Restricting to only one weapon like Hammer or Gunlance is simple to understand, like many hunters only know how to use one of the available weapons. The other restriction – only key quests – is something different. Instead of directly making the hunting experience more difficult, the restriction is more likely to affect the available builds, which will require more time and effort with research.

For example, even if a monster is available in this run, as it spawns in one of the key quests, it does not assure that I can build its weapon or its whole armour set. Because the corresponding parts may require drops from other monsters that are not included in any key quests, that means no access to those monsters, to those drops, and hence to the parts.

After sorting out which builds to build, the rest will be pretty simple. Even though Hammer is still considered as one of the weakest weapons in MHX, by utilising Aerial Style and Bushido Style, as well as its below par Hunting Arts, most key quests will be manageable.

For the village part, my final goal was clearing the first graduation quest 「宿命の四天王」. Of course there are more graduation quests afterwards, but these will not spawn by taking only key quests, which means out of my consideration. And for the Low Rank, I chose the armour set of Royal Ludroth. Again, far from the best set in the Low Rank, but the main concern here is to gain more defence and jump to the High Rank as soon as possible. This armour set is one of those available (not many actually) to build in this run, so I built it without wasting too much time, even though the whole set came with no useful skills at all.

The Low Rank armour set of Royal Ludroth was enough for the Low Rank part, but I did need to find an upgrade then which would hold unto the end – unlocking the hunter rank cap by clearing 「奈落の妖星」 in the hub.

In the end, after doing some research, I chose the High Rank armour set of Glavenus with the route A of Seregios Hammer. Both are not optimal options, as so many are not available in this run. But they turn out to be good transitional options:

• As one of the main monsters, Glavenus' whole armour set is available and can provide the useful skill of Sharpness +1/+2 at this stage. Additionally, simply by hunting Glavenus itself repetitively, you can complete around 90% of its armour set, and the rest will not take long.

• For the weapon, usually the route B of Seregios is stronger, But again, Route B is not available in this run. Additionally, the Route A Seregios Hammer has a good synergy with Sharpness +1/+2 from the armour set to keep a long white sharpness, just convenient.

Last but not the least, as this was a special and restricted run, I did not "invent" any optimal charms. The charms used in the following builds are actually natural but garbage ones.

Finally, Ostogaroa is not a big deal, as long as you know what to do. Of course with the silly weapon called Hammer, it did take quite some time to clear which was nowhere near fast. But overall low risk, and it was done.

Around 41 hours and Hunter Rank 25, much quicker than the Gunlance run, since MHX only has only up to High Rank and is overall an easy Monster Hunter game. Even though I intentionally picked Hammer in this run – one of the weakest in MHX, the actual experience was not near challenging at all. However, given the limited options, searching what build was fun.