BadHat

I watched Kingsman knowing next to nothing about it. I came out wondering how such a fun, silly concept could be so marred by excessive, queasy, gleeful violence. Then I looked it up and found it was from the director of Kickass, based on a comic by Mark Millar. Fuck.

My only character is female so I have no idea which sets are gender specific really (there's so little cheesecake boobplate, how am I supposed to tell?!). However, I did just make my first Hunting Horn after being encouraged by your performance that one time - The Magia Charm! 90% sure this one is female-only since it references magical girls in the description, but I could be wrong. Anyway I think the songs kind of suck (no attack up seems like a no-no, although it does have elemental attack up), but I don't care because I'm bashing monster's skulls in with a giant magical girl scepter. Anyway, I finally beat the Rajang urgent using this so it can't be all bad. Edit: What on earth? How was the Seregios urgent ten times easier than Rajang when it's 3-4 stars higher. :|

Dalamadur? Yeah, I was lost the first few times I tried him, too. I had to do the fight a bunch of times before I understood what was happening, so here's what I figured out if you ever decide to attempt it again. Basically, there are 3 main phases to the fight. The first is when he's coiled around the large pillar in the centre with his head next to it, which is the phase you always start with. In this phase your goal is to climb up and beat him in the head to knock him out. To do this, you want to run towards him and jump onto his body where the red arrow is pointing. Run around to the right a little and you can jump off his left side and catch some vines on the side of the pillar to climb up. You want to climb most of the way up and then shimmy around to the very left on the vines, then jump off with A. If you do it in the right spot (it's not hard once you figure it out) you'll land right on his head and can hammer away at it until he gets KO'd. When he's KO'd his head will drop down to the ground (if you're on his head at the time it'll conveniently drop you right next to it) and you'll be free to hammer away at it for ~10-15 seconds, enough time for a big burst attack. This is your main opportunity for damage, so if you aren't able to climb up and KO him yourself try to know where he's gonna drop and be there to get some hits in. The second phase is when he exposes his chest (the giant glowing rocky part), and he'll be in one of two positions. The most common one (in my experience), his chest will be next to the big rock you jump off of to get to his body in phase 1. The other position is over the opposite side, sort of behind the pillar. In this phase you want to beat on his chest as much as possible to KO him again and get more hits in. I noticed his chest deflects hits very easily so unless you have a weapon with great sharpness you'll want to use attacks that don't bounce (hammer charged slam for example). Once he's KO'd his head will drop in the same place as before and you can go get some more hits in. This is the easiest phase since all you need to worry about is the occasional bite attack, and he telegraphs them well in advance so you have plenty of time to move. The final phase is when he vanishes. This is the trickiest part, but also the easiest to cheese. So, he'll vanish and reappear shortly after in one of a number of different locations around the map, and unleash an attack which will severely damage or 1-hit KO you, depending on your armor. If you want to do this "the right way," the first thing you're going to want is a decent set of armor, so if things go wrong you won't be 1-hit, at the very least. Then you can at least learn his patterns here without risking a triple cart and everyone leaving your room. HOWEVER, there is a far cheesier way to avoid this phase if you're not confident and just want to finish the fight, although it requires some materials. Basically, you want to bring along a Farcaster and enough materials to combine a few more. Every time he vanishes (you'll know because his lock-on portrait will display ???), use a Farcaster to send yourself back to camp. Then you just have to wait a half minute or so for him to finish the phase, maybe stock up on some supplies or sharpen your weapon, and you can just mosey right back into the fight. Finally, there's the space in between phases where he just slithers around to reposition himself. There's nothing much to do in these parts except get a couple hits on his body if you can (but I don't think it does much damage), so mainly I'd just worry about dodging his energy attacks, which are easy to notice and far easier to dodge than, say, Shagaru Magala's bullshit random energy pulses. The only thing I wasn't able to figure out was what's up with his tail? I figure it's a weak point since you can lock onto it, but none of the groups I ever did this with bothered with it and it didn't seem to matter. Final note: this part is important if you want to avoid a major headache. Once you beat Dalamadur, there is actually one more urgent quest immediately after to unlock G rank (I know, sigh), to slay Ukanlos. This guy is much more straight forward, he's basically just an ice version of Akantor with a few differences (key similarity: avoid his fucking roars). If at all possible, try to stick around in the same lobby you beat Dalamadur in and knock out this quest as well. This might mean you're questing for a while since you might need to do each urgent 4 times over (unless you're a bastard and skip out on theirs), but it will save you a headache in the long run. When I did it, I beat Dalamadur for myself and everyone else in the group and stuck around for someone else's Ukanlos, but then had to leave. When I went back to try and find or create my own Ukanlos lobby later, I discovered that not only was he not on my monster list (even though I beat him on another player's urgent?), I couldn't even advertise the room as 7* questing since he's technically an 8* quest, which there's no option for. So, as far as I can tell it's basically impossible to advertise your room for Ukanlos. In other words, better to find a good group and get it all done in one swoop. In any case, I'll add your friend code (unless I already did?) and maybe I can help you out with them some time if you're on. Once you get into G rank the game really opens up. I'm having loads of fun fighting the new monsters (well, mostly the old monsters but tougher) and crafting new, powerful armors and weapons to cheese those tricky caravan quests with.

