Having casually played my way through to endgame content in Rise I thought it was way past time for me to start a focused attempt at crafting proper endgame sets. With Sunbreak releasing in a few months, what better time to polish up a variety of sets to tackle Master Rank quests with.
I’ve written in the past about my disappointment with there being no Apex armor sets. Even though these monster do drop endgame items, Deviant/Apex sets are always the trophy pieces of the online world. Proof that you’ve not only downed the most difficult challenges, but downed them repeatedly, to craft complete sets with weapon and decorations. With months on end of steady event quest additions, plenty of challenge here, imo, I’ve been crafting set after set with relative ease, and enjoying the endgame as it is currently. I find it interesting though, that even after crafting the Valstrax set, grinding Apex Rath and Zinogre for decoration mats, the Purple Magna Orb from Magnamalo is still the rarest item in the game. Ok so I don’t know for sure that this actually the case, but I do know that after hundreds of hours in Rise and so so many encounters with Magna, only 3 of those orbs have dropped.
On my way to the end of this version of the game, I was after the complete Magna armor set, working in many encounters to get the orb to drop so that I could craft the Sinister Gauntlets S. By the time 3.0 released, I was ready to “complete” the game and did so, grinding out several sets, Valstrax included, but never got the orb to drop, and Monster Hunter got put on the back burner so I could play through other games while I waited on the next Monster Hunter content to come our way. Back into the game and fine tuning things, I found that I needed the Purple Magna Orb for Handicraft Jewels, and after researching sets, found that I wanted to complete a Longsword set for the Phantom Mirage and might need three of these jewels.
About to craft my 3rd Handicraft Jewel 3, so stoked to see that 3rd Purple Magna Orb drop.
I am happy to announce, that I have finally completed the set, Handicraft Lv 3, Weapon Sharpness +30. The rest of the set is in the pic below. I’ve completed sets for Charge Blade and Switch Axe, Dual Blades is next, then the Tigrex Hammer. I was able to put together an Insect Glaive set without focusing on it with pieces I acquired putting other sets together. Looks like I’ll be spending the rest of my time in 3.0 mastering the counter timing for LS and waiting for those epic talisman drops.
This is where I’m at with the set. All Valstrax armor. White sharpness on the Phantom Mirage. I’m happy with it, but I’m still waiting for that perfect talisman.
The online event has come and gone and now we know everything there is to know about Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, the newest DLC for the franchise. My first concern for any Monster Hunter game is, is there going to be a G rank or G rank equivalent? Monster Hunter 4U was the first title I sank a considerable amount of time into and playing it mostly solo, G rank was always the goal, how far was I going to make it. G rank always seemed like this unknowable future that I would never see the entirety of. I would watch speed runners and similar “professionals” and think I would never have the knowledge or skills to see the final challenges of the game. That was before my first 1000 hours and I feel different about the game now, but the mystique of G rank has never left me. For the record, I soloed my way to G3, shattered the bottom screen of my first 3DS and was unable to transfer my save data to a new system, so I had to start over. I’m still working on it. Maybe it goes without saying but I was disappointed to find that the US version of Monster Hunter X (Generations) wasn’t going to have G rank, so I skipped the 3DS version of that game until it was released on Nintendo Switch. I played Generations Ultimate until Monster Hunter Rise released, as I felt similarly about Monster Hunter World. As cool as Monster Hunter World was and is, I didn’t see it as a full game. Not the experience I wanted. I dabbled, but never played. Rise was going to be the next Monster Hunter I sank time into, and now I’m ecstatic to see that there will be “G rank” content in the form of Master Rank quests.
Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, new monster, flagship of the DLC, Malzeno.
I’ve mentioned before about the letdown from the fact that Apex monsters in MHRise don’t have their own armor. Maybe the letdown was that there is nothing beyond them. That the armor and weapons we can make in the game are it, and they are the final challenge. Only to be defeated, only for the purpose of defeating them. I’ve added to that thought, that just because they don’t have their own armor doesn’t mean they don’t have value in the game, we can craft decorations for end game sets that provide huge dps bonuses, and those sets will serve us well as we enter into Master Rank quests. I have to say though, the rarest item in the game also serves its purpose in an essential decoration, the Purple Magna Orb from Magnamalo, but what point does it serve that we still have to grind on Magma even after the Apex monsters are out?
I digress.
Sunbreak is coming, new monsters are coming, Astalos is coming back, and maybe now Monster Hunter Rise will feel like the full game we need in a Monster Hunter title. I am unabashedly nostalgic for the old ways, the clunky plucking of herbs and the forever animation of drinking a potion while Basarios winds up forever away in the distance and still has time to faceroll me before I can get out of the way. But Monster Hunter Rise is fun and beautiful, maybe Sunbreak will add the challenge we are all looking for.
