Rosalia Rambles

Tag: Monster Hunter

  • Redundancy Review: Day 457, “The common topic of sleep”

    Redundancy Review: Day 457, “The common topic of sleep”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning insomniacs and narcoleptics, welcome to Day 457 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    I am rapidly running out of words relating to sleep to open things up with, which is not surprising considering I have written around ten reviews where the topic of sleep, either too much or too little, is brought up as the main body of the article that day.

    Today is in the latter category of “too little”, as I was up till around two in the morning stuck in a thinking pattern, alternating between having my brain slow down in the hopes of finally giving me the blessed sleep I crave before suddenly thrusting anxiety into the forefront of my mind once more giving me about ten minutes of feeling on edge with rapid thoughts running through my mind before it calms down again.

    Usually in those moments would be the moment I reach for a CBD gummy to help quiet the mind and allowing myself to sleep, but I have been holding back from taking them recently for a handful of reasons:

    • I am halfway down my last jar and really do not have the funds to restock myself at this current moment in time
    • I had a bad experience with one a couple weeks back and have been hesitant ever since
    • And I want my system able to receive the blessed relaxation as best as possible for Vexpo sleep next week because I will certainly need it

    Thankfully the day is not too stacked for me, though I do have some more job applications at the local council I need to work on before my time away. Local government has been the main focus of my applications since being laid off three months ago, primarily in pursuit of acquiring better benefits – especially a more robust pension benefit because whilst I do not fully believe I will be able to retire for one reason or another, it would be nice to actually care about my future rather than be dismissive.

    I definitely have some amount of savings in my pension, although it is simultaneously nowhere near what the guidance says it should be for my age and also looking damn fine if I start to run low on funds if this job search gets more protracted than I would like it to be.

    Plus there is the fact that writers never usually fully retire from work, as our bodies fail keeping our minds sharp is more important than ever, meaning we will be working on our own things even long past the age of any physically or mentally demanding work, though it would still be nice to fund being an aging writer considering that making a living off writing is still as hard as ever.

    Admittedly it has been nice to start writing again, even though I know for a fact Vexpo is going to completely derail any notion of a schedule as I will be out of action from the 17th to at least the 22nd due to how much I have in my itinerary and that I will be writing the sequel last year’s Vexpo post as quickly as I can once my energy returns to me.

    For now though, it has been nice to get back in the groove, and remind myself of why I enjoy writing so much. It came back naturally to me, and even on today when I feel as if I am struggling to write, it feels good to get my thoughts down and make everything feel less heavy if only for a wonderful, fleeting moment before my reality kicks me back down.

    I love writing. There is nothing that would make me happier than getting to do this every day, and who knows? Maybe I will make it there someday.

    Until that point, I will keep rambling about all the things that make me happy, which today includes showing off one of my proudest gaming achievements to date: my collection of endemic life in Monster Hunter World.

    Due to a friend wanting to go through World on their PS5 and myself having a PS4 Pro with a physical copy of the game, we have arranged a regular game night to play through things together. Even as the franchise marches on towards Ascendance, I think there is great value to be found in the fifth generation entries of World plus Iceborne and Rise plus Sunbreak, especially on sale for stupidly low prices given how much content is packed into each game.

    Returning to World felt satisfying as all hell, and whilst there are several gameplay decisions I find myself questioning both on their own and when comparing it to the quality-of-life packed Wilds, I still consider it a nine-out-of-ten experience that any newer Monster Hunter fans should experience at least once.

    Not least because the endemic life collection system and the way you are able to display said endemic life might be one of my favourite side activities in the entire franchise.

    Once you progress into Master Rank in the Iceborne expansion and unlock the new hub area of Seliana, you also unlock a personal room area that can be decorated with ludicrous amounts of microtransaction DLCs to make it fit your taste, but more importantly it features several areas to place any captured endemic life, including both a fish pond and an aquarium.

