So is Ice born worth it for a solo player?

[Target]

Ive started up world again, its genuenly a better game then I remember but I dont know about picking up ice born. There seems to be a huge emphasis on massive raid style bosses that are best approached with a coardinated team. I play solo and even in the base game I have not even tried gold dragon because Im afraid not knowing the mechanics already will let any team I am on down.

Is group play nessisary to get the most out of ice born?

[LordShoe]

Unless you pick a weapon and playstyle specifically suited to solo, I'd say its more worth it to run a group.

I've found that far more than regular mhw the monsters like to spaz out, run, fly, swim, and generally avoid you during a fight so you spend most of the time chasing it for most of the new monsters.

I take a group just so the damn thing will get distracted and pause to hit them every once in a while so I can catch up to it.

[♋Phenex]

It is worth for a solo player. There are only like 2-4 bosses you can't do solo easily but that's about it.

[Seamus]

Minor correction: There are TWO "raid style" fights. One which was added in the base game(Kulve), one that was added for Iceborne(Safi).

As for the expansion, as long as you didn't do something silly like faceroll the base game with the defender gear, absolutely.

There's more monsters, more challenge, and more gear to collect.

You don't HAVE to do Kulve or Safi at all.

[Target]

Originally posted by Seamus:

Minor correction: There are TWO "raid style" fights. One which was added in the base game(Kulve), one that was added for Iceborne(Safi).

As for the expansion, as long as you didn't do something silly like faceroll the base game with the defender gear, absolutely.

There's more monsters, more challenge, and more gear to collect.

You don't HAVE to do Kulve or Safi at all.

While their might only be 2 raid bosses, (2 seems like a significant amount of content to write off) from what I have seen even the base monsters seemed like they were desighned to be fought in groups rather then solo. I say the developers showing a new variant of the dragonball monkey, and they flat out said if the monkey grabs you, you better hope an ally heals you. Maybe that was hyperbole but the impression the DLC gives off is that it was desighned for hardcore groups, not solo players.

[Seamus]

Rage monkey is completely soloable. Hell, if you want to get technical, EVERYTHING is soloable with enough skill.

The devs just like to hype up the fights. Yeah, the monkey does a lot of damage, but, again, completely soloable.

But, other than a few outlier fights(Kulve, Safi, Behemoth, the tree thing from Witcher 3), the entire game scales based on player count.

[Val]

You'll be fine solo.
Base game has Kulve Taroth (Gold Dragon) and Behemoth as not solo friendly (though doable for some) while Iceborne has Safijiva and the recent Alatreon. So it is more or less the same formula so i don't know where the "huge emphasis on massive raid style bosses" came from.
Difficulty "may" feel higher compared to base game but thats a given the playerbase does need a challenge so don't be surprised at first for finding monsters being "cheap" but eventually you will get the hang of it and push though solo or not.

[JHarlequin]

You can complete the story solo though it gets a bit complicated a few times. The armor and weapon upgrades that you might need go up rapidly in the early part of the story.

There are a few monsters that are much more difficult jumps in challenge than ever happened in the base game. You can still finish the hunts but it is good advice to suggest that you just go ahead and group for them.

To keep it simple, end of base game, you could take a single monster hunt and likely kill the other monsters and then finish your hunt probably all withing thirty minutes if you decide to. Even if you can do that regularly, your first hunts in iceborne are likely to take you forty minutes or more for just one monster. Then a few hunts later, some monsters will be so fast and chain so many attacks together that they will likely keep you from doing enough damage the first few times you try to do the hunt.

The learning curve on monsters and their much larger health values will slow your hunts down to a crawl if you stay solo in iceborne. It will get easier as you get better armor and weapons, but everything slows down.

[Lumen]

I predict that you will be ending up grouping a lot at least as soon as you finished the story.
Why? Because it's fun and mhw is build heavy for supporting it.

If you enjoyed the base game go for Iceborne as otherwise you'll run out of things to do.
Currently you still got a lot of people playing the base game from the steam summer sale but that ain't gonna last.

