This week in Monster Hunter: World had me cleaning up house. It’s funny because it mimics how I work in the real world. I ‘grind’ before doing the real work (mostly by thinking hard about things) so it seems as if I make my decisions suddenly and rashly, but in reality, I’ve given it a lot of thought. It’s like swimming–most of the work is done below the surface.
When I last posted, I had just tackled Teostra and had two more Elder Dragons in this cluster plus Kirin (also an Elder Dragon) and the final storyline quest (final is not really applicable in this game, but it’s the quest that makes the credits roll). Before this, I’d been tackling one main monster a week, roughly, so I thought it’d be the same. I’d manage to do one more Elder Dragon, then farm the hell out of it so I could make all the armor and weapons out of it that I wanted. Plus charms that need the parts. I still needed the Teostra Gem, but I didn’t feel like fighting him any more, so I took a short break.
Next up was Kushala Daora. I love this Elder Dragon. She (and I call her she. Dunno if it’s cannon or not, though I found an angry post about how it’s an IT! Not a he or she!!!! Like, who the fuck cares? Why does it chap your hide so much that Kusha is called a she and not Nergy being called a he, for example? Nerds are the worst about this shit. For real. But I digress) is elegant and very Asian-looking (specifically Chinese, but probably meant to be Japanese), and if you don’t attack her, she ignores you. Once you attack her, however, it’s on! She’s called Kushala Daora, Dragon of Steel, and she has control over the wind. Her most vicious attacks are wind-based (though they all inflict physical damage, which is odd), and she is covered in steel. That means you don’t do much damage until you break her skin, and her tornadoes are insane. The only thing I knew about her before going in was that she did a lot of wind moves, so I made sure I had Windproof Level 5 (max) before taking her on.
As usual, I rolled in all buffed out and with My Nergal Gash. I will take High Elderseal over high elemental damage any day of the weak. As I said earlier, it’s believed that High Elderseal means the Elder Dragons do their ultimates less often. There is no official word on it, but it seems to be true from what I’ve seen of videos with people who weren’t using Elderseal.
Kusha was fairly easy with the liberal use of Flash Pods. That is still probably the singular best tip I learned from Casey–bring Flash Pods and the materials to craft more whenever fighting a flying monster. Kushala is made almost trivial with Flash Pods as long as you don’t do it during her tornado phase. I wasn’t even close to carting once, and I did it in under twenty minutes. Of course, I did her multi several times, and I had to laugh because her gems dropped so easily. I have three, I believe, whereas I still don’t have one from Teo, and it took me twenty tries to get one from Nergy. I had a hard time getting two of Kusha’s tails, so that’s what I concentrated on when I did multi. I managed to slice it off three out of five times (I think I had Partbreaker), and I felt like a badass. I finally got the second one on the last time I cut off her tail. I needed them to make her Insect Glaive, Daora’s Entom. I’m mostly maining the Switch Axe, but her IG is so badass! It’s a squid, and it lights up when you use it.
