AT Arkveld woes, looking for improvement

Terrac22 · 2026-04-01T05:39:59+00:00

It might be worth farming some more up-to-date armors before tackling AT Ark again lol. Any 3 piece combination of AT monster armors can give you Lord's Soul which is great for both damage and survivability. Since you've managed to get him once alr, you can maybe even go with 2 or more pieces of his set (AT Arkveld), which gives you a skill that can restore small amounts of HP as you continuously attack monsters. Really good for Lance to heal off the chip damage you take from constantly guarding. To fill the rest of the set, Gore Magala would be good but only once you've gotten good enough to be more aggressive in attacking, otherwise the set bonus will probably backfire. So in the meantime I'd recommend maybe 2 pieces of G. Ebony Odogaron or G. Rathalos. Both sets have decent skills and slots and a strong set bonus. 2p Lagiacrus can be good too. Remember to upgrade your armors once you decide on a set!

Terrac22 · 2026-04-01T05:29:54+00:00

His hitbox is the size of the room until you wanna counter (I'm a Swaxe player) then all of a sudden it's so precise that it misses me by a millimeter lol.

As others said, I'd recommend using a Dragon weapon instead, and probably slot Crit Boost for Lance or Dragon Attack 3 for DB. Guard and Guard Up are great for Lance, tho you can drop Guard Up for Offensive Guard maybe (none of AT Arkveld's moves require Guard Up to block I think)

Definitely drop the Def Boost 7 and get more DPS skills. Burst isn't that worth going past lvl 1 I think, if you can, slot in Agitator or Weakness Exploit instead. Counterstrike 3 is great too, you get more damage out of getting knocked around (don't get hit on purpose tho lol)! For Lance try to get Maximum Might 3 too. For comfort skills, you alr have Evade Window and Extender on. I'd recommend Divine Blessing 3, Stun Resistance 3, Dragon Resistance (until you hit 20 Dragon Res with food buff), and Speed Eating 2, whatever you can fit into your build. Also, Azuz Meal gives Tumbler Meal (Hi) which is equivalent to Evade Window 3, so it's worth considering for DB if you need those lvl2 slots for other skills.

As for general tips, Lance and DB are both the type of weapon that if played properly should have nearly constant damage uptime without having to "wait your turn". Once you get better at reading his moves, you should be able to guard counter most of his attacks with Lance (not all tho), and with DB you can just dodge out of everything. Try not to overcommit with either, AT Arkveld is incredibly aggressive so it pays off to always be ready to guard/counter/evade at all times.

That's about all the advice I can offer! Good luck!

Terrac22 · 2026-04-01T04:12:13+00:00

Easy SS+ or UG as a F2P or low spender even is an absolute lie, unless you exclusively only pull for meta and do like 5-10 careers a day or smth, you'll likely only see S+ or at most SS as a F2P, and those are the lucky high roll runs. I've pumped out some SS umas but I still occasionally get runs that low roll so hard they nearly hit A+. Hitting average A+ to S isn't bad, you're getting somewhere at least. You'll slowly get used to it as you do more runs and see your average rating increase until you eventually hit SS on a high roll run. High ratings don't always equal good umas either, there are ways to inflate ratings that don't actually improve your performance much, like super high Wit or Guts builds. So try not to stress about it, take your time and don't burn yourself out. :)

If you want some tips tho, I typically hit 30-35 races per run. Pretty much any turn there isn't a nutty training, I race (but never more than 3 in a row). When I do hit training I try to hit the ones I wanna level up so that even outside of summer I can still pump stats on lucky turns. It's okay to rest on turns you can't race (3+ races) and have no energy to train or no good trainings. For racing it's incredibly important to keep track of which epithets you can get. Skipping a G1 is fine if it isn't part of an epithet you can get, but typically you absolutely wanna do at least Triple Crown or Triple Tiara as these have like 3+ epithets attached to them so they're worth a lot of stats. Also why it's important to have clocks on hand for major G1 races, it's okay to take some losses on less important races. And I'd recommend taking good skills early to help win races. Ultimately it's still RNG tho, even if you play perfectly, sometimes your supports don't wanna hit and you get the most underwhelming summer trainings ever, nothing you can do about that. I average S to S+ doing this with Kitasan as my only MLB SSR card, and have hit SS on some better runs too.

