Final Fantasy 14's Monster Hunter collab has two very easy steps: buy the game, spend 500 hours beating the game

I'm all for a simple, no-nonsense set of instructions on how to participate in a videogame. Perhaps in Final Fantasy 14's case, though, it could have popped a little clause underneath its two-step guide to its upcoming Monster Hunter Wilds collab to note that there's, well, a healthy dose of triple-digit hours between them.

How do you participate in the newest Monster Hunter collab, then? Step one: create a character. Buy the game, essentially. Step two? Play through the base game, four expansions, and approximately 500 hours of story in order to reach Arkveld. Even more if you actually want to check out side quests and level other classes. Easy enough, right?

This how to participate for FFXIV's MH collab is so fucking funny

— @envinyon.bsky.social (@envinyon.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-08-20T10:27:22.872Z

To be fair, it's not the first time that a Final Fantasy 14 collaboration has required reaching the endgame. When Square Enix originally collaborated with Capcom for Monster Hunter: World, you had to finish Stormblood (the current expansion at the time) to fight Rathalos. The Nier: Automata raid series requires you to finish Shadowbringers and be at least level 80. Even all the way back in A Realm Reborn, the Final Fantasy 13 crossover event needed you to be maxed out at level 50 in order to nab the entire Lightning or Snow armor set.

Does that make this any less funny? Of course not. It would have been considerably more frustrating if the event was a limited-time run—which the Final Fantasy 13 crossover was, I cry as it wrapped up while I was still ploughing through the level 30s—but similar to the Rathalos event, Arkveld should be around for the foreseeable.

It's still a tough sell for Monster Hunter fans, mind you. Dedicate at minimum between 300 and 500 hours on the main story alone—though you could do it in less if you skip all the cutscenes, you heathen—for a single fight that folk'll probably be able to blitz through in sub-10 minutes.

That's not to say it hasn't been done before—a friend of mine mainlined the game to hell and back just to fight Rathalos a couple years ago—and if we're being real, it's not as if Monster Hunter fans aren't used to a terrifying timesink of a grind.

I am looking forward to seeing what fighting Arkveld in the confines of FF14 is going to look like, though. The Rathalos fight is easily one of my favourites in the game, and my second-favourite collab after Nier: Automata.

It does a great job of playing around with MonHun mechanics—like having to heal through potions instead of being zapped with Cure by a White Mage—and even has a mechanic that lets you cut off the tail. I'll just be over here praying that Square Enix makes the Arkveld armor for my Warrior of Light, it's rad.