For those new to Monster Hunter, or even new to the later games of the series, Monster Hunter is an action game structured around hunts where you have to track down and slay or capture a monster. Each hunt has a time limit, and each monster is the equivalent of an action game boss, with attacks to learn and openings to exploit. The monster also moves between areas within the map, which used to be separated by loading screens, and it was World that first did away with them for good, owing to the power of the PS4, Xbox One and having finally come to PC.
Monster Hunter as a franchise is also produced by Capcom, which means it's straddled with baggage, poorly thought out grind, and other gameplay nonsense that only serves to grievously imbalance the game. Thankfully, PC has mods to fix that and make the game more "once-through" friendly.
When hunting monsters, a player has to pick a weapon for the hunt, which comes from a bunch of different types, each with it's own move set with various values and timings. Commitment is of great importance. If you commit to an attack, and it doesn't stagger the monster, you open yourself up to a counterattack that can eat a lot of your health. Since you can take so much less damage than the monsters, evading or blocking attacks is very important, meaning you have to manage your commitment carefully, and know how much window you have to counterattack when exploiting an enemy move.
Generally speaking, heavy weapons have larger commitments than light weapons, and ranged weapons usually have even less. Of these weapons some are better for evading, and relying on evasion invincibility frames to phase through attacks, while others are good at blocking and countering. Finally of note is the greatsword, slow, but incredibly high in damage.
Weapons are also split into melee and ranged, the latter type composed of bows, light, and heavy bowguns. Bows and light bowguns are good at evading, bows in particular need evasion to be weaved into the attack pattern, while heavy bowguns can be equipped with a shield to block attacks with like any shielded setup (lance, gunlance, charge blade, sword and shield). Heavy Bowguns are also notable because they have low commitments to their "primary" shots.
Ranged weapons have a glaring, never mentioned drawback. The UI says that ranged weapons take less elemental damage, while melee weapons take less physical damage. This is because unlike earlier games, there is no gunner or blademaster armor. Everyone wears the same armors, and the weapon decides which type of defense (physical or elemental) you get.
Except that is not how it works. Having a melee weapon equipped does nothing to your defenses. Having a ranged weapon on the other hand, reduces your physical defense by 30%, while giving you a dinky 5% to all elemental resistances. You could say that okay, this is still less elemental damage taken for the ranged player, except that is not true either. No attack in the game is purely elemental. Most "elemental" attacks like fireballs, lightning strikes, and icicles deal half physical damage, or two thirds physical damage. There is exactly one attack, from one enemy, that deals slightly more elemental than physical damage. What obfuscates things even more, is that there is a base of 80 defense, that is not displayed anywhere, which is added after your normal defense has been penalized. So it's barely noticeable in the early game, but gamechanging in the endgame.
Another thing is, while it is true that ranged weapons are low commitment that allow you to hit things from range, the fact is that monsters are more mobile than you, and even worse, they are even faster in later, master rank versions. To top it off, some enemies flat out get cone attacks that force you to play close to them less you find yourself way out of position and pinned down / fainted (killed).
There is one particular exception. Insect Glaive. It is a mobility weapon with average-ish killing speed, average to fast sheathing time (which is important when wanting to heal, as you need to sheathe before using items), and a kinsect. The kinsect is the single best thing about it. You can send it out, it will peck a monster, and extract a colored buff. Normally you use it to extract buffs from the monster, which the bug will return to you upon recall, boosting your attack speed, defense, and unsheathed movement speed.
But as long as your kinsect, which you can upgrade and send through tech trees like with every other weapon, has stamina, you can order it to keep pecking the same monster or even monster part that you point to, pecking in quick successions repeatedly.
Normally it does not peck for much, but since Iceborne got released, owners of the expansion can feed it red ammunition, acquired from light weapons wounding the monster via the expansion-added clutch claw, (also acquired from the monster hitting certain life tresholds, and from certain fauna) to massively boost it's output.
Best of all, it is independent of armor and decoration granted skills, allowing the player to focus on defense. The insect glaive is a melee weapon, so it does all this without the ranged defense penalty.
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I also want to note that I disabled the ability to hold max and ancient potions in your item bag for this run. They have the fastest "drinking" speed, you are essentially eating a pill that restores your hp to full, instead of chugging a potion as you are supposed to that restores only a part of it. Much of the game was balanced around the "normal" and "mega" potions' slow chugging speed, it's only the endgame where things break into the "max potion or die" levels, where you usually bring max and ancient potion materials with you, take one when you get hit (because it's inevitably more than what a mega potion can heal back up), and craft more with the itemwheel / item bar. I find that playstyle extremely messy and boring, so mega potions and chugging it is.
In similar vein, farcasters are disabled in this run. No "town portaling" back to camp for easy restocks here!
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Before the run, at the tail end of 2020, I purged my Monster Hunter save. With my then-current character, after 500 hours, I got burnt out with the grind, the tedium of endgame, and enough emotional baggage piled up from suppressed IRL issues to make driving him around not fun anymore. There was also very little left to do, being in the endgame.
I also wanted to test a friend, named Rei's idea that you need high-end bugs to make kinsect-only work. Plus I'd get to play monster hunter at it's best: low and mid-high rank, very little grinding for armor pieces and monster mats instead of a lot of grind kulve/safi rng and points and decorations, and hunter ranks.
Finally I also wanted to get better at the stick part of bugstick, despite my reaction times and general attentiveness having worsened over time. (It has been getting better since my operation) (This is also as a nod to another friend of mine, who also was an insect glaive user)
All these three combined to the start of a new run. I picked up the iron glaive and blazed through the first few quests. I learned what the buffs do, for the most part, and followed around a rather enjoyable youtube video's guide to picking armor and weapons. The kadachi glaive especially looked good, and the pieces were nice.
As expected, the bug was weak at the start, even with getting priority in terms of upgrades, and with the red ammo buff. But come Mudfish (Jyuratodus), come the water sac, and I could give the kinsect an element, which was a huge change against anjanath who has exceptional 30% hzv*-s on the nose and head, with a decent 20% on the tail and neck, 25% on the head's non-nose part.
