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I picked up MH4u and Majora's Mask both on the day of their simultaneous launch alongside the n3DS, and after some three hundred or so hours of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, i decided i should probably crack open Majora too. I'm probably too early in Majora to make any big statements about the game, and it's been over a decade since i played the game last, but i'm still impressed with the density and complexity of the side quests in Clocktown. I think i like that the new quest journal sort of forces you to appreciate it more, because it seems like something that a lot of people would completely miss or otherwise lose sight of. The game's presentation also still strikes me as really sharp and stylish, whereas the narrative presentation in Ocarina came across to me as kind of listless and staid when i was revisiting it with Ocarina 3D. Edit: I assume it was probably the case, but perhaps somebody can confirm for me if you had to first slot a mask to equip it in Majora? It probably made a lot of sense there with how slow the UI used to be in those N64 games, but why is that still a part of how the UI works with the remake? It doesn't make sense with the remake's quick and easily accessed touchscreen inventory, the extra step of slotting the mask is now actually slowing you down. They're passive equipment, they don't really need to be on a hot key. That's my minor gripe, as of this point in time.

According to available information, it shouldn't be an especially rare drop, it appears with a pretty good deal of frequency at all ranks. For low rank, It shows up in areas 3, 4, 8, and 9 in the volcanic hollow with around 10-20% chance for each attempt. Keep in mind that red and blue points mining provide different resources... Though i'm not sure right at this moment which provides firestone. (They might both, i suppose, but with different percentages?) Tip: If you're using a gather mission, do your loop around the map, but then finish it and restart the quest to reset the gather points. The in-mission respawns of the gathering points can be lengthy and unreliable. Also, be sure to set yourself up with some gathering-related food skills. Sometimes it can feel like the RNG in the game just randomly decides that it hates you though, definitely. For my own place in this, i'm on pacific time and usually available late at night, but weekends are pretty flexible and maybe other times depending on what people suggest. Also, there is cross-region play between North America and Europe, but there's likely going to be some latency, though it probably shouldn't be too detrimental with the way the game works. I'd be happy to join in on some low-rank fights, i can easily put together some scrub gear to not throw off the difficulty curve, but i've also been looking around for good people to dig into g-rank with.

Nobody picked Tali in 2 and 3? Nobody else at all?

I can't speak for the Gunzerker, but i played a hell of a lot of BL2 as a Commando, and i can basically tell you that you can't really do anything interesting with the commando by focusing in on one tree, it pretty much has to be a combination of two or more. That's kind of a problem with the Commando, it doesn't come into its own until NG+ playthroughs. Until you have enough points to mix elements from deep in multiple trees, it's pretty dull. (While most pronounced with the Commando, I feel that's kind of a problem with BL2 in general, NG playthroughs are pretty bland compared to the ridiculous builds you can sort out in NG+ playthroughs.)

They're real-time action RPG's and benefit from a shared skill set of a background in both RPG's and character action games and perhaps even a background in fighting games. (Lots of familiar fighting game nuance can surface in the pvp.) Coming at the series without that broad skill set can make it more difficult as things that are absolutely crucial won't be surface-level apparent on their own. (Like the invincibility frames in the dodge, for example, and how the best way to use that is to counter-intuitively dodge towards an enemy and through an attack, positioning yourself to punish on the attacker's recovery frames.) The extent to which they are "hard" tends to be oversold, i feel. Those i-frame windows will feel very generous if you come to the series from fighting games, for example. The series punishes mistakes fiercely and quickly though, but the games also provide you more than ample tools to overcome the challenge. The real difficulty lies in recognizing those tools, whether they be expendable items, facets of your weapon's moveset, or quirks of the character sheet. It is entirely up to you to recognize and utilize your character's strengths. (Don't expect to guided towards those solutions, you very much have to find your own path.) They're games that reward a deep understanding of both the underlying statistical systems and the mechanical nuances to the combat, and that's - i personally suspect - why they're so loved. Since flailing aimlessly tends to be punished so harshly, they're games that give people a genuine opportunity to apply the skills the game forces them to develop, and it's done without being difficult to an arbitrarily and completely bullshit degree. (Usually.) They're games that also encourage a methodical and careful approach, both in exploring the world and attempting to unravel the abilities of the enemies contained within. They're games where failing is not an actual fail state, but an opportunity to have learned more about the game. They're also games that present seemingly opaque narratives that are only revealed in all their layered complexity through attentive observation of details that other games may have taught you to ignore.

Is anybody here ever going to be interested in getting something going for MP?

