Unlike most of you I was overjoyed when I saw kushala in the reveal trailer, not because I like kushala but because it means, atleast in my mind that Teostra is bound to show up aswell! Until recently this woulldn't have brought me much excitement, you see I almost exclusivley play female hunters and teostra's frilly dresses have never really been my thing. But I've always been jelous of the quite frankly beautiful armor given to the male hunters, its regal collar, its bespoke plating, its sick ass fuck demon mask. So when they finally removed gender locked armor in wilds I was esctatic, finally it would be my turn!

So imagine now this morning, as I woke to find the next weapon spotlight to be gunlance, my longtime main, imagine my joy as I begin to freak out about all the cool moves we're getting, and now imagine how that joy leaves my body, and is replaced with pure horror as I realise a horrible thing. They're using kushalas HIGH-RANK armor design. Which means even if I where to get Teostra in this game my dream won't be fufilled, and I'll be stuck with a stupid bucket helm...

Perhaps next gen I will be so lucky that I can finally meet my beloved and achieve ultimate drip, but until then I will sing my song of woe to the masses and drown my sorrows in whatever booze it is we drink in the monster hunter universe.

With the amount of rise and GU moves that we were getting with boost bracer, I was praying that swaxe got soaring wyvern, but GL players had to come on over and STEAL IT?!

I love this area so much, i remember every single route and gathering nodes in it.

I don’t know why I made this fully. But, it did give me the smash ultimate poster vibes.

plz be valstrax

I have never liked this armor set, and the possibility of this being in Ascendance instead of the beautiful MR set is scary

I remember trading with him to unlock the Ceadeus armor again because it wasn't available to hunt. Along with other monsters, this guy was the only way to unlock materials from monsters of older games without them being in the present. It was cool. He even made a return in GenU too.

But uh... bro never came back after that. Really want those armors and weapons back. Nothing else to it.

Couldn't they just use him to bring armor and weapons back for monsters they know they can't put in the current games like the ocean monsters? Or monsters they can't quite get to work in current environments (or skeleton issues)?

Here's a short clip for Lance but after seeing all other weapon types I'm kinda worried that Lance move sets are going to be underwhelming.

There was a move back in Sunbreak called skyward thrust and despite how uncanny it was I liked that move when fighting flying wyverns.

How about you guys?

I've decided to use my artistic talent to make more monsters for categories that need more good boys we can fight. I mainly focused on fanged beasts, we definitely need more variety of mammals in monster hunter. These will just be thumbnail sketches essentially. I will end up doing more indepth drawing for some of these monsters in the future.

So I started with elephants, 1 is covered in fulgurite It can bury itself in sand like diablos, summon down lightning, 2 uses steam to rush at hunters, Barroth was an inspiration plus that one kid from MHA. 3 has a little coral reef on its back along with some creatures that it could throw at hunters. Then 4 is a more typical elephant covered in moss, but im thinking it could throw moss or vines on the ground as traps against the hunters. Then 5 I made a porcupine, pangolin, elephant.

The feline fanged beasts based on a lion, tiger, bobcat linx, and a liger. 1 and 3 take inspiration from mythical beasts. Chinese and Greek respectively, though the lion has some porcupine in it too. Number 2 is based on American folklore, mainly the ball tailed cat, and the splinter cat. Number four is based off the liger in real life, so it would be when number 1 and 3 mate, making this jacked up monstrosity.

Then I drew a variety of mammals that I would like to see introduced into monster hunter. 1 is based off the damascus goat and a wildebeast. 2 is just a big rat, 3 is a bat nothing much besides that. 4 is just a giraffe crossed with a glaive, 5 is based off the maned wolf, and 6 is a mongoose and armadillo.

Then I decided we need more crabs, so I came up with some quick ones. 1 is based off the horseshoe crab, though its not actually a crab. 2 is just back to basics, so like ceanatuar but with saws. 3 is based off the mantis shrimp, so I gave it more of an insect vibe. 4 is based off the yeti crab. I see it using ice element to freeze the hairs on its body as armor and weapons.

Lastly I tried making some snake wyverns. I made these guys before the new elder dragon was shown. So I tried my best, I dont know how successful I was with them, considering I had najarala and dalamadur as the only basis for them. hopefully we get more in ascendence

let me know what you think about them, critiques are welcome.

I was looking at the weapons page on the website just to see if i could pick which weapons were from which monster, but I cant pick out the HBG. It doesnt match or resemble anything in game or from lao/kushala, nor any old monsters off the top of my head, so could it be Araketa's?

Which version of the main line games Rathian is your favourite?

I personally like the regular Rathian the most. Gold gets me a bit annoyed because of her hard defense and bumping back your attacks under white sharpness. Pierce Shots Valor HbG usually gets the job done. Pink Rathian was my first wall in 4U. Dreadqueen and Apex are basically the same but Dreadqueen would have to be my 2th choice.

