6 Reasons to Be Excited About Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

Monster Hunter fans are drooling at the prospect of getting more Monster Hunter World content.
6 Reasons to Be Excited About Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

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Fans of Monster Hunter are practically drooling at the prospect of getting more Monster Hunter World content. On September 6, fans of the intensely difficult franchise will get their hands on all kinds of new content, and it's all incredibly exciting!

Thankfully, we've managed to narrow down all of the cool new stuff coming in Iceborne to just the best-of-the-best. If you're on the fence about getting the game, reading this article will almost certainly make you want to pick up the giant expansion and get sucked in!

1. Master Rank Is Going to Be Very Hard

One thing fans of Monster Hunter love is the brutal difficulty of the game. And I'm going to say that Monster Hunter World was easy (if you've ever fought a tempered Kirin, you know it's anything but), but without the G-rank, it didn't have the same difficulty offered by previous games in the long-running series.

Now, World is getting Master Rank, which is essentially equivalent to G-rank. Fans who want to suffer through the long fights and feel the joy of carting multiple times after battling a monster for 30 minutes will get exactly what they want. After all, there's no satisfaction quite like defeating a monster with 10 seconds left on the clock on the hardest difficulty setting.

2. Brand New Monsters to Hunt

At the end of the day, what really makes Monster Hunter so much fun the is the diversity of the monsters. Each monster feels like an epic boss battle that truly tests your abilities. But because the core loop of the game is killing monsters to farm their parts, you end up fighting the same ones over and over.

With Iceborne, there will be brand new monsters, some returning favorites from previous games, and tweaked World monsters to fight. So far the monsters confirmed and rumored are Banbaro, Beotodus, Nargacuga, Tigrex, Velkhana, Glavenus, Acidic Glavenus, Shrieking Legiana, Barioth, Brachydios, Fulgur Anjanath, Ebony Odogaron, Viper Tobi-Kadachi, Coral Pukei-Pukei, Nightshade Paolumu, and Gammoth.

3. Hoarfrost Reach Is an Icy Hunting Paradise

The same things we said about the monsters applies to the world. You spend a lot of time farming monsters in the game's environments, and if you spend hundreds of hours playing MH World, you're bound to get sick of hunting on the same maps over and over.

With the introduction of Hoarfrost Reach, we get to explore a whole new location, which is always exciting. Add in the icy mechanics (get those hot drinks ready), and you have some old-school Monster Hunter fun.

4. Clutch Claw Looks So Fun!

The Slinger is... a thing that exists in Monster Hunter World. Maybe I just didn't make the most of it in the hundreds of hours I spent in World, but that's about the change with the introduction of the Clutch Claw.

Basically, the Clutch Claw is like a grappling hook that allows players to use the Slinger to hook onto the side monsters, which then opens up the ability to guide monsters in certain directions, such as towards the game's abundance of environmental traps. It sounds like something that'll greatly shake up the Monster Hunter World formula, especially for higher-skilled players.

5. Quality of Life Improvements

The story for Monster Hunter players coming into World was how much easier the game was to get into. It featured a massive list of quality of life improvements that got rid of much of the obtuse stuff from the older games in the series.

Now, with Iceborn, Capcom is taking things a step further by introducing even more improvements. Here's a quick breakdown of the quality of life improvements announced for Iceborne:

  • Headquarters-Specific Radial Menus - Different menu specifically when you're at a base
  • Option to add "craft all" to radial menu
  • In-game event schedule finally added
  • Fire slinger with any weapon drawn (including Clutch Claw)
  • Item box now has bow gun customizations

6. Two-Player Difficulty Scaling Is a Game-Changer

If you play Monster Hunter World with a full squad, this won't make much of a difference for you, but if you tend to play with just one friend, this is a big deal! In Iceborne, the game will dynamically scale difficulty if there are only two players in the game, instead of just having either single or multiplayer difficulties.

Even cooler is the fact that all Monster Hunter World players will get this upgrade, even if they don't purchase the expansion. But wait, there's more! If you're in a group larger than two and a player leaves, the monster's health will scale down on the fly, which means you won't get stuck battling a four-player monster with less than that amount of players.