The 7-star Heart of Rivalry Event Quest is to take down an Apex Mizutsune and an Apex Zinogre. I was wearing the fully upgraded Narwa set and swinging the Ibushi charge blade, Abyssal Gale Ward. My first attempt at this quest was too soon after taking a break from the game for several months. The Zinogre leveled me quick and I didn’t even have a chance to watch the Mizutsune. If you get caught in any of the Zinogre’s multi-hit combo movements you are going to get carted. After going back and completing higher level quests I have left, I encountered non-apex Mizutsune and Zinogre several times and really focused on taking zero damage, so when I came back to the event quest I was able to one shot without being carted at all.
Endgame Armor, the fully upgraded Narwa set and Abyssal Gale Ward
For both monsters, if you are familiar with the non-apex versions, the apex versions will not add too much. For the most part the movements are the same with less time between attacks and less one shot attacks, these apex monsters are going to string attacks together and the Zinogre especially will get you in the air and attempt to juggle you, 2-3 hits and your done. The Zinogre is easily the more challenging of the two, even though early in the game I had more difficulty with Mizutsune since I’ve been fighting Zinogre for years.
For whatever reason, Capcom decided that for Rise, there would be no armor sets for Apex monsters. Aside from them being the final challenge and dropping more of the higher quantity materials there are no real upgrades to be had from fighting these monsters. I feel like this takes away from the mystery of the endgame, one of the biggest appeals to me of earlier titles was that there was really no way I was ever going to obtain and max out more than a few armor sets and weapons, I just wouldn’t have had the time. Maybe they wanted more people to see more of the game but I feel like it was a missed opportunity to not offer higher level sets and weapons, though maybe we’ll see something like G rank in the future so there’s more variety like in the past.
There are a few differences you’ll have to deal with fighting the Apex, compared to normal Mizutsune. The first you’ll see will be the bubble attacks, one will throw you in the air, one will inflict a blight and need to be cleansed. Maybe more obvious is the new water jet attack, Mizutsune will be surrounded in smaller floating bubbles and go up on both hind legs and begin the water jet in a swirling motion, up and down. These jet attacks are still easy to dodge but the damage boost is a lot. Other than the general aggression buff it was these attacks that stuck out to me. The added stress of the Hellfireblight from the bubbles while you are running around just trying to survive is a lot to deal with. Its so much more helpful than usual when your cat lays down that blue fog for you to run through to take the blight away. Compared to Zinogre, the Mizutsune’s attacks are weaker. I see them taking less damage from me if I shield through them or if I end up taking them straight to the face. On my successful run through this quest I downed Mizutsune first with zero carts even though it was the first time I’d encountered this apex.
Apex Mizutsune down. This was the first time I encountered this monster. I really thought I would cart at least once.
The Apex Zinogre might be the toughest challenge in the game, though I haven’t seen everything yet. There is great potential to get one shotted, juggled to death, caught in a mess of lightning and tail. When you first see Zinogre it will be all lit up instead of not. You beat that out of him but it doesn’t last long. In that respect, this fight will be the opposite of the non-apex Zinogre, it stays enraged for the most of the fight and is super aggressive, always stringing attacks together and rarely “gathers itself” for the next attack, you just have to find those damage escape pockets close by where you aren’t going to get hit and then quickly position yourself to avoid and place yourself during the next attack. I purposely chose the Charge Blade to make it easier to position myself through these attacks, making the fight more about timing and less about dodging, especially with Zinogre over Mizutsune, a lot of the time its just a mess of attacks. I also feel like there is a much fresher feel to apex Zinogre compared to normal, there is a bigger difference than with Mizutsune. My $.02.
Apex Zinogre down. This fight is a real challenge, must stay focused.
Overall I find it easy to take my time with the Charge Blade and time my guard points, picking at the monster with small attacks until they flinch or fall and then unloading a bit. Keep your shield charged up and and red so that it takes a hit every time you block with it and you may get a stun opportunity. This is one reason I like the Ibushi CB, the long blue sharpness stands up through a beating, if you are the kind of hunter than shields through multiple attacks you’ll see Zinogre’s mightiest combo, 5-7 massive hits starting with lightning explosions and ending with a full size body slam. Always be moving, attack where you will be not where you are, be thinking 3 moves ahead and pay attention to where your movements and attacks will put you at the end of the motion. Apex Zinogre is just plain fun.
The way I choose which cryptocurrencies to watch, to put our money into, is to identify the needs that crypto meets, then choose the winner from that category. Polygon is my pick for Ethereum scaling. Shiba Inu as a gaming/metaverse token. Cardano as an alternative to Eth. And this is just to name a few; my time and liquid capital are scarce. I don’t have time to pour over charts and learn trading on a scalper scale. I’m not interested in money like that. I am, but only as a means by which I can make myself able to participate with freedom in what comes next, be it “web3,” whatever that turns out to be, “the metaverse,” or DeFi, governance, city building. Its difficult to predict where all this leads, but I want to be there when we find out, and not be on the side lines like most of us were when the internet became a thing in the ’90’s.
