Season's greetings to everybody! I appreciate you all so much for watching my videos ❄️🎄💖
Last weekend, when I finally got my PC back, I took to putting together a fancy Christmas outfit for my character just for fun. Afterward, I realized that nobody's ever going to see it unless it's on video! So, I went through the whole process of figuring out a speedrun to attempt, then going through hours of resets just to create some gameplay with my Christmas outfit.
Freaking extra, I know. You can catch a preview of it at 5:51.
I ended up deciding on the Heroics AT Velkhana hunt because it fits the winter holiday theme, and I am already knowledgeable in this matchup. Plus, with the major changes soon to take place in my life and career, I probably don't have much flexibility to start a new project from scratch.
Little did I know that the Freestyle version of this hunt was going to bring me a world of pain due to its tedious opening sequence, altered AI, and Heroics HP management - but it was still very fun! I'll talk more about Velkhana's altered AI and the HP management aspect below.
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Velkhana's 50/50 Mixup
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Velkhana has significantly different AI in the Freestyle hunt, which primarily consists of a 50/50 mixup following its rush attack in Aura 1.
This is a niche Lance topic that might not be relevant to all viewers, so I'll just leave a link to my analysis of it here: docs.google.com/document/d/12ArH3JPAPyJSNGi4JKg1cGyz0JFhWCKVi4U26SJbuVw/edit?usp=sharing
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Heroics, HP Management and Chip Damage
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Using Heroics in this hunt introduces a very fun HP management minigame. The essence of it is that the player initially takes a couple of hits to reach the Heroics threshold (e.g., 30 HP), then "locks in" that 30 HP amount. For the rest of the hunt, they have the 30 HP to carefully spend using the Power Guard charged thrust during optimal openings.
At 0:54 I meet that Heroics threshold after receiving two tail stings. However, there is a red regeneration bar that will eventually take me out of the Heroics threshold, so I have to get rid of that red bar and "lock in" the green bar by taking some chip damage.
To do this, I can use Power Guard against any attack that inflicts a small knockback in order to take 10% chip damage from it. I get the lock-in at 1:09, and from that point on, I have a one-inch green bar to spend on Power Guards throughout the hunt. I actually attempted to lock in the green bar at 1:02 against the ice rings, but I was too far from the first ring and had to walk toward it, so I only had time to use a normal counter. I know, it looked really goofy.
Next, by spending HP, I mean using Power Guard against any incoming attack, which guarantees that I receive at least 10% chip damage. The importance of spending HP with Power Guard is that it enables one to use the 40-MV charged thrust instead of the standard 22-MV high thrust; in such a tight time constraint, every bit of damage counts. You can see me spend HP at 1:22, 1:51, 2:30, 2:57, and 4:12 to use charged thrusts.
There were many attempts where I ended up locking in only about 15 HP and had very little to spend for the rest of the hunt, which resulted in me fainting from a random Power Guard during the hunt. There were also many attempts where I forgot to lock in my HP after two hits, which resulted in Heroics wearing off about 90 seconds into the hunt.
All in all, I found the HP management minigame to be really fun and provide an interesting twist on the Lance. Usually, in TA Wiki hunts we use the Health Augment plus Peak Performance so we never have to worry about our HP; this Heroics hunt, on the other hand, introduced a resource scarcity aspect that kept me on edge. If you think this minigame sounds fun, be sure to try out Heroics some time!
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Build
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My build is at 5:10. The only deviation I made from the standard Heroics build is that I used Evade Window 2 + Attack Boost 5 instead of Evade Window 1 + Attack Boost 6, which I found to sacrifice a negligible amount of damage in the presence of Heroics.
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Game Details
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• MHW: Iceborne - PC Version 15.11.01
• 6★ Offline Event Quest - "The Place Where Winter Sleeps"
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Mods Used
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• Daily Food Skills Utility - For Felyne Booster
• All Event Quests - To play this quest in offline mode since my siblings are using my game library with Steam family sharing
• My custom Christmas outfit - Created by combining and editing multiple outfit mods to suit my tastes. I am not permitted to publicly share the outfit or my edits, but if you are interested, I can teach you how!
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Music
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0:33 ♫ Shin Giwon Piano - The First Noel
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you all! Thank you so much for watching my video. 👋✨