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Got tired of derailing the sales thread.

Some amateur tips learned recently by this amateur:

- Find a weapon type you like! This is key to enjoying the game, as your weapon choice affects what play style is possible.
- Upgrading your weapon is super important. Yeah, it's nice to get a real new weapon by crafting it, but often the upgrade of the current weapon has more currently available parts and is just as strong. The way it works will also be familiar.
- Don't try to just brute force your way through quests. Use traps even when not capturing a monster, make poison bombs so they're taking damage even while you're chugging potions on the far side of the map. Learn their weaknesses, even if Google must be your teacher. I've had a lot more fun with the game since I started playing strategically.

Since I switched to the bow and began upgrading armor and such ... I'm addicted.

Got this game at Christmas. Didn't get too far; it's slow as hell.

Zappit said:

Got this game at Christmas. Didn't get too far; it's slow as hell.

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I bought it in August and I'm really just getting into it now. The game does a lot of hand-holding, explaining piecemeal about doing things many of us learned back in World of Warcraft, but it matters since knowing to search for crafting items is key. Once you get past the one-star quests, the game opens up more and the battles become more interesting.

I say that and I'm not even to the gargantuan screen-filling monsters yet.

The thing about MH is you can't just hack/slash your way to a win. If you're not blocking, bombing, dodging and trapping your way to a kill, you're going to hate the game. It's all about strategy and learning the monsters' patterns. It seems like a simple game on the surface, but it's not.

Also, capturing a monster as opposed to killing it will net you more items, along with some you can only get from a capture. I'd suggest mapping out the weapon/armor upgrade path you want, and be prepared to farm the same couple monsters over and over again, eventually the capture can take well up to 30+ minutes a beast.

I decided to go with the Gun Lance (What's that, Squall? A gunblade? Pfft, amateur!) and while it's been a pretty fun weapon so far, I really wish there was a way to lock onto targets. Small creatures are near impossible to stab with this thing.

I had a hell of a fight with a pretty basic boss monster that I was trying to capture but ultimately ran out of time with that ate up a lot of resources. I'll have to do some farming to get back to where I was and don't feel like doing so right now so for the time being I've stopped.

Ravenpoe said:

I decided to go with the Gun Lance (What's that, Squall? A gunblade? Pfft, amateur!) and while it's been a pretty fun weapon so far, I really wish there was a way to lock onto targets. Small creatures are near impossible to stab with this thing.

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I tend to use the wide swing to snag small monsters, stabbing is tough to catch them with.

Something I always tell friends who are just getting into MH: it's slow. It's repetitive. You'll be fighting monsters over and over, and just gathering resources over and over (especially early in the game, you'll want to be sure to take the time to mine for ore and stuff like that). It's also incredibly satisfying when you get to the serious monsters, rewarding when you forge better and better equipment from their remains, and genuinely become a stronger hunter. It's not a conventional action game, but the gradual way you discover better ways to hunt just makes the game more satisfying over the long term.

And playing with other people is a great way to not only ease the tedium of grinding for items but for picking up tips and tricks. Just watching other players can give you a lot of insight on how to play more efficiently, even if they're not using the same weapon you favor.

Also, if you're worried about wasting resources when you fail a quest, you can instead abandon the quest before the timer runs out or before you faint three times. Abandoning essentially means the quest didn't happen. You do not lose any items used during the quest and you do not get to keep any resources gathered during the quest.

CynicismKills said:

The thing about MH is you can't just hack/slash your way to a win. If you're not blocking, bombing, dodging and trapping your way to a kill, you're going to hate the game. It's all about strategy and learning the monsters' patterns. It seems like a simple game on the surface, but it's not.

Also, capturing a monster as opposed to killing it will net you more items, along with some you can only get from a capture. I'd suggest mapping out the weapon/armor upgrade path you want, and be prepared to farm the same couple monsters over and over again, eventually the capture can take well up to 30+ minutes a beast.

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At least with the bow, I've found that I'm going to need to jump to another of its kind since I can't get my next preferred upgrade until 5-star quests and I'm still on 3-star. Sometimes you have to go non-linear.

Yeah that's true. Bows are stupid good, though, be sure to check out what charge moves you get from each branch.

I can see why captures give you a better chance at rare items than kills--they're fucking hard.

I had to bring an Arzuros to the brink 4 times yesterday. He kept running just after I laid my trap and it's frustrating that you have to wait for the trap to disappear before you can lay a new one. Is there no way to set it off if the monster has run to another section?

Sadly no, there's no way to spring a trap yourself, only large monsters can do so. When monsters are weak enough to capture, they will flee the area you're in so they can sleep, eat, or otherwise recover their stamina (they can recover a small portion of their health but that's usually negligible). So when on a capture quest, weaken the monster as much as you can then carefully watch their behavior. When it starts limping don't drop a trap immediately, wait for it to run (paintballs will help you track where it goes to rest), follow it, and drop the trap in this new area. If the monster is being a huge pain they may flee again but overall you've got a better chance of capturing them by waiting for them to flee once.

Thankfully though, MH3U has far fewer capture quests than past games, so you aren't required to cap as much.

Eliwood said:

Thankfully though, MH3U has far fewer capture quests than past games, so you aren't required to cap as much.

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I am if I want a better shot at decent gear.

And in the case of the Arzuros, it had fled, and by the time I got the trap down on the second map, it had fled again. The attempt where I did capture it was when I waited for it to run to a third section. Caught it immediately.

Yeah but the required capture missions are more annoying, since if you mess up the cap you fail the quest. Capping on a kill mission is way less stressful and annoying, since you can just kill the monster if it avoids your trap.

Eliwood said:

Yeah but the required capture missions are more annoying, since if you mess up the cap you fail the quest. Capping on a kill mission is way less stressful and annoying, since you can just kill the monster if it avoids your trap.

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Oooh, I didn't know you could capture them and it would count as mission succeeded. That takes away some of the worry from overdoing it. Thanks.

Went online for the first time last night and that was a blast! Hunted with some good people doing 1 and 2 star quests. We tried hunting the hooty pterodactyl and got fucked when it summoned a shelled bear. I realized no one brought a dung bomb or took the one from the box ... we died.

Tried again, figuring we'd be better this time, except this time the bird summoned a fucking dragon. I saved the day a couple times there, throwing a dung bomb and then a flash bomb. We killed our mark, but as we were carving out our winnings, the dragon started charging us. It was crazy, but a lot of fun.

It's funny that I was regretting buying this game months ago without playing it, but since helping my wife get into it, I've really got into it and it's become one of my favorites.