The company with one of the most unique use case claims for block chain technology going into 2022 is the XY Oracle network, “an incentive driven geospacial location network.” Those words are take straight from the website, and they are not helpful. The explanation that convinced me to opt in is that the XYo network is using block chain technology to anonymously store users location information in an attempt to build a decentralized alternative to the government controlled GPS system we all use all the time. The peoples GPS. Skipping the tech talk, which is super dense, instead of satellites triangulating our location using various devices, users opt into an app and allow themselves to always be tracked. Location information is verified by other devices on the network, allowing XYo to store that information for future implementation. There is an app, in which you earn “COIN” that can be swapped for many things, including the XYO cryptocurrency. Within the app there are several ways to “earn” COIN but in a basic sense XYo pays you COIN for all of the information your cell phone gathers passively, location information, shopping habits, gaming. The big difference being that users give permission, and actually get something in return besides that creepy always-being-watched feeling we get when we talk about puppies out loud and open any social media app seconds later seeing ads for puppies.
The SentinelX NFC card, scan using the reader built into smartphones to be read by the COIN app to give you a boost.
This all sounds great, and it probably was when the COIN app first launched (I still use the app with a Sentinel device). It isn’t difficult to see how adoption of the COIN app lead to a serious price increase of the XYO token, and in the words of Arie Trouw, founder and CEO of XYo, lead him to his most successful financial year in 2021. Then and now, COIN is locked at a rate of $5 per 10K COIN. As I am writing this, XYO is trading between $.02-$.03 and the developers are unmoved, keeping that exchange rate despite late adopters complaints. I sympathize with both sides, as it goes in crypto, early adopters reap the largest rewards (taking the biggest risk).
For block chain, for crypto, implementation and adoption are king. The XYo network and the $XYO token were launched in 2017, but the original idea came in 2012 with the start of XY Labs. XY Labs big idea was “findables,” as in, never lose your stuff again. Put one of their devices on your TV remote, always know where it is. Apple released their own version of this not long ago. One unique use case for this technology is in the XYo partner CAS Smart City. The idea is that the city, and everyone in the city, vehicles etc, would be plugged into the network, making all facets of difficult daily city life, easier. Find parking spots easier, manage the flow of traffic more efficiently, it doesn’t take much brainstorming to see how that plays out and where the future could be for proponents that decide to opt in, and similar technology is already in use all over. Its all very future. But when it comes to the COIN app, it reminds me of the kids game, “which of these things aren’t like the others,” it makes me wonder, why spend so much time and resources on the COIN app instead of increasing use for the actual $XYO crypto? Short answer, Arie Trouw thought, if Zuckerburg can do it, so can I.
My introduction to crypto and block chain in general is as a progression of “the internet.” We’ve heard the term “web3” a lot lately. The idea being that “web1.0” was the internet without social media, a new and neat online world complementing the physical world. A website then would be a place you could go to get inside information, to see products you couldn’t find locally and have them sent straight to your house, it was all new and fascinating. “Web2.0” is the internet as we know it now, where social media dominates and actual websites take a back seat. We rarely go to nike.com, instead following on IG or downloading the app. Smartphones brought on web2 and web2 developers were quick to exploit that technology to compete for our attention and harvest our personal data for massive loads of cash. The biggest motivation for “Web 3.0” is to counter that exploitation. Facebook evolved from a virtual place where we all hung out all day every day sharing and consuming, to a verifiable stalker tracking everything about us so that they could sell that information to companies vying for our attention. Google went from being the best search engine to being the biggest advertising company in history. Utility became surveillance and manipulation, this isn’t new information. The devices, the iPhones and Galaxys got on board tracking our location, how much time we spend inside Target, how long our eyes linger on a certain post, who we hang out with. Most people are well aware of this as a fact of modern existence, and most of the people that know about it will admit that it is a serious intrusion on our privacy. And this is all without mentioning the ubiquitous microtransaction, the most hated thing about the current iteration of “online.” But we are so entrenched at this point, there doesn’t seem to be a way around it, or a way to shut it down. Enter Web 3.0.
All of the technology, the philosophy of web3, stems from Bitcoin. As the original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin runs on computers owned by its users. These computers are constantly verifying every transaction made on the Bitcoin network. About every 10 minutes anywhere from 14,000 to 100,000 (sources vary) individual nodes are verifying the validity of each individual transaction. Any one can download the software and run a node, either to verify the ledger or to actually mine the coins. This is what it means to be decentralized, decentralized finance. No government, no central banks, only people that believe in the project and want to participate. The whole idea was to create a system that “gives it back to the people.” So on this principle, over the following decade or so after Bitcoin launched, several other companies launched claiming to be decentralized as well. Some are better than others at being truly decentralized, and there are several reasons why non of these entities can be truly decentralized like Bitcoin. The idea remains, the point of Web3 is that it belongs to the people. If Facebook and Apple were Web3 companies and if the central actors, Zuckerburg and Cook, rose to prominence and tried to strong arm surveillance of its users through government and smooth marketing, those companies would either fail or be made to change unless a majority of their users agreed to their actions and supported the network. The only way for Bitcoin to end is for all of those 14,000-100,000 nodes to decide to stop verifying blocks of transactions. Every single person involved would have to step away. For Bitcoin to change from what it was originally designed as would mean at least 51% of those nodes agree and verify the change to the block. One central actor that decides to modify Bitcoin, no matter how much money or computing power they put behind it, will never succeed in modifying Bitcoin. The one bad actor would only be found out by the rest of the nodes on the network and they would be invalidated and have to start over with a fresh, verified block. Bitcoin belongs to its users.
