In probably one of the most requested crossovers, Monster Hunter World players are finally able to stare eye to eye with an iconic beast from the Final Fantasy series. The Rathalos also jumped over to Final Fantasy XIV Realm Reborn, but we just saw someone decimate the Behemoth in Monster Hunter, so we had to highlight it. This four player team are able to take him down in just over 4 minutes and 30 seconds, all using the Heavy Bowgun’s explosives and status ailments to their advantage.

The Behemoth and his tougher variations is one of the most challenging beasts to walk into a hunter’s path. He has this meteor spell that is hard to avoid and can dish out a ton of damage, as well as lightning bolts. With straight overpowering through the various explosive ammos though, the Behemoth just doesn’t stand a chance.

This run is a cleverly orchestrated assault with everyone playing their part. Monsters take double damage on the attacks that wakes it from sleep. This is why we see a lot of sleep bombing, or using powerful attacks like the Charge Blade's Elemental Discharge or the Gunlance's Wyvern's Fire. It’s also effective to drop the overhanging crystals for a huge boost in damage when triggering stacks of barrel bombs, which the team actually tested when Behemoth was announced. From here each hunter puts in just enough of their special ammo to activate a status effect, keeping the Behmoth in relatively one place. 

Statuses slowly cease to activate as often, depending on the monster’s resistances, so the variety in stuns help control the situation. It is this control that help take out some of the more wild elements of a speedrun in Monster Hunter.

Truth be told though, it could have been faster as the team does lose a member towards the end.

We chatted with JinJinx, who is the main one recorded in the video about their strategy and thoughts on high levels of Monster Hunter play. Planning actually began before the Behemoth was even available. 

"We did quite a bit of research before Behemoth was released," JinJinx said, "to try to figure out what we could about the fight. We could tell that he was fairly easy to CC (crowd control) from gameplay footage. Although I never imagined his threshholds would be so insanely low. We also noticed how low the damage was on him, suggesting that he had very low HZVs (hit zone value) so we decided that clusters and bomb strats would be the best option since they ignore HZVs and in general deal insane damage."

"We also noticed that there were the two droppable rocks and we tested on other monsters beforehand to see if the rocks doubled damage on wakeups, which they did."

"Basically we tried to figure out how to deal the max damage to him in the least amount of time, which was more interesting on Behemoth because we only had the gameplay footages to go off of. The team built a skeleton plan off this information that we could refine more each hunt after he actually released." 

Sometimes, it takes a few tries

We then asked him how many runs it took for the team to get this time. 

"Because of work," he said, "I wasn't able to join in on the hunts until about 2 hours after Behemoth dropped, so I don't know how many runs they got in before I got there. After I got online, we got our goal of a sub 5 minute run in 2-3 hours and it was my 9th Behemoth hunt according to my hunter's notes. So I guess my 9th run we got it."

"A lot of those runs were me trying to figure out a good CC chain I could land solo. I had my laptop next to me and I was writing down how many shots it took to get each CC so I could make an efficient and clean chain. To be honest we were mostly just trying to set a high standard for a first day hunt. The goal time of that wasn't clear until a few runs in, at which point we set it to a sub 5 minute time since most our runs were running 5-5'45". When we got it we dropped the speedrunning to enjoy melee runs instead (and carry some people who needed the gear." 

We then asked JinJinx about his thoughts on the current method of competing in Monster Hunter through speedruns. 

"I feel like the nature of humanity is that we will always figure out a way to make a competitive display out of anything."

"I don't feel that speedrunning is necessarily a good way to compare players, since I think that how much fun you have in a hunt is what matters most. I know a guy who uses exclusively full monster armor sets and has a ball playing with them, and my friends and I regularly do roulette hunts where we randomly roll what we are hunting and what gear we use. I switch weapon classes every 1-3 hunts because I just find it more fun." 

"In a competitive sense (since you can't exactly measure fun), I don't really see any other method for comparing player skill. I do think that in a lot of cases though, comparing a time that's 5-10 seconds faster or slower than the other is not indicative of player skill. There's too much RNG involved, if anything it generally indicates which player has more perseverance to farm the RNG to get the more perfect run." 

There are lots of damage boosting elements that can take hours upon hours to farm with many players still unable to make a truly perfect build. 

"I do like Arena a lot more as an indication of player skill since the items and equipment choices are set.  I know a lot of speedrunners who lack random decos like handicraft that are needed to use the best build available, and that 5% damage loss matters on a speedrun. I find arena a bit more pure because of that, it's all about how well you play, how well you use the items available, and of course monster RNG."

"I just really wish that there were some properly scaled 1 player Arena quests."

JinJinx and his team included not only the other hunters in this run, but also some others that helped research the Bethemoth. That team was: Kismet, Pooty, Krusche, Xan, and Krusos. 

We’ve definitely seen some amazing skills come out of Monster Hunter World. Capcom even dipped the game into their esports cauldron with the Monster Hunter World USA Championships, which was a speedrun competition. Even in the cooperative oriented titles, competitive play can arise.

We’ll have to see how Monster Hunter further develops more competitive elements in future updates, games, and events. For now racing against the clock adds an interesting layer. 

For more Monster Hunter World related content, check out our interview with Frank Yang who won a weapon design contest that was later put into the game. For PC players that are just getting to the really tough monsters, check out our Deviljho guide.