That is actually also not the indication that the monster is enraged, that is the exhausted state. It does, however, often come after a monster has been enraged and has severely reduced its own stamina, but it can also come about from hitting it with weapons that do exhaust damage. (Certain ranged ammo types do it, but the hammer is another good source of exhaust damage, which is different from the KO damage it also does.) Whereas you want to be very cautious when a monster is angry, you absolutely want to capitalize on a monster being exhausted, as much as you possibly can. (Also, be careful not to misread a monster being exhausted as it limping, that can lead to you wasting traps and tranqs. Look for the tell-tale drool of the exhausted state. Though, i suppose, the two states could potentially overlap, in which case it would be fine to go for the capture.) There's no common outward indicator of when a monster is enraged, it varies from monster to monster and often, but not always, overlaps with a super-powered mode. The Tigrex gains visibly red veins and becomes wildly reckless and aggressive, the Deviljho puffs up and starts spitting dragon-element fumes around. Some monsters will have no visible state changes like that though, they'll just be more aggressive, and others still will have other state changes that don't coincide with their enraged state.

The red eyes thing is different than a monster being enraged. An enraged monster will just attack repeatedly and ferociously, perhaps with different moves, and so relentlessly that it sometimes puts itself in an exhausted state. It's a normal part of every fight, even if you're not necessarily noticing it yet. The red eyes though, that's frenzy. (It's a "virus" that some monsters in some quests will be infected with.) It's similar in the sense that it means the monster will be way more aggressive, but there's a lot of special mechanics happening there. (Most significantly, its attacks can afflict you with a debuff. A new status bar will show up on your screen, and when it maxes out, you'll be afflicted with a small health debuff. If you attack enough anything before it triggers though, you can gain a rather significant attack buff instead. Nulberries reduce the buildup of the meter and can give you more time to build for the positive buff.) That said, i have also definitely seen frenzied monsters refuse to limp away and just keep fighting to the absolute end.

As you suggest, i'm also fairly sure that if a monster goes off to rest and you take an inordinately long time to find it, it can heal back up out of the capture threshold. (Keep your monsters paintballed!) Normally if a monster has a lot of health, it will go hunt other small monsters to restore its health instead of wandering off to sleep. Still, outside of skills that specifically reveal when the monster is ready to be captured, limping is definitely the most reliable tell. The threshold for a monster beginning to limp is usually similar to the capture threshold, but actually just a bit below it. (Which means that using the limp as your tell gives you a bit of leeway to avoid the above scenario.) Keep in mind though, monsters don't always follow a predictable behaviors. I've had monsters near death with me having no awareness of it because an enraged state was overriding any obvious limp and its instinct to flee and heal. Since we're talking about tracking, here's a fun secret: Sometimes you'll notice that there's a hot air balloon that will appear randomly in the sky above many areas in a given quest. If you face towards it and do the "wave" gesture, it flashes a signal back at you which reveals the current locations of all the large monsters in your quest. (For only a few seconds, so be sure to back out of the gesture menu quickly so you can check your map. You can also only use it once per mission, in missions where it happens to show up.) Griddlelol: If you're settling on the bug staff as your main, i hope you're abusing the hell out of the pole vault. Also, i'm totally game for some multiplayer if the timezones work out. We don't actually necessarily need to exchange friend codes in advance, we could just post the room code and its password. I made a thread in the multiplayer networking subforum a while ago with some details about match-making in m4hu.

Dung bombs won't usually take immediate effect, they can take a good ten seconds or so to do their thing and drive away a monster. (You know you landed the hit if there's a brown cloud around the monster.) I understand that they can, very rarely, actually fail though. It's something that happens so infrequently that if it seems to happen, i don't realize that something's wrong until long after it seems to have happened. It just seems like the dung bomb cloud can occasionally dissipate before the monster is coerced into relocating. It also seems to me that monsters may have variable resistances to the dung bombs. That all said, if it happens, you can throw another one after it's failed and it'll probably work the second time. (Maybe it won't!) To be clear though, I don't believe there's any stacking benefit from throwing more while the debuff is already active on the monster. (Maybe there is though, i don't know!) Specifics like this are where people kind of tend to throw up their hands and shrug. Best to keep it simple: Dung bombs are where you throw literal shit at monsters to make them go away. Edit: I just realized i didn't respond to it directly, but it probably is actually true that continuing to attack a dung bombed monster will render the bomb ineffective.

Just sit down at the canteen's table and order a combination of two food items. The benefits will persist until you complete a mission or get carted. The combination determines the skills and stat bonuses earned, with daily skills being randomly set to each combination after every tick of world time, while stats and normal skills are locked to their given combinations. The grade of the ingredients used determines the size of the stat buffs, and based on the freshness of the ingredients, skills may randomly not activate upon finishing the meal. (Freshness is also assigned randomly to different ingredients after each tick of world time.) That's pretty much it. You always want to eat before every mission, the benefits are enormous. You're making the game much, much more difficult if you're not taking advantage of it. (On top of general stat buffs, you can plug gaps in your armor's elemental defenses, get bonuses to gathering-related skills, increase the strength of status weapons, etc, etc.) It actually doesn't have anything at all to do with raw meat, it's an entirely different system. (Though you do eventually get to use the canteen to cook steaks outside of missions, ten at a time.)

