, looking around for where I went.  It was a cool touch, but also a bit of a terrifying one.

Black Diablos

Black Diablos is labeled as a subspecies of Diablos, but as in-game lore and other sources will explain, a Black Diablos is a normal female Diablos. During mating season, the females darken to a deep black color as a warning to other monsters to not get in her way. She’s getting that D and god help you if you get in her way.

Diablos was already a terrifying monster to me. Diablos trades any sort of elemental or status attacks in favor of raw brute force. For the most part, its attacks are highly telegraphed, so you can avoid them pretty easily if you’re paying attention. Lose focus and get hit, though, and you can easily get nearly one-shot if not at full health. That’s at a full 150, I-ate-food-for-buffs, hp. If you’re at base 100, say goodbye. Especially gunners.

Black Diablos takes a step further. She’s faster, stronger, and her horns are harder to break. She also changes up her charge attacks and will often charge in ways you weren’t prepared for. Still, maxed out Black Diablos weapons often had some of the best raw damage in the game, even factoring in their negative affinity.  And taking out a monster this dangerous is always immensely satisfying.

Odogaron

So now we’re touching into Monster Hunter World territory. The monsters I’ll be mentioning aren’t really super spoilery (they were all shown in the trailers), but if you’re unsure, stop now.

Odogaron is a monster I highly looked forward to since the trailers.  He was scary and icky but I was super curious about how this monster would behave.  Plus, it was awesome to see another canine-based monster. Zinny was feeling lonely.

Getting closer looks at him, it’s apparent that he’s not a skinless dog like the impression the trailers gave me. Instead he reminds me of an intricately-carved jade statue (albeit jade of a particularly bloody color). The armor you made from him for your hunter and your palico have this detailed sort of Chinese look to them that is really cool. The female hunter set is one of my favorite sets in the game so far appearance-wise.

As far as combat, Doggo is a bleed-type. The double claws he uses against you rip and tear in ways that bleed the hunter dry. As with dealing with Seregios’ bleed debuff, you either must crouch for a time to recover, or eat a piece of meat. This monster has similar movesets to Zinogre, though there are a few lunges and such that are purely his own.  He is also smaller but much faster than the other canine. It isn’t uncommon for Doggo to leap off my screen and cause me to have to reorient my camera to keep track of him. He definitely earns his place as the apex predator of the Rotten Vale.

Radobaan

I honestly surprised myself when this monster came to mind when thinking of my favorites.  The more I pondered it, though, the more it totally made sense. I honestly never thought I’d love a monster that is essentially an Uragaan at its core. I mean, nothing BAD about an Uragaan, but I wouldn’t put him in a high place, either. But there’s something about Radobaan that makes him less annoying than an Uragaan, more unique, and more fun.

At first, I thought the bones of the Radobaan were his own. But noticing the Diablos horns on his sides, I started to question it. That was answered further when I started to break off the bones on his body, only for him to go to a bone pile and roll around in it until he was covered in brand new bones. His actual skin has a tar-like substance that coats it and makes him able to stick the bones on his body like armor. You have to break the bones off to make him vulnerable. I had a lot of fun with him and he’s one of the few monsters in the Rotten Vale that don’t fight down in the nasty, health-sapping acid floor downstairs, so it made him that much more fun to fight. 

Tobi-Kadachi

Not the best or worst on this list, just the last. Tobi is like if you took a flying squirrel, gave him a snake head, and gave him the ability to charge himself with static electricity. Oh, and made him highly aggressive. Can’t forget that.

Tobi is fast and can give you thunderblight. He’s especially tough in forested areas where he has trees to jump in to use to jump on YOU. Though this often results in him going up into Rathalos’ nest to fight you and you can imagine how THAT ends up half the time. He will charge his fur up with static and seems to have different levels of charge, similar to a Zinogre. He’s even prone to sometimes doing Zinny’s tail slap on you.

Despite how fast and dangerous he is, though, I found myself learning him pretty fast. He’s tough, but he’s by far not the toughest monster out there and is pretty easy to farm.  Which is good because he gives you thunder-based weapons, which are good against a number of monsters, notably Rathalos, who is rather scary without a proper setup.

He’s challenging enough to not be boring, but is easy enough that you can casually hunt him for fun and not feel like you’re struggling.

And that’s it for the normal monsters. I know it was a lot, but I guess that just goes to show how good Capcom is at making memorable and engaging monsters. Next time I’ll do an Elder Dragon edition. Then maybe a music version. o/

[rumikothefox]

Favorite Monster Hunter Monsters, Part 1

I have a lot of favorite monsters in this series.  It was honestly very hard to narrow it down in any capacity.  Even having only played a few of the games, narrowing it down still only got me down to 15 normies and 8 elder dragons.  I’m doing the elder dragons in a separate post because I feel like it’s unfair to compare normal monsters to elder dragons that are basically MADE to be extra cool and very powerful.

