*riding on a boat* “Wow! An adventure! Yeaaaaaa-“

LIKAMUDDA******TRAINWRECK

Did you expect me to talk about the main flag-monster of
Monster Hunter 4 ALREADY? Well you’ll be needing this info RIGHT NOW. Enter the
Gore Magala.

First thing’s first, this guy looks FREAKING AWESOME. Just
had to verify that mmkay? Second, the Gore introduces a whole new mechanic to
the Monster Hunter series, the Frenzy. Monsters with the Frenzy virus, mainly
our pal Gore here, will be able to infect you with their oozy gas stuff. When
this happens a meter will appear and show how close you are to being fully
infected. When that happens, you take much greater damage from frenzy related
attacks, and you won’t be able to recover health. The only way to reduce your
frenzy is by using nulberries, but there’s a pretty good way to turn the
tables. The more damage you deal to a monster the slower you get further
infected, and if you fight enough you can shake the virus off completely AND
gain a large damage boost for a while until you can be infected again. I notice
the weapons like insect glaives and dual blades which get more hits are easier
to overcome viruses than slower weapons like great-swords and such. This can
make the virus something you want to gain intentionally, but the monsters you
fight won’t make this an easy task. First of all, besides the Gore Magala who
spreads this virus around, any Frenzy monster will be in a constant rage mode,
meaning more attacks and mobility. This makes for harder battles and much
harder captures. Now that the Frenzy is explained, let’s look at the Gore
Magala battles you will endure.

Honestly, the Gore Magala isn’t the beefiest monster in that
it doesn’t have much defense going for it. It has chronic weakness to fire, and
not exactly minor weaknesses to thunder and dragon. That coupled with potential
virus boosts means if you survive enough, it won’t be that long a fight,
especially considering the earlier meetings with it where you just have to
drive it away, like riding a boat… in an enclosed space. Why you gotta fight
this thing in enclosed spaces? It has a big range of attacks that all have
their own big range of attack (that was wordplay everyone, I’m here all
weekend, gnite). Everything this thing does involves charging forward with its
large body, shooting spreading projectiles, exploding projectiles, and lots of
slamming and scratching. Basically you wouldn’t like being in front of this
thing, even if its head is its weaker spot. My advice? It doesn’t do anything
to its backside, so try and perform a bum-rush up in its tail. It may perform
the occasional 180 to face you, but just make sure to stop attacking and run
around it again. You can break its wings, face, horns (if they pop out during
its rage mode), and cut its tail, so blunt weapons to the face, blades to the
wings and tail. In fact, the same goes for many other monsters, especially
these dragon-like monsters. The attacks you need to watch out the most for are
its slams and virus balls. If it stands up that means it’s about to slam onto
you, so get away from it if that happens. As for the projectiles, getting hit
by any of these afflicts the virus on you, and some projectiles even explode.
In fact, its strongest attack involves a chain reaction of explosions that move
in two side directions. The indicator is it propping its head back and a
hissing noise. When this happens, MOVE BACK. If you’re looking Gore in the
face, move away from it. Dodging to the side will only get you hit by the chain
reaction and the explosions have wide range, so don’t count on getting under
the Gore. When it enters rage two feelers will unfold out of the sides of its
head, but while they are vulnerable I still recommend the bum rush unless you
need the feelers to break for Armor and Weapons or you’re THAT desperate for a
sub-quest reward. Follow these guidelines well, as any attack could very well
take away most of your health, or even all of it at lower levels.

Now once you reach level 4 quests you gain access to
Snugsnug Isle, opening the way for two more areas, the Primal Forest and the
Frozen Seaway. I already used a big chunk of this guide on the virus and Gore,
so I’ll spend the rest of my time talking about 3 monsters you can expect to
encounter in the P.Forest, moving on to the F.Seaway next time. That’s how we
say area names in Monster Hunter, get on with the groove man.

“You know what hunters want? Another primate like monster,
able to switch into various status inflicting modes, and it kills you with its
farts!” ~ Capcom staff meeting

Meet the Congalala.

Congalala is pretty much a monster made of monkeying around.
And not in a good way like the Kecha Wacha, but it the way where it’s a painis
cupcake to deal with. All of the main attacks by this guy involve gas, gas, and
more gas. It can inflate its belly to push you away, followed by a body slam,
can fart from behind as previously mentioned, perform a pseudo roar move by
burping, and jump away great distances by means of which I assume involve fart
propulsion and helium inflation. Now besides the gas attacks, it seems to be a
normal run-of-the-mill animal that is limited to swiping, pounding, and jumping
at you, but then there are status conditions… oh are there status conditions.
By default the congalala has very smelly brown gas that applies the stench
condition. For reasons science cannot explain, having stench prevents the use
of many items, including potions, food, even traps and bombs I believe, and the
only way to cure it besides waiting for it to wear off is through deodorant,
fortunately the only item you instantly use on yourself without taking time to
set up or flex or something. Now that seems bad enough, but the congalala can
choose any time at which to completely disregard the battle and look for food.
The congalala, as violent as it seems, only eats mushrooms. These mushrooms
contain high amounts of spice and toxins that no normal creature should attempt
consuming, but the conga family is equipped with an iron stomach. Not only can
the congalala’s eat these shrooms, the gas they expel gain their properties!
Depending on the area and types of shrooms it gets, the gas breath and farts
can poison you, paralyze you, and even cover you in explosive dust or light you
on fire! Poison is, of course, healed with antidotes, fire put out by rolling,
and if you get paralyzed you can roll the circle pad around and mash buttons.
The bomb dust is unique however. If you get covered in it the next time you
take a strong enough hit you will take explosive damage, greatly increasing the
power of the attack, and if you wait too long for the dust to go from red to white
it explodes on its own. You can use deodorant to clean yourself (not cleanser
for some weird reason, probably to limit the things you need to fight a
congalala) or you can roll a couple of times. These conditions allow the
congalala to completely change the battle formula, and any time you want to
fight this sucker you BETTER bring all the supplies you’ll need.