*HZV - Hitzone value, the percent of the True Raw / True Element dealt to the part and to the monster life total.
None the less I continued using the stick part, and went for the kadachi weapon I mentioned. I also crafted the armor pieces since they buffed more or less everything an Insect Glaive does. I had some tickets to make the orion belt and layered armor to make myself not look like a mismatched mess eventually, so I even had a little health boost.
The Tobi-kadachi spear worked wonders against Legiana, although I had trouble after that with Radobaan.
Then I took a larger break, focusing on other things, and when I returned, lets just say I was rusty and gravitated naturally towards the bug part of the weapon's offerings. I also decided I shouldn't bother with following the videos, despite it's production values, since I was going to diverge hard soon.
As such, I danced with odogaron with my ice kinsect, no bleeding was incurred on me. Then I dealt with Rathalos and Diablos as usual, remembering to dive* against the diablos burrow. Zorah's second setpiece was interesting in that I had to use my weapon instead of my bug since there was no ammo to load into the kinsect and it was too slow. I won anyways without too much trouble (And I didnt forget to eat for health since I had max and ancient potions banned via my own mod.) This was also the last time that I seriously used the stick, and didn't bother upgrading the Tobi-Kadachi spear afterwards to high rank.
*dive / superman dive. A move that you can do when looking back at the monster, sprinting away from it, and pressing dodge. It has exceptional invincibility frames.
Fighting the deceptively strong (by low rank standards) Pukei Pukei with the bug, I installed two other mods simultaneously. The Modern Decoration System and the More Balanced decoration drop rates. Those would quadratically reduce my decoration grind time later on, but also change things up in other ways.
But anyways, on high rank I had a goal. Nergigante. Actually, make it two goals. Rei mentioned that in Monster Hunter Rise there is so far no health augment. Health augment is the living, beating heart of the master rank bugsticking, or even any kind of master rank play. High rank health augments have higher lifesteal than master rank ones, and combined with a master rank bug's high base damage since there is no kinsect damage penalty for using a weaker glaive as long as it's boost is correct, they can leech back even Rajang's Lightning Cannonball (normally a near/oneshot for ranged players) in 1-2 hits, provided the setup is defensive enough.
But for low and high rank there is nothing of that sort. There is green extract though, which is helpful and I used it a lot since it came from monster tails. For you see, slicing kinsects are exceptional at tail cutting. As long as the kinsect is fast enough (hence the speed boost for now) the tail will cut pretty much 100% without any partbreaker skill needed.
Anyways, since green extract can't be relied on for every monster, I needed a plan b. I could go recovery up and speed eating, like a scrub, or I could go get that sweet passive regen like Rei said I would want to in rise. In that game it's the Daora set, in world it's the Vaal set. This is my goal here as a transition set to health augments.
A little on health regeneration:
At base, you recover 1 health every 1.5 seconds of a tick.
There are two ways to increase this: More hp recovered per tick, or faster tick rate.
Hunting Horns can apply two "recovery speed" effects, a small for +2 hp per tick, and a large for +3 hp per tick. When stacked they sextuple the base regen. Additionally the coral cheerhorn also adds +2 hp per tick.
This makes green note horns exceptional for regen setups, but that does not help me since I use a glaive.
Furthermore, using an immunizer, astera jerky, great sushifish scale, or consuming the appropriate mushroom with the mushroomancer will grant Natural Recovery Up, doubling health regeneration per tick from all sources.
Level 3 recovery speed quarters the time between each tick of hp regen.
Stacking the above works as follows:
(1 Base + 2 Horn (S) + 3 Horn (L) + 2 Cheerhorn) * 2 Item * 4 Skill = 64 HP per 1.5s interval. Your maximum health is 200 with health boost 3 after eating for health.
Unfortunately, without the hunting horn it drops down to 24 health per 1.5 seconds (16 hp per second), and when the coral buff drops it's only 8 hp per 1.5 seconds. It is also random if I get the coral regen buff at all.
However, it is still good, and better than anything I have so far.
But back to the High Ranks. I stood at the gates in low rank armor, although the amazing bugstick defensive and evasive power was still on my side.
My first task was upgrading my hornetaur greaves and making a hornetaur chest for the inevitable fighting in Rotten Vale's effluvia regions. I also made a bone helm to help with that, and for the health boost. For gloves I wanted ingot, so I hunted for hardbones and inferno sacs, which meant bullying Pink Rathian a ton. Once I got bored of that I caught Odogaron and a couple elder's recess monsters, and mined a ton of carbalite ores for bugs and my transition to high rank insect glaives, of which the most important is the humble iron tree's main branch.
As for the monsters, as expected Uragaan was a nuisance, but less so now that I got it's tail early on (And completely forgot about it, first time I left a tail on the ground). Dodogama was fun, if a little annoying since I fought it before getting some armor upgrades. The rest were easy enough, leaving me with plenty of room to recover with vigorwasp, green extract, or potions. I also had a LOT of errands to run, to unlock the botany slots, to unlock sleep herbs (which I forgot even though I could've done it in early low rank), and a LONG backlog for canteen food.
It was quite a ride, every hunt or expedition bringing me closer to my goal in a visible, and quick way. The decos weren't anything spectacular, at best I had two thunder resist decos, which would be nice if thunder was something monsters used. As is, it's practically nonexistent except for maybe kirin and tobi, neither of whom were particularly in my way. Veteran players of vanilla who struggled greatly against kirin would scoff at this, but this is post-iceborne, there is little to do in high rank anymore.
Still, after a lot of mining I eventually reached my armor goal, as well as all five elemental kinsects in the pseudocath lineage. Accidentally leaving speed boost on I took on nergigante and it felt like I was carrying myself. Most of the hits I took were tiny trips, and the dive bombs I dodged to the side from didn't really hurt, maybe 66 health? As long as I wasn't out of position it would be no issue, plus later on I realized I could try using the IG's aerial moves. I didn't have any evade extender either to cover more distance. Oh well, onwards to Vaal Hazaak.