This is how XYo has positioned itself. The location of each node is verified by other nodes on the network. Through the COIN app they claim that each user verifies the location information of every other user on the network, and that information is stored anonymously on the blockchain, purposely mirroring the Bitcoin philosophy of a network owned by the people. This information serves the purpose of strengthening the system as a whole for future partner implementation. XYo users are building the network, and XYo via the COIN app claims to reward its users for that information and attention. So why the microtransactions? Why the Sentinel NFC devices? Imagine selling someone on Bitcoin and they decide to run a node or a miner, only for them to find out that upon doing all of their research and setting everything up they were sold a metered down version of the program, and for a small fee that restriction could be lifted and mining would take off at a faster pace. That is exactly what the COIN app does. As the app “mines” your location you see it in the bottom of the app, a mining pick. The block is mined and then you sit and watch as the block slowly resets, and then the mining pick slowly resets, very slowly, and then a tiny tiny amount of “coin” trickles up to the total you’ve collected. People think this is a solid way to earn cash on the side, but the exchange rate is $5 per 10k COIN, which sounds great until you see it mine each block at +0.02, +0.04. That’s 2 and 4 tenths of a single whole COIN coin, of which it takes 20/50k to redeem at the $5 rate, and the entire app reinforces the fact that its going to take a long, long, time, for you to get to 10k. You find out that you need 20k to redeem, and 50k after your first redemption (I’ve redeemed over 100,000k COIN). Unless you are moving almost all day, almost every day, reaching 50k without paying $35 for the “pro plan,” its going to take you most of a year to get there.
So what’s the difference between the free version and the “pro plan?” 33%, to be exact. Using the Sentinel NFC card, free plus shipping (kind of), and paying $35 a month to fully unlock the app, you get a 33% boost to the productivity of the whole thing. Find bigger geo mines, be more likely to find large blocks worth more COIN, the app will run longer in the background without having to be recharged, which brings up another point. In a recent interview the co-founder of XYo claimed that the COIN app is one of the most used apps on the market, that people spend more time with their face in the COIN app than even Instagram. But that statement shows the deception these developers have towards their target audience. The app is designed so that you have to leave your phone on and open with the app open and running for it to work. Leaving your phone and the app open like this for 90 minutes “charges” the app so that it will run for 3 hours in the background, at which point you need to fill that meter again to recharge the app.
This “Get COIN pro” ad pops up regularly. Is this something we want to to include in our “crypto future” or something we want to leave behind. Put out a good product that people want to use. This app sticks out like a sore thumb compared to other projects on the market, which are only focused on providing quality to users instead of nickel and diming us while we build their network.
People aren’t in the COIN app like they are IG or TikTok, they have to leave their phones open to make the app work, not the same. Of course for $35 you get 9 hours of background run time for only 30 minutes of “charge” time, should you want the app to work more efficiently. I thought we were building their network? I thought microtransactions were a thing of the past? This reeks of CandyCrush developers coding in impossible levels every so often, allowing you to either beat your head against a wall for hours to pass it, or, ya know, pay $1. If the founders of XYo and the developers of the COIN app were really appreciative of their users building their location network they wouldn’t put this pay wall up to get a crappy app to work right, they would put the full version of the app out for everyone to use. They wouldn’t separate their users into groups of “pro” users and normies unwilling to part with what turns out to be a an expensive monthly subscription fee that likely won’t even pay for itself in XYO tokens redeemed each month. XYo isn’t developing technology for the future, they are sinking all of their time and resources into an app that collects information on its users so that they can sell our attention and information to companies for ad revenue. Sound familiar? XY labs was a failing company, and without its users it still is. XY Oracle isn’t a “web3” company pushing the boundaries of blockchain and crypto technology, Arie Trouw just saw a free ride and tacked on crypto “functionality” to an app that no one needs to fund a company making products no one wants.
I can’t help but hope this company can turn around. The whole idea is just plain neat, and part of a future I would like to see happen. I just haven’t seen what I need to see from the company or the people that run it for me to be behind them like I am with other projects I’m invested in. The last thing we need is another tech giant coopting our attention and farming our data out to the highest bidders most willing to pay. Is it a full on scam? I don’t think so. But they aren’t what they say they are, and this is the first crypto project I’ve put serious time into researching that I feel like won’t be around in the next 10 years. The first crypto project I’ve researched at length and thought, “is this a thing we want in the brave new world we’re building?”
Monster Hunter Rise, Aknosom. Easy work with endgame gear but still a fun fight.
