Monster Hunter Wilds' campaign is, in a sense, a bit of an extended tutorial—that's not to say it isn't a blast, but chewing through the second half of it myself, I get the distinct feeling I'm only just scraping the tip of the gear grinding iceberg before the endgame. And an endgame certainly exists—in the form of Artian Weapons. Yet, some players are choosing to skip them in favour of fashion.
These Artian items require you to knock over tempered, high-level hunts to grind for parts—as is RPG tradition, they can then be upgraded with RNG-dependent boosts that'll wall you off from the statline you want if your luck's anything like mine. Mercifully, dismantling them gives you back your upgrade materials, so it's not all bad—but I can definitely see myself doing some gambling at the forge once I've wrapped up the campaign.
Or maybe not, seeing as Monster Hunter Wilds doesn't have layered weapons yet—see, eventually, players are able to unlock layered armour (essentially a transmog or glamour system) saving you from looking like a neon freakshow that tumbled through a fantasy Hot Topic. Weapons, however, don't get this treatment. Which is a problem, because some of the Artian Weapons are uggo.
That's maybe a little unfair—not all of them are eyesores, they're definitely hedging towards a very specific steampunk, clockwork/tech aesthetic. For some of these weapons, that looks rad as hell, but fashion is a vital part of Monster Hunter's endgame, and shoving players into any one aesthetic is always going to be unpopular.
"I don't care how good they are, I'm not using them," writes one player on the game's subreddit to the tune of over 14,000 upvotes—sparking a flurry of agreement in the thread itself. "They certainly make me wish I could change the appearance of my weapon," adds another. One even praises Capcom for making their class of Artian weapon sub-optimal: "Gunlance has been blessed with the Artian weapon being WORSE than the end game monster Gunlances."
While I'm not there yet, I can at least confirm secondhand that our build guides don't mandate Artian weapons—take this Hammer build guide, for example, which suggests a fully-upgraded Arkveld bonker instead.
Not everyone agrees, yet. In that very same thread, the local Switch Axe enjoyer is happy with their lot: "Bro I have a buzzaxe chainsaw, how is that not rad?" Another fellow sw'axer concurs: "For real, I don’t get it. Our sh*t is dope as fuck." They're not the only ones. A separate thread sees Artian weapon enjoyers rising up, though even Artian enjoyers concede that "layered weapons would solve this issue with literally zero negatives."
Personally, I think it's pretty clear that not all of these things are made equal. While I do think the Switch Axe's buzzsaw looks dope—and I'm fond of the silly clockwork hilt in the Charge Blade, as a budding Dual Blades main myself, uh, what happened?
These things look like bent pool noodles dipped in metal, except someone stuck a battery-powered fidget toy to the hilt of them—and I can't for the life of me tell what they're meant to be powering. Their only purpose seems to be burning your hands with all the sparks they're spitting—utterly dripless. Hopefully, layered weapons'll be coming in a future patch to save me from fashion hell. That or I'll just use a rank 8 weapon and skip the grind entirely.
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