Just before the release of Monster Hunter Rise I had decided that I would finally go through and try to learn a few more weapons. Ever since Monster Hunter Portable 3rd I’ve almost exclusively played the Switch Axe. In Monster Hunter XX I’ve experimented a little with Aerial and Brave Great Sword and in World and Iceborne I’ve used a lot of Heavy Bowgun to farm during Endgame. When it comes down to it, I’ve only ever felt really comfortable with the Switch Axe. Even in matchups where I would consider the weapon to be a poor choice, I never entertained the thought of using a different weapon until World, where as I just mentioned I chose the Heavy Bowgun as a farming weapon.
If you are a little confused by the term village gauntlet, don’t worry about it, I made it up. What I am referring to here is choosing a set of weapons, as many or as little as you’d like and to go through the entire Monster Hunter Rise village quest-line, fighting each new monster as it shows up with every single weapon you chose and the exact same loadouts.
Now there is nothing too challenging about this really, other than the fact that I did this blind, meaning my first time going through the game and that I was learning three of the weapons from scratch. But even with those caveats it’s not really that much of a gatekeeper. What turned out to be a major hurdle to overcome was money. That’s because of the weapons I chose and I only chose a total of four weapons. Great Sword, Long Sword, Switch Axe of course and the Charge Blade. As I was upgrading my gear after each gauntlet I was constantly running out of Zenny going through each and every branch of all four weapons, which turned out to be extremely expensive.
While editing and uploading takes a bit of time and I am scheduling the videos to not spam subscription inboxes, I’ve already uploaded several videos of this Monster Hunter Rise Village Gauntlet to my channel. They are edited down to just focus on the hunts mind you. The gauntlet and the aftermath are actually a little more involved. So let’s break it down.
First up I always wanted to make sure I had everything available that I might need for any given monster. Which means I needed to make sure that my item stocks, armours and weapons are as good as they can be at the point I am starting a gauntlet. If I couldn’t upgrade my weapon trees any further, that’s when I would start a gauntlet. All of the rules are made up of course, but I did try to abide by them as best as I could regardless. So one more time, once I had started a gauntlet in Monster Hunter Rise’s village, my item loadout and the armour I was wearing for the first hunt were fixed in place. I’ll have to use the exact same item loadout and armour set that I was using in that first hunt and cannot change it until the gauntlet is over. Same goes for armour upgrades. Whatever level my equipped gear was at, that’s what I was stuck with. Which was never a problem though, as I always made sure to farm and upgrade everything that’s available as far as it was possible. Following that I simply went through the gauntlets, bitching and whining as I do whenever I was on Charge Blade duty and went back farming out everything as far as possible with the new available materials afterwards.
The funny thing is, I really thought one of the weapon types would eventually stump me, I was putting my money for my Monster Hunter Rise first triple cart on the Charge Blade, but that never happened. Instead, the further I got into the village’s quest progression, the more difficult it became to keep being able to pay for all the upgrades. More and more Zenny is required for each upgrade and on top of that, you’ll have to be able to create loads of duplicate weapons to cover all available weapon tree branches. By the time I reached 5 to 6 Star, somewhere in between there, I spent an ungodly amount of time farming out materials for dozens of weapons. The majority being dupes, to be able to move down a different branch of the upgrade trees. Not having, what usually feels like an infinite amount of money, was something I had never experienced in Monster Hunter before. When you’re only running one weapon and even when you create every single armour set the game has available, you usually end up with a surplus, a big surplus. Having to budget, weigh out my options and go hunt monsters, not for their drops, but just for the Zenny reward, was something I had never done before.
By the end of Monster Hunter Rise’s village I had clocked up almost 75 hours, I had collected 28 Great Swords, 28 Long Swords, 26 Switch Axes and 24 Charge Blades for a total of 106 weapons. The amount of gear I made was far more manageable. This is low rank, actually even lower, it’s village low rank we are talking about here, so the only skills I kept chasing after were Attack and Expert. By the time you get to Barioth you’ll most likely be running both Attack and Expert at Level 4 and then only update your armour when an armour piece or a combination of armour pieces present themselves to be a direct upgrade to whatever you are currently wearing. Which in the end meant for me to run a low Rank Zinogre, Zinogre, Rathalos, Anjanath and Ingot set.
The Great Sword is a very simple weapon to use. The barrier to entry is almost nonexistent, but the skill ceiling is ridiculously high, this is not new in Monster Hunter Rise, it’s always been like that. The Silkbinds, well the Silkbind attacks at least I have yet to get used to. It even took me a while to just get accustomed to the Power Sheathe, which while I am using it a lot more frequently now, I am not quite at the point where I truly understand how to use both the evasion properties, as well as the following suped up draw attacks. As I get into High Rank and considering that mantles no longer exist, I wonder if skills like Crit Draw and Punishing Draw will make their way back to the Great Sword staple skills. Then again, the tackle, which essentially is a Rocksteady Mantle in itself is still there. I will check once I have reached endgame, but I am curious.
