At gamescom 2019, I had the chance to tackle Velkhana, The new flagship monster of Monster Hunter World: Iceborne! Here is a short summary of this pretty amazing hunt in the Elder’s Recess!

The Velkhana Statue unfortunately was not present

The booth had 48 consoles of which half were for SP, they would change that on Thursday where 8 SP Stations were turned into MP Stations and Friday, where they completely removed the SP stations.

You had a total playtime of 30 minutes and able to choose between 4 Hunts: Great Jagras, Banbaro, Tigrex and Velkhana! I hunted Banbaro and Tigrex but Velkhana was my main focus, not only because she was the most intriguing but also an incredibly fun but difficult hunt!

Velkhana is beautiful!

You start off in the first camp in the Elders Recess, after some instructions by the Handler, you can head right into the map to find Velkhana. You are supposed to pick up tracks to find her but she always spawns in the same area (12), so you can just run straight at her.

Velkhana won’t attack you directly, the fight starts once you attack her and when that happens, things escalate quickly. She immediately puts on her ice-armor and the whole area gets covered in a chilling atmosphere as she starts attacking you.

Velkhana goes wild, she moves around quickly using her tail a lot. One of her primary combos are two tail spikes in a row, 3 when she is angry, but alternatively she can jump into the air to do a flying tailspike. This one can throw off your timing quite a bit, as you need to really need to pay attention to both audio and visual cues. The tailspikes are very quick, your reaction skills have to be on point, but evasion isn’t that hard since the hitboxes are rleatively small!

The Cold Dragon moves around a lot, a bunch of moves are not only to damage but also to create distance in preperation for the next attack. For example, a rotating version of the tailspike attack ends with her jumping back, which she then can either follow up with a charge or an icebreath attack.

There are several ways Velhana uses her Ice Breath. In most circumstances, it creates walls of Icecrystals that can hurt you. Vapor appears over those areas for a short time, so if you stand there, move away! However, these Ice Crystals can also be used as a cover but they won’t stay for too long!

It also loves doing an attack where it breathes ice right onto the ground, creating a massive Area Of Effect Attack which hurts a lot, but if you are clever you can actually dodge INSIDE that attack as it comes in a wave and get a few hits on.

Velkhana almost constantly moves, meaning that using openings is super important. Clutchclaw for example can get you some damage in during the attacks where she breathes Ice on the ground altough you gotta be careful not to drop too early or too late. If you manage to get enough damage in, her icearmor will be destroyed, knocking her over!

Without Icearmor, Velkhana looks quite different

Without Icearmor, her attacks are much more simple, there is in general less Ice involved and the fight gets a lot easier until Velkhana charges her Ice Armor again!

The quest in the demo lasts only 15 minutes, she travels to 3 different areas, a fourth one (Uragaan’s nest) when limping. My best run was one where I was able to make her limp within 8 minutes, however I had to leave the booth because my overall playtime ran out. Staff was impressed, and also apologized for forcing me out of the booth, friendly guys there! But you gotta follow rules.

Unfortunately the best run was my last run. On Friday they removed the SP stations making a Solo Velkhana impossible for me. Since I am no MH Elite Celibrity like Team Darkside and I don’t do speedruns (because I honestly am not interested in doing these frequently), there was no way they would give me an extra privelege. I had around 8 total attempts at Velkhana at the end. I do not own a PS4 so I even had to get used to the new moves and a different controller first!

Either way, Velkhana was a fantastic fight! She is quick and moves around a lot with devastating damage on her attacks but her weakness are the small hitboxes of her attacks. It balances out super nicely and when you get that satisfying feeling of knocking her armor off, you can feel the adrenaline rushing through you, I’m definetely looking forward to the final game!

My brother (left) and me (right) in the Monster Hunter Booth!

See you in Iceborne!

See Ya, Bye Bye then,

MrEinFan aka Chriss~