Getting the tracks was no trouble at all, done with a bit of hornetaur hunting (for canteen) and getting the plunderblade on an expedition. I had a strong enough kinsect, and since the pseudocath has plenty of speed I went for the Sever Boost bonus on my IG. This time I also put in some decorations, including a miasma decoration
And holy cows did Vaal melt. As usual being an insect glaive user protects from the worst of it, the many weird hitboxes I never got used to, the defense was enough for me to feel safe all around this wyvern, and being closer to it allowed me to better angle to avoid the laser. The effluvium AoEs which would normally reduce my DPS had no effect with my long range. Best part was the time. 8 minutes and 6 seconds. Back in last summer I'd fret a lot about this dragon, having seen Rei do an amazingly executed 11 minute hunt with a build she suggested when I asked for help for someone else. Of course neither back then nor now was I up to the task of pulling off such a run, but hey, at least I could do a good one my own lazy way.
After that I had a choice to make: Farm vaal in the current speed, or head straight to iceborne for a massive upgrade? The latter won, despite my plans on a 3p vaal build nurtured for a few days, As such I grabbed a few hardbones, upgraded some kinsects, and went on expeditions to quickly gather the rest of the tracks.
So for the other two elders: I forgot to bring a water bug at first for Teostra, but as soon as I got it going it was a smooth run for the most part. I was missing the fire resistance that would remove the fireblight chance altogether, and that was most of the damage I took. The final part at Teostra's nest was a little hairy thanks to the lava, but my bug got it done.
Kushala too was an interesting case, although a lot faster than Teostra: 12 and half minutes and some of that was spent mining. One notable thing is the roar that can stun you long enough to give the dragon a free hit, but with bugstick defenses this was not a game changer the least.
With those two dead it was time to hit the final boss of the game: Xeno'Jiiva.
When I first fought it I used a Defender LBG V, and it took me a faint, a lot of stress, and 35 minutes. Here it was only 14:30, and I wasn't rushing to the fight so the contact time was even less. One thing I underestimated was how much time it spends outside critical mode, so a dragon or fire bug would've been preferable here. I cut the tail, I also got a gem carve. Life was good.
And now for the transition to Master Rank.
The first hunt is a Beotodus that is weak to fire (thank goodness, I had a maximally upgraded firebug just for this). Thankfully it's an expedition so no time or faint constraints, not that I needed them, not having fainted a single time on this run. Having full health boost and the presence of mind to run back and eat at camp once the story sequence was over was the key here. I also ran around mining and gathering but that's just the way things work here. the hunt is slower but the rewards are better than doing the two things separately.
As a result I was able to craft an alloy chest and beo's greaves, which boosted my defenses from 360 to 450. A major leap.
Next up, for Banbaro I returned to high rank for more materials. I bullied Nergigante with my upgraded defenses so it was even less threatening. After that I continued working on the remaining high rank monsters in the arena to get some hardbones (I swear the costs are insane for one full set of bugs, much less two). Uragaan kept hitting me time after time, but my defenses were so high at this point that it didn't pose a threat. For legiana I hit a streak where I dodged the roars and did some risky positioning that looked and felt good.
But back to the game, with the full power of a finished high rank bug Banbaro stood no chance. Sure the tail took ages to cut, but screw it I have a severing bug and plenty of time (It was already 4am). I also took some hits, but I had nullberries, potions and patience on my side.
After that I continued to master rank to get that gathering quest done, and after that it was time to craft myself a full set of that alloy stuff, minus the greaves for which I picked Oolong, even though Beo's earplugs 2 technically offers better uptime and higher "inbuilt slot count". I had melded three healh boost decos* before just to make sure I was not dependent on high rank armor (which made me a little uncomfortable, since from now on it's no longer individual armor pieces I'll be building with, but with set bonuses and decorations).
*decos, decorations. They are socketables that can be freely slotted into and reclaimed from equipment, conferring certain passive skills. Health boost gives you 15, 30, and 50 health respectively at levels 1, 2, and 3. Skills can be gained from decorations slotted into armor, or from certain armors themselves.
As for the decorations themselves, I had two evasion/x decorations so I could live without the butterfly helm's evade window. After meeting these "basic" defense requirements I just put in whatever would help me with the hunts. Bombardier and friends mostly.
At this point I have to mention the mods in more detail. More Balanced Decoration Drop rates makes steel tickets and ancient feystones output mostly the higher end of high rank decorations, while the higher ones (Carved/Sealed) are guaranteed high rarity level decorations. Modern Decoration System reworks steamworks reward from mega potions and ancient potions to immunizers and kelbi horns, as well as slightly more melding tickets. It also adds melding tickets in place of armor spheres to some bounties, making those much more worth doing, and also to the sailor's stock, so I had high value fodder ready for the melding. Finally there was the automated steamworks application, which predicts with 100% accuracy the right button to press in steamworks, and thus sextuples the rewards from steamworks.
All combined have a cubic effect on reducing the open-ended grind in monster hunter world, which is perfect for my case since the hardbones are already becoming a nuisance.
In the full setup my defenses were 580, a lot more than what I had when fighting Nergigante, and a lot more than what I could get from high rank in any reasonable time. I lost some defense boost but gained everywhere else.
Continuing on with the story the game settled into a rather stable pace. Enemies would take about 15-18 minutes to cap, and they could still get some licks in, despite the bump in my defenses. I upgraded to Rose, barioth, etc. pieces with a base of 140-150, a significant upgrade from starting MR gear, and my defenses skyrocketed into the 750s. A shaver charm meant the removal of defense boost, but I could wound in one clutch claw for a nice damage boost, the only way to really improve kinsect damage.
With that I eagerly took on Velkhana, as I was yet undefeated at that point. A Hard Ice Res deco (which I havent seen in unmodded MHWI despite over 500 hours in the game, of which over 300 were in IB) came in handy, but was not essential here. I got the tail cut, then Velkhana, despite it's ice breaths and sweeping explosions catching me and taking a whole chunk out of my health. Imagine what they can do on gunners who took chip damage!