I find it so strange that this musical subculture has arisen using the aesthetic of things I find extremely nostalgic (90s anime, Playstation and Dreamcast, even old versions of Windows and Macintosh), and yet I find it completely alien and impenetrable. Like, that doesn't reflect the quality of the music, I actually quite like some of it, but something about the presentation is so hard to grasp. I guess I just don't understand the why of it. It's a rare thing to find prog rock these days that can be weird and experimental without being completely self-indulgent. This album fuckin nails it. It's just so goddamn fun.

Holy cow I finally got out of HR7! Unlocking my rank boosted me all the way to HR51. Just need to do the Ukanlos urgent and I'll finally be G rank.

The difference in quality from last week's Rick and Morty to this week's is like day and night. Total filler episode (can a show with very little plot to speak of have filler?) to total gold. It's almost like last week's was transplanted from a future season where they've run out of inspiration. Is that meant to be some kind of big meta-joke? Like the show itself did a time travel thing? Heh.

Man, I'm hitting a brick wall. HR7 is tough, and all my urgent solo quests are 8 stars and up, I basically triple cart them ten minutes in. Is it a good idea to have a bunch of different sets at late high rank so I can juggle different skills and resistances between monsters? Or should I just milk each set for what it's worth and move on until I can replace them all in G? I nearly have all the stuff for the Storge S set (S.Magala parts), but the skills seem kind of bogus and I don't have the greatest talismans just yet. I'll be doing some random hunts in the next hour or so, maybe try to knock out some HR7 keys, if anyone wants to join. I'll edit with room ID when I start. Edit: I lied! Gotta do stuff.

Sorry. To contribute to the "not in my country!" thing on the last page, this is something I genuinely used to think of New Zealand. In reality, we're more liberal and open-minded about certain issues, sure, but there's a pretty deep strain of sexism, homophobia, and racism running through our culture, even if a lot of people are outwardly accepting.

I've been giving charge blade another shot. I started out using it heavily but never used guard points which seems kind of crucial. Also I didn't realise you could chain the ultra attack straight from the shield attack, handy for cancelling into glowy axe mode or whatever without having to switch first. In other news S. Zinogre Umbrage doesn't exists

You're handy as hell with that horn! Never seen someone handle heals and buffs that well. Now just one piece away from my zin u set.

Added you. I'll be hunting some Stygian Zinogres for the next little bit if you want to join.

Picross 3D is just about my favourite puzzle game. Awesome news.

Cool, I chucked my friend code in my sig. Post or PM me yours.

Using the switch-axe made from Dah'ren Mohran parts. Currently farming Zinogres and Stygian Zinogres to make a sweet as hell long sword. Really want to build a bow set for high rank because I always had a much easier time of flying monsters with my bow. The only one I can build that seems worthwhile at all is the Tigrex bowmaster set, though, so I guess I gotta get to farming him.

I started a SotFS play through and made a dex-heavy character as a change from my usual str-heavy buff two hander guy. Trying smaller shields with larger parry windows and all that. Yeah... I liked my str build better. Parrying is hard.

I'll totally hunt with you when I hit G but I'm still stuck in high. The solo pink rathian hunt keeps kicking my ass and rank 6 guild quests are all crazy variant monsters that wipe the floor with me. I don't think my double gore set is going to carry me much further.

Sometimes there are good things on the giant bomb subreddit.

I watched the Madoka movies through with my girlfriend recently (she went from "why are you making me watch this" to "I love this" and then back to "why did you make me watch this") and they're more or less a more neatly edited version of the show with some flashy transformation sequences added in. The only part I found really weird is they completely skip Madoka's dream sequence at the beginning, so when she recognises Homura at school it doesn't make any goddamned sense. I love the movie. Don't read anything about it, just watch.

The latest Rick and Morty is sublimely good.

The joke is that people think Jonathan McIntosh is pulling Anita's strings from behind the scenes and actually writes all of her work because obviously a woman couldn't come up with such salient criticism (even though... they think it's bad? I don't know either.) Never said it was a good joke.

Anita is slowly approaching the final stage of her evolution. Eventually her earrings will become so elaborate as to comprise an actual cradle, in which Jonathan McIntosh will sit and whisper slyly into her ear. (This is a joke. Sorry.)

I can't help but read those kinds of criticisms of college students as a natural extension of the old conservative line about colleges being brainwashing facilities for young libruls. Actually there are a lot of "moderate" arguments going around now that remind me of conservative talking points from 5-10 years ago. Also that particular piece, and the earlier one about "new progressives," remind me of arguments I've personally made where I take a general trend and extrapolate it out way too far and then look back later and go "oops." It's easy for those big picture arguments to seem 100% logically consistent in your head at the time, until you realise you've stumbled over 1,000 obvious details to get there.

Awesome.

I gave up on season 6 a few episodes in because of the aforementioned inconsistency. Writers being super temperamental with characters' relationships is a huge turn-off for me. I appreciated it way more in the first few seasons because it was more of a side-plot that only came up as often as they could do something interesting with it, or at least make a funny gag. As the show progressed it became more of a focal point, but that just led to more frustrating unresolved bullshit as they had to write around it to keep the show going. Meh.