#its a thing for him the og dragon he was based on was lightning element aligned!! its abt the frankenstein parallels!!

[recallback-art]

Remembered I wanted to post this individually and don't think I already did.

It's always a storm out where faceless beasts prowl.

[rumikothefox]

Favorite Monster Hunter Monsters, Part 2

So here is the second half of my favorite normal Monster Hunter monsters. Once again, these are in no particular order.  Let’s get right to it.

Lucent Nargacuga

I put Lucent because it is definitely a very cool rare species of Nargacuga, but really, it could be this or the original Nargy. Green is pretty cool, too. I often say that my true favorite monster is either Nargacuga or Zinogre (way to go spoiling an entry on this list, right?). Nargacuga looks very much like a black panther in many ways, along with the roar to match. Despite not fighting him in the game he was the flagship of, I fell in love with him when I fought him in 3U. His movements are sleek and I love how fighting him makes you wonder just who is hunting who. Lucent takes it a step further by being able to go completely invisible when he enrages, only letting you track him by his glowing eyes. His fight is on top of a tower in basically a small arena, so it makes it very difficult to evade him.

I love the Nargacuga set, especially as a gunner set. 

It has very high evasion and has this cool ninja look to it. The Lucent armor looked especially cool, but sadly, I was never able to get it. Lucent was just TOO damn difficult for me to want to bother farming him. It was like “spikes for everyone” Opera-style, plus the fact that they could poison you and there was NO way Lucent was going to give you an opportunity to deal with that poison while you were on the screen with him. Lucent is highly fast and aggressive, so reprieve is something you rarely get against him.

Stygian Zinogre

So I mentioned Zinny was hitting this list, but I have to say that Stygian JUST pulled ahead on this one. OG Zinogre is awesome on so many levels, but Stygian, as frustrating as he can be, just amazing as well. Zinogre is a giant lightning wolf monster, basically. He was, at the time, the only canine monster I’d seen in this series and was very cool. I loved his vocals, I loved his style, I loved his moveset, and MAN did I love his music (I may have to cover music in another post, because that is another cool topic to put out). Stygian swaps the lightning element for a dragon element and man is he hard. For those unfamiliar, dragon element will cause dragonblight, a debuff that causes the element or status on your weapon to be disabled until you cleanse it. It can get really frustrating. 

This dog will do everything he can to get you. Claw stomps, throwing elemental balls at you, flipping through the air and either smashing you with his tail or attempting to do a back flop on you, shoulder checks... He isn’t too bad when you first fight him, but as with normal Zinogre, he has two levels of charge above his base level that he’ll build up to. Each charge will make him faster and more aggressive.  And hope and pray to the MH gods that you get out alive if he enrages while on a max level charge. 

I also love his blademaster set on females.

It has that thing going where it gives you its own hair and you have these adorable little dog ears and I really just can’t help myself. >.>

Azure/Silver Rathalos

So we have another instance where I really couldn’t decide and just listed both. Rathalos is a cool monster, but Azure and Silver have such cool colorations to them and have interesting twists on the normal moveset. It’s totally not because my favorite colors are blue and silver. >.>

Ahem. Azure is one of the first subspecies I ever saw, being on the US cover art for MH3U. He’s faster and hits harder than your standard Rathalos and hangs out in the air a bit more. He also seems to really have a homing instinct for those poison claw attacks, moreso than normal Rath. He also had one of the best armors for blademasters in MH3U skill-wise and I remember wearing his set a LOT with my Brachy switch axe.

Silver is a rare species (the difference between subspecies, rare species, and variant has always been kind of dumb to me) that basically says “Fuck this, I’m just going to be airborne about 80-90% of the time. Deal with it.” He’ll start on the ground like any other Rath, but once you get that first enrage and he goes airborne, it feels like nothing short of a flash bomb or him finally running out of stamina is going to get him down. And that very well might be the case, to be honest. You fight him on top of a tower, so there are no other maps to escape to.  You’re trapped with him and he’s super pissed about you intruding.

I have to give an honorable mention here to Rathian and her sub/rare species, the Pink Rathian and Gold Rathian. Rathalos is the male counterpart to the exclusively female Rathian. She didn’t make the list, only because Rathalos pulled a bit ahead and it felt redundant to have them both on here. She focuses a bit more on poison than fire and likes the ground a bit more than Rathalos. You also tend to fight her earlier in any game they appear in. In World, you find that these two are difficult to deal with when spawned together in the Ancient Forest, due to the fact that Rathalos is very protective of his mate. I found instances where I’d use a dung pod to shoo him away from her, only for either her to seek him out or for him to come right back, at which point if I hid, he’d proceed to hover over her like a mother hen, looking around for where I went.  It was a cool touch, but also a bit of a terrifying one.