After that I had a heart operation, and an extended stay in a hospital then sanatorium without mhw, but with monster hunter rise. I returned and was eager for more PC. So I sobered up and went against Seething Bagel, with 17:30 contact time. I was unhappy with the damage I was taking, so I reworked my defenses after this, cramming in as much defense bost (Thanks for the hard def deco) as possible.
At this point I realized that the pseudocaths are probably a trap for master rank, and that breaking out the Blunt type Gleambeetle Velox with elemental boost was needed badly. Sure, tail cuts are nice, but the real deal is a quick cap and the stuns, on top of better blunt hzv-s, or even sometimes elemental hzv-s to be exploited. Calculators and prior experience said going for the elemental velox route is the way to go.
So I was doing quests like MR Pukei for Deadly Poison sac, and even bullying HR Pukei with tailraiders who got me 5(!) toxin sacs. (Most of those are stuck as Carnage Beetle 1-s)
In the meanwhile I gathered enough tracks for Blackveil, whom I fought. It took an age and a half (24:20), but it was a LOT safer than eating some chip damage and then a laser by a bowgun. Additionally, the terrain was unfavorable, ledges and narrow corridors added unnecessary risks and damage downtimes. Blackveil is just not cooperative all around either. There is a powerful drain from the spore patches on the ground, and it alternates between making the ground around it a worse hazard than lava, and shooting lasers that are hard to outposition if you are far away. In short a positioner's nightmare. That it also took out 40% of my health with a laser was another factor in keeping the fight tense, but i stuck to it and bested him.
To say the rewards were lackluster would be a gross underselling, but I got 2 pure dragon bloods that would allow me to upgrade my fire gleambeetle to it's final stage. Compared to the penultimate pseudocath (Foliacath II Forz) it can deal 25-30% more damage to blackveil with an elemental boost glaive. I also got a Kushala investigation, and his shard would allow me to max out my Pseudocath line IF I got myself some large elder dragon bones.
As it was it made sense to bully High Rank pukei for yet more toxin sacs and some mid-tier monsters there to grind up more hardbones (remember what I said about them? If you know what's good for you you forget the pseudocath and tail cutting nonsense, the HZVs are crap anyways, and go for the mauldrone line all the way up through Gleambeetle Velox-es). Investigations helped a lot, and would have helped even more had I not missed that I had a Pukei investigation going on.
After that I entered MR pukei hell, which was a fumble since it only gives Deadly Poison Sacs as investigation reward and shiny drop, but I was unlucky (or unattentive) there, and the ones I needed I got from MR Viper Tobi-Kadachi.
Armed with a maximized Fire Gleambeetle with elemental boost, I tussled with Namielle. It's lasers were less threatening than Vaal's faster sweep, and I found I can avoid it better by keeping at mid-range to her right, circling to my left around her.
I got another pure dragon blood, enough now for maxing one more Gleambeetle. My main choices were the Ice and Lightning beetles: Lightning for viper-tobi and Ruiner Nergigante, Ice for Shara Ishvalda. I assumed Shara would be worse and picked ice, leaving thunder at the penultimate level. I tried getting two more bloods, but a blackveil I came back to (and did in less than 18 minutes, progress!!!) didn't bleed enough, and gave only one blood.
So I went against this Ruiner Nergigante with slightly less damage, and thanks to RNG, no bleeding resist. Blessedly, said Ruiner Nergigante was only 15k hp, the real one being locked behind MR 100. As one would expect, I had to deal with bleeding a couple times, and kept using Sushifish Scales since they recover more health than Astera Jerky. I put my tempered ruiner experience to good use, exploiting the green extracts from the tail to keep my health topped off, and my earplugs came in handy when Nergigante did its roar-followed-divebombs, as I managed a superman dive to get out of the way.
Overall, Ruiner gave a tense fight and a taster to what is to come, but it was doable and not too dangerous. Ironically, the carve gave a bunch of large elder dragon bones, and a Pure Dragon Blood, just what I'd have needed for the final kinsect. Oh well.
After Ruiner, the game instantly gives you the Shara Ishvalda fight. Normally one farcasters out of the way, for me it was a return to Seliana for a bug change and some finetuning/restocking. Shara has a lot of health, over 37k, one third of which you are supposed to break off by flinch shooting it against the wall with falling rocks. Once that is exhausted it's just shooting what is left on the head, and then transitioning to phase 2.
There was a tense moment in the first phase, with the raking charge catching me out of position, but a few dives solved that, and there also was some potion use. Interestingly enough, the second phase provided no such problems, Shara's head was often exposed and also a great hitzone for my maximized ice bug. While at first it felt tense, the scalp actually fell a few thousand HPs before the dragon croaked, without laying as much as a gnarly finger on me in phase 2. I'm not sure what possessed me, or what kind of stars aligned this time, but I was just not getting hit.
In the end, Shara was scalped and defeated soundly, in 15 minutes 34 seconds, and with it Iceborne was finished without max potions, ancient potions, farcasters, or carting, using kinsects.
Final gear:
Barioth Helm B+, Level 5, Defense 146
Tigrex Mail B+, Level 5, Defense 150
Viper Kadachi Braces B+, Level 7, Defense 144
Rathian Coil B+, Level 7, Defense 142
Nargacuga Greaves B+, Level 5, Defense 148
I had some luck on the decoration front, with a Hard Defense deco coming in, and also an Earplug+ and Earplug/Vitality coming in either from special logins (christmas) or lucky melds, that gave me Earplugs 5 which came in handy many times to get more offensive windows without needing to precision-dodge. Funny enough the miasma decos for blackveil were still in for Ruiner and Shara. I managed evade window 3 too, for comfort, although evade extender was only 1 as I could not slot in jumping/evasion without compromising my defense boost. Make it what you will.