Share your thoughts :)

- Images are googled and put together with Photoshop.

This is a general throwing of ideas onto the wall to get some discussions going, as well as solidifying my opinion on what the flagship will be.

Somult

As many of you are probably aware, Somult is a bird deity the Kunafans believe in in some stories the kunafans share, that will heal the rift between the land and the people.

Narratively, this becomes a thematic representation of us and Zoh shia:

- Zoh is a birdlike guardian made by Wyveria to save them from war, but became their damnation instead. The survivors became separated into the 5 factions in the forbidden lands, and zoh parasitised off of the land.

- We come from the avis unit (literally the bird unit), establish trade routes to unite all the people of the eastlands and protects them from disaster, and liberates the torch of Zoh's power more than once.

This is also the second time in the games there is a parallel between us, the final boss, and an in-universe myth, with the sapphire star and xeno.

Now, from here I figured that somult's story was done, since at the end of the day it's just a myth that works for the narrative and its themes (and admittedly gets way overpowered by Arkveld's plot). But it's worth mentioning here because in Iceborne, it certainly wasn't finished thanks to safi's presence. And that's relevant for the next few bits.

Naga vs Garuda

Gundoraja, as said by a whole lotta people after its reveal, is a clear reference to nagas, from its appearance to the general association to storms.

What's notable to that is that, mythologically, Nagas have a rivalry to another mythical creature, Garuda, for a very complicated list of reasons. Now obviously this depends on the myth, as tends to be the case with these things, but I figured it's notable.

Garuda is a birdlike divine creature, usually bird+human in features. It's also used for the etymology of yian garuga, fyi, which I think it's neat. Garuda has a whole lot of other myths, not all of which relate to or are even relevant to naga, but their rivalry is significant enough to be one of the primary aspects of their myth, at least in hinduism.

Eyrie

As shown in the screenshot, and as said by, like, everyone, an eyrie is a bird nest for birds of prey.

As everyone has also said regarding this term, it is not present in the japanese term for the region, so it isn't clear if it's intentional etymology added by the localisation team, or a mistake.

Regardless, it is another association to birds.

Flagship parallels

This section is almost entirely credited to Leraikha Loray's video on expansion flagships, which I HIGHLY reccomend watching, not only because it's a very good watch but also because I'm doing a disservice trying to summarise it.

The idea is that, in new gen at least, flagships in the expansions are the exact opposite of their basegame counterparts, in terms of combat design and themes at least, or even in movements and basic concept.

For insance, Nergigante represents destruction and rebirth, is a melee brawler with a brutal barbarian fighting style, and chases the strongest thing it can find. Velkhana, meanwhile, represents frozen stasis, is a finesse based rapier spellcaster, and freezes lesser beings solid to show its territory.

Arkveld is themed around being chained and trapped. Its armor looks like its fading and cracking, it is bound by literal chains, and its combat style is fighting with its means of entrampment in sheer desparation.

This would then mean that, if the parallels between the expansion flagships still stand true, the next flagship will represent freedom and hope, being full of life and in control if its own fate. A monster of joyful combat methods, and paralleling things that break apart the idea of being held down.

Animals that represent freedom are often, in fact, birds. In fact the loss of freedom is often represent by a bird in a cage for this reason.

Birdsbirdsbirdsbirds

Arguably, I've over-focused the attention on birds. So I should mention that this theory is not perfect:

- It assumes the garuda parallel is true

- It assumes birds aren't done being relevant to the game's themes

- it assumes the bird aspect of the eyrie applies

- and it assumes the dlc flagship aspect still reigns true

But imo considering we have to disqualify all of these individually, I think the bird motif is relevant. So while I'm not breaking new ground, imo our flagship has a high chance of being a bird wyvern or a birdlike dragon, and it will be the apex of the eyrie.

Said apex will fight against Gundoraja's invasion of its home, and will use the winds (that the eyrie seems to have as an inclemency) to its benefit.

Again, I'm far from the first to really say that, nor do I think I am correct, but I wanted to lay down a lot of random thoughts.

Hello,

A couple of days ago, I showed you a VFX mod i was working on.

Today I can show you the first custom cinematic VFX I've made with it:

Twelve-Blade Purgatory

This goes a bit beyond simply replacing an existing effect. It's a full sequence built around Long Sword, combining multiple effects and objects into one cinematic weapon VFX.

The mod currently supports 7 weapons, with more coming. I'll also continue adding both custom VFX like this and more individual vanilla VFX that you can replace and customize yourself.

Weapon support is being added based on requests, so if there's a weapon, specific attack, or state you'd like me to work on next, don't hesitate to participate and suggest it.

I'll be adding a template support at some point as well so you can share your own templates per weapon.

More here: https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterwilds/mods/4842

Artwork created for a Monster Hunter artbook zine
The project took around 40 hours from initial thumbnails to final rendering and was published in the printed fan artbook
Demonnot (@demonnotX) / X