Black Diablos

Black Diablos is labeled as a subspecies of Diablos, but as in-game lore and other sources will explain, a Black Diablos is a normal female Diablos. During mating season, the females darken to a deep black color as a warning to other monsters to not get in her way. She’s getting that D and god help you if you get in her way.

Diablos was already a terrifying monster to me. Diablos trades any sort of elemental or status attacks in favor of raw brute force. For the most part, its attacks are highly telegraphed, so you can avoid them pretty easily if you’re paying attention. Lose focus and get hit, though, and you can easily get nearly one-shot if not at full health. That’s at a full 150, I-ate-food-for-buffs, hp. If you’re at base 100, say goodbye. Especially gunners.

Black Diablos takes a step further. She’s faster, stronger, and her horns are harder to break. She also changes up her charge attacks and will often charge in ways you weren’t prepared for. Still, maxed out Black Diablos weapons often had some of the best raw damage in the game, even factoring in their negative affinity.  And taking out a monster this dangerous is always immensely satisfying.

Odogaron

So now we’re touching into Monster Hunter World territory. The monsters I’ll be mentioning aren’t really super spoilery (they were all shown in the trailers), but if you’re unsure, stop now.

Odogaron is a monster I highly looked forward to since the trailers.  He was scary and icky but I was super curious about how this monster would behave.  Plus, it was awesome to see another canine-based monster. Zinny was feeling lonely.

Getting closer looks at him, it’s apparent that he’s not a skinless dog like the impression the trailers gave me. Instead he reminds me of an intricately-carved jade statue (albeit jade of a particularly bloody color). The armor you made from him for your hunter and your palico have this detailed sort of Chinese look to them that is really cool. The female hunter set is one of my favorite sets in the game so far appearance-wise.

As far as combat, Doggo is a bleed-type. The double claws he uses against you rip and tear in ways that bleed the hunter dry. As with dealing with Seregios’ bleed debuff, you either must crouch for a time to recover, or eat a piece of meat. This monster has similar movesets to Zinogre, though there are a few lunges and such that are purely his own.  He is also smaller but much faster than the other canine. It isn’t uncommon for Doggo to leap off my screen and cause me to have to reorient my camera to keep track of him. He definitely earns his place as the apex predator of the Rotten Vale.

Radobaan

I honestly surprised myself when this monster came to mind when thinking of my favorites.  The more I pondered it, though, the more it totally made sense. I honestly never thought I’d love a monster that is essentially an Uragaan at its core. I mean, nothing BAD about an Uragaan, but I wouldn’t put him in a high place, either. But there’s something about Radobaan that makes him less annoying than an Uragaan, more unique, and more fun.

At first, I thought the bones of the Radobaan were his own. But noticing the Diablos horns on his sides, I started to question it. That was answered further when I started to break off the bones on his body, only for him to go to a bone pile and roll around in it until he was covered in brand new bones. His actual skin has a tar-like substance that coats it and makes him able to stick the bones on his body like armor. You have to break the bones off to make him vulnerable. I had a lot of fun with him and he’s one of the few monsters in the Rotten Vale that don’t fight down in the nasty, health-sapping acid floor downstairs, so it made him that much more fun to fight. 

Tobi-Kadachi

Not the best or worst on this list, just the last. Tobi is like if you took a flying squirrel, gave him a snake head, and gave him the ability to charge himself with static electricity. Oh, and made him highly aggressive. Can’t forget that.

Tobi is fast and can give you thunderblight. He’s especially tough in forested areas where he has trees to jump in to use to jump on YOU. Though this often results in him going up into Rathalos’ nest to fight you and you can imagine how THAT ends up half the time. He will charge his fur up with static and seems to have different levels of charge, similar to a Zinogre. He’s even prone to sometimes doing Zinny’s tail slap on you.

Despite how fast and dangerous he is, though, I found myself learning him pretty fast. He’s tough, but he’s by far not the toughest monster out there and is pretty easy to farm.  Which is good because he gives you thunder-based weapons, which are good against a number of monsters, notably Rathalos, who is rather scary without a proper setup.

He’s challenging enough to not be boring, but is easy enough that you can casually hunt him for fun and not feel like you’re struggling.

And that’s it for the normal monsters. I know it was a lot, but I guess that just goes to show how good Capcom is at making memorable and engaging monsters. Next time I’ll do an Elder Dragon edition. Then maybe a music version. o/