For weapon I used mostly the ore tree, not spending the pure dragon blood for the final upgrade and instead for the finale switching to the Amber Piton. Staying with the pre-barioth levels would have been preferable, but I fancied the idea of a hybrid and had a build planned for it, which I now realized was shitty and vulnerable, but decided to stick to the glaive nonetheless. 2 lv2 slots were not the end of the world.
Monster Hunter as a franchise is also produced by Capcom, which means it's straddled with baggage, poorly thought out grind, and other gameplay nonsense that only serves to grievously imbalance the game. Thankfully, PC has mods to fix that and make the game more "once-through" friendly.
When hunting monsters, a player has to pick a weapon for the hunt, which comes from a bunch of different types, each with it's own move set with various values and timings. Commitment is of great importance. If you commit to an attack, and it doesn't stagger the monster, you open yourself up to a counterattack that can eat a lot of your health. Since you can take so much less damage than the monsters, evading or blocking attacks is very important, meaning you have to manage your commitment carefully, and know how much window you have to counterattack when exploiting an enemy move.
Generally speaking, heavy weapons have larger commitments than light weapons, and ranged weapons usually have even less. Of these weapons some are better for evading, and relying on evasion invincibility frames to phase through attacks, while others are good at blocking and countering. Finally of note is the greatsword, slow, but incredibly high in damage.
Weapons are also split into melee and ranged, the latter type composed of bows, light, and heavy bowguns. Bows and light bowguns are good at evading, bows in particular need evasion to be weaved into the attack pattern, while heavy bowguns can be equipped with a shield to block attacks with like any shielded setup (lance, gunlance, charge blade, sword and shield). Heavy Bowguns are also notable because they have low commitments to their "primary" shots.
Ranged weapons have a glaring, never mentioned drawback. The UI says that ranged weapons take less elemental damage, while melee weapons take less physical damage. This is because unlike earlier games, there is no gunner or blademaster armor. Everyone wears the same armors, and the weapon decides which type of defense (physical or elemental) you get.
Except that is not how it works. Having a melee weapon equipped does nothing to your defenses. Having a ranged weapon on the other hand, reduces your physical defense by 30%, while giving you a dinky 5% to all elemental resistances. You could say that okay, this is still less elemental damage taken for the ranged player, except that is not true either. No attack in the game is purely elemental. Most "elemental" attacks like fireballs, lightning strikes, and icicles deal half physical damage, or two thirds physical damage. There is exactly one attack, from one enemy, that deals slightly more elemental than physical damage. What obfuscates things even more, is that there is a base of 80 defense, that is not displayed anywhere, which is added after your normal defense has been penalized. So it's barely noticeable in the early game, but gamechanging in the endgame.
Another thing is, while it is true that ranged weapons are low commitment that allow you to hit things from range, the fact is that monsters are more mobile than you, and even worse, they are even faster in later, master rank versions. To top it off, some enemies flat out get cone attacks that force you to play close to them less you find yourself way out of position and pinned down / fainted (killed).
There is one particular exception. Insect Glaive. It is a mobility weapon with average-ish killing speed, average to fast sheathing time (which is important when wanting to heal, as you need to sheathe before using items), and a kinsect. The kinsect is the single best thing about it. You can send it out, it will peck a monster, and extract a colored buff. Normally you use it to extract buffs from the monster, which the bug will return to you upon recall, boosting your attack speed, defense, and unsheathed movement speed.
But as long as your kinsect, which you can upgrade and send through tech trees like with every other weapon, has stamina, you can order it to keep pecking the same monster or even monster part that you point to, pecking in quick successions repeatedly.
Normally it does not peck for much, but since Iceborne got released, owners of the expansion can feed it red ammunition, acquired from light weapons wounding the monster via the expansion-added clutch claw, (also acquired from the monster hitting certain life tresholds, and from certain fauna) to massively boost it's output.
Best of all, it is independent of armor and decoration granted skills, allowing the player to focus on defense. The insect glaive is a melee weapon, so it does all this without the ranged defense penalty.
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I also want to note that I disabled the ability to hold max and ancient potions in your item bag for this run. They have the fastest "drinking" speed, you are essentially eating a pill that restores your hp to full, instead of chugging a potion as you are supposed to that restores only a part of it. Much of the game was balanced around the "normal" and "mega" potions' slow chugging speed, it's only the endgame where things break into the "max potion or die" levels, where you usually bring max and ancient potion materials with you, take one when you get hit (because it's inevitably more than what a mega potion can heal back up), and craft more with the itemwheel / item bar. I find that playstyle extremely messy and boring, so mega potions and chugging it is.
In similar vein, farcasters are disabled in this run. No "town portaling" back to camp for easy restocks here!
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Before the run, at the tail end of 2020, I purged my Monster Hunter save. With my then-current character, after 500 hours, I got burnt out with the grind, the tedium of endgame, and enough emotional baggage piled up from suppressed IRL issues to make driving him around not fun anymore. There was also very little left to do, being in the endgame.
I also wanted to test a friend, named Rei's idea that you need high-end bugs to make kinsect-only work. Plus I'd get to play monster hunter at it's best: low and mid-high rank, very little grinding for armor pieces and monster mats instead of a lot of grind kulve/safi rng and points and decorations, and hunter ranks.
Finally I also wanted to get better at the stick part of bugstick, despite my reaction times and general attentiveness having worsened over time. (It has been getting better since my operation) (This is also as a nod to another friend of mine, who also was an insect glaive user)
All these three combined to the start of a new run. I picked up the iron glaive and blazed through the first few quests. I learned what the buffs do, for the most part, and followed around a rather enjoyable youtube video's guide to picking armor and weapons. The kadachi glaive especially looked good, and the pieces were nice.
As expected, the bug was weak at the start, even with getting priority in terms of upgrades, and with the red ammo buff. But come Mudfish (Jyuratodus), come the water sac, and I could give the kinsect an element, which was a huge change against anjanath who has exceptional 30% hzv*-s on the nose and head, with a decent 20% on the tail and neck, 25% on the head's non-nose part.
*HZV - Hitzone value, the percent of the True Raw / True Element dealt to the part and to the monster life total.