This weapon is ridiculous. I’ve always said that as a Switch Axe user looking at the Long Sword user from afar— wondering: why this weapon is allowed to do all these things. Having used it a little in Monster Hunter Rise now, I still don’t have the answers, but I do know that it’s really fun to feel this overpowered. With all three of the weapons I wanted to learn I’ve been pretty much mashing buttons a lot more than I usually would, simply due to not having a solid understanding of each weapon yet. The Long Sword though, really accommodates this as you get not one, not two, but three get out of jail free cards. Foresight Slash, Iai Spirit Slash and the Silkbind Serene Pose. Nice nice nice. The one drawback to the Long Sword is that you need to raise your Spirit Gauge Level, right? Not anymore. The Silkbind Sakura Slash completely eliminates the need to even remotely think about your approach on how to level up. Just press ZL+X at max distance and that’s your level up. The skill only eats one Wirebug, so as long as you picked up a temporary one on the way to the monster, you can instantly level up to a Red Spirit gauge and wreak havoc from there. As it does blue damage, you will probably get a ride off at this point as well. Once again, the weapon is ridiculous and frankly; really fun because of it.
The Switch Axe was the only weapon where I didn’t really have much of a learning curve going into it. I’ve been playing the Switch Axe for over ten years now and even played this game’s iteration plenty in the demos already. What I wasn’t prepared for were the Silkbind Switch Skill, the one that I call the Rider Kick and the Switch Skill for forward+X, a really far forward moving chop, that leads to a double slashing morph attack. I can’t say for sure that either of these skills are meta, or that they will find much use in Speedruns, but casually in solo play, they are really powerful and the rider kick especially is so fun to use, especially if your amp is up already at that point. I thought the Switch Axe was a little dry in the demo. I liked Switch Charger, but the rest all felt a little lackluster. The Rider Kick alone made more than up for it though!
Alright look, I am not saying that the Charge Blade is bad or anything. In fact I know it’s not. Guard point counters in speedruns look insane and I am sure the same will be true in Monster Hunter Rise’s speedruns. Next to the Great Sword, Long Sword and Heavy Bowgun, the Charge Blade is one of the few weapons I always see ranked quite high when it comes to kill times. Nonetheless, being the filthy casual that I am, I hate this weapon with a passion. One thing that really bothers me about the weapon is the prep work that seems to be required. I am sure with the correct set of skills during endgame most of my gripes might get alleviated, but just the weapon by itself without any skills to accentuate its features, like blocking and guard pointing, the Charge Blade is a chore and a half to work with. Once you get into the groove of things and the flowchart starts to kick in, charged A, Reload, Shield Bash, SAED, Cancel to Shield Charge, Charged A, Reload, Cancel to Sword Charge Slam, it does feel like a very satisfying weapon. To get to that point though, to get the first charges even started, is so much work, especially when your shield at this point, without any guard skills and not being charged up, literally does diddly squat. Once again, I am not talking about how good or bad the weapon is, just that without skills and in the early game, it really doesn’t seem all that fun.
For me this whole process was a very cool experience. For one I found out that there are in fact some monsters that I much prefer fighting with either the Great Sword or Long Sword in lieu of the Switch Axe. I also found out that I hate fighting pretty much every monster in the game with the Charge Blade. Do keep in mind that this wasn’t a challenge of any sorts, the challenge for me was to learn those weapons, so please don’t mistake this for a “Challenge Run”.
I will keep running these gauntlets in High Rank as well, at least for monsters that I haven’t fought in Monster Hunter Rise yet. I will drop the locked armour and item loadout restrictions though, as starting with High Rank I am going to work more with more customised setups for each weapon. Evasion, Power Prolonger and that new Morph skill on Switch Axe, probably Focus on Great Sword and whatever the preferred choices are for Long Sword these days. As for Charge Blade, guard stuff I suppose to make the guard points somewhat useful? Don’t really know. The experience of running each monster with all of my chosen weapons, especially the first time you are fighting them really is an eye opener to certain monster behaviours, weaknesses and when and how different weapons can or can’t take advantage of openings. It also allows you to really bitch about a specific weapon type and let the salt flow. There was a lot of salt, sooo much salt.
Which weapons are you currently playing in Monster Hunter Rise? Are there reasons for your selection, like certain weapons for specific monsters or is it just preference? Let me know in the comments, either here or in the YouTube video’s comments! See you next time.
