Monster Hunter Now introduces Driftsmelting to take your armour to the next level

One of the most fun parts of the Monster Hunter franchise, to me at least, is designing that perfect armour set to give you that optimal skill set you’ve been dreaming of. Unfortunately, you sometimes had to sacrifice fashion, but that won’t be a problem in Monster Hunter Now, thanks to the latest free update introducing Driftsmelting.

Driftsmelting brings with it a new menu to power up your armour. By collecting and using Drifstones, you are able to imbue your gear with massive new skills, up to a total of ten per piece. It is an incredibly exciting new system that offers everyone the opportunity to overload their gear with a host of incredibly powerful buffs.

There are currently a total of five different Driftstones that you can get your hands on; Crimson, Azure, Amber, Cyan, and Pale. The biggest issue to obtaining these is that they are guarded by the game's most vicious monsters. You will need to take on beasts like the Rathalos, Devlijho, and Zinogre to find the colour you want. Luckily, Special Carving Knives are applicable to these drops.

The second issue, and writing this I think it might be worse than point one, is that the skill you get is random. Each stone has a pool of its own specific skills, as well as a bigger pool of non-specific ones. You can see where this is going. Prepare to farm the same dragon over and over to get the skill you want.

On the upside, you can get some pretty cool skills from this. Pop a Cyan Driftstone and you might get Poison Attack to whittle down those bigger health bars, or harvest Pale Driftstone to get the frankly invaluable Earplugs skill. You might also get the Aggressive Dodger skill, exclusive to Driftstones, to power up your counterattacks.

Monster Hunter Now is available to download from the App Store and Google Play.