New player, armor progression for first playthrough?

[Insane Scientist]

Hi, I'm a new player, enjoying taking my time in my first playthrough and not using Guardian/Defender Gear. My question is what is a good progression path for armor sets in first playthrough, I've reached Coral Highlands and I've found monsters are starting to be able to one-shot me with a lot of their attacks now. Right now I'm using a mix of Pukei Pukei and Tobi-Kadachi armor, flying monsters in Coral Highlands can frequently one-shot me and Anjanath can one shot me with breath attack too.

Is my armor too weak or should I start to expect this to be common from this point forward, also should I be using armor spheres to upgrade armor this early in the story or should I be hoarding those for later on in endgame?

[Suzaku]

Any armor will work just fine; the skills are what matters. The problem is you're not using your armor spheres to upgrade whatever you're wearing. As long as you keep your gear properly upgraded, surviving attacks is almost never an issue.

Remember to register bounties at the resource center. Check back in after every single hunt to see if you can hand any of them in, or get better ones to complete. I tend to focus on ones that involve hunting/capturing monsters, as they are completed just by playing the game without having to stop for mining/bone collecting.

[Citronvand]

Are you eating before hunts? You can get a lot more max health if you do. I recommend you use armor spheres, you'll get better armor spheres later which makes the current ones more or less useless. For example I need 160 points to fully upgrade my 1 of my armor pieces and I'm only HR 14.

[Insane Scientist]

Thanks for the advice, I'll start using my armor spheres and I think that should make a big difference.

[empingao]

Is it okay to invest armor spheres on early Game or should i settle first on a strong armor before i upgrade it???

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by Barangay Tibay:

Is it okay to invest armor spheres on early Game or should i settle first on a strong armor before i upgrade it???

Use your spheres. If you don't, you'll find yourself lacking in defense, which will really punish you heavily. As you progress through the game, you'll gain stronger spheres to match your increased needs for upgrades anyway.

As long as you're constantly completing bounties, armor spheres are almost never an issue.

[Dagný]

I recommend the odogaron armour

[cruste]

simply focus on progressing through the game and visit smithy from time to time, to see if you can craft some new armors.

you go through this cycle 3 times, if you own iceborne and earliest mr already outclass latest hr gamma armor gear, when it comes to defense, so lr armor becomes obsolete in hr and hr stuff in mr.

defender gear has already shown some of the best defensive skills available.
like vit+3, so try to get these skill from other armors if you want to skip defender, but still struggle with the dmg.

you can use the wiki to get an overview about armors with specific skills
https://monsterhunterworld.wiki.fextralife.com/Health+Boost

[BadRat]

monster hunter is at its best when the player is enjoying themself. find something that works and entertains you and go wild. theres no leaderboards so the meta only matters if YOU want it to. happy hunting :)

[Insane Scientist]

I'm enjoying the game much more playing without the defender or guardian items. Actually made this thread because I tried out defender gear on first playthrough, killed an Anjanath without knowing what it was or how difficult it's supposed to normally be in my first or second expedition, when I realised how easy it was making game I made a new character using none of the defender or guardian items, then Anjanath one shot me with me some attacks!

But now I am learning the game and enjoying instead of rushing, I beat it this time by learning about armor upgrading from you guys and equpiment forging and upgrade system, started to use items like flash pods and stuff too to help with more difficult hunts. Really enjoying this game :)

[Citronvand]

Originally posted by Insane Scientist:

But now I am learning the game and enjoying instead of rushing, I beat it this time by learning about armor upgrading from you guys and equpiment forging and upgrade system, started to use items like flash pods and stuff too to help with more difficult hunts. Really enjoying this game :)

Good to hear, I'm pretty much the same. Since I'm also fairly new, here's some tips I wished I knew about when I started: You can set join requests to manual in options which lets you manually accept anyone that wants to join when you SOS, that way you can prevent OP players from carrying you while still playing with others.

You might have found native cats in the wilderness, 1 group for each zone, there is a way to befriend them. Even better, if you reach unity level 6 with any of them it will unlock some stuff for you: Item trading with them & treasure hunts. Considering only 3% of players have the achievement for finding your first treasure it seems a lot of players miss this.

[侍Kage]

I remember my first playthrough, never used defender gear. Bosses were taking so much time, I was dying a lot. This is a game where you die a lot but you learn so much by dying. You can use armor sphres you'll have tons of them later on. You can also check skill bonuses of armors in smithy and craft some dps/tank mix sets for yourself. You don't always have to go full dps build, you can get defense armor set and still be doing decent dps to take down monsters. For you the key is to avoid dying and kill it successfuly not trying to kill it under 10 minutes. Even it takes 40 minutes thats a success.