HR 14 and difficulty spike

[sisyanor]

Everything felt easy in this game, until I reached HR 14.
There is...this brutal difficulty spike the moment you start hunting elder dragons.
To the point where I feel that everything I learned so far is useless.

Suddently, I reach the time limit, not doing enough damage, yet faiting if I ever get it twice.

So first, could someone tell me if the equipement I have is considered enough to start these quests:
Defender Warhatchet V, Dragonking Eyepatch alpha, Damascus Mail beta, Guardian Vambraces alpha, Nergigante Coil beta, Nergigante Greaves beta.


And if you have some suggestions on what I should make sure to have when HR 14, that'd be great.

[Jereweeb]

Defender weapons will always be "almost" the best, if not already the best for that weapon type. They're made to be super strong so that base game players can quickly breeze through base game and get to Iceborne ASAP, so your weapon shouldn't be a problem.

The biggest aspect in the "preparation" part of the game is the matchmaking of armor skills. Some armor skills are game changing, while some can be utterly useless. For example, you're using Damascus Mail Beta, giving you two levels of Focus, an armor skill that is completely useless to you (you use Sword and Shield).

My suggestion is to at least read the descriptions of the armors you are making, or want to make. Find ones that you think will be awesome for you. It can be Quality of Life skills like speed eating or earplugs; DPS increases like Weakness Exploit and Critical Eye, or defensive skills like Evade Window and Recovery Up. If you don't know which is good, then we can elaborate further on some recommendations, but I still urge you to explore them on your own first.

Finally, perhaps the biggest tips I have for elder dragons are to learn what their respective weaknesses are first. I'm not just talking about elemental weakness, but also what counters you can do other than just learning their moves. Vaal Hazak gets super easy once you have nulberries or Effluvia Resistance, Teostra's aura can be nullified with cool drink, and almost every "aura" type elders have (Kushala's, Teostra's, Kirin's) iirc can be halted by poison (at least it felt like it in my runs, but that's something I learnt in MHF2 so don't quote me on that).

[Anoyun?]

what weapon you're using? first upgrade you're armor as high as much as you can if possible max it. second don't rush learn the monster move failing 3 to 10 time its ok, learn what the monsters elemental weakness and use it against him (most monsters is weak against lighting) and if cant do it alone you can always do it on group. and it all fails fire and sos and w8 for a high MR player join you and let him do the job. easy

[Lochlann]

Kushala's wind aura can be avoided by sticking near his head, not sure how much that will help you as SnS isn't really much of a head-sniping weapon, but Kushala's head is pretty accessible (whenever he's on the ground at least)

Make sure to use flash pods to ground him whenever he flies, though be aware that he won't be affected if he's inside one of his tornadoes. Also be aware that flash pods get nerfed going into Iceborne's Master Rank but that isn't something you need to worry about rn

I believe you can also plunderblade his materials to make his armour for wind resistance but I wouldn't know anything about that, I've never even gotten the plunderblade myself lol

As for Teostra, he has many tricks but in particular you should also know a bit about his nova/nuke attack: In older entries I believe he tends to do his nuke 100 seconds after he enrages but I don't know if it's the same for World... Either way whenever he becomes fully enveloped in flames and ♥♥♥♥ and you feel like he's been that way for a while, you should probably hang back for a bit because he'll likely do his nova soon. That being said, SnS does have a fairly quick speed even without quick sheath iirc, plus it has mostly quick attacks that you don't need to hard commit to, so you can probably sheath and dive away from the nuke in time before he kills you

If you don't know what diving is yet (the game doesn't really teach you about it at all I don't think?), basically when you have your weapon unsheathed turn and run away from the monster - you might want to wait a moment just to make sure you're properly running - and then dodge, and you should do a huge dive as opposed to your regular dodge roll. This dive has a LOT of iFrames which makes it good for emergencies, it's saved me from a lot of attacks that I don't know how to consistently dodge lol

(if you've already done Nergi I assume you already know how to do it tbf since diving is the best way to deal with his divebomb attack, but thought I'd mention it just in case. I kinda already typed it out xd)

As for Vaal, he's fairly easy outside of his effluvium which constantly halves your HP. Either bring lots of nulberries or run effluvium res like the first comment says

[IxianMace]

Your equipment is more than 'enough', though be sure to upgrade your armour. My general recommendation if you're having difficulty surviving is to fit maxed Health Boost and maxed Stun Resistance somewhere in your build. You can get maxed Health Boost by wearing a Bone Helm and Ingot Vambraces. Maxed Stun Resistance can be obtained by crafting and upgrading a Stun Resistance charm and/or combining it with Barroth Greaves if you can't fully upgrade the charm.

[Kabirbd]

First of all, you are using a defender weapon which is very strong for base game. Too strong. You can even use it a little bit in dlc too. That's how good this is.
It has blast status which is very good against both Kushala and Vaal Hazak. It's not that good against Teostra. So you may struggle a bit with dmg against Teostra.

Second of all, your armor has issues. Now the armors are decent but the mistake is that you used "beta" versions of armor. So you are missing out on good skills.
For example, you are using,
Damascus mail beta: which gives focus but you are a sword and shield user so it is not important. What's more is that if you used damascus mail alpha, you would have received focus and defense boost. So you missed out on defense. Defense isn't that important but better than using beta version armor.

Nergigante Coil beta: You got attack boost from beta armor. If you had alpha version of this armor, you would have gotten stamina surge too.