Monster Hunter Rise is the 5th in the series I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into. The Aknosom is a large monster that sticks out to me as simple early encounter on the experience curve, but still adds enough challenge elements and unique style to be a favorite encounter. Much like the Kut-Ku in 4U, if this is your first Monster Hunter title, Aknosom might be complex enough to cause some real frustrations. It has a dancer feel to it, like a formal dance with poses and pauses before a flourish of movement, or Tai-Chi stances of grace. However the style strikes you, Aknosom is a great monster to learn a basic idea in Monster Hunter that all monsters have a tell before each attack. Later in the game, when you are able to achieve a flow state to avoid attacks while dealing your own, those tells may become less apparent or even something you don’t look for at all, but early in the game it is essential that you spend time with each encounter to grasp what the monster is telling you.
Aknosom is a fun fight to focus on taking zero damage. Totally doable and her movements are fun to dance with.
In 4U it was the Great Jaggi, the basic no wings no fire jump and slash dino style encounter that a large monster is. These early monsters are built on in quest order. Pay attention to the way the developers flesh out the quest list to help you learn as you face more and more difficult encounters. Aknosom rarely comes right at you, often standing on one leg before flailing with its crest and head or slashing with a wing. Learn these tells and roll out of the way, find those safe pockets to slash from. Notice when she is enraged as well, as these attacks can be extended and will catch you off guard. Early in the game the biggest thread from Aknosom will be fireblight. Any of the fire attacks that land, either the single fire ball shot or the rain of fire multi attack will leave you with a debuff that nips at your health bar as the fight goes on. Cure this with a nulberry.
Aknosom is a great encounter to take a few minutes early in the fight to study how the monster moves. She isn’t all that fast and once committed to an attack, her movements are big and slow. It helps that she is one of the better looking monsters as well, I played a lot of Breath of the Wild on my Switch and Aknosom has that painted look to her like she could have come straight from the fields of Hyrule. Early in the game, elemental weapons play less of a role than later on, but lightning weapons are plentiful in the lower ranked stage of the game and easy to obtain accompanied by armor that will boost this effect, Aknosom is weakest to that elemental type if you are looking for an edge.
For armor you can craft with Aknosom parts, like most all armor in Rise, it looks great. Up to fire attack, quick sheath and recovery speed, this set isn’t a bad choice for the early game. The Aknosom S set adds 7 gem slots and the Peak Performance skill which buffs your damage output as long as your health is up. The higher your health the more your attack is buffed, there are levels, but this skill requires you to either take little damage or take the time to pop a health pot if you take a hit.
For weapons, Aknosom parts are used in a lot of them. If it is a weapon made strictly from Aknosom parts you are going to get a buff to fire damage and there are several “ok” weapons you can make as you progress, but none of them stick out towards the end game, my $.02.
The first dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, the Tail Cave. For me, a clunky start.
When the new 3DS was coming out I decided to sell off a lot of my physical Nintendo stuff, trading my physical games for digital versions. One of those games was the Gameboy Advance port of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. I played it very little then, less than an hour, and it left such a sour impression I thought I would never want to come back to it. Since then it has stuck in my mind as something I should have held on to. I felt like I let myself down because I didn’t approach the game with the right mindset. I was impatient. If I’m being honest I never thought Gameboy games were valid. Very few of them held my attention as serious attempts to make an impact on gaming like other games I liked to play. So as the title screen cleared, and I see Link being woken up on a beach, unable to jump, unable to swim, or float, no sword no shield no nothing, I was put off. I think I found the sword on the GBA version but that was it. When I saw that Link’s Awakening was being remastered for Switch I told myself I would complete it. I understood where I went wrong before and I was ready to immerse myself into this chapter of Link’s story.
Overworld map, Links Awakening, so far to go.
Despite my adjusted attitude, I still find it frustrating for all of the reasons I’ve always found games like this, from this time, frustrating. The idea of being dropped into the world with no guidance seems great, but I never feel like those early game developers did a good job at cueing the player in. Of course there are the obvious obstacles; you can’t jump the holes, can’t lift the rocks, can’t move through the shrubs. It’s the less obvious puzzles that always feel unfair, like using a spin attack to kill the Shy Guys to get the key you need to enter the room to get the power up that lets you lift the rocks. I never would have thought of that. So I, as a youth, would have put the game down, called it dumb, and moved on. Once I did figure it out though, that knowledge was like a power up itself, I started using the spin attack in other situations to see if it was the key to progress.
Less clever are the owl statues. Link always has a helper guiding him and this game is no different, but the owl statues that you have to find the nose for before you can understand them, only to have them tell you “clues” outright, seems a little straight forward. What is the fix for this? I feel like with some thought I could come up with something more intuitive. But it is cleverness that they are going for, and in the context of a video game that cleverness is relative to the video game world, Link’s Awakening separate from all other Zelda games but not wholly separated from the history of Zelda games or games of that time. Instead of having to randomly bomb everything looking for secrets like in the original Legend of Zelda, the walls are crumbly where you need to bomb. Further into the game you get the hint to poke walls with your sword and listen for a different “hollow” sound that you can bomb through. The first example of this working is super simple to find and had me looking for other walls through out the world that might be hollow. I liked that. And I feel like that could have been employed throughout the world as opposed to the obvious crumbly-wall “hints” that you just see plainly. Don’t show me the walls to be bombed, don’t make me waste bombs finding holes, just let me find them. But like other games of this era, once you have sat with the game for some time your mind adjusts to how the world works and once you have that “tool” in your mental arsenal things get a lot easier.
