Monster Hunter World Iceborne Update #2 Overview

The hunt is on! Monster Hunter World: Iceborne is back with another update. This time around it’s bringing everything, even the kitchen sink, for its second free title update to top off the first one with Rajang and its volcanic region. Hunters will be able to discover the new snowcapped zone that appeared near the forest region, home to the Stygian Zinogre with its jet black and red aesthetics and menacing roars.

And with a new region, brings new faces to the Guiding Lands. Here, we’ll see the likes of Viper Tobi-Kadachi, Barioth and Shrieking Legiana that will pile up to the number of monster corpses as you hunt down and skin every last one of their surviving families. This time around, we’ll also be able to hunt down a tempered Ruiner Nergigante to soak your pants wet before it turns to ice on the level 7 Tundra region while also having a chance to be lured as tempered in others. So it’s highly advisable to bring in an extra set of pants for each and every hunt if you can as well as a pack of jerky for the long hunts. And with all-new monsters in the Guiding Lands also mean an expanded augment system. This adds up an extra upgrade slot to add more augments to power up your builds even more for the upcoming siege ahead, more on that later.

With the addition of the new tundra region also brings up the total possible levels of the regions to 27 which gives you enough room to play with your region level’s fluctuations while also making it easier to level up one or the other by manually dropping levels for one region. There’s quite a bit to nitpick with the way it’s implemented but it’s a welcome change nonetheless.

The fight with the Stygian Zinogre itself while similar to its base variant offers some pretty noticeable changes like a dash attack after two sets of ground slams or different behavioural patterns to its thunder bugs, one of which is gradually expanding lightning strikes. As for weapons and armour, the set bonus remains the same as a three-part latent power secret that is also inter-swappable with the regular zinogre armour. Weapon designs, however, remain similar to its only difference towards its colour schemes. Meanwhile, it does line up to the dragon element with higher raw compared to the Zinogre line of weapons and melee weapons having natural purple sharpness.

We also get a sneak peek at the true identity of our unknown dragon which appears to be the adult Xeno’Jiiva that is now being called Safi’Jiiva that can be fought after the special assignment against the Stygian Zinogre. At this time, it doesn’t particularly give us any new sets or weapons however the full seige similar to the likes of Kulve Taroth is going to be available starting December 13 up to the first week of January and will bring in a transforming armour set aside from the huge list of awakened line of weapons for every weapon type that has randomized elements or status effects. Which can be further modified to slot in up to 5 effects similar to the augments we use on weapons. However, this also let us put in armour set bonuses from stuff like a tigrex or anjanath on the weapon itself.

The update also brings in the second batch of craftable high rank layered armours from the likes of odogaron, rathalos, legiana, dodogama, uragaan, lavasioth and zorah magdaros to name a few which spices up the life of every hunter that doesn’t want to run with a mix bag of armor pieces for their efficient hunting needs.

With all the content updates from its initial release and leading up to next year, Capcom has been really good at keeping the game fresh for its most hardcore fans while making its casual audience enticed to come back for more as each sizable update gets introduced. Stay tuned for more Monster Hunter World: Iceborne updates in the future.

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