• Light Melee - Smaller bladed weapons that include shortswords, large knives, small chainsaws, and other such things that could be effectively wielded in one-hand. The strength of this category of weapons is that you are the most effective at piercing the joints on Abductors, and your efficacy is not reduced when attaching yourself to an Abductor using your Thorn.
  
• Heavy Melee - Large, two-handed Swords (both the traditional giant-slab-of-metal variety and Tachi) and Hammers. These weapons have much stronger charge attacks that can be charged for longer to deal increased damage, and allow you to pivot your swing as you unleash the charge attack. You are more vulnerable due to the extended charge time, but your range is also significantly increased to compensate.
  
• Polearm - Spears, Bardiche, etc. With longer range and increased mobility, including aerial combos, spears make for a decent technical playstyle for people who still want the increased damage of the larger weapons but not be limited by charge times. Has a mechanic where fighting at low HP will increase your damage.
  
  All melee weapons can be charged for different/stronger attacks, but the power of this varies on the category. As a Light Melee player, your charge attacks are typically used to inflict Elemental statuses as they execute many hits at once, while for Heavy Melee, a charge attack is simply a huge spike of raw damage.
  
  
• Assault Weapons - Compact, low-recoil guns that can be effectively wielded while utilizing the Thorn to traverse the area. If you enjoy spending more time in the air around the monster as opposed to on the ground, you'll likely prefer these.
  
• Portable Artillery - Large weapons that can't be used while ziplining with the Thorn. This tends to include heavier rifles and explosive launchers of varying sorts.
  
• Autocannons - Typically giant, gently caress-off explosive lasers/cannons that restrict your mobility and have limited capacity, but are very good for temporarily distracting/disabling Abductors. Also includes gimmick launchers for explicitly disabling Sinners/Abductors.
  
  Anybody who has played God Eater should be familiar with this setup, although the modularity of the guns themselves is significantly less expansive due to each gun type having a specific use instead of a "specialty".
  

• Fire - Basically Poison. When you hit a limb enough, it will burst into flames and be damaged over time.
  
• Ice - Lowers defense on the limb. Useful for speeding up severing.
  
• Electric - Paralysis. Temporarily disables use of the limb. The efficacy of this varies wildly, typically this is most useful against Bipedal Abductors. Things like Quadropedals, Paradoxa, Ramosa, etc. are not greatly inconvenienced by this status unless you manage to apply it to all of their limbs at once.
  
• Will'O - If you've played MH3/MH4, this is Slime. When you apply enough Will'O to a limb, eventually it will explode for a big chunk of damage.
  
• Impact - While this is not technically an "element", this stat determines how much of your damage can contribute to causing the monster to Stagger. Mostly relevant when attacking legs.
  

• Binding - This Thorn type is primarily used for disabling Abductors. It is the most efficient at Dragdowns, and gives your team members an attack boost while attached. The primary function is almost exactly like a trap out of Monster Hunter, except it only works on Sinners. The secondary function works from a distance and will disable Abductors for a short time.
  
• Shielding - This Thorn is for keeping your team safe. When attached to allies, it gives them a defense boost. The primary function gives yourself and everybody close to you a defense boost. The secondary function creates a large wall that impedes the movement of and blocks attacks of Abductors and Sinners.
  
• Healing - This Thorn is for healing. When attached to allies, it heals them over time. The primary function cleanses debuffs and heals from yourself and allies around you. The secondary function lays down a healing thicket (that is vulnerable to attack from everybody).
  

• All-Purpose - These are the most common. They are the humanoid-esque builds with a single Pod in their chest. These typically have shoulder-mounted and arm-mounted artillery.
  
• Carrier - These are the ones explicitly meant for Citizen transportation. These have two Pods in their chest and one in their back.
  
• Artillery - These are the UFO-looking builds typically with a large cannon on the top. They have a single Pod underneath the cannon.
  
• Ramosa - This is the pictured one on the far right, with the wings and claws. They are fond of pouncing attacks and long-range beam/bomb weapons. They contain a Pod under their chest.
  
• Paradoxa - Essentially a Spider-Tank. Has two cannons for spreading web traps everywhere (these can be broken out of if you are attacked by anything, including allies) and loves to spin. All of the legs have outer armor that must be removed before the limb can be severed.
  
• Dionaea - loving Dragons. Loves to fly around spew bullshit everywhere. Disabling of its wings is priority one.
  
• Peltatum - Basically an AI-core with jet engines attached. Each of the engines can be broken (though this does not disable its flight) and it comes with a number of detachable Chains that will seek out combatants. Disabling the Chains when they are detached should be your primary concern, otherwise you wont be able to handle the fight.
  

Emalde fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Nov 5, 2014

• Rarity - Rarity determines the number of module slots on the weapon. At R8, you have the maximum of 12 slots. There is no reason not to have as many mod slots as possible. During Modification, you can only force your base weapon to Maintain/Inherit 7 of its existing mods. The other 5 slots are based on the resource material and/or randomly generated. Mods can be deleted for 5k Entitlement Points per mod at the Cell Garden in 6-F140
  
  
• Power - Your attack damage ofc. At level 1, this is the most important value to take note of as it will determine whether your weapon even has the capacity to become an optimal variant. This table, in the highlighted column, shows the maximum Power value for the highest Class of the "Late-Bloomer" Growth type. The takeaway from this is that when you craft a new R8 weapon, you want it to be either at or below that highlighted value for the respective weapon.
  
  
• Growth Type - There are four Power curves for all weapons, divided into four categories by japanese fans into "Late-Bloomer", "Irregular", "Flat", and "Early-Peaker". For short, we can refer to these as "G1", "G2", etc. G1's curve is such that at level 1, your weapon will have the lowest possible power, while at level 10 it will have the highest possible power. In all cases, you want a G1 weapon.
  
  
• Growth Class - If you're familiar with the deeper mechanics of Pokemon, this can be directly compared to the IV system. In short, upon crafting/seizing a new weapon and when remodeling level 5+ basic weapons into advanced models it is assigned a random Class, and the Class of the weapon will be reflected in its Power. It can be C1 (the highest possible) all the way down to C21 (the lowest possible). Every weapon is assigned a Class upon generation, and a C21 weapon is typically hundreds of points worse than a C1 weapon in Power. Again, in all cases, you are aiming for a C1 weapon. However, the bright side is that you can directly increase the Class of a weapon at any time! More on that slightly down. You can check the full list of power curves by Class by just selecting your weapon from the dropdown and hitting the button. They are sorted by Growth class in descending order, so G1 G2 G3 G4.
  
  
• Element - It should be noted that if you want to pump an Element into a weapon, there's no reason not to just shoot for the maximum base value for the entire Element pool, which is 100 (that is to say, you can only have 100 base points of any combination of elemental damage. 99 fire 1 ice, 25-25-25-25, etc). Most weapons typically have a few random points of Elemental damage anywhere, but do not worry as this can also be modified directly.
  

Emalde fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Nov 5, 2014

Emalde fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Nov 7, 2014