Welcome back, Hunters!
Kirin will soon be available to add to your Monster Hunter World experience. So today we’re going to follow the Scoutflies and track down some early information on the mysterious new elder dragon.
Pssst! Make sure you pre-order the bundle by June 28th to get the pre-order exclusive neoprene arena and holographic cards. These won’t be available once the pre-order closes.
Elder Dragon Expansion
This expansion contains all the armour your hunters can forge from these monsters as well as all the possible weapons that can be forged for all hunters! If you can forge it in the video game, it’s in this expansion!
Kirin Physiology
Kirin are so rarely sighted that little is known of their ecology. It’s been said they envelop themselves in pure electricity when they are provoked.
The lightning a Kirin cloaks itself with has been confirmed to toughen its skin. The key to hunting Kirin lies in staggering it. Using Elderseal weapons, and protecting yourself from and avoiding its lightning attacks.
Being an elder dragon, Kirin is in dangerous company being of similar difficulty to Kushala Daora, Teostra, and Nergigante. Kirin should be among the final tests of your campaign.
The other aspect of being an elder dragon is that there’s a lot more going on with this encounter than with most monsters. Some of Kirin’s special rules will be found in its rulebook. But for today, I’ll walk us through them.
Power Card
Kirin has an additional card that lives just to the side of its physiology card and it tracks the status of Kirin. It starts the game powered down, but, after Kirin resolves a thunder elemental behaviour it flips to the powered up side.
The first thing this does is give Kirin an armour boost for its body and legs. All that electricity coruscating around its body increases Kirin’s protection against physical attacks.
However, that’s not all it does…
Thunderstrike Deck
Kirin also has an entirely separate deck of behaviours called Thunderstrike cards. These cards represent Kirin’s ability to call down lightning from the sky. In the video game the ground glows blue just ahead of when lightning is about to strike the ground.
For the board game, this deck sits face up next to the game board showing you which nodes are “glowing blue”. So you know where the Thunderstrike will hit, but you don’t know when…
When the power card is showing the powered up side, after Kirin resolves a thunder elemental behaviour, the top Thunderstrike card goes off. Any hunters on blue glowing nodes are attacked by the Thunderstrike.
That’s right, you could get attacked by Kirin AND hit by a Thunderstrike in the same turn!
After Kirin resolves a Thunderstrike card, the top Thunderstrike card is discarded and the power card flips to the powered down side. Then, the sequence begins again and you’ll have a new set of glowing blue nodes to avoid, or step on at your peril!
*hint* - dodging Kirin’s behaviour gives you a chance to move off a blue glowing node before the Thunderstrike goes off!
Kirin Behaviours
On top of Thunderstrikes, Kirin still hits like an elder dragon. That is to say, hard.
Thunder Sweep will knock you off your feet if you’re not prepared for it. Visiting the Meowscular Chef for some extra thunder elemental resistance isn’t a bad idea before hunting Kirin!
Would you like to see Kirin in play? You can! We recorded our very own play through against Kirin with Jamie and Chynna returning to team up and try to take down this thunderous elder dragon! You can watch that below.
If you think you're ready to take on Kirin you can pre-order the expansion here. Good luck Hunter!