Wait, is that true? I remember feeling like the 3DS already had a good bit of momentum before FEA came out. I should go look up a timeline of releases. I definitely don't know how i feel about the campaign splitting on the new one though. FEA had tons of DLC, but it was kind of all off to the side, it was clearly delineated as additional content on top of an already fairly enormous game. What they're doing with this new one feels much more manipulative. I also don't think FE has the kind of fanbase that can support two retail releases, so at the very least, i don't expect that will happen outside of Japan. Also, FExSMT is super weird to me. It doesn't really feel like either of those things, it lacks SMT's apocalyptic tone and FE's fantasy tropes. Instead, it looks like Persona. (With, i guess, FE characters as the summons?) I've watched that trailer a few times now though, and i come away a little more confused each time. They certainly have my attention, i guess. It is not at all what i was expecting that crossover to be, and i'm super curious to see how it pans out.

Did anybody else catch the stories about the pre-order rush for Nintendo's newly announced slate of Amiibos crashing both Gamestop's website and in-store computer infrastructure? This whole thing is just getting increasingly ridiculous, i wonder how long it'll be until the bottom falls out. I do want one of those yarn Yoshi plushies though...

Is there any definite release date for the PC version? I've looked around and not found anything. I'm super excited to get my hands on this.

I went from playing Dark Souls on consoles to playing DS2 on PC, and ended up playing with the keyboard and mouse for a bit before sorting out a gamepad to use instead. With KB/M, some of the inputs i found virtually impossible to perform. Guard breaks and the unparryable jump attacks, mainly. Not a huge problem in solo play, but sure to get you wrecked in PVP against turtles and parry-baiting.

I made it to Caravan 10 in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and that prompted the credits to roll, so perhaps i can say i have "finished" the game, but i'm certainly nowhere remotely near being done with the game. I've played a few Monster Hunter games before, most of that time was spent playing Monster Hunter Tri online with friends, but the series never clicked with me the way MH4U has. I'm not completely sure what's actually changed since those half-hearted experiences with the earlier games, but whether it's a case of Monster Hunter finally stepping its game up enough, or me just being more acclimated towards and ready for the kind of heavily demanding insanity it poses, i'm left with the feeling that it's an absolutely phenomenal action RPG. It's almost certainly going to be my game of the year and it's definitely my new favorite 3DS game.

I'm probably going to go pick up a copy of Xenoblade 3D, and i don't even have an n3DS to play it on right now. Also, this is apparently being patched with a way to speed up AI turns. So hey, Nintendo heard people, i guess.

Yup, dung bombs are your tool for divide and conquer tactics. Keep in mind that if you've already been hacking away at a monster for a while, it can sometimes make more sense to dung bomb the monster you want to fight, since wounded monsters tend to move around more frequently. If you dung bomb the new arrival, your actual target might actually end up leaving soon after anyways and possibly end up in the same area the dung bombed monster fled to. (It can also, in fairly rare circumstances, be useful to have two monsters in one area. The Deviljho is a possible example of this, which while incredibly dangerous and aggressive, has AI that tends to focus on the other monster more than it focuses on you. That said, if the AI isn't being cooperative, quickly go ahead and dung bomb to divide as normal.) Items in Monster Hunter are so important though. If it feels like there's something you want to do that you're not sure you can do, there's actually probably an item that does it. (The same holds true of the passive buffs gained from food and armor skills.) Some other valuable things: Null berries remove elemental blights and reduce frenzy buildup, deodorants remove stench and blast buildup. Flash bombs will stun and blind a monster and are also useful for grounding flying monsters, but you need to carefully aim that thing so that it explodes near them and in their cone of vision. Mosswine Jerky cures the rare bleed status, but also restores red health, often making it a more efficient way to restore from status damage or powerful single hits. Sonic bombs are good for surfacing tunneling monsters, mainly. Poison bombs are good for killing small monster bugs without destroying them, so you can carve and build bug armors. (Bnahabras, mainly. The things that fly around and sting you with paralysis.) Play around with stuff. Edit: Another useful tip - I always bring a farcaster with me. Initially, a one-use teleport back to the hunter camp doesn't seem amazing, but consider that it has an extremely fast activation animation. I use it like a panic button for when i'm cornered and have only a sliver of health, it's like a free pass out of an otherwise completely dire situation. Helps you cling to those important food bonuses for a little longer, since they normally disappear when you die. (Once back at the camp, sleeping in the bed will heal you and remove all negative statuses, and it will also immediately revive and heal your cats.) Edit: One other small detail - A way around the tight carry limits on useful items is to bring their component parts into missions instead, combining them as needed.