    Particular creatures of note in my aquarium include two Petricanths, extremely rare endemic life styled after ancient coelacanths, and the Sealord’s Crestfish, an even rarer endemic life that took me so many soft resets during expeditions to find but was one of my proudest achievements once I did… oh how little did I know how hard some of the others were going to be.

    When you enter the room from the main hub area, you start on this upper balcony area that can contain endemic life both on the bannister itself and on the floor. My floor is filled with Moonlight Geckos, not particularly rare creatures compared to what else you can see in the room, but still pretty hard to find. The guest on my bannister is the far more interesting exhibit though, a gorgeous bird called the Blue Diva, an endemic life I did not even search out for and found purely by chance when on a hunt one day. Whilst I would love to find more to fill out the bannister, I think there are more pressing matters for me rather than grinding it out for multiple rare creatures.

    Especially when you take into account I have six out of seven Molys from the endgame Guiding Lands area – or as I prefer to call it, the Grinding Lands because this area is so shittily designed in terms of how you have to progress each zone for mining, monsters, and the rare endemic life of Molys and there is very little that can change my mind on this being the absolute worst way to build an endgame I have seen in any of the Monster Hunter titles I have played.

    Ahem.

    Still, the majority of the Molys is not bad at all.

    In front of my fireplace is a small family of Arrowhead Gecko, another rare creature but one with a guaranteed chance of dropping in one of the early Master Rank event quests, so I took the opportunity to grab a many as possible.

    One creature that took an absurd amount of grinding on my part is the Tsuchinoko. This illusive snake only spawns in Kulve Taroth raids near to the cannons or on the slide to area two, or in the little corridor before the optional quest of the final boss of Iceborne which is where I found it. A little fat bastard wiggling along my floor is a worthy addition to my collection.

    And finally, we come to the fish pond outside alongside the hot spring. The latter holds the singular Goldspring Macaque I have been able to find, and again whilst I would love to fill an entire spring of these, that sort of grinding is not in my cards. The former holds my pride and joy, but not for what is in the pond… although there is a second Sealord’s Crestfish in the pond as well which was so cool to find after grinding out the first one.

    Flying high above the fish pond is the Wintermoon Nettle, a rare creature that can only spawn at night in the Hoarfrost Reach locale and requires full on scaling the mountain in order to have a chance at capturing it. It may not even appear, and whilst it is possible to catch a glimpse of it from the ground I often found it quicker to run up the mountain to try find it, not wanting it to turn to day and have it despawn after taking the effort to get up there.

    This thing is massive, and floats around in the sky so elegantly. I remember when I first saw it after scaling the mountain for the god-knows-how-many’th time and knowing my quest to find the rarest forms of endemic life were at the end.

    World holds a special place in my heart for many of its mechanics, but currently no game in the franchise does creature collecting better than this one.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are sleeping well. Losing sleep is never fun, and I hope to sleep better tonight myself.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 323-325, “Sleep, and lots of it”

    Redundancy Review: Day 323-325, “Sleep, and lots of it”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning nocturnals and diurnals, welcome to Day 323 to 325 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yeah, no, the streak broke, but the streak resumption is still way shorter than what it was before. In short: periods suck. Emotional volatility and feeling drained by most things led to writing falling by the wayside in favour of recovery, but some positive things did happen in the interim.

    (end screen courtesy of my Gunlance friend, cause I was coming down so hard from the fight that I forgot to take a screenie)

    Me and my group of Monster Hunter friends finally came together to get me to beat Savage Omega. It took one initial attempt to dial things in after having not played so long, but the attempt after that went as smooth as anything, with no faints and being done in a smooth sub twenty minute time.

    It was one of the last things I needed to do to start considering my base game experience in Wilds to be “complete”, and I still love how Omega was implemented into the game from both the story and the gameplay perspective. 

    I should talk about Wilds more in future reviews, for all of its launch faults in terms of performance on PC, the experience I have had with it has been nothing short of phenomenal. In general I feel I should do more gaming-based reviews, or write more about games in general – try to inject some positivity into a space that can often be overwhelmed with negativity.

