Monster Hunter Tri - Modes

Modes

Offline Specific (Village): The offline plot opens with the player traveling to a small island right after an earthquake has happened. The player meets the village chief and he speculates a large monster is behind the earthquakes and sends you out to develop your skill as a hunter and find the monster behind the quakes. In single player the player has the option to Free Hunt, where they can venture into the Deserted Island map and slay monsters or forage for herbs, mushrooms, honey, seeds or ore. Also while in Town the player will have access to a farm which can be upgraded by providing specific materials. This farm allows Felyne farmhands to produce additional materials that will be helpful to the hunter, in addition to greatly reducing the need to gather items by hand. A traveling item-trading ship, the Argosy, will arrive in the village occasionally to provide several harder to find items, that he will trade to the player for other various items which are items found during free-hunts made with the designed purpose (sometimes)to be traded to this merchant. Also, the player can send boats (which can be upgraded to a maximum level of 3) to find fish, ore/treasure from the ocean, or to occasionally hunt large monsters for various parts.

Online Specific (City): Online gameplay has more quests available than offline. Up to 4 players can meet online in a city and embark on quests together. The quests are scaled up in difficulty to accommodate the increase of hunters. You have to complete each quest to get to higher difficulties. However, rewards are usually better in online play. Players will be able to give materials to a combination specialist for him to fill a jar, after a set amount of quests the player can return to find their items have become a new item. An interior decorating Felyne will also take items and can perform several different methods such as "brainstorming" to make items to decorate your house. Capcom will occasionally post differing "Event Quests" which are quests only available for an allotted amount of time, usually having special conditions, increased difficulty, or rare item rewards which are used to make special weapons or armor pieces. A change from previous Monster Hunter titles is that each tier of quests requires players to be of that tier or higher in order to join the quests. Previously there were only 2-3 lock out points, usually for the Plus and/or G rank quests. Unlike other games on the Wii, Tri uses a more traditional lobby system instead of friend codes or matchmaking for online play. The player chooses a server and room to join to play with other hunters, and can also add friends by simply sending friend requests to people they meet. As a player's Hunter Rank rises new features and items are available in the city for purchase, trade and creation. Once Hunter Rank 31 is achieved, players gain "elite hunter" status can then embark on elite quests (formally known as "plus" or "high rank" quests). These quests are more difficult and provide new "plus"-grade pieces of monsters or other gathered materials to make/upgrade higher grade weapons and armor, identified with a "+" after its name. Nothing changes from regular weapon upgrade to elite weapon upgrading, except for the higher part quality (and sometimes quantity). "Plus"/high grade armor sets have higher defense as well as different and/or better skills, but can sometimes require the occasional low-grade monster parts to make. Since skills between high rank and low rank armors are different, sometimes people opt to upgrade their older pieces of armor to "high grade," allowing them to gain the added bonuses of much higher defense, but retaining the skill set of their previous armor, which can be advantageous for certain styles of play.

The online servers will be shut down on April 30, 2013.