None the less I continued using the stick part, and went for the kadachi weapon I mentioned. I also crafted the armor pieces since they buffed more or less everything an Insect Glaive does. I had some tickets to make the orion belt and layered armor to make myself not look like a mismatched mess eventually, so I even had a little health boost.
The Tobi-kadachi spear worked wonders against Legiana, although I had trouble after that with Radobaan.
Then I took a larger break, focusing on other things, and when I returned, lets just say I was rusty and gravitated naturally towards the bug part of the weapon's offerings. I also decided I shouldn't bother with following the videos, despite it's production values, since I was going to diverge hard soon.
As such, I danced with odogaron with my ice kinsect, no bleeding was incurred on me. Then I dealt with Rathalos and Diablos as usual, remembering to dive* against the diablos burrow. Zorah's second setpiece was interesting in that I had to use my weapon instead of my bug since there was no ammo to load into the kinsect and it was too slow. I won anyways without too much trouble (And I didnt forget to eat for health since I had max and ancient potions banned via my own mod.) This was also the last time that I seriously used the stick, and didn't bother upgrading the Tobi-Kadachi spear afterwards to high rank.
*dive / superman dive. A move that you can do when looking back at the monster, sprinting away from it, and pressing dodge. It has exceptional invincibility frames.
Fighting the deceptively strong (by low rank standards) Pukei Pukei with the bug, I installed two other mods simultaneously. The Modern Decoration System and the More Balanced decoration drop rates. Those would quadratically reduce my decoration grind time later on, but also change things up in other ways.
But anyways, on high rank I had a goal. Nergigante. Actually, make it two goals. Rei mentioned that in Monster Hunter Rise there is so far no health augment. Health augment is the living, beating heart of the master rank bugsticking, or even any kind of master rank play. High rank health augments have higher lifesteal than master rank ones, and combined with a master rank bug's high base damage since there is no kinsect damage penalty for using a weaker glaive as long as it's boost is correct, they can leech back even Rajang's Lightning Cannonball (normally a near/oneshot for ranged players) in 1-2 hits, provided the setup is defensive enough.
But for low and high rank there is nothing of that sort. There is green extract though, which is helpful and I used it a lot since it came from monster tails. For you see, slicing kinsects are exceptional at tail cutting. As long as the kinsect is fast enough (hence the speed boost for now) the tail will cut pretty much 100% without any partbreaker skill needed.
Anyways, since green extract can't be relied on for every monster, I needed a plan b. I could go recovery up and speed eating, like a scrub, or I could go get that sweet passive regen like Rei said I would want to in rise. In that game it's the Daora set, in world it's the Vaal set. This is my goal here as a transition set to health augments.
A little on health regeneration:
At base, you recover 1 health every 1.5 seconds of a tick.
There are two ways to increase this: More hp recovered per tick, or faster tick rate.
Hunting Horns can apply two "recovery speed" effects, a small for +2 hp per tick, and a large for +3 hp per tick. When stacked they sextuple the base regen. Additionally the coral cheerhorn also adds +2 hp per tick.
This makes green note horns exceptional for regen setups, but that does not help me since I use a glaive.
Furthermore, using an immunizer, astera jerky, great sushifish scale, or consuming the appropriate mushroom with the mushroomancer will grant Natural Recovery Up, doubling health regeneration per tick from all sources.
Level 3 recovery speed quarters the time between each tick of hp regen.
Stacking the above works as follows:
(1 Base + 2 Horn (S) + 3 Horn (L) + 2 Cheerhorn) * 2 Item * 4 Skill = 64 HP per 1.5s interval. Your maximum health is 200 with health boost 3 after eating for health.
Unfortunately, without the hunting horn it drops down to 24 health per 1.5 seconds (16 hp per second), and when the coral buff drops it's only 8 hp per 1.5 seconds. It is also random if I get the coral regen buff at all.
However, it is still good, and better than anything I have so far.
But back to the High Ranks. I stood at the gates in low rank armor, although the amazing bugstick defensive and evasive power was still on my side.
My first task was upgrading my hornetaur greaves and making a hornetaur chest for the inevitable fighting in Rotten Vale's effluvia regions. I also made a bone helm to help with that, and for the health boost. For gloves I wanted ingot, so I hunted for hardbones and inferno sacs, which meant bullying Pink Rathian a ton. Once I got bored of that I caught Odogaron and a couple elder's recess monsters, and mined a ton of carbalite ores for bugs and my transition to high rank insect glaives, of which the most important is the humble iron tree's main branch.
As for the monsters, as expected Uragaan was a nuisance, but less so now that I got it's tail early on (And completely forgot about it, first time I left a tail on the ground). Dodogama was fun, if a little annoying since I fought it before getting some armor upgrades. The rest were easy enough, leaving me with plenty of room to recover with vigorwasp, green extract, or potions. I also had a LOT of errands to run, to unlock the botany slots, to unlock sleep herbs (which I forgot even though I could've done it in early low rank), and a LONG backlog for canteen food.
It was quite a ride, every hunt or expedition bringing me closer to my goal in a visible, and quick way. The decos weren't anything spectacular, at best I had two thunder resist decos, which would be nice if thunder was something monsters used. As is, it's practically nonexistent except for maybe kirin and tobi, neither of whom were particularly in my way. Veteran players of vanilla who struggled greatly against kirin would scoff at this, but this is post-iceborne, there is little to do in high rank anymore.
Still, after a lot of mining I eventually reached my armor goal, as well as all five elemental kinsects in the pseudocath lineage. Accidentally leaving speed boost on I took on nergigante and it felt like I was carrying myself. Most of the hits I took were tiny trips, and the dive bombs I dodged to the side from didn't really hurt, maybe 66 health? As long as I wasn't out of position it would be no issue, plus later on I realized I could try using the IG's aerial moves. I didn't have any evade extender either to cover more distance. Oh well, onwards to Vaal Hazaak.