Which monster? Which quest? What weapons do you have available? I'll try and offer some advice.

I have some pretty fond memories of that game, i take it actually holds up? Impromptu PS2 nostalgia thread: Anybody else played Robot Alchemic Drive? Of course you haven't, you haven't because you're a terrible person. (Or in Europe, i guess.) and it's from Sandlot, the developer behind the Earth Defense Force series.You play from the perspective of a human running around trying to get a safe perspective of his giant transforming remote control mecha. (When controlling the mech, triggers control the legs, sticks control the punches! There's tons of dumb special moves and weapons.)

The general buzz i've been hearing is that it is a very, very good tactics game that sort of sits in a valley between X-com and Valkyria Chronicles, but has interminably slow AI turns with no way to speed them up.

I saw some people saying that the suspend/resume feature disables co-op and invasions in Bloodborne until you do a full proper reset of the game.

I'm speaking as somebody who doesn't use the switchaxe, nor do any of the people i play with, but in my mind, it fills a similar role to the Long Sword, but without the mobility while instead benefiting from a greater range of useful secondary effects through its phials gimmick. (Which are innate to each weapon and basically work as an additional element or status effect applied specifically to the sword mode. The game does a terrible job explaining this, it's really not as complicated as it makes it seem.) In terms of moveset, there's not a whole lot to say about it as per my understanding of it. There's variable combos of course, but the important thing is that, while in the axe mode, you can spend stamina to mash A repeatedly after any upward swing for a huge repeating wide-arc attack, and that can combo back into the normal X string. (The upward swing can be done by either an XA input, or it will show up as the last hit of the X string.) Hitting R transforms into the sword, even during the A-mash if pressed repeatedly, or refills its charge if it's low. (With further recharge just happening over time, or instead depleting while in sword mode.) The sword mode can more or less just be button mashed, as far as i can tell. There's probably variable combos of some significance there, but they all seem the same to me. Hitting XA while in the sword mode does a super that you can charge up by mashing X immediately afterwards.

Yeah, i misread your post. Anyways... I was initially playing with a circle pad pro and it definitely strikes me as the way the game should probably be played, the game benefits hugely from free look. I mean, hell, Monster Hunter is actually the reason that dumb thing exists in the first place. That said, i got so used to just constantly swinging the camera around with the left-trigger lock-on that i ended up just taking off that big cumbersome thing and playing purely with the lock-on. I'm not necessarily advocating that though, so if either the CPP or the N3DS are not options, probably play around with the virtual d-pad more. Like i said, beyond just moving around its tile, you can tweak the size and shape of the touch hotspots with some other options in the touchscreen customization. Regarding the Great Jaggi and a small handful of similar monsters, they are unusual in the degree of unpredictable mobility they display. They're hard to keep track of because that's kind of the point, they bark to call in packs of smaller monsters, and then they all collectively leap around you taking cheap shots. That said, fighting one and taking literally no damage is not unusual when you get used to their patterns, but more importantly, they're not actually super representative of what the broader game is about. MH4U has a roster of some 90+ large monsters, and virtually none of them move as erratically as the Great Jaggi and its ilk. Bowguns and Bows are weird, even if you have a CPP or an N3DS for dual-analog control, because it quickly becomes clear that the game very specifically doesn't want you to use them the way you would intuitively think they should be used. It's hard to explain, and it's honestly not really an advisable starting point for a new player. (Definitely worth figuring out if you stick with the game, gunners are highly valued in MP.) Great Sword, Long Sword, Dual Blades, and Hammer are all very good, very popular starting points. (Great Sword gives enormous physical damage, Dual Blades build statuses and elemental damage like crazy, Hammer gets unique knockout and exhaustion effects, and the Long Sword is primarily set apart by the tremendous mobility of its moveset.)

Huh... Really? Great Jaggi, hey? You know, I don't remember if the training missions start you with anything in your inventory, are you missing the supply box, perhaps? That could probably make it needlessly brutal. You're coming at this from the Souls series right? Monster Hunter relies on a lot of similar skills, positioning and timing and all that, so I don't understand why you'd be having trouble with the Great Jaggi of all things. Also, are you just taking about the bowguns with the aiming comment, or are you taking umbrage with the lack of a functioning lock-on? I could see that being a bit of hurdle, having to aim the physical attacks manually. Still, even in Souls, fighting without a lock-on is a fairly common tactic in bossfights, and with Monster Hunter's emphasis on damage zones with variable resistances, even theoretically it would be the only option and it makes complete sense after a time. You can tweak the size and shape of the virtual d-pad, if that's an issue. Okay, okay though. Is there a specific weapon that seemed more appealing than others? What were you doing with it? Edit: Blah, i think i misread your initial post. Regardless, most of this is probably still relevant.