    In general, I follow the logic that I am not a critic, nor am I qualified to be one. I exercise my critical thinking skills and can approach stuff from a critical perspective, but my intention is to hopefully have the vast majority of the Redundancy Review be more about personal experience than critique.

    Outside of that I have been working hard on yet another Satisfactory engineering project, this time on a world my partner and I are playing together. I said early on that I wanted to handle the power generation for the world, and after some amount of trial and error I have been able to construct the first two floors of what I am referring to as “The Tower of Power”, something that will ideally be our central hub for power generation along with some smaller stations along the periphery of our world. It needs further refinement, but I am very happy with what I have been able to achieve in terms of engineering.

    But overall, what have I been doing the most?

    Resting.

    Sleeping in late.

    Enjoying my time with things.

    Indulging in the things I enjoy.

    Today I slept in till almost noon, and catching up on that amount of sleep feels fantastic. Given the nature of my work and life, I tended to run on a sleep deficit that often caught up with me very quickly in certain circumstances, leading to me constantly projecting the outwards appearance of being half asleep, alongside medicating myself heavily with various strengths of caffeine to have some measure of function throughout the day.

    It is still scary to consider the prospect that I am about to be unemployed once more, especially given that I want to use this as an opportunity to grow into something beyond what I currently am – even if I do not fully know where I am going next.

    For that though, I refer to an image that I have pinned in the DMs between myself and my partner on Discord. It is something that I am using as one of many guiding philosophies in how I am going forward in this strange new existence.

    I am going to pursue myself, both to recover from the pain and heartache that giving my all into a career has inflicted upon me, but also to grow into the person I want to become: a healthier, more put together version of myself.

    That will cover things for now, hopefully tomorrow brings about a more substantial Redundancy Review, especially as I am currently out and about with some tickets to go see a wildlife photographer give a talk, courtesy of my lovely parents.

    Thank you for reading this short catchup for this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to take it easy this weekend. Indulge in your favourite food or drink if you can, you definitely deserve it after what came your way this week.

    No matter what you end up doing, I am proud of you. Never forget that.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 110-111, “Shark Attack!”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning hammerheads and nurses, welcome to Day 110-111 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    After a long relaxing weekend where nearly nothing was able to bother me, I now return to my desk full of one thing…

    …estrogen.

    Yup, the best way to end a fantastic set of days in which I felt the best I have in several months is me entering into the week starting my period once more which brings paranoia and overthinking back into my mind. Yum.

    You would think after almost three years of being in this cycle, there would be some measure of “used to this” with the fact my body decides to destroy itself whilst throwing my emotions into flux for up to a week, but nope – it still hits like a truck each time and brings out the worst of my inner monologues to put me in a funk.

    I carry on though, in spite of everything that could hold me back, to continue writing the part of my story that I currently find myself in the midst of: one girl trying to find her way in a world that is rapidly changing around her, all the while trying to keep herself on a good mental path.

    And sometimes, part of that story is having a brain that decides you need to feel inexplicably worse about everything going on in your life as if there is not a long history of things going your way.

    So, rather than go into any of the thinkpieces or in-depth stories I usually like to tell, I am going to go straight into the review section of today, and in honour of Title Update 3 coming out for Monster Hunter Wilds, it is time to go over one of my favourite musical tracks from the game that got me into the franchise as whole: Monster Hunter Rise.

    Not only is this one of my favourite tracks, it belongs to a monster I think is in contention for being my all-time favourite within the series as a whole – Crimson Glow Valstrax.

    For those who might be unaware, I have a massive fascination with fighter jets due to playing a large amount of Ace Combat, and this interest made me fall in love almost immediately with Valstrax’s design, being a peregrine falcon crossed with a dragon and then because that was somehow nowhere near badass enough, throwing a fucking F-22 Raptor into the mix to form an absolutely gorgeous design.