Getting the tracks was no trouble at all, done with a bit of hornetaur hunting (for canteen) and getting the plunderblade on an expedition. I had a strong enough kinsect, and since the pseudocath has plenty of speed I went for the Sever Boost bonus on my IG. This time I also put in some decorations, including a miasma decoration
And holy cows did Vaal melt. As usual being an insect glaive user protects from the worst of it, the many weird hitboxes I never got used to, the defense was enough for me to feel safe all around this wyvern, and being closer to it allowed me to better angle to avoid the laser. The effluvium AoEs which would normally reduce my DPS had no effect with my long range. Best part was the time. 8 minutes and 6 seconds. Back in last summer I'd fret a lot about this dragon, having seen Rei do an amazingly executed 11 minute hunt with a build she suggested when I asked for help for someone else. Of course neither back then nor now was I up to the task of pulling off such a run, but hey, at least I could do a good one my own lazy way.
After that I had a choice to make: Farm vaal in the current speed, or head straight to iceborne for a massive upgrade? The latter won, despite my plans on a 3p vaal build nurtured for a few days, As such I grabbed a few hardbones, upgraded some kinsects, and went on expeditions to quickly gather the rest of the tracks.
So for the other two elders: I forgot to bring a water bug at first for Teostra, but as soon as I got it going it was a smooth run for the most part. I was missing the fire resistance that would remove the fireblight chance altogether, and that was most of the damage I took. The final part at Teostra's nest was a little hairy thanks to the lava, but my bug got it done.
Kushala too was an interesting case, although a lot faster than Teostra: 12 and half minutes and some of that was spent mining. One notable thing is the roar that can stun you long enough to give the dragon a free hit, but with bugstick defenses this was not a game changer the least.
With those two dead it was time to hit the final boss of the game: Xeno'Jiiva.
When I first fought it I used a Defender LBG V, and it took me a faint, a lot of stress, and 35 minutes. Here it was only 14:30, and I wasn't rushing to the fight so the contact time was even less. One thing I underestimated was how much time it spends outside critical mode, so a dragon or fire bug would've been preferable here. I cut the tail, I also got a gem carve. Life was good.
And now for the transition to Master Rank.
The first hunt is a Beotodus that is weak to fire (thank goodness, I had a maximally upgraded firebug just for this). Thankfully it's an expedition so no time or faint constraints, not that I needed them, not having fainted a single time on this run. Having full health boost and the presence of mind to run back and eat at camp once the story sequence was over was the key here. I also ran around mining and gathering but that's just the way things work here. the hunt is slower but the rewards are better than doing the two things separately.
As a result I was able to craft an alloy chest and beo's greaves, which boosted my defenses from 360 to 450. A major leap.
Next up, for Banbaro I returned to high rank for more materials. I bullied Nergigante with my upgraded defenses so it was even less threatening. After that I continued working on the remaining high rank monsters in the arena to get some hardbones (I swear the costs are insane for one full set of bugs, much less two). Uragaan kept hitting me time after time, but my defenses were so high at this point that it didn't pose a threat. For legiana I hit a streak where I dodged the roars and did some risky positioning that looked and felt good.
But back to the game, with the full power of a finished high rank bug Banbaro stood no chance. Sure the tail took ages to cut, but screw it I have a severing bug and plenty of time (It was already 4am). I also took some hits, but I had nullberries, potions and patience on my side.
After that I continued to master rank to get that gathering quest done, and after that it was time to craft myself a full set of that alloy stuff, minus the greaves for which I picked Oolong, even though Beo's earplugs 2 technically offers better uptime and higher "inbuilt slot count". I had melded three healh boost decos* before just to make sure I was not dependent on high rank armor (which made me a little uncomfortable, since from now on it's no longer individual armor pieces I'll be building with, but with set bonuses and decorations).
*decos, decorations. They are socketables that can be freely slotted into and reclaimed from equipment, conferring certain passive skills. Health boost gives you 15, 30, and 50 health respectively at levels 1, 2, and 3. Skills can be gained from decorations slotted into armor, or from certain armors themselves.
As for the decorations themselves, I had two evasion/x decorations so I could live without the butterfly helm's evade window. After meeting these "basic" defense requirements I just put in whatever would help me with the hunts. Bombardier and friends mostly.
At this point I have to mention the mods in more detail. More Balanced Decoration Drop rates makes steel tickets and ancient feystones output mostly the higher end of high rank decorations, while the higher ones (Carved/Sealed) are guaranteed high rarity level decorations. Modern Decoration System reworks steamworks reward from mega potions and ancient potions to immunizers and kelbi horns, as well as slightly more melding tickets. It also adds melding tickets in place of armor spheres to some bounties, making those much more worth doing, and also to the sailor's stock, so I had high value fodder ready for the melding. Finally there was the automated steamworks application, which predicts with 100% accuracy the right button to press in steamworks, and thus sextuples the rewards from steamworks.
All combined have a cubic effect on reducing the open-ended grind in monster hunter world, which is perfect for my case since the hardbones are already becoming a nuisance.
In the full setup my defenses were 580, a lot more than what I had when fighting Nergigante, and a lot more than what I could get from high rank in any reasonable time. I lost some defense boost but gained everywhere else.
Continuing on with the story the game settled into a rather stable pace. Enemies would take about 15-18 minutes to cap, and they could still get some licks in, despite the bump in my defenses. I upgraded to Rose, barioth, etc. pieces with a base of 140-150, a significant upgrade from starting MR gear, and my defenses skyrocketed into the 750s. A shaver charm meant the removal of defense boost, but I could wound in one clutch claw for a nice damage boost, the only way to really improve kinsect damage.
With that I eagerly took on Velkhana, as I was yet undefeated at that point. A Hard Ice Res deco (which I havent seen in unmodded MHWI despite over 500 hours in the game, of which over 300 were in IB) came in handy, but was not essential here. I got the tail cut, then Velkhana, despite it's ice breaths and sweeping explosions catching me and taking a whole chunk out of my health. Imagine what they can do on gunners who took chip damage!