I have played 3 Ultimate, Portable 3rd, 4 Ultimate, and touched a LITTLE into Freedom Unite (not enough to get super far).  I JUST hit the end of low rank in World, so even if high rank introduces any cool new monsters in that game, you won’t see them on this list.  You also won’t see monsters I’ve never fought, so sorry if Amatsu or Lao-Shan being excluded make you sad.  I never fought them.

These aren’t in any particular order.

Brachydios

I believe it was Gaijin Hunter who mentioned that your first flagship monster will always be close to your heart.  Considering MH3U was my first official romp through the MH series, it makes sense for Brachydios to be on this list. While the American release gave us Azure Rathalos on the cover for MH3U, the actual flagship for the game was originally Brachydios (look up the Japanese boxart). Brachy gave us the introduction to slime/blast weapons, which usually end up some of the best weapons in the game now. Brachy’s glowy parts are actually explosive saliva that he coats on his pounders and horn to attack with. I love the little detail that to coat his horn, you see him use his pounders much like a cat uses its paws to clean its face. He has a deviant/variant called the Raging Brachydios that causes explosions more quickly and whose pounders, horn, and even tail will eventually explode just from repeated hunter attacks. I love his mechanics, but as far as looks, nothing will beat that blue sheen the original Brachy boasts. His weapons look pretty awesome too and motivated me to make them for each weapon type just for the hell of it.

Gore Magala

Another weird flagship situation. Gore Magala was on the cover for our US release of MH4U, but he was actually the MH4 flagship. Still, regardless of whose flagship he is, you can’t deny the cool factor. I loved that we got this really cool black-and-purple themed armor from him that gave me slight Alatreon vibes, and at pretty low level as well, making it possible to look like a raging badass pretty early on. I also always found it awesome how the area you were in would darken when he enraged. He introduced the Frenzy mechanic to us, a strange mechanic that could debuff you if you weren’t careful, but that was also able to buff the hunter if dealt with correctly. Even though you beat him pretty early on, his effects are long-reaching and cause other monsters through the game to be frenzied and, worse, apex, a special level of frenzy that was just.... yikes. Ask anyone who played a lot of MH4U endgame what 140 apex jho was like. I also love that, to use a cliche, this isn’t even his final form. The form of him you see in the picture above is an adolescent form. When it gets old enough, it sheds its darker scales and takes on this pale ivory look as a Shagaru Magala. There is also a variant called the Chaotic Gore Magala, a Gore Magala that tried to shed its scales but was only able to change halfway. Still, neither of them really hit me as much as the original.  He brought us a new mechanic that made things exciting and looked too damn cool, even if he’s a total edge lord.

Seregios

At some point, I’m going to stop with the flagships. Really. But Seregios was just too cool to pass up. He introduced the Bleed mechanic, one that causes the hunter further harm if they move or evade while suffering from it. To be honest, when I first saw a promotional image of him, I was severely disappointed. They liked to show him with his scales flat against his body, which made him look like little more than a sleek, gold-ish wyvern. Cool, but not entirely original or awesome for something that was the MH4U flagship.  Then I saw him take on a Rathian and puff up his scales and I got it. I also love his hawk-like roar, despite him having zero to do with a hawk (except the flying thing I guess?). His movements are a bit on the fast side, but once you learn his movements he is a fun monster to fight. He also has some of the cooler weapons in the game, mechanic-wise. For melee weapons, evading with your weapon out causes your weapon to regain some of its sharpness. The weapons aren’t stingy on initial sharpness either, making them weapons you don’t have to use many whetstones for. For bowguns, evading with your weapon out causes you to reload a single bullet of your currently loaded ammo. And for the bow, close range coating gets the same damage boost as if you were also using power coating.  It’s pretty awesome. I used that light bowgun through a huge portion of G Rank. 

Furious Rajang

A variant of Rajang rather than a subspecies, I think Furious Rajang was the first time I really felt like a monster was just insurmountable for me. Sure, a monster like Jho is scary, but never once did I feel like I couldn’t ever beat one eventually. Rajang, especially his Furious variant, just basically wiped the floor with me so often that I very nearly began to hate him more than a few times. He was the monster I had the hardest time learning the tells for, for some reason. It was frustrating and, seeing as I fought him in MH4U and I was largely a gunner in that game, not evading in time and getting hit by nearly anything of his would often one-shot me, or get very close unless I was absolutely topped off in hp.  He’s one of the main reasons I honed for Life on my bowguns. But besides the large hate I had for him and the fact that I needed some of his armor.... he’s just so damn cool. His roar has this strange effect that almost sounds like he’s doing it through a loudspeaker and almost breaking the speaker with the sound. He is a monkey that pretty much goes super saiyajin when angry. He shoots lightning out of his mouth. Let’s summarize that: he’s a super saiyajin lightning monkey with a cool roar. I mean... come on! And as stated, his armor ended up in a lot of franken-sets just due to how good some of the skills were on them.

Those fists will kill ya, though.

Molten Tigrex

Let’s cross a tiger, a T-rex, and a wyvern. Let’s make him angry. Let’s make him hungry. Let’s make an angrier and hungrier version of him. Okay, now let’s make an even angrier and hungrier version of him that uses blast and is the size of a brick shithouse. Perfect.