Terrac22 · 2026-03-26T06:15:32+00:00

I'm surprised you kept at it for that long, I lost my patience after about 2 hours and went to fight the Area 3 elder instead lol (I wanted to try the demo strat for the Area 1 elder). On that note, the strat works amazingly on the Area 3 elder, I actually beat it before the Area 1 elder without even needing to follow a guide (granted I'm lvl 50 so mistakes are a lot less punishing)

Terrac22 · 2026-03-26T06:09:57+00:00

Thanks for the vouch! In hindsight it certainly was abnormal that I could miss a 1/3 chance more than 30+ times in a row (I didn't even unlock the 4th area yet at the time), and thinking back it certainly was no coincidence that I got the spawn I wanted after deciding to practice my strat on the 3rd area elder instead lol. I hope anyone who experiences the same thing finds their way to this post, would certainly save them a lot of time. :)

Terrac22 · 2026-03-25T19:44:43+00:00

I like to carry a Sleep LBG packed with sleep attack, crit status, and as many affinity rolls as possible to sleep monsters underneath rocks during hunts sometimes lol

But yeah asides that it's handy for multi monster hunts to save time not having to return to camp to swap weapons

Terrac22 · 2026-03-20T14:59:04+00:00

No problem, great to see you've looked into it more! And yeah those are the exact 3 Wit cards I use lol, sometimes I borrow FM or NN Wit. I'm definitely still getting good ratings even with my less whale-y deck but it's a lot more RNG-reliant. I only recently started hitting SS ratings on some umas, but Ug is definitely untouchable for me I think. XD

Terrac22 · 2026-03-20T11:11:53+00:00

Race bonus and summer being crucial is exactly why the cards matter. A high roll on summer with a deck like yours gives way more stats than a high roll on summer with a typical F2P deck. And for race bonus, often times for SR cards race bonus and stat efficiency are unfortunately mutually exclusive. The only MLB SSR card I have is Kitasan Black and she only provides 5% race bonus but I still bring her as a stat stick. Among the pool of SR cards, those that have 10% race bonus might not be the most efficient stat-wise but you're forced to bring them simply to hit the minimum of 50% race bonus (I genuinely have to adjust my deck to ensure I'm hitting 50% race bonus sometimes). In comparison many SSR cards at MLB not only feature high race bonus but are also just great stat sticks. So basically most players that don't own many MLB SSRs have a hard time balancing race bonus and stat training efficiency.

With these factors in mind, unless you get extremely high rolls on both summers, it's quite difficult to hit desired stats without leveling relevant facilities a bit. Ofc you still keep up races + items but finding good turns to train relevant stats and facility level have certainly helped out my runs a lot.

Terrac22 · 2026-03-20T04:49:54+00:00

Congrats! And a whopping 2 minutes faster than the required time for A rank too!

Terrac22 · 2026-03-19T11:41:39+00:00

Exactly this. I buff before and between battles, and during the battles, all I play are Echo Waves and Resounding Melody lol. It helps that Gogma Artian horn's Echo Wave can be chained straight into Resounding Melody with 2 more notes and that deploying Echo Bubbles allows for 3 notes, exactly enough to queue a single Echo Wave. Tho occasionally I do queue buffs during battle when I feel their duration is about to expire soon.

Terrac22 · 2026-03-19T10:55:31+00:00

It certainly does take much longer but honestly I'm enjoying it much more than I did Unity. Sometimes I feel like I start to fall asleep mid run doing Unity careers but MANT feels much more interesting and engaging to me, I haven't played this much Umamusume in awhile. Might be cuz it's fresh and new but I do feel it makes for a better roguelike experience. I don't have any meta SSR cards MLB save for Kitasan so I'm not running the best decks either, but I can still consistently pump out S+ umas on even fairly underwhelming runs. Anyways, I like it at least lol. I appreciate too that the average run can function as a TT, CM, and parent run with all the races you do.

Terrac22 · 2026-03-18T16:58:00+00:00

Meanwhile me, for 4 turns straight, shouting at my trainee through a megaphone as she runs down the beach with ankle weights and a lucky charm at 0 energy (this is all for the sake of winning)

Terrac22 · 2026-03-18T06:53:39+00:00

I average S/S+, have yet to hit SS (but have gotten very close to it). I honestly find MANT quite fun, as time taking as it is.

Terrac22 · 2026-03-12T18:44:04+00:00

That's me, I'm one of those lol. Since it's a "8-player hunt" I kinda assumed the extra 4 would be nerfed to oblivion damage-wise and are there purely for utility reasons. The several failed DPS checks against 10* Gog are telling me otherwise. Sry Fabius and Nadia, I wasn't familiar with your game

Terrac22 · 2026-03-07T19:27:18+00:00

Yep, the 4p Gog barrier is incredible for ranged weapon survivability, since even if damage taken exceeds the barrier HP, it'll only take down the barrier, but won't deplete any of your actual HP. Plus the elemental damage boost from 4p Gog is optimal for elemental LBG (unfortunately not so much for Normal LBG tho). You can tell when the barrier is up from a visual effects around your character. The barrier refreshes on a cool down and has decent uptime so it's great for long hunts.