After that I had a heart operation, and an extended stay in a hospital then sanatorium without mhw, but with monster hunter rise. I returned and was eager for more PC. So I sobered up and went against Seething Bagel, with 17:30 contact time. I was unhappy with the damage I was taking, so I reworked my defenses after this, cramming in as much defense bost (Thanks for the hard def deco) as possible.
At this point I realized that the pseudocaths are probably a trap for master rank, and that breaking out the Blunt type Gleambeetle Velox with elemental boost was needed badly. Sure, tail cuts are nice, but the real deal is a quick cap and the stuns, on top of better blunt hzv-s, or even sometimes elemental hzv-s to be exploited. Calculators and prior experience said going for the elemental velox route is the way to go.
So I was doing quests like MR Pukei for Deadly Poison sac, and even bullying HR Pukei with tailraiders who got me 5(!) toxin sacs. (Most of those are stuck as Carnage Beetle 1-s)
In the meanwhile I gathered enough tracks for Blackveil, whom I fought. It took an age and a half (24:20), but it was a LOT safer than eating some chip damage and then a laser by a bowgun. Additionally, the terrain was unfavorable, ledges and narrow corridors added unnecessary risks and damage downtimes. Blackveil is just not cooperative all around either. There is a powerful drain from the spore patches on the ground, and it alternates between making the ground around it a worse hazard than lava, and shooting lasers that are hard to outposition if you are far away. In short a positioner's nightmare. That it also took out 40% of my health with a laser was another factor in keeping the fight tense, but i stuck to it and bested him.
To say the rewards were lackluster would be a gross underselling, but I got 2 pure dragon bloods that would allow me to upgrade my fire gleambeetle to it's final stage. Compared to the penultimate pseudocath (Foliacath II Forz) it can deal 25-30% more damage to blackveil with an elemental boost glaive. I also got a Kushala investigation, and his shard would allow me to max out my Pseudocath line IF I got myself some large elder dragon bones.
As it was it made sense to bully High Rank pukei for yet more toxin sacs and some mid-tier monsters there to grind up more hardbones (remember what I said about them? If you know what's good for you you forget the pseudocath and tail cutting nonsense, the HZVs are crap anyways, and go for the mauldrone line all the way up through Gleambeetle Velox-es). Investigations helped a lot, and would have helped even more had I not missed that I had a Pukei investigation going on.
After that I entered MR pukei hell, which was a fumble since it only gives Deadly Poison Sacs as investigation reward and shiny drop, but I was unlucky (or unattentive) there, and the ones I needed I got from MR Viper Tobi-Kadachi.
Armed with a maximized Fire Gleambeetle with elemental boost, I tussled with Namielle. It's lasers were less threatening than Vaal's faster sweep, and I found I can avoid it better by keeping at mid-range to her right, circling to my left around her.
I got another pure dragon blood, enough now for maxing one more Gleambeetle. My main choices were the Ice and Lightning beetles: Lightning for viper-tobi and Ruiner Nergigante, Ice for Shara Ishvalda. I assumed Shara would be worse and picked ice, leaving thunder at the penultimate level. I tried getting two more bloods, but a blackveil I came back to (and did in less than 18 minutes, progress!!!) didn't bleed enough, and gave only one blood.
So I went against this Ruiner Nergigante with slightly less damage, and thanks to RNG, no bleeding resist. Blessedly, said Ruiner Nergigante was only 15k hp, the real one being locked behind MR 100. As one would expect, I had to deal with bleeding a couple times, and kept using Sushifish Scales since they recover more health than Astera Jerky. I put my tempered ruiner experience to good use, exploiting the green extracts from the tail to keep my health topped off, and my earplugs came in handy when Nergigante did its roar-followed-divebombs, as I managed a superman dive to get out of the way.
Overall, Ruiner gave a tense fight and a taster to what is to come, but it was doable and not too dangerous. Ironically, the carve gave a bunch of large elder dragon bones, and a Pure Dragon Blood, just what I'd have needed for the final kinsect. Oh well.
After Ruiner, the game instantly gives you the Shara Ishvalda fight. Normally one farcasters out of the way, for me it was a return to Seliana for a bug change and some finetuning/restocking. Shara has a lot of health, over 37k, one third of which you are supposed to break off by flinch shooting it against the wall with falling rocks. Once that is exhausted it's just shooting what is left on the head, and then transitioning to phase 2.
There was a tense moment in the first phase, with the raking charge catching me out of position, but a few dives solved that, and there also was some potion use. Interestingly enough, the second phase provided no such problems, Shara's head was often exposed and also a great hitzone for my maximized ice bug. While at first it felt tense, the scalp actually fell a few thousand HPs before the dragon croaked, without laying as much as a gnarly finger on me in phase 2. I'm not sure what possessed me, or what kind of stars aligned this time, but I was just not getting hit.
In the end, Shara was scalped and defeated soundly, in 15 minutes 34 seconds, and with it Iceborne was finished without max potions, ancient potions, farcasters, or carting, using kinsects.
Final gear:
Barioth Helm B+, Level 5, Defense 146
Tigrex Mail B+, Level 5, Defense 150
Viper Kadachi Braces B+, Level 7, Defense 144
Rathian Coil B+, Level 7, Defense 142
Nargacuga Greaves B+, Level 5, Defense 148
I had some luck on the decoration front, with a Hard Defense deco coming in, and also an Earplug+ and Earplug/Vitality coming in either from special logins (christmas) or lucky melds, that gave me Earplugs 5 which came in handy many times to get more offensive windows without needing to precision-dodge. Funny enough the miasma decos for blackveil were still in for Ruiner and Shara. I managed evade window 3 too, for comfort, although evade extender was only 1 as I could not slot in jumping/evasion without compromising my defense boost. Make it what you will.
For weapon I used mostly the ore tree, not spending the pure dragon blood for the final upgrade and instead for the finale switching to the Amber Piton. Staying with the pre-barioth levels would have been preferable, but I fancied the idea of a hybrid and had a build planned for it, which I now realized was shitty and vulnerable, but decided to stick to the glaive nonetheless. 2 lv2 slots were not the end of the world.
