If you’re playing Monster Hunter: World outside of Japan, you’re missing out a quest for one of the game’s most striking armor sets. The Azure Starlord set requires a code that you can only obtain by going to the Universal Studios theme park in Japan, but if you’re tenacious, there’s still a way to get it. It’s just going to take a lot of work.
There are two Universal Studios Japan quests in the game, and unlocking them requires codes that are handed out exclusively at the Osaka theme park. The first quest grants armor for your Palico companion and a low-level longsword. The second quest grants an awesome-looking armor set for your hunter.
If you’re in the West, you can’t normally access these quests. The theme park codes only work on Japanese copies of the game, using Japanese PSN accounts. Since Monster Hunter: World was only released on the PlayStation 4 in Japan, Xbox One players are out of luck entirely. If you want the armor, you need to find, and join up with, a Japanese player who is hosting these quests.
To give a sense of how much of a crapshoot that is, let me break down my efforts from last night. First, I tried asking about access to the USJ armor quests on social media, retweeting to Kotaku’s two million Twitter followers. When that didn’t yield any results, I logged into the game and walked to the event board to search for SOS flares. Players looking for help on quests can fire there flares to call in other players. Since the new quest involves fighting an extra large Dodogama and a miniaturized Azure Rathalos, I searched for event quest with the Dodogama as the target creature. I spent about ten minutes refreshing my search, turning up nothing, before looking to other outlets.
Since the release of the first USJ quest earlier this year, generous players have made a habit of occasionally hosting sessions where they run the quests. The demand for the sessions has only increased now that the full armor set is released, meaning more hosted servers. Still, finding an active session on a late Monday night proved difficult. Two posters on the Monster Hunter: World subreddit host scheduled USJ runs, but both of them had canceled due to unforeseen personal circumstances.
Finally, I took to Twitch and looked at streamers broadcasting the game and found a German-language streamer who had been hosting USJ runs for nearly 10 hours. After numerous attempts to join their session, I was in.
That was the process I had to go through to find a session where the event was hosted. Next, I had to wait until the streamer posted the quest and hope that I would be one of the three players out of 15 lucky enough to join the quest. I only wanted to complete the armor set, which required five of the special Azure Stargems that dropped from completing the quest. These are rare items used only in crafting the Universal Studios armor. I used lucky vouchers—consumable items meant to boost rewards—to increase my odd of getting more gems, but never received more than one per run.
There we other problems along the way. My host’s internet was spotty and I lost connection to the session twice, placing me back at the step of somehow getting back in the session again whenever this happened. By the end of their stream, I had four Azure Stargems. Granted, that’s more than most players have, but one fewer than I needed for a complete armor set.
Of course, just having the gems isn’t enough to craft the armor. You also need monster parts from Dodogama and Azure Rathalos. I was short of these materials and needed to spend extra time hunting to gather the various scales, tails and wings required to craft each piece of armor. I finished my ensemble with some Odogoron leggings dyed to match the Azure armor.
It is worth all of this hassle to get the armor? Well, that depends on why you want it. It’s basically a variation of Rathalos gear and offers the same full set bonuses, plus a few other benefits such as Critical Boost on the leg piece and level two recovery on the gloves. As a whole set, I find it somewhat underwhelming—particularly since you can get the fantastic Devil May Cry set right now—but creative hunters might find it useful for mixing and match with other gear.
However, if you’re looking to make a personal statement, the Azure Starlord armor is as bold as it gets. The absurd dedication it takes for Western players to get, combined with the striking visual design, is sure to make your fellow hunters green with envy. The events last until August, so you still have a bit of time to get the gear. It’s possible that Capcom will release these quests outside of Japan after that, given that it has done so in the past: Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate eventually received its own USJ armor set worldwide, as did Monster Hunter Generations. But for now, you’ll need to jump through serious hoops.