Well, I just went ahead and killed my Ukanlos to get to G1, but I'm experimenting with my newly-made Seregios LBG set. I've taken down a few Seltas Queens, Rathaloses (part of the package while I was trying to get an S.Queen Concentrate), a Kushala, and a Teostra so far. Apart from my horrible aiming and Kushy's wind shield, it's gone pretty well.

I also went with a friend to try killing a guild Fatalis and... we died like 5 times in 20 minutes. That normal Fatalis feels much more difficult than the caravan Crimson Fatalis.

Crimson and normal Fatalis are pretty different, yeah. I personally think Crimson is easier to fight. Friend disagrees.

G2 Black Grav is a pita. Just saying. Dude just vents all over the place. And, you know, the superlaser again. Nobody wants to fight this guy. Out of 5 rooms, 4 of which I abandoned because either noone came or came & left, I've gotten one game started. Around 2 minutes in, one drops, followed by another soon after.

WOW the Ukanlos is annoying to fight. I have, over like 5 unsuccessful missions, not yet figured out how to properly avoid his swimming move.

To be clear on some things:

1. It's the 7* rank up guild quest which I was throwing myself at again for some underscales for the Kushy charge blade.
2. I was facing it alone with high rank gear rather than G rank, and also with a bomber lead cat and healer secondary (bomber to fill out my guild card)
3. I was using the Seregios LBG because when I ranked up with a charge blade, I couldn't seem to not bounce off of him.
4. I was finally successful on a final try after carting twice and got my underscales.

As an aside, I am LOVING the Seregios LBG. I'm using the Uniqlo armor with Evade +2, HGE, Evade dist up, and... I think slow eater or something? It's not something I really notice because generally speaking, if I get hit once, I don't have to focus on healing because I'm either about to be pummeled and die, or I can keep pummeling the monster while waiting for my red meter to fill back up.

I think I mainly evaded Ukanlos by faceplanting or being fortunate enough to not be its target. My armor at the time typically left me with something like a quarter of my heath bar if it hit me.

Chaotic Mag is in my way now.

But I do the superman dive and still get hit half the time! That's why I say I cannot properly avoid it.

Damn G rank creatures hit hard. I feel like I'm doing plenty of damage to them, but any of the proper monsters take out most of my health in one hit and then turn around and hit me while I'm getting up and can't dodge or block.

I threw myself at both a Savage and normal Deviljho in a G-rank Expedition I don't know how many times without killing either, and have gotten unfairly killed by the duo Tetsucabras twice now. Bluh.

In gunner gear? Yeah, you're going to feel it. Even in blademaster gear, it feels pretty much like back in the early game, except with better dodge timing.

No, actually, with a charge blade and 460-some-odd defense. I don't do expeditions with gunner gear because I'd run out of ammo more quickly than I run out of whetstones, and I don't have enough confidence in my gunning abilities to do a dual much of anything yet.

After some time I started it up once more and do some stuff solo.
Got all the G1 key quests done and Seer of Swords as well, so now cleared to do G2.
And still sporting my HR Rath Soul <_<

I could try farming Steve for its armor, but before that though, I intend to get all the Wycoon quests done. I need G-Agnaktor and Lagiacrus stuff to upgrade swords.

Chaos Magala got owned. G3 achieved. Need to do some Stig Zin tailectomies to upgrade my SA.

Well, lookie what I found yesterday:



I still have to test it out, but it was a nice surprise to see.

Cool. Not what I thought it'd be.

I hate those double quests where they keep following each other within 15 seconds.

I wanted to solo the double Pink Rathian quest, because there was no-one coming to my room.
They kept flying to each other within seconds of one flying off because of a dung bomb.
Blew through all (Mega) potions and First aid med+'s from the guild before they were finally laid to rest. I spent more time fighting them together than apart.

On the plus side, upgraded my normal Ice-DS to max and this quest was also the Agnaktor-G stuff, so now I just need to farm...Black Gravios...

So, I've spent the last about a month playing MH4U again in nearly every spare moment. Haven't ranked up, but have been upgrading a lot and filling out my guild card. For instance, I now have finished all the guild quests from 1* - 5*.

This partly came about because of some friends getting back into it, I think. Or maybe I started again and got them back into it? Either way, we've been having some fun even if we can't play together often.

I've been experimenting with more than just the charge blade and it's lead to a few things. Firstly, it's lead to my old habit from when I played Freedom Unite of finding the right weapon type for the monster rather than adapting my playstyle to the monster. Secondly, it's gotten me to experiment more with weapons I had put down before or hadn't used at all. I've started using gunlance again and picked up a small handful of insect glaives.

Boy howdy, the insect glaive. It is simply a phenomenal support weapon. Now that I'm a decent rank to make a good kinsect, I can actually utilize it and I've mostly been using the Najarala one with paralysis, which just creates SO MANY OPENINGS. I was also experimenting with weapon types to face the black Fatalis and realized that the Brachy IG is PERFECT. Facing him a few times with the IG has actually been teaching me about positioning in ways I've never actually learned before.

Meanwhile I've picked up the Seregios gunlance and that thing is just a powerhouse. Learning that I can't use GL against certain monsters, though, because they can actually chew off HP through the guard anyway.

I'm probably the only one here still playing, aren't I?

I haven't played in forever, but I did enjoy the Glaive a lot when I played.

But really, I just hated every ranged weapon in that game. They just seemed so clunky to play with in that game.

I should really go back and finish the high level quests. I was at kiling the... big things? I don't remember which Elder Dragon I was farming last. Maybe the explody fire one?

Can you tell I'm bad with names?

While I wouldn't call the gunner mechanics themselves clunky, it's definitely not easy to break into gunning, for a number of reasons. There's the money drain in the early game as you don't have the resources to make your shots, the walled-off separation of armor sets throughout the entire game, the way they differ so much mechanically not only from blades but from each other (bowguns of both types operate completely differently to bows, while every blademaster weapon uses sharpness), and probably what I'd consider the biggest communication failure: the fact that not a one are "sniper" weapons. I definitely went through the phase and have seen friends trying to stay halfway across an area and still attack the monster, not realizing that the damage output is so low as to be effectively zero.

The addition of a Gunner's Pouch was definitely a large step toward not just approachability but also effectiveness in combat, but still there's been some steps back, I feel. For instance, I haven't touched HBG since learning that I can't reload after a roll without going into the damn cannon mode or whatever it's called, leaving me wide open to an attack. I've only recently thought I might be able to get back into them again after learning that limiter removal removes the cannon mode.