When not loving the heck out of Xenoblade Chronicles, I am still toiling away in the arena in Monster Hunter Freedom Unite.  Currently I’m about 87% towards my  goal of acquiring a Barrage Piercing — a truly amazing armor piece for Gunners.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the arena is really proving helpful at improving my skills with weapons I’m not comfortable with.  The best example of this is the Hunting Horn — a weapon I largely ignore.  Well, I had to fight a Tigrex with one.  If you’ve never seen or fought a Tigrex, it’s basically a T-rex with bat wings and an untreatable case of “roid rage”.

To my surprise, I actually did really well against the beast, clobbering it into submission with my humble bagpipe:

The arena is also a great tool for honing your skills more with a weapon you like.  I’ve been into the Gunlance (not to be confused with a Gunblade. Oh, Japan.) lately and the Arena gives me an excuse to test my talent with it against tough enemies.  Here I take on a Diablos, which is like a rabbit but its ears are actually terrifying horns that can gore the heck out of you:

So that is the status of my arena endeavors.  Expect more updates leading up to the acquisition of my Barrage Piercing.