    And that is just its base design, as the Crimson Glow (shortened to CG for ease) variant in Rise takes the base form of Valstrax, adds in an unstable core of dragon energy to increase its aggression, and make its theme a thousand times more terrifying – especially if you are fighting the Risen variant found within the Sunbreak expansion.

    If it were not for Rey Dau coming into the mix with Wilds, Valstrax would be my definitive favourite monster outside of my meme pick of Dodogama, but that is a debate for another time.

    As additional comparison, I will be comparing CG Valstrax’s theme to the original Valstrax theme from Generations Ultimate, found here. Note: I have not played GU (a cardinal sin, I know), so my impression will be solely based on how I react to the music.

    Right from the start, CG Valstrax’s theme presents an aura of intimidation with a choir coming in to herald the arrival of this magnificent creature before launching into the main body of the song, which honestly makes me feel as if I am being relentlessly pursued by an apex predator.

    This differs from how the original theme makes me feel, as the progression of the song makes original Valstrax feel like a regal creature – one that is still completely capable of destroying you, but one that views your encounter more like a dance, a coordinated exchange of blows with two equally matched combatants. 

    CG Valstrax has no such illusions, they are driven solely by the amount of dragon energy coursing through them, and they want you dead.

    This is best exemplified during what I refer to as “the chase” section of CG Valstrax’s theme, shortly after the chorus concludes. In the GU version, this starts at the timestamp of 1:15, and honestly, I think there is nothing much to say about what plays out here before it returns to the start of the song.

    There are strings, there is choral singing, but this section of the GU theme honestly lets me down compared to how the CG theme plays out at the timestamp of 1:40.

    It is entirely possible I am blinded by bias, but you cannot deny how much more impactful “the chase” section of the song sounds in CG Valstrax’s theme, this version is the whole reason I call it “the chase” because it actively sounds as if you are being chased down and the rapid notes of the choral singing is your hunter panicking as this out of control creature bears down on you.

    Ultimately though, I love both versions, as I love both versions of Valstrax for what they represent for Monster Hunter. Crazy ideas that sound silly on paper, brought to life through detailed ecology.

    Some might disagree and say that Valstrax goes too far along the line of silly, but when you look at the similarly bizarre but beautiful designs of “T-Rex with a flaming sword for a tail” and “wyvern that creates explosive scales out of excreted oils”, I think a peregrine falcon dragon fighter jet is right at home.

    That will do it for today, I need to get back to my day job. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope the Monday blues are not bringing you down too hard and that you can find some time to relax today.

    As a little bonus, OG Valstrax’s theme won the Hunter’s Choice Best Monster Theme award over a year ago now, and in honour of that it got an EDM-style remix which, like the main themes, sounds absolutely fantastic.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 22, “Upgrades, people! Upgrades!”

    Redundancy Review: Day 22, “Upgrades, people! Upgrades!”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: https://rosaliarambles.com/2025/06/11/redundancy-review-day-1-a-new-beginning/)

    Good morning leviathans and wyverns, welcome to Day 22 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    I have my own domain now!

    No longer carrying the “.wordpress” part, I have a simple .com domain that will look a lot more professional on my CV and be a lot easier to say to people who might want to look up my work.

    It is part of a greater upgrade plan I am looking at to take my work to the next level, with the next steps including getting a professional logo for the site and looking at upgrading my phone to make any photography I need to do look even better…

    …and considering I smashed the screen up a while back along with the battery being on its way out, it makes practical sense as well.

    This is being enabled by the fact I have got almost all of the money I am entitled to out of my redundancy, the only thing I am missing now is my lack of notice pay which I hope to resolve today after my Jobcentre meeting.

    Which, yeah, is not something I am looking forward to today. I have a very dim outlook on the unemployment system in the UK, seeing it as a necessary evil for myself currently but having little to no optimism in how they can help me beyond monetary assistance.

    I will be receptive to their input and if they can find me a holdover job that holds some relevance to my areas of interest I will be thankful, but having been through the system once before and having those close to me go through it multiple times my confidence in what they can do for me is low.