Nergigante Greaves beta: You got maximum might skill. but if you had alpha version of this armor, you would have gotten Agitator too. Agitator gives attack boost when monsters are enraged.

So if you had used alpha armor, you would have gotten defense boost, stamina surge and agitator skills. So you missed out on 3 skills. But not just that.
If you had 3 pieces of nergigante armor, you would have another skill called Hasten recovery which literally regenerates health when you attack a monster. You only have 2 pieces of nergigante armor.

So basically you would have a better armor set if you made a complete "alpha" armor set from Nergigante only.

FYI the difference of alpha and beta armor is that alpha armor has better skills but beta armor has better decoration slots but fewer skills. In base game, the decoration aren't that good and you can get deco easier in dlc. So it is better for most players to just craft alpha armors.

Now tips against 3 elder dragons:

Kushala: Take flash pod to knock it out from sky when it is flying. It is a slow battle cause of the wind. You can beat this. It just takes time. I think it took me 30 minutes too when I first fought it.

Teostra: Use cold drink and fireproof mantle. If you have fire resistance decoration, then you can set it on armor.

Vaal Hazak: It's honestly a really easy fight. It is difficult simply cause effluvia. So always take nulberry. Never fight this monster without nulberry.
But what makes it easy? It doesn't stay enraged for long. So you can wall bang it so many times per fight. Its movement is also very slow. So take it slow, wall bang the monster, remember to focus on your health.

[Fiona]

To add on: Do not forget the meals you can eat. They can give specific buffs like large Attack/Defense/ElementalDefense up which can mean the difference.

Also SOS. Do not be afraid to call for help, a single MR player can deal with any of those dragons, just focus on staying alive, and get in whatever damage you can.
The monster will scale depending on the number of players, so staying alive so MR players can kill the thing is vital.

[Bobucles]

Try hitting the monster and not getting hit. SnS is actually a very difficult weapon to master. The short range puts the camera in bad positions and it's very difficult to hit monster sweet spots at a novice level. If you can't figure out the advanced moves, SnS isn't going to work out.

Greatsword is probably the best novice weapon. You can beat everything with only one move, the draw attack. Run around, heal up, look for a good opening and sweep in to lay the smack. It teaches good habits and the play style really lets you see the monster in action to learn its moves.

[Oni-Lyrics]

yeah worlds difficulty spike is really bad. you wouldnt have that problem with rise at all. in world you kinda need to tune your gear to the monster youre hunting rather than your style of play. leading to the game padding out its runtime with grinding

[Kino]

Defender gear is double-edged. From what I've seen on streams (not calling you out, could be different) people can button mash and not really learn anything.

Monster Hunter is a lot like a fighting game in many ways. People can raw super, spam zoning cheese, and other things, but it will only take them so far.

Sword and shield is really punishing in the fact if people don't know what combos to use and when; they'll drag out fights (and not know why).

Other than that it's fundamentals. I see a lot of people getting hit a lot while in defender gear because they can. Getting hit and healing repeatedly can chew up a lot of hunt time. Being reactive first and learning patterns will have benefits immediately. Becoming proactive and shaving down hunt times should come after.

[FuyuNoSora]

It's very important to upgrade your armor as much as possible so you have enough defense. No defense = huge loss of time, due to you getting big wounds. You need to eat food that gives you Felyne defender too, then you can get familiar with the fight without having to fear for your life every hit the monster does. Your cat should be on healing against Elder Dragons. You also need offense, and the best offense is anything that makes your critical hits higher. Finally you have to hit the weak spots of the monster.

[sisyanor]

Thank you all for your replies.
I learned a lot from them.
I will now focus on my armor and fixe my mystakes there.
I will also do my best at following your tips regarding each dragon.

[RobeRonin]

no offence but how the hell are people experiencing difficulty spikes in HR lol the base game is so easy we al complained originally until icebourne hit the scene and we got hard fights lol not only that now the base game has the clutch claw and defender armour set that is crazy OP if you are finding it hard in HR may i suggest you are playing wrong and your build sucks not trying to be rude just suggesting to try look up some vids and learn whats actually going on!

[Anoyun?]

why the hell i'm getting a warring for spamming have only 1 comment and the one there showing to me is not my post wtf is this.

[Fraktal]

Originally posted by sisyanor:

Thank you all for your replies.
I learned a lot from them.
I will now focus on my armor and fixe my mystakes there.
I will also do my best at following your tips regarding each dragon.

Watch speed runners on YT. Just watch them avoid hits, and to see where they hit.

However DO NOT try and emulate their build, it’s usually 100% offense and 0% defense, which is not good for a struggling hunter.

[Kino]

Originally posted by Fraktal:

Watch speed runners on YT. Just watch them avoid hits, and to see where they hit.

However DO NOT try and emulate their build, it’s usually 100% offense and 0% defense, which is not good for a struggling hunter.

This is ok advice, but honestly I wonder how much of their own thread OP reads. Or anyone who posts looking for easily answerable questions like this one. IMO it's barely a step above your average clown farming thread.

While your advice is decent, noobs who follow it will ultimately be asking "Why doesn't my monster behave like that?". Also speedrunners will abuse every opening which may lead to just as much trial and error than learning first hand. A speedrun is the best outcome shown, manipulating AI through spacing and flinching etc; not really an amazing resource for new learners. It's like telling someone they can be as good as Daigo's Ken by copying them.

Also recently the MHW speedrun community is a bit muddy with people caught using lobotomized AI