It is precisely that higher level thinking that is the charm of Link’s Awakening. The updated graphics do a lot to embrace the feeling you get once you’ve truly allowed yourself to enter the world. The village and its inhabitants come to life, the houses throughout the world and the characters you meet with their peculiar desires and needs seem to make sense. The social aspect of the games takes off. Especially with the remastered art styling, once you are in the mindset to appreciate the social side of the game it starts to feel similar to Animal Crossing. Solving problems for the inhabitants of the village or finding things they want or things they’ve lost are essential to the completion of the game. That aspect of Link’s Awakening is obvious enough once you’re on that level, but you do have to hold a lot in your mind, pointing to the best way to play this game, don’t put it down for long. Stay focused and don’t lose your place. Take breaks sure, but power ups that you acquire will have you scouring the entire map again and again to find new corners to explore, places you couldn’t get to before, people you need to find again after you find the dog food, to get the banana and the stick and the ribbon. You are rewarded subtly over time, once you can lift the heavy rocks, going back through the world you find all those chests you couldn’t get to before are full of rupees. Once you can jump further you find all those areas you couldn’t get to before are hiding heart pieces and further clues. Not too long into the game you realize it might not be long enough, that you may want more once you figure out what that egg at the top of the mountain is hiding and you finally wake up (I’m not there yet but I’ve deduced that is the end of the game).
In the week since I started writing this piece I’ve progressed at a pace I’m happy with. If there’s one word to describe all Nintendo titles its “charming,” and Link’s Awakening is definitely that. I’m not rushing it, but I am looking forward to completing the story and gathering my thoughts on it.
My inspiration for writing about crypto was never to post charts and talk analysis. But I do watch them and try to learn, try to see what they tell us about where we’re at. Shiba Inu’s chart paints a clear picture. I first took a real hard look and bought in at $.000007, so I was in for the glorious rise that nearly ate 2 zeros while we all watched. It was a super fun couple of days and since then my position hasn’t really changed. I took a small percentage and moved to other projects, reaccumulating each dip with my mostly dollar-cost-averaging attitude towards investing. There were reasons for that pump, and Shib had climbed a long way before that, fueled mostly by exposure to new listings.
From watching Discord and digging on my own, I found the earliest investing success stories with Shib came from 4chan. Those early adopters went through the struggle of obtaining Shib on platforms least like Coinbase and held through what must have been serious doubt in a project that at the time seemed ludicrous, releasing all of the coins at once, and the various FUD that like Dogecoin, a huge percentage of the tokens are held in a small number of wallets (not true of Shib). By the time I found crypto, and Shiba Inu, it was known only as “The Dogecoin Killer,” the hot new meme-coin, and that was it. It was super cheap, and its future super unknown.
Fast forward to today, and zoom out to the daily chart, and you will see the arc of where we’re at. At first Shib was relatively unknown. New listings resulted in a rise in value. People went from finding out about us on 4chan and reddit to seeing us in the Coinbase top movers category. Users tweak the functionality of their chosen investing platforms to show the crypto that costs the least to obtain the most whole coins and there we were. For a long time, becoming a “Shibanaire” was very cheap. The rise of NFT’s in 2021 had everyone wondering when Shib would release theirs.
Shiba Inu is a truly decentralized experiment in community building. As Queenie reiterated in the Dec. 30 AMA, none of the original developers are still on the project.
Announced in Oct 2021, Shiba Inu launched their first NFT, the Shiboshis, “a collection of 10,000 exlusive Shiba Inu generated Non Fungible Tokens.”
Ryoshi was leant the money that provided for the original liquidity. The developers working on Shib now are all volunteers. The entire supply is live, no more will be added (only burned). There is no marketing budget. There is no one person calling the shots (the soon to be implemented Doggy DAO will have the community calling the shots). The community wanted NFT’s and the community wanted a massive burn. Going back to the daily chart, you can see when news of those events hit Discord. You can watch all 10,000 Shiboshis sell and be renamed. You can also watch the fomo live as the chart peaks out.
This is what irks me when I see on Twitter some crypto-bro claim with confidence that it will be years before we see any more zeros drop off from Shib’s rise in price. What is that information based off of, price action and technical analysis? No one can make that claim. In the words of Queenie, “Shib is an enigma.” As I write this the price of Shib sits around $.00003, but we’ve watched it consolidate down from $.00009. As the Shibarmy adopted their Shiboshis and paid to rename them, the price quickly and steadily rose, fueling the fomo of all those people that whether they admit it or not were watching and wondering if the vision is real. Is it trustworthy? Is there any vision beyond being a meme token? As it turns out, identifying Shiba Inu as a meme coin isn’t truthful at all. Doge and proponents of Doge all recite the origin story, “Doge was started as a joke.” Shib was not, Ryoshi wasn’t meming.