    To be frank, there is a little bit of arrogance in my outlook. The Jobcentre is primarily focused on getting those who have been out of work for a while into a job with a secondary focus on helping people acquire basic skills that they might have missed out on due to life circumstances – right now I fall into neither category.

    I have a plan in mind, I know what steps I need to take, and I really do not need a digital skills course that teaches me how to open Microsoft Word when I have been working at the apex of a heavily specialised technological industry for the last three years.

    A little bit of frustration this morning, but getting it out every so often feels good.

    In honour of the Jobcentre meeting though, I am going to do a variation on my call to action today. Whilst I am looking to start getting into paid writing work, it is more of a desire to pivot than where my career specialty actually lies. So what have I done every day since 2021?

    I break things.

    For the last four years, I have been working as a Quality Assurance Engineer/Analyst/Specialist, whatever you want to call me the core foundation of my career has been the ability to find bugs in all sorts of software projects – I am even credited on two EA Sports games (F1 2021 and F1 22).

    Finding bugs is not just a career for me, it is a way of life. Even when playing games on my own time I am able to find bugs as easy as I breathe, my brain switching into QA mode once I do and seeing if I can replicate it.

    I am good at what I do, and I know it. Any software project I get my hands on will be tested thoroughly with a can-do attitude and a tenacity to see it through right to the end.

    With that done, it is time to review something from a game today, but considering it is a very recent addition, I will put a spoiler warning.

    If you have not played Monster Hunter Wilds Title Update 2 content, please click away now. If you do click away now, thank you for reading today and I hope you have a great day!

    With that done, I can get into it, and I am excited because I love Monster Hunter.

    I really like Monster Hunter.

    I really like Monster Hunter.

    From being a complete newbie to the franchise back in 2022 to becoming way too obsessed today, Monster Hunter has wormed its way into my heart for its combat system, ecology design, and “fashion hunting”, the term for making layered armour sets out of different monster parts.

    And with Wilds Title Update 2, a fan favourite monster finally returns to the franchise properly.

    Lagiacrus was first introduced in Monster Hunter Tri as the flagship monster, releasing in 2009, with their inclusion in Wilds being their first representation in almost a decade, leading to many experienced fans being excited for their return.

    For me though, I had no prior attachment to Lagiacrus but I was still excited to fight them for the first time, especially with the inclusion of a form of underwater combat as part of their fight mechanics.

    Screenshot taken from the Title Update Trailer – I had taken footage but it seems to have corrupted

    Underwater combat was a headline mechanic back in Monster Hunter Tri, being essential to Lagiacrus’s fight back in that game. Whilst the dev team for Wilds did not fully include a full combat system underwater, they did incorporate it into this new iteration.

    After Lagiacrus retreats to its nest, it will dive underwater, giving hunters the opportunity to follow. During this fight you will need to use slinger ammo and collapsible underwater structures to stagger Lagiacrus to open a window to attack with your weapons, finalising with a cinematic finishing move once enough damage is done.

    The introduction mission to Lagiacrus was extremely fun, not only serving to teach these mechanics to players, but also elaborating on one of the other characters in the Forbidden Lands with very thoughtful writing.

    However, that is only one half of Lagiacrus being introduced, as after completing that mission they are now able to spawn in the world regularly, including being able to appear as a “Tempered” variant with stronger attacks and more health.

    Tempered Lagiacrus is fucking terrifying.

    Myself and my partner only fought a three-star version, supposedly on the weaker end of the scale.

    It took us twenty minutes of consistent attacks and effort – longer than some base game tempered monsters, which included my partner fainting twice from the relentless onslaught of attacks.

    Which, y’know, people had been asking for more challenge in the game.

    And to get a non-spoilery thumbnail for the article, have one of my favourite fashion hunter sets from Wilds.

    That does it for today, and that is possibly the most recent topic I have reviewed yet. Thank you for reading all the way if you did, I hope you have a relaxing day whatever you do.

    Monster Hunter Wilds is available on Xbox Series, PS5, and PC.