- This time I went for something different. A friend visited me, so I suggested we went to the arena. Sadly, you must be a hunter to enter it, even if they give you pre-set equipment. So we did a quick course to turn him into a hunter, which involved going to Moga village and being victim of a Lagiacrus earthquake… that’s a weird graduation ritual.
- So here’s how the arena works: you go to the arena, choose a boss available from the list and they give you 4 equipment sets to choose, one of them always being a bowgun. You can also bring a friend to fight with you.
- After turning my friend into a hunter and quickly explaining him how things work, we chose our victim: the Great Jaggi. Actually I chose him because my friend needed a little practice before taking the bigger ones. I chose the lance and my friend chose the sword & shield as my recommendation, since it’s fast and thus, makes things easier to learn.
It worked for him: he learned how to attack, dodge and run to heal himself quite fast. As for my attempt with the lance? It was a complete failure. I hated the lance.
How can something this big be practical in any way? Oh wait...
You can’t roll out of the way, just do some small sidesteps; the attack radius is so narrow that you need extreme accuracy only to hit the enemy; and it’s very slow. Sure, there’s a huge shield, but I prefer rolling out of the way than getting reduced damage. Not to mention my greatsword is big enough to be used as a shield.
- Even with both of us dying at least once due to him getting used to the whole hunter thing and me trying to make the lance work, we succeeded at defeating the king of douches. So for our next foe, we chose the Qurupeco.
This time the greatsword was available, so I decided to go with what I know I can use. My friend picked the bowgun, even after me warning him it’s a hard-to-master weapon.
He fell in love with the bowgun. And he’s really good with it too. He said it was “his experience with shooters” that helped him… whatever that means.
FPS what?
With me attacking on the front line (most of the time, at least) and my friend covering me from behind, we defeated the Qurupeco in no time. Not even calling some jaggis to distract my friend helped him, as I could easily smash them away with a single slash.
- Our final duel was with the Barroth. Yes, the same Barroth that defeated me so many times during my trip to Loc Lac. My friend went with the bowgun again, while I decided to try out the longsword.
Guess who's back for more ownage?
And I can’t believe how great it is. The longsword is fast, it’s powerful, its attack radius is wide… and the sharpness (or maybe the fact that it was lightning enhanced) made my issue with the Barroth’s narrow weakpoints nearly disappear.
But a Barroth is a Barroth. He was still fast and powerful, and we obviously were knocked out more than once. Actually, more than I thought the arena’s rules allowed.
The strategy was basically the same as in the Qurupeco: my friend shoots from far away while I keep the Barroth’s attention drawn and attack from close quarters. There was only one problem: the Barroth was deeply in love with my friend, and wouldn’t stop chasing him. But surprisingly, my friend was handling it pretty well. He would dodge when the Barroth approached, then quickly put the bowgun away and run until the bastard stopped chasing him and then, back to shooting.
This worked so well that the Barroth was already showing signs of weakness. I’m not sure if this is what caused us to slip, but for whatever reason, we died once more, and lost. Suddenly both of us were “OOOOOOHHHH SOOOO CLOSE!!!!!” and apologizing for each other. My friend, who’s not the kind of person who would usually enjoy a hunter’s job, not only liked it, but became good (decent at least) at it in only 3 fights.
- Later that day, I went back (alone) to Moga Village to take some quests. Among them was one to capture a Great Jaggi. I thought “great, I already have enough experience with capturing and fighting to not only defeat him without risks, but capture him!”.
Huge mistake. And it wasn’t even because I was being bad at it, it’s because I was too good at it.
In other words, I couldn’t measure my own strength and would end up killing the damn thing before I had a chance to capture. This became obvious when I finished a fight with him in less than 2 minutes, not without first being shocked by the fact that I hit his jaw with so much strength I broke all his teeth, which someone could hear breaking even if they were a mile away.
After 5 tries, I managed to control myself and set the trap before killing another one. Not long after that, I decided to go to the woods to gather some resources, and found one of them there.
The speed of the fight astonished me. About one minute after my eyes crossed his, I see myself in front of a dead Great Jaggi (and a couple smaller jaggis that were around), with my health full. He didn’t even hit me. BETTER CARVE THOSE SCALES BEFORE THEY’RE GONE!
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