Monster Hunter: World – Iceborne is one very dense expansion for a very dense game. It cakes on the complexity with all-new abilities, monsters, and weapons. But the real dirt doesn’t start to kick up until after the credits roll. Like the rest of the series, the new MHW endgame is where most hardcore players will spend the most time. It’s all about hunting for better weapons, farming materials, and grinding for Master Rank in a new locale called the Guiding Lands. This process does look very different in Iceborne than it did before. Sadly, it’s still quite a grind — and not in the way I like from these games.

Grinding in the New Monster Hunter Endgame

Every time one of the subsections levels up, though, one of the other areas has a chance to level down. Lost progress is never fun; it’s especially bad when you’re not actually failing. The XP reductions are clearly just designed to keep you fighting the same monsters again, and again, and again. Which is… fair, to a point. That’s Monster Hunter, baby! Not to mention the Iceborne bench is pretty deep, and only about to get bigger with free updates. There’s a Super Saiyan gorilla I’m very excited to tango with later this year.

But this isn’t the kind of grinding that makes MHW enjoyable. The idea is to kill or capture monsters, turn their hides into gear, and use that equipment to fight even bigger baddies. The downside is that you don’t always get what you want — rare drops can be annoying. Yet there’s usually something to put those extra parts you acquire towards. The Elder Melder, for instance, lets you melt down monster bits into useful items. Whereas these abstract XP bars serve no function but to gate creatures like Zinogre, Yian Garuga, and… some other surprises I won’t spoil here.

Monster Hunter: World had the same issue. You had to grind Hunter Rank to reach certain thresholds. It was annoying back then, too, and made it hard for friends to play together until everyone reached the arbitrary number. To see Capcom walk into the same rake is a bit of a disappointment. That’s especially true when the rest of Iceborne is so damn good. The new monsters, the Clutch Claw, improved weapon balance: it all feels great! It’s all in service of a new and different MHW endgame, but not necessarily a better one.

On the bright side, Capcom supported the hell out of Monster Hunter: World after launch. I have similar hopes for Iceborne. Assuming Arch-Tempered Elder Dragons and the Kulve Taroth siege were just experiments, the new MHW endgame could look very different in just a few months. At the launch of this new expansion, though, it could still use some work.

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