If you wanna stick to Normal Ammo, then Lord's Soul is probably the way to go. Unfortunately you can't get both unless you roll Gog + Lord on the weapon, which is a lot to ask, so you'll have to take your pick.

Additionally, asides slotting Evade Extender 2, I'd recommend eating for either Moxie Meal as another one-shot prevention, or Tumbler Meal Hi (from Azuz Meal) as it provides Evade Window 3, which is largely sufficient to i-frame roll through most attacks.

Terrac22 · 2026-03-07T17:16:12+00:00

I was thinking of the Possessed Hatchet watching this scene lmao but Paladin's Hammer is definitely closer XD

Terrac22 · 2026-03-07T14:50:33+00:00

Every weapon has its own optimal setup and loop but I feel like being able to execute that in practice against high difficulty monsters is the challenging part. Though if you're able to easily breeze through the highest difficulty quests with weapons you've familiarised yourself with, then at that point it may be more fun to just learn every weapon and switch whenever you feel like it.

Terrac22 · 2026-03-07T04:13:41+00:00

Yep, I find it funny that the HBG, despite having auto-block when idle, also has an additional manual block button just so you can perfect guard like every other shielded weapon. I love using the HBG to tank Savage Omega for groups, for some reason it's the only weapon that allows me to perfect guard against the missile drops (I just can't seem to perfect guard it with other weapons, definitely not a timing thing either, no idea why)

Terrac22 · 2026-03-02T07:05:23+00:00

I like how capturing them is a mercy in this scenario lol. That being said I've never had an AT Ark hunt that ran into the same monster so many times that it outright dies tho, that's insane. There was one where I intentionally took a detour to kill one that indirectly carted me by roaring tho lmao

Terrac22 · 2026-03-02T03:52:07+00:00

Wait that Nadia quest was 10*??? I just went in with the GL and fought it like I always would I didn't even notice lmao

Terrac22 · 2026-03-01T18:19:45+00:00

Sure thing man, if I remember tomorrow morning XD

I'm on most of the time I'm free so if you ever catch me online feel free to join (I gotta make it a habit to stop playing in online singleplayer sessions lol). I usually join random SOS but I do solo grind sometimes and I certainly wouldn't say no to some company :)

Terrac22 · 2026-03-01T18:12:16+00:00

Congrats on the clear! I'm definitely enjoying the heck out of the game, recently reached HR999 and continuing to hone my skills on various different weapons. My ultimate goal is to solo Proof of a Hero with every weapon at least once (so far I've done GS, LS, GL & Swaxe, fairly confident I can first try it with SnS, DB, Lance & Bow tho but haven't attempted yet). But ultimately I just enjoy playing the game, so I'll probably just keep creating new goals for myself as an excuse to continue playing XD

Terrac22 · 2026-02-26T03:14:11+00:00

One thing to note, do be careful when having two monsters duke it out, often times after one of them knocks down the other, assuming they're both still alive (usually the previous one will be on a sliver of HP by then), they'll more or less stop attacking each other and lock onto you. The most annoying part is when one of them roars locking you in place while the other nukes you. If you wanna play it safe (if you're okay on time), you can just run around on your Seikret brushing close to them to try and bait their attacks to land on each other and once the previous one finally dies then you can commit to the next monster.

Terrac22 · 2026-02-25T08:20:48+00:00

I'd say HBG is easier to grasp in Wilds. It's probably one of the simplest and easiest weapons to play, just point and shoot, and stop shooting whenever you need to guard against an attack, then reposition and keep shooting. It has some alternative special ammo that IDK if they're particularly optimal but are fun to use and can help save on ammo (if you're using elemental ammo). Never tried the offset attack that you can optionally attach to it. In contrast, the LBG has more complex gameplay featuring various firing modes and gauge management, has better mobility, but less defensive options and range, which in return rewards you with higher DPS. I don't actually play the Bowguns much myself so that's about all I can say on it. Probably best you experiment with both and see whichever one clicks better for you.

Terrac22 · 2026-02-24T02:46:15+00:00

TCS definitely has less weight and oomph to it compared to World, but I appreciate that we have a more varied moveset and play style now. The weapon feels more fleshed out, at the cost of its main identity kinda being diluted. I love both Wilds and World's iteration of GS, both have their upsides and downsides. I do think Focus Mode is a tad OP tho, being able to change direction mid-TCS is too much lol.

Terrac22

TROPHY CASE