Monster Hunter Rise

Rampages are pretty ok in parties I thought, like there's more monsters and more shit going on. It's still super easy since you can cart as many times as you want, but at least it's somewhat fun just blasting tons of shit and ganging up on the last boss with 3 people mounting shit and spamming chain knockdowns and stuff like that. They also give a shit ton of xp(mostly useful once you have uncapped HR) and a lot of materials(you get both materials from any of the mobs in the rampage with more from the wave bosses, but you also get tickets and you can throw tickets in the melder, so it's like doing 2 quests worth of materials at once).

Feels a lot less annoying than KT and Safi with the multiple phases and all the shit and randoms just carting or fucking up stuff so you wouldn't get best rewards. Here you just kinda shoot at stuff in your ballista for a bit, then once the gong is rang automatically when the boss spawns, you just whip out your weapon and start blasting fuckers for 1-3k per hit and just demolish everything, then it has a somewhat "proper" last boss that doesn't die in 3secs but is still easy.

I wouldn't spam it, but I don't mind doing a run here and there. I need mats for my hunting horn anyway.

Village is like easy mode hunts compared to hub. Hub is "normal" MH difficulty, village is like story mode stuff, so it's REALLY easy. You'll notice a big difference when you switch over. I did village first too and it was dumb dumb how fast stuff died, but it also means you can progress somewhat faster as a result. It actually ends at the end of low rank too, once you're done you basically have to switch to hub for high rank and the rest of the story(well the rest they added after the game launched).

I don't have numbers but it's like 50% or 66% health/dmg and such. It's good for farming LR materials for the weapons that you can't shortcut directly with HR mats though, you just go do village quest and you smash the mobs in a minute with HR gear.

That said Rise definitely is easier than World so far, it's not like dumb dumb easy(other than village quests), but the wirebug recovery move makes a lot of things a lot more trivial. They do try to mess you up by having some moves that you would actually avoid if you didn't recover but get clipped if you do, but it's not that many and even these depending on the direction you go you can still dodge them. This makes it harder to cart and as such the game is a bunch easier, plus the new moves and the mount system being a lot "stronger".

Cleared the HR50 stuff and grinding to HR 100 now for the last bit of content. I have so many decorations I'd need to grind but so far I've been fucking around with various weapons and trying to get basic builds for them. Got a Charge Blade build, it's alright, I think better than World but still clunky. SnS I didn't like much, I liked the old infinite combo, the new filler is too slow, and arguably too strong which makes perfect rush not as good in comparison, so meh. Also with wirebug there's less incentive to do speed eating stuff which is one thing I liked about SnS(I only played it in Iceborne though with the changes there, might be able to do more full builds in Rise once they release the expansion too). Longsword was alright but I got bored of it after 2 hunts. Dual Blades I looked into it quickly but it's too element centric, I'd need to make a bunch of setups for every elements and I'm lazy. Maybe I'll try Chameleos poison stuff and just go with this for a few hunts to test it out.

Still trying to put a solid gun build together, I have most pieces now I just need a spare shot deco and some other thing I forgot. I got the LBG almost ready(need to get some magnamalo common mats to get the last one I ran out of claws or whatever it is) and for HBG I'm thinking of just making the Rampage one so I don't have to farm much and get a bunch of tickets for melds. Takes a shit ton more effort than other weapons, at least for the full setup(ammo up+spare shot+reload+recoil+artillery).

Mostly keeping to my old favorite stuff, IG/HH/Lance/Switch Axe.

Yeah for Apex mats for the rampage weapons and stuff, just do rampage, the normal fights are like challenge fights and really don't reward enough I think, but in rampage it's super easy and you get a bunch of other mats too. I made the rampage HBG earlier, took me like an hour or so of doing rampage, I did azuros, rathalos, diablos and zinogre, I still had misuzune and rathian mats left over. Also got a ton of tickets in the process which mean I got a bunch of talismans prepared too. I do these online, honestly in parties it's somewhat fun and pretty quick versus solo, it's just a big clusterfuck of explosions and you hit for like 2-3k with big attacks and stuff. Beats Zorah quests easily and I find it more fun than KT/Safi too. It's not great but it's very bearable, as long as you just go do something else inbetween and not just grind them non stop.

Haven't started Apex in normal quests just yet, I finished Valstrax armor and almost finished gathering all the random crap to test weapons, need a few more decos and pieces of armor. The weapons I tested somewhat recently after playing IG/HH/Switch Axe a bunch early on:

• SnS isn't as bad as I thought it was, but I still don't like the current combos and dislike they went away from Perfect Rush. It's strong enough so that's not a huge deal, I just liked Iceborne SnS more.
• Longsword is very strong as expected, especially once you know the patterns a bit, although it's a bit weird they put Helmbreaker on a silkbind attack(a switchskill too in case you just want to do no damage by removing it).
• LBG with Sticky is a lot of fun, much more than in World. The silkbind slide thing is pretty fun since it lets you fire clusters on the move, and overall the damage is super high with ability to break every part while barely trying(have to target tail a bit for slicing ammo to cut it but it's not even that bad). I'm making the Pierce LBG stuff now to farm Narwa mats when I need them but luckily I haven't needed much since most of the weapons I use are Narga or Rampage S. Enjoyed this one a lot more than I thought I would
• Charge Blade feels better than World with the Axe Hopper move, the other one feels a bit redundant seeing as how you can charge your phials stupidly fast with Load Shells but eh. Still feels slow overall and not a big fan and the hitbox on SAED explosions feels very weird sometimes
• Lance feels weird now, on one hand it feels like I take way less chip dmg than in World so the loss of health augment isn't that bad but on the other it feels it got the short end of the stick with all the silkbind stuff, the new double charge thing is great damage but doesn't feel like lance gameplay(there is a counter on it I guess), it's also annoying how you can't confirm where you're going before you initate the 2nd charge so you can't wait to see if you're sliding through the monsters, go under the tail, instead stand still and so on, it's annoying. But still very strong, like not great dmg when playing block oriented but very easy to survive, and unlike before you can easily get out of nasty situation with the wirebug recovery move(which auto sheathe which is great since lance sheathing speed is still garbo).
• Dual Blades I wasn't sure if I wanted to check cause it's all ele builds and I didn't feel like making 50builds, but I just crafted Teostra weap(ice and blast) and it works pretty well against pretty much anything. Feels better than World with Archdemon changes, very easy to play tbh, even with no Go Fight Go/Dash Juices/skills for stamina, it feels like you can stay in demon form a good amount of time, and it replenishes easily without too much of a downside while in Archdemon. The silkbind skill that lets you counter a move is also broken as fuck, since it basically means you'll rarely get hit by anything unless you're messing up bad.
• Greatsword is alright, still not a fan, I do like it more with Rage Slash or whatever instead of the True Slash, because it's faster and you can 360° to readjust if the enemy moves. Lose a bunch of damage but gain a lot of consistency if you're not god at predicting shit, so I liked that.

Overall liking most of the weapons I tried, some I'm not a huge fan like CB, and have yet to play HBG(low interest now that I've played LBG though), Hammer(never had any interest), Bow(would need to switch to keyboard and mouse and too lazy) and Gunlance(still making the set, got the weap but need to farm bazelgueuze a bit for the armor, although I could probably do something with what I have already).

Interested to see what kind of switchskills they add to the weapons for Sunbreak.