[Greb]

Game is much easier in solo, however there are some parts definitely funner in a group - a close knit group is much better than roughin' it with randoms and the SOS flare, too.

Groups also reduce the monotony of the grind, too. It's a lot more fun grinding in the late game with a friend or two than it'll ever be going alone, - plus in the case of the absolute end game it's nice having another friend to play with that has a different region level set up to yours, so you can fight the right monsters a lot easier.

There's definitely a part in the game where suddenly you need a million different monster parts to get the really juicy end game stuff, and having people to work alongside can really help reduce the "what the hell am I even doing?!" situation that comes from that, lol.

There's only a handful of monsters you can't fight in solo, and most of those are stuck in High Rank anyway and can typically be solo'd no problem with Master Rank gear anyway, so yeah. Safi'Jiiva is a special case since he's a Siege but also you can just join a lobby dedicated to him, literally never say a single word, and still walk away with something...depending on the quality of the randoms you join, anyway.

Just a theory of mine is that people are more likely to cheat to skip the grind if they're stuck playing the game in solo or without friends, which is fine I guess if they stick to singleplayer forever, but in my opinion regardless of any controversy that cheating generates, it really defeats the purpose of actually playing the game if you do that, so trying to remain a solo player in this game kind of also defeats the purpose, especially with the Gathering Hub set up like it is...but that's just my opinion I guess, not fact.

[Gin-chan]

Soloed all the story content no problem. And yeah Iceborn is really worth it imo.Never did the raid bosses (Kulve/Safi)since yeah that requires actual proper teamwork and planning which does not suit my playstyle of just hunting however i feel like(which i can still do in a reasonable amount of time ) except of course the occasional SOS during parts grinding. (SOS's are still fun enough to see whatever shenanigans people are up to if you dont really care what happens during a hunt)

[ᔑᓭ∴ᔑリ⊣]

to answer the title:


yes

[Cerberus]

i play solo, and i really loved it. so yes. i guess its more fun with multiplayer, but gotta love the contents you can enjoy by yourself.

[Zelph]

Originally posted by Gin-chan:

Soloed all the story content no problem. And yeah Iceborn is really worth it imo.Never did the raid bosses (Kulve/Safi)since yeah that requires actual proper teamwork and planning which does not suit my playstyle of just hunting however i feel like(which i can still do in a reasonable amount of time ) except of course the occasional SOS during parts grinding. (SOS's are still fun enough to see whatever shenanigans people are up to if you dont really care what happens during a hunt)

You CAN solo kulve and safi, but its a real pain.

[Gin-chan]

Originally posted by Zelph:

Originally posted by Gin-chan:

Soloed all the story content no problem. And yeah Iceborn is really worth it imo.Never did the raid bosses (Kulve/Safi)since yeah that requires actual proper teamwork and planning which does not suit my playstyle of just hunting however i feel like(which i can still do in a reasonable amount of time ) except of course the occasional SOS during parts grinding. (SOS's are still fun enough to see whatever shenanigans people are up to if you dont really care what happens during a hunt)

You CAN solo kulve and safi, but its a real pain.

Yeah i know its possible but since it was specifically designed for coop i'd rather not drive myself frustrated attempting them XD. As much as i appreciate a good challenge i know my own skill level well enough not to attempt it >.<. Plus min-maxing is not really my thing.

[Dex]

I've only played a bit of Iceborne but I'm completely solo and I'm enjoying it. Two things however,

first, the fights are longer than the main game. The monsters seem to have a lot more health, I think the clutch claw tenderizing mechanic was implemented to counter that but in my mind, they basically created a problem so they could use the claw, seems strange, but just make sure you clutch claw when you can.

Second, large monsters seem to run away a LOT more in iceborne. I've only done 3 MR hunts (Beotodus, that big horned guy and a MR kulu ya ku) and they all ran away at least 4 times, which is sort of annoying but as a HH user, it lets me rebuff myself.

Oh, and the handler talks a lot more and is still as annoying as ever. I'm just waiting for her next 'run off ahead of me and get attacked by something' episode, it seems to be capcom's only way they know of creating drama in the story.