Speaking of supplies, I want to take a moment to talk about
a couple useful tools you can use on monsters that may show high relevance now
or later. First, the dung bombs! Oh… dung, I forgot, the congalala throws its s***
at you too, there, burps farts and crap. Lovely. Now dung bombs aren’t really
given credit in the game, in fact I only found out from a friend on what they
actually do. The items description says that it covers monsters in stench that
they may not like. Cool, but why use them though? Well if they get hit by a
bomb and successfully stenchified, they are more likely to leave the current
area. After all, wouldn’t your heart be broken if someone threw crap at you?
*sad MLG violin music* This is really useful in expeditions when you need to
hunt a basarios and that goshdarn SELTAS SHOWS UP AND… well you can basically
get it to leave quicker. Unless the basarios leaves as well, then they end up
in the same place again… I take it back, there aren’t enough areas in
expeditions. The next two items are the pitfall and shock traps. Now both are
probably a given at this point, you place them down to trap a monster for a bit
letting you A) get more powerful hits on it or B) capture the monster if it’s
weak. But what I need to address is the differences, and how to know which one
is best for the situations at hand. Shock traps are more dispensable, generally
easier to get a hold of than pitfall traps. They do have limits however, and
considering they are elemental based you should already have expected this.
Some traps generally won’t work on some monsters, like gypceros (you little
****) is resistant to paralysis and thunder elements, so shock traps, as the
game puts it, ”does Jack”. I know some monsters also disregard these traps in
rage states, and shock traps are less effective when used multiple times, as
the monster develops a resistance. Sorry, I don’t honestly know as much about
pitfalls. One more problem with shock traps, some monsters can become charged
by the trap if they get caught in it, which is actually really bad. Make sure
you know which monsters have electric based attacks.

Wow, this is getting REALLY LONG, I better wrap this up soon………….
SPEAKING OF WHICH

Get it? It’s a snake? Wrap? I… I made another… screw it,
this is the Najarala

If you hate snakes, this thing gives you another good reason
to. Let me get this out of the way, this is what I like to call the Spam Snake.
Why? It only really puts two attacks to common use. First is the
scale-shriek combo. A trait that the najarala has is the ability to fire its tail
scales at foes, and the tails themselves function like glass, shattering at a
certain frequency. The najarala will fire a scale either at you or near you,
then follow up with a scream to break the scales, and if you’re too close to a
breaking scale you will get knocked off your feet and become stunned when you
get back up. This is usually when the scaly pumpernickel decides to follow up
with the next attack. It TRAPS YOU. Now let me tell you something kids, in
Monster Hunter you NEVER want to be stuck between a monster and a hard place,
as this inhibits one of the only things you may have, your movement. Being hit
against a wall can make your health go from 100 to 0 in 2 consecutive attacks
flat. The naja on the other hand doesn’t put you between it and a wall, it puts
you between it and it. If you seem in a vulnerable spot, like being paralyzed
or stunned, or if it just up-and feels like it, it will slither forward really
fast and wrap around you. You will be stuck in a snake ring, and you better
hurry and find a gap between its tail and head or it will dig under you and
rise up like a rocket. And if you aren’t unable to move, don’t worry, the
najarala will bite and paralyze you, subjecting you to this torture unless it’s
multiplayer and someone knocks the snake back. Oddly enough, besides finding a
gap to escape, there are two weapons you can exploit at this time, the lance
and the insect glaive. The glaive has the ability to pole vault up and over,
and the lance has a charging move that you can jump while doing. This makes
both weapons the only ones with manual jumping abilities, the power to mount a monster
from any direction, and, if placed correctly, a ticket out of the najarala
wrap. Now as for these two attacks, they are ridiculously common and ANNOYING.
The snakey butt can also whack you with its tail, charge at you, dig around and
rise under you, but that’s about it. And the main formula is scale throw, (whack)
scream, (attack and repeat) wrap and rocket, (attack) and repeat. This puts the
snake up on my black list as most hated monsters. Now there are some pretty
jerkish monsters later on, but it’s really the ones like najarala and gypceros
that feel cheap.

Now I WAS gonna talk about one more monster, the Rathian, I’ll
put up a picture down below as an honorable mention, but to be honest the
rathian is very similar to another monster, and like the case of the Gendrome
and Iodrome I don’t feel like repeating myself. (Especially when I barely had
anything to say about the Great Jaggi to begin with) And this is already a long
edition, so I’ll stop here. Next time on the MH Guide to Success we’re going
north or south or wherever to the Frozen Seaway, and see what awaits us there!
See you then!... what? We’re… not talking about the Seaway NEXT time? Well what
do you, OH WE’RE STILL GOI-