PREVIEW -- Monster Hunter World: Iceborne - Title Update 5 Trailer

Get ready, Hunters! Title Update 5 storms onto #Iceborne Oct 1st at 00:00 UTC.

🐉 Fatalis
❄️ Arch-Tempered Velkhana
🌏 USJ Collaboration
👻 Fun Fright Fest

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The closer we get to Fatalis' debut into the New World, the more nervous and anxious I get to this monster as a newcomer to this series. The Monster Hunter series veterans regard this monster as a harder kick to the family jewels than Alatreon could ever hope to be. I'm ready to tackle this challenge, along with Arch-Tempered Velkhana. FYI Velkhana was my personal favorite Elder Dragon that was added as part of the Iceborne expansion, so I'm excited to see the changes to this battle. I know a lot of people on Reddit have been clamoring for an update to the USJ Collaboration armor for Master Rank and it's great that we're finally getting that along with layered armor for the beloved Buff Body armor and Scarf armors. Last but not least, the Fun Fright Fest is another welcome treat with the Handler sporting a Morrigan (DarkStalkers)-inspired look with the Frankenstein Palico costume to boot. They should've just made the Palico look like Victor von Gerdenheim or Jon Talbain, but beggars can't be choosers when this stuff is coming to players for free.

It still makes me sad that this is the last free title update for Iceborne, but there's still some new content in the pipeline with a few more Arch-Tempered monsters left to face before the game truly winds down with Monster Hunter Rise on the horizon for players on the Nintendo Switch.

PREVIEW -- Monster Hunter World: Iceborne - Fatalis Trailer | Final Developer Diary: The Final Stand

"What we're up against isn't a monster... it's actually history" 

Confront Fatalis in #Iceborne, October 1 🐉

Welp, shit's finally hit the fan as Fatalis officially arrives in the New World. Ever since the arrival of Safi'jiiva, the NPCs in-game have been dropping not-so-subtle clues about his arrival as the end of all things, so this monster rightfully deserves to be the last obstacle in players' wakes at the conclusion of Iceborne's expansion and more importantly, for the lore of Monster Hunter World as a whole. I'm sure that the devs have some insane tricks up their sleeves for this battle as they didn't bother to drop any details about this fight - AT ALL. I don't know why I have a feeling that this is going to be Extreme Behemoth all over again. Unlike most people, I didn't think Alatreon was as bad as the wealth of complaints that stemmed from the mechanics of that battle. Simply put, Alatreon was an elemental DPS check from start to finish. Otherwise, you were wasting your time and efforts. The common complaint from the community was that elemental damage has been nerfed across the board and relegated as a specialty that very few weapon classes can truly capitalize on to optimize the battle properly. That's partially true, but the majority of the complaints were coming from players who were too comfortable and too lazy to give up their precious Master's Touch-focused and/or high raw damage DPS builds to try something different. In that regard, I hope the developers have something similar in mind to piss off players even more and to enforce more less common strategies to topple this beast. This is supposed to be the apex predator in terms of everything in the franchise (at least that's the impression that I get from Monster Hunter veterans), so I'm looking forward to the devs to pull out all of the stops and not pull any punches on this one. Alatreon was definitely the kick in the nuts that everyone needed and I want to see more battles in the vein of that one in terms of difficulty. 

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Developer Diary: The Final Stand imminent! You won't want to miss this one...

Like I mentioned on Facebook and Twitter, it made me sad to realize that this is actually the final developer diary and last round monster additions to the game. 

How could anyone not look at that final montage at the end of this stream and not get sentimental after spending the better part of two years with this game. You buy this game and have the entire wealth of content for that game right out of the box with the developers supporting it from the start to the end of the base game's life for FREE, with regular updates right up to the paid Iceborne expansion and still continuing to do the same for the expansion. It makes sad that we're winding down to the end of this journey. I have made a wealth of friends from this game - either from hunting together in-game, talking about it on social media and/or Discord, and as well as streaming over on YouTube/Twitch. I'm going to continue to ride this out to the end, even though most people I know have already moved on to other games and only pop in for the new updates, but I'm always going to be willing to jump back in and help friends out if they need a helping hand with the grind. I freakin' love this game and I hope Capcom doesn't make us wait long for the sequel.