For new players (like me): DO NOT use the guardian/defender sets!!!

[Kashews]

Monster Hunter World is the first ever Monster Hunter game I have ever played. As such, I wanted to go in completely blind, stay away from spoilers and just experience the game as it is thrown at me. I was immediately in love with it. As soon as I saw I could create a supermodel badass from the character creation screen right to the lush environments and scale of an Elder Dragon I knew this game was going to suck me right in. Since I got the game after the Iceborne expansion was released, I was given the option to choose a default armour set from the start. Naturally, I chose the best looking one which was the Guardian Armour. This was a huge mistake and is the whole reason I am writing this post – for any totally new players; DO NOT use this armour set it is NOT for you.

I will summarise why you shouldn’t use this armour or the defender weapons in a few points:

You will pick up bad habits and not learn how to fight effectively

Wearing guardian armour allows you to be smacked about essentially any number of times (practically) and you will still be able to beat anything early on. This alone felt wrong from the start. I was basically going through the game via this cycle: get smacked by monster, stand up, poke poke poke (I’m a lance player), get smacked. Repeat until monster is dead. I did this right up to the Anjanath fight and still beat him easily. By taking away the danger/consequence of getting hit, there was no incentive to learn a monsters attacks, how to block, counter, move or use my weapon properly at all. The defender weapon also had very little consequence to poking the wrong spot since sharpness didn’t matter.

As soon as I decided to chuck on some normal Jagras pleb armour OH BOY did I get my ass whooped so hard it made my head spin. But I knew at that point that this was right. If you are not prepared and a giant T-rex grabs you it its jaws and hurls you like a MLB fastball it should hurt – a lot. By ditching the god-mode suit, my lance skills went up a hell of a lot and I am having way more fun.

You miss out on the thrill of progressing through the armour system

It is outrageously fun to Kill monster -> make fancy clothes & weps from its corpse -> kill bigger monsters -> make fancy clothes & weps from its corpse and repeat. The whole enjoyment of feeling yourself improve both in gear and in technical skill is intoxicating. I only realised that guardian armour had OP stats when I looked closely in the workshop and saw I didn’t need to craft anything at all and nothing would be better than my current gear.

Back to the Anjanath – I decided to hunt the Jyuratodus for a water lance and hunt Barroth to make armour; both of which I figured would help me with the T-rex. Just this fighting, planning and understanding the monsters weakness was great learning for me and I realised this was the whole point. You are not supposed to breeze past challenges, but work up to them. You will beat the monster when YOU are worthy and that is fun as hell. By the end of that farming sesh I could stomp all over those two and it felt great.

The triumph of beating an honest challenge

When I played Bloodborne and beat Father Gascoigne on my 134097861th attempt it was an amazing triumphant feeling. I believe this same feeling is in Monster Hunter so lets not deprive ourselves of that. As I said before, you will beat the monster when your character is suitably ready and you have learned your weapon/the attack pattern. If you are struggling, improving one of those is the only way to gitgud.

You will suck in Iceborne content & multiplayer

From what I have heard it is way harder and without fundamentals you will just be useless both solo and in a team. Iceborne is where that armour/weapon combo gets outranked and could you imagine going into that at that stage? It will be just like me when I first took on the Anjanath with jagras gear and no clue how to fight.

Sorry for the very long post – but because of these reasons, new players like me should not use the Guardian armour or defender weapons as it will make the game a lot worse.

Here’s my character [imgur.com] ; cannot wait to keep going and learning how to make use of the Lance 😊

[Miya]

Yup ^ hence why us vets are mad at people who just lean on the guardian armor and weapons T0T

[Gomu-the-Ghost]

Here's a tip for lance, you can shield advance in any direction. This only really works after a thrust or hop and then inputing the shield advance in the direction you want. Makes for safe way to stay on the monster.

As for the defender set and not really learning the game. If your intent is to get to the real meat of the game(IB's end-game) then just use it and learn monsters later.

[Juliane_L]

the guardian armor/weapons is just an atempt from Capcom to make noobs crush the base game story and buy Iceborne. bad money grab.

also, i'm happyto hearyou don't use it anymore. welcome the real game. (also, Anjanath is often a wall for low level players, he was designed to be the first wall you encounter.)

[Faust Wither]

what ever your equipment is, if you fire SOS, i help you by capture or killing less than 10 minute.