In this day and age user-created content is quickly becoming an accepted and successful strategy for games. So can user-created content be used to enhance Monster Hunter and make it more popular outside of Japan? I think it can.

Weapons and armor are a big aspect of series. Your character is always trying to find the best combination to use in each situation. Instead of Hunters all running around with the same weapons why not allow the user customize their weapons.

By that I mean allow the user to take a weapon they have and use materials to refine a weapon to better suit their needs. For example, let's say you have you're use an Aka based weapon which only goes up to green sharpness. Allow a player to refine the weapon and add more sharpness by using materials. In this case a Ceantuar Claw or some such. To balance this you could either lower weapon attack , elemental power, or only allow a set number of refinements. It would be a neat way to let players change the way they think about weapon choice. I could refine a weapon for more elemental power, high sharpness levels, high sharpness (think sharp sword skill) , more attack, better critical rate, etc. This lets someone retool their weapon a bit.

Now for bowguns you could allow a small amount of elemental power to be infused so that all ammo that isn't elemental got a slight amount of element added to it. You could also refine the gun to do more damage with a particular ammo type at the cost of lowering overall attack, or eliminating other ammo types.

Now let's take this a little further. Outside of improving a weapon's usefulness, people like to have something unique to call their own. Let's allow hunters to make color dyes. They can use the dyes to customize the color of weapons to their liking.

These come together to allow weapons that are simliar but different enough for hunters to call them their own.

Everyone that plays Monster Hunter knows how the right weapon can make all the difference in a fight. No one however seems to ever thank the good old carving knife. Without it you could never carve any parts off of your kill and would be stuck with just the rewards from a quest.

Anywho I have a few ideas on how the carving knife could be improved and made into a more important tool.

Make the carving knife an equipment slot.

The knife can be upgraded with monster parts for various effects when carving. For balance the knife will have a sharpness level that cannot be restored and once depleted, the knife is gone. As each wyvern has its own hardness, you may get say a total of 15 carves from a stone carving knife when carving a kut-ku, while only getting 5 carves when carving a gravios.

The carving knifes will be mainly based on ores with the ability to be upgraded with monster parts. I.E studding a stone carving knife with Ceantuar claws to increase its sharpness level. Also studding a knife with say a ruby from a wyvern will slightly increase the chance of carving rare items but perhaps affect carving speed or durability of the knife. However the knive would have unlimited use on normal monsters (effects of the current knife wouldn't do anything). I.E prey and minions are normal monsters.

Some of the effects that could be put on the carving knives:

+/- carving speed (could be as a result of the weight of the ore it is made of)

+/- number of carves per carving spot (the blade's cutting accuracy... how fine the blade is. could be altered by studding or sharpening the  blade against high grade ore)

+/- chance of rare items

+/- rewards (by using a proper knife the monster is left intact and more rewards can be harvested)

Maybe even the ability to customize the color and look of your carving knife to match the style of your character.

and many others could be added. I think it could definitely add a new flavor to the game. Those are my thoughts. Free feel to comment or pm me.

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