Monster Hunter Now Season 1 adds invasions and layered armor
Monster Hunter Now Season 1 is just around the corner, bringing new foes, armor, and a whole lot more to the Pokemon Go-like game. MH Now Season 1, officially called The Vernal Invader, goes live as a free update on March 13, 2024, with three new monsters, a challenging new weapon, layered armor, and the game’s first season pass.
The new monsters storming into Now are:
- Odogaron (desert)
- Tzitzi-Ya-Ku (swamp)
- Deviljho
Odogaron hits hard and can inflict the new bleed status effect that, like in other Monster Hunter games, saps your health until you treat the affliction or it expires. Tzitzi-Ya-Ku is small and agile, and it uses a flash attack that stuns you for a few seconds if you get caught in the blast.
Deviljho is a bit different from the other two. True to its nomadic nature in Monster Hunter 3 and the Frontier games, Deviljho only turns up occasionally in Monster Hunter Now’s new invasion feature. Portions of Now’s map will become unstable over time and glow with a strange light. Devilhjo has a chance of crashing into battles fought on unstable ground, complete with a set of powerful attacks that become stronger as the fight wears on and Deviljho powers up.
If you manage to defeat these monsters, you’ll earn materials to craft new armor sets inspired by them.
Speaking of armor, Monster Hunter Now Season 1 adds several layered armor sets. Layered armor is Monster Hunter’s transmog feature. It lets you impose a piece of armor’s appearance on your current loadout without changing its stats.
Season 1’s available layered armor sets range from school uniforms to casual-wear hoodies and punk-inspired looks, all of which come in different colors. There are 30 layered armor items total in the season, and you can use other monster armor as layered armor as well.
The Charge Blade makes the jump from mainline Monster Hunter to Now, and it functions in pretty much the same way. It starts in sword-and-shield mode, with a set of quick attacks and some defensive utility. It stores energy as you attack, and you can eventually swap to axe mode using that energy. The Charge Blade’s axe form is slower, but it hits much harder and uses stored energy to fuel heavy attacks.
The Charge Blade unlocks at Hunter Rank 11, and you’ll have plenty of chances to practice with it. Niantic is celebrating Monster Hunter’s anniversary with several events during the season. The first runs from March 14, 2024, through March 24, 2024, which adds 16 new quests, a chance to earn Zinogre Plates and Wyvern Gems, and Beginner Weapon Tickets. Those tickets let you forge weapons from previous events that you might have missed.
Finally is the season pass. Like most free-to-play games, Monster Hunter Now has a free track and a paid track. The free one gives you materials and cosmetics. The paid track does as well, but you get more cosmetics more often. You can buy the pass with gems, though you won’t earn gems from the pass.
Monster Hunter Now’s season pass has 100 tiers of rewards, though you can technically just keep ranking it up infinitely. You’ll keep earning materials until the pass expires at the start of the next season.
When that season is, Capcom didn’t say, though it’s pretty much guaranteed that we’ll see Monster Hunter Now Season 2 at some point. Since the mobile game launched in late 2023, over 10 million people around the world have downloaded it.
