![Monster Hunter Stories [The Adventure Begins] -- #21. The Definition of Insanity](/images/yt/2h/monster-hunter-stories-the-adventure-begins-21-the-definition-ba8pa.jpg)
Monster Hunter Stories [The Adventure Begins] -- #21. The Definition of Insanity
3Is... riding monsters around and having a good time?
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The biggest fear in every Monstie's heart is that that egg you worked so hard to please your Rider in helping to acquire will be your immediate replacement.
Sometimes this is due to power creep on account of the fact that monsters are clearly ranked according to tiers within the game itself... mostly as a mechanism to prevent you from somehow getting something that's "too strong" for you... ... ... meaning it would upset the game balance tremendously because you'll steamroll all your adversaries until it becomes the expected norm. Uh... I-I mean... you don't have enough badges to get them to obey! That's what it is!
Other times, it'll come down to simple genetics. I mean that the game's approach to genetics is incredibly simplistic. Specifically, it was bound to happen sooner or later that we'd hit a bingo. Jackpot! That is to say, if all the genes line up just so, you get even more passive boons for your pals! Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about that in the present... and there's no way your Monsties can account for what's simply a twisted roll of the dice that just makes some specimens superior to others.
How... depressingly and bleakly deterministic... and perhaps you thought Pocket Monsters IVs had harsh implications!
Unfortunately, this new best bear of mine... escaped without a name... and I'm pretty sure there's no way to change that after the fact, so... "Arzuros" it shall be. ("Good" thing we presumably don't have to wait long before you get replaced in turn, silly old bear!)
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Speaking of the children NOT being our future... I guess Cheval is already considered to have abandoned the Code, the village, and our very way of life? So... we're not going to look for him anymore, I guess?
At any rate, all this back and forth between here and the Whistill Forest has us apparently worried about the encroaching Black Blight... up to and including the so-called "Forbidden Land"...? This is the first I'm hearing of it... am I to assume we're NOT allowed to go there? Shocking! And yet, it was forbidden long before the current crisis in order to have that name.
Never fear! Dan will investigate... um... eventually, I guess? I don't know if waiting on relative NPC inaction is a very wise and responsible course of action. No offense to Dan and his alleged reliability, of course!
So Navirou, an outsider, comes up with a most ingenious plan! We should prove ourselves a TRUE rider by resolving this matter before Dan can have the chance to! ... ... ...and somehow he's back on the train of mind that somehow this can make it acceptable to break the Rider's Code? Only a true Rider can be Rider enough to ignore the Rider's Code! Obviously!
It's almost like the game knew I couldn't stop myself from seeing if that guy by the Hall of Rites would offer a new Subquest... and indeed, now he has one! A Blue Yian Kut-Ku called The Wily Bird!
Unfortunately, my next foray out into the Pondry Hills will be too preoccupied with finding the Catavan stands I was certain to forget about in due time to spare any time for the wily... and even I wince with the recognition that I passed RIGHT by the Den where the creature apparently lives.
...at least it's relatively near a direct route between two Catavan stands?!
At any rate, the game really wants us to go back to the forest to disobey directions... when we clearly could've just explored its entirety in one trip by now. Heck, if we ran into Simone and Papan, presumably from the opposite direction, I'm pretty sure the Scriveners have already investigated what lies beyond our stop-and-go meeting points, so it would've been prudent to ask them about it before they left.
I think we just wanted to make sure they didn't change their mind about taking Lilia away and letting us be rid of her!
Huh, things don't look especially "forbidden" yet... how annoying that we weren't allowed to proceed at least that far before now.
Hey, look! A Felyne settlement! These are things in regular Monster Hunter games, although they tend to be substantially less helpful to Hunters than Riders. Why would Lynians of any persuasion discriminate? A Rider doesn't ride Felynes, and Felynes aren't exactly Monsters... in the same sense, I suppose... of course, the denizens of such a settlement tend to be decidedly nonviolent by comparison to those found in the field of a hunting ground, so maybe we just never knew to ask if we could take a nap? ...while the Quest time limit ticks away! (Go back to the base camp tent for that, you bum!)
The Catavan waypoint list seems to have some strange order all its own logic, so it's difficult to say where we'll find the ones that fill in the blanks based on where they fall on the sequence they're written down... but I think it's safe to assume that the one that's still missing on this page is going to take a little backtracking to locate.
(No worries!)