While it may have been an easy parallel to draw when Shib was released, a lot happened in crypto in 2021 that changed the face of crypto in general. One of those changes is the proliferation of Layer 2 scaling solutions such as Polygon, and standalone ecosystems functioning on the back of Eth. Whatever else Shib has been compared to, what crypto as a whole will come to see of Shib will look a lot more like Pancakeswap, Uniswap and Polygon than Doge.
These projects are all in the works and expected to release in the near future. Does that mean Shib reaches $.01, that may be the case, but it could be more. Go back and look at how $MATIC shot up and continues to do so as project after project integrates into their network. For those of us that have been watching closely, Shiba Inu has been a solid entity, devs listening to the user base, maintaining decentralization and continued development. All this is to say, this is where we’re at. The price has consolidated from $.00009 and other than market manipulation, which there is plenty of, there is zero reason for it to shoot up. And we shouldn’t want it to. What we want is for Shib to look like Polygon $MATIC in the charts. the price will go up, but we want it to increase with adoption due to use value. That can’t be rushed, it has to be proven over time, and if the crypto adoption rate is any indication as to how many projects will make it or fail, we want the devs to be thorough, we want to earn our place in the charts and have staying power.
Hypothetical situation: You walk into a room with five or so people in it and say something like, “did you hear Facebook changed their name to Meta?”
Everyone looks up from their phones and says, “yea I don’t get it.”
You reply, “short for metaverse, like the digital world.”
They look up again from their phones, “so like VR? I’m never going to be into that. VR is cool but I’m not wearing those goggles all the time. And I don’t know a single person that would spend significant amounts of their real life free time with their faces strapped to a device that feeds them the digital world.” They all agree and look back down to their phones.
The metaverse has existed for me since the first time I played Metroid on the original Nintendo. For my unlces it was Zelda in ’87, maybe even a decade or so before that as they gathered around a table for the first time to play the Dungeons and Dragons inspired Dragon Quest. So many people have jumped to the conclusion that The Metaverse is web3 gaming, incorporating NFT’s and blockchain technology, where by shortly, we will be uploading our physical selves to the digital world and they want no part of it; not realizing that a.) that is not the point and b.) that process of uploading our physical world into the digital world started decades ago.
In one of his many interviews with Joe Rogan, Elon Musk makes the point that we are already crude cyborgs given the way we are attached to our various connected devices. Musk is of course developing Neural Link, a chip that will be hardwired into a persons brain. He claims that we will be able to communicate without words, and that Neural Link will first be used to correct neural based diseases like Parkinson’s and the effects of a stroke. This leads to several obvious questions about plugging our consciousness into some sort of network a la The Matrix, this is what people think when they hear “metaverse.” And they aren’t wrong, Musk talks about how we’ll essentially be connected to the internet, to which I thought, aren’t we already?
Map of LAND in Decentraland, a Roblox-like web3 game utilizing blockchain and NFT’s. Each of these blocks represent parcels you can own or participate in.
My bringing up those vintage games, video games and tabletop RPG’s; the metaverse exists, and will continue to advance, because it already exists in our minds and we participate in it already, and that is the point. The fact that its digital is a modern facet of human imagination. The metaverse is as much The Matrix as it is anything that captures our attention. Those early games contained enough story and world building for people to bridge the gap between the graphics they saw with their eyes and the world they allowed themselves to exist in in their minds. Much the same with the advent of social media, the relationships we build online with words, pics, and vids are enough to bridge the gap to what our relationships are in the physical world. The people we know online evoke just as much emotion and “value” as people we know in person. I feel like I know Joe Rogan. I feel like I was part of Casey Neistat’s life. I am very much a part of several online communities that people I’m very close to in real life know nothing about. And those communities speak as much to who I am as my relationship with my wife, whom they know nothing about.
This is what the metaverse is, and we’ve uploaded plenty, its just that we’ve been limited by our thumbs and the strain on our eyes instead of the speed of some port in the back of our skull. Everything you’ve ever put online is stored somewhere whether you’ve deleted it or not, yes, even your incognito browsing history and vanishing messages. This is how “Meta” knows when someone else posts a pic with you in it and asks you to tag yourself. And every time you do that you are functioning as a validator for that technology. Apple knows I get up around 5 a.m. and which 3 apps I check first. They know when you poop and if you or someone in your family is expecting, either a baby or a puppy. This is all The Metaverse and whether you know it or not, or even want to, you are participating.
So what does “Web3” promise about the metaverse? There’s so many ways to answer that. Ever spent money on skins in Fortnite only to be a little let down that they only exist in those games? Web3 promises that these digital assets are yours. Like a digital closet you can dress yourself in, yes, yourself, not your player character in the Epic Games ecosystem. There is digital real estate for sale along with digital currency, and digital art, and pets, and music, and its yours, freely yours, not like now where those skins stay in the game they came from, but yours like I’m wearing this shirt right now at work, and then I can wear it home, and at Walmart and at my daughters basketball game. Think of a fully implemented augmented reality where you can wear your Fortnite-like skins to these places as well. Think filters for the world, not just for IG. Think, you don’t just buy the slickest new Nikes, you also get a digital copy for your online avatar to wear.
Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate released to glowing reviews claiming it was the most fully fleshed out iteration to date. The most monsters, the most areas, the most gear. Generations was seen as growth, maybe in a new direction, but as a hold over title while Capcom worked on Monster Hunter World. XX released in Japan only, but it was MH World that was in the news as the new title. A technological advancement in the game, seamless maps, stunning design and a player experience that may hold as the most welcoming to newbies for a long time to come. So when Generations Ultimate released in the West, essentially a localized XX, it opened the door for debate, which version of this stellar gaming franchise is champion, Classic Monster Hunter, or the new and streamlined Monster Hunter World?
There is no way for me to compare the two, I’ve never played World and I likely never will, not to the end game anyway, I’ll never have the time. My friends are playing it though and its because I talked them into it. For months we would talk at work about the early quests, the frustration of learning the Anjanath fight as a complete noob, the wall of stats and status effects and how each one plays on each monster in different ways. We constantly compared the two, “well in 4U it was like this,” or “World does this different,” or not at all. Everyone knows about the lifestyle changes made to World and it is arguably the better entry point to the franchise. For several reasons, all our conversations have lead me to think a lot about why I love the game so much, and why I really have no interest in playing World at this point in time.
The most obvious is that I’ve only experienced Monster Hunter as a hand held game. My introduction to the franchise was Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate on the 3DS, it was the first “new” game I played on the device and I still play it (I’m around 700 hours play time). I picked at Generations but I didn’t have as much time to play and the changes Capcom implemented had an adverse effect on me for a long time. I didn’t like arts and styles, I saw them as a temporary thing that wasn’t going to be included in further titles, also the press was saying that it was an interim game likely never to have G rank. I felt like it was skippable, especially after XX wasn’t coming West I wrote it off for good.
When World released and people were coming to me for information I felt the pull again to let my self be caught up in the experience so I started playing Gen with fuvor, then to find out that Generations Ultimate was releasing in the States on Switch and our save data was coming with us, that was what I needed to hear to let my self pick the game back up with excitement. Seeing it on a big screen has got to be the coolest thing in gaming right now, even if I am years behind having that feeling. And the fact that I can still take it with me where ever I go appeals to my early love of the game.
Monster Hunter fills in what I need in a game in that it rewards your hard work. Nothing about the game is given to random chance. Your gear and gathered materials are stockpiled as you collect them, all stacked relative to the time you put into collecting them. Your skill against each new challenge is a reflection of the time you put into learning each fight and nuance of the game and how quick you can pick it up. Each boss has a tell, a weakness, super moves and stumbling blocks.
The build up to the fight is catharsis enough, my hard work is rewarded, but the actual fights are the gem of the game. There are enough weapons and status affects that you should never get bored strategizing. By the time you come face to face with your first large monster as a new player, the build up to that moment leaves you feeling like you are part of something epic. The first time you down a large monster is one of the rarest feelings I’ve had playing a game. And when you are on, and you’ve figured things out enough to go into a fight with very few questions, and you are one step ahead of every move, bashing a monster skull, severing tails and breaking parts, nothing feels more satisfying. It is all on you and the build up makes it very clear that it is because of your skill and what you’ve learned that you are able to complete the task. It is because this game is unforgiving and makes no apologies for it that makes it great, and when you rise to each occasion, you feel that much better for it.
Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate releases tomorrow and if there is one quest I want to leave behind it is the five star village quest Trifecta of Terror. I loaded it up thinking I would trap them all and be on my way, only to find that pitfall traps will not work against the Nibelsnarf, and that I would actually be failing quests in Gen, which I had yet to do.
5 Star village quest, Trifecta of Terror, Hunt 3 Nibelsnarf
I got the impression that this is one of those gear check fights like a middling raid boss in World of Warcraft. If I was paying attention I am sure I would have completed it, but I went into the fight thinking I would trap all three after a modest beat down and continue to the next quest. I had one shock trap and mats for three pitfall traps. I couldn’t figure out why my traps weren’t working…
As frustrating as it was to see the 10 minute warning, and then fail, it reminded me why I like the game. Coming off of 600+ hours of MH4U, Nibelsnarf is new to me, my first encounter was successful but only because it was forgiving. I had to muster up the monster hunter mindset of patient beat down. There comes a point when you are flying through quests, but only after you learn the monsters inside and out, which I have yet to do with anything that wasn’t in 3 or 4U, and I didn’t play 3U much.
Since I’m not leaving it behind, its the Monday evening before the Switch expansion drops, I guess it will have to be the first quest I complete after I get my save data transferred…
Updates pending, I’m so excited for this game on Switch.
Tinfoil D-Pad 