Don’t get me wrong, Tigrex is a cool fucking monster. He’s pretty much up there with Jho in terms of a monster that is just a ton of aggression and hunger. He’s the choo choo of death and god help you if you step on the tracks. Brute Tigrex is pretty awesome as well. I didn’t realize a Tigrex could become MORE aggressive, but apparently I was mistaken. But then in strolls Molten Tigrex. Not only do I love his coloration, but I love just how absolutely huge he is. He starts off slow for a mercy, though as the fight goes on, he gets progressively faster and crazier. He can put puffs of blast powder in the air much like Teostra and set it off using his claws like pieces of flint. He also covers ground very fast with how big he is. You have to use caution as a melee user because due to his size, you can easily get lost in attacking him and not see a tell that would otherwise have you preparing for the incoming attack.

His weapons are very good, especially his heavy bowgun, which is among the best heavy bowguns in the game. Plus... it’s his head. You made a cannon out of his damn head. I mean... how can you beat that?

Glacial Agnaktor/Zamtrios

To be honest, it was hard to pick just one here. I love these monsters for similar reasons. Both are these huge monsters that just kind of swim through the ice and snow as if it were water. Zamtrios is a little less stealthy about it, but he has that awesome Jaws effect going on when he does it. 

Glacial Agnaktor is a subspecies.  The normal monster, the Agnaktor, is a fire-based monster who lives in volcanos and wears lava like armor once it cools on his body.  By constrast, the Glacial Agnaktor packs ice and snow tightly on his body to make his armor, preferring to live in freezing tundras over raging volcanos.  I got very well acquainted with this monster while farming his lance set, since his armor was the best guard lance set in the game by far. His movements are cool and I love the little clicking thing the Agnaktor family does with their beaks. A little less of a fan of the 360 no scope beam of death, but that part is also kind of cool, too.

Zamtrios has a sand-based subspecies and while I love the Tigerstripe Zamtrios’ paralysis weapons to death, I can’t help but like the style and feel of the original monster more. I laughed when I saw him balloon up for the first time because it was goofy as hell, but it quickly became closer to terrifying when I realized that form is surprisingly swift when he wants it to be and boy does it hurt when he lands on you. He also does the ice/snow armor thing, along with giving himself a sawtooth nose to boot.

Overall, I love them both and they feel so similar that I just decided to group them together.

Abyssal Lagiacrus

Okay, this one is a little bit of a cheat. I have actually never fought Abyssal Lagiacrus myself. I’ve seen screenshots and know he’s fought in the same arena as Caedeus, but outside of that, my knowledge of him is minimal. I regret that I never got to fight him. I was late to the party with MH3U to begin with and didn’t know a lot of people who played MH at the time, so I had a hard time leveling my HR by myself and to unlock his quest, you had to get your HR to 70. He was the highest HR single monster hunt in the online guild hall. His weapons looked really damn cool to me and I always wanted them, but I was unable to get them.

Lagiacrus as a whole is a really cool monster though. I loved the sea serpent theme of him and while I often celebrate the lack of water combat in the newer games, fighting him underwater was always a really cool challenge. I thought Ivory Lagiacrus would be easier because he’s on land more and while I was correct to an extent, Ivory is much more aggressive and dangerous and it sort of offset that solid ground comfort. I love the fact that as he gets more charged up, those spikes on his back start to glow. Overall, I found him fun to fight and I can’t think of third gen in general without thinking of the Lagiacrus.

Savage Deviljho

Deviljho is amazingly scary on his own. You first come across him when you definitely aren’t powerful enough to take him on. He strolls on up, sensing a free meal, and he doesn’t care if he takes it out of you, Cha-Cha, your palicos, or the monsters you’re fighting. He’s nomadic, having no territory of his own and therefore able to be found just about anywhere. He’s just looking for where the food is. He will even eat his own severed tail if you give him half a chance.

He’s also easily one of the largest monsters you’ve seen by the time you first encounter him.  Only weapons with decently high reach are going to reach his tail or head on a normal basis and he does large sweeping attacks and huge strides that bridge distances in a time you wouldn’t expect from a monster so bulky.

Savage Deviljho is that much more terrifying. His base form is what you’re used to seeing for an enraged Deviljho. When Savage Jho enrages, he gets a shroud of dragon energy over the top of his head and back and all you see around his eyes is a black shroud with glowing red eyes peering at you from it.  Truly, the abyss stares back at you. Savage Jho is just that much more mean and powerful than his normal counterpart.  I also love the coloration of his gear. Deviljho gear has a pretty cool shape, but while the normal gear is this dulled green, the Savage Jho gear has this almost punk black-and-hot-pink thing going on that I think looks awesome.

I think that’s it for part 1. I’ll finish up the rest of the normal monsters in a second part coming up and elder dragons will have their own third part. o/

[rumikothefox]

Humpty Dumpty

It occurs to me... he's always portrayed as an egg, but it doesn't actually SAY he's an egg in the rhyme.  That's a weeeee bit disturbing if he's, say, human.

[rumikothefox]

It's crazy how animals evolve into things like this.