Yes, you can level up your bug.
The Insect Glaive , unlike other weapons (except Prowler Mode maybe), is a living weapon. What I mean by this is: The Kinsect is a living, breathing insect that you command using the power of the Glaive itself (don’t ask questions). As such, the Kinsect evolves and levels up in tandom with the Glaive, and must be fed to be healthy. This doesn’t make it some sort of pet simulator, but it does mean that the Insect Glaive has a few more kinks to iron out when upgrading it.
Insect Glaive Upgrade Menu. It’s a bit more complicated.
When you open up the menu you will see that you can not only upgarde the Glaive, you can even upgrade the Kinsect! What is this supposed to mean? Well, in this game, Kinsect upgrades and level ups are independent of Glaive upgrades and level ups. This means you can have a maxed out Insect Glaive that still only has a level 1 Kinsect! Not recommended, of course, but this gives you freedom to really think through what you’d like your Kinsect to become without worrying over locking yourself in too early.
This little triangle diagram will help you track your Kinsect growth.
So let’s talk Kinsect. There are three types of Jellies that you can feed the Kinsect which will upgrade your Kinsect’s speed, weight, or power . Meanwhile, Ambrosias allow you to customize the elemental power your Kinsect has, since it does do damage when it strikes the monster and absorbs its “essence”. Ambrosias are not tied to your Kinsect’s progression and can be added and wiped clean any time.
If you want to upgrade your Jellies to the + and ++ versions, you will need Larval Extract and Paralarval Extract , respectively. The latter is exclusive to High Rank. Larval Extract will often appear when you use Neko (means “Cat”) to grow more Jellies, and both can be gathered from the Jelly areas on the maps!
So what exactly does speed, weight, and power do? Speed affects the flight speed of your Kinsect. If you want your essences fast, then go for speed. Speed is very important if you want to maintain triple essence buffs continuously. Weight will increase the Kinsect’s stamina , which if it runs out the Kinsect will lock up in the air and not move. And finally, power will increase a Kinsect’s, well, power , and will deal more damage to the monster. It’s theoretically possible to kill a monster with nothing but the Kinsect, and you bet it’s been done by many hunting groups as a joke. Power is probably the least relevant of the stats since you’ll want to be hitting the monster with your Glaive mostly, obviously.
Now that you know about the Kinsect’s attributes which you can modify…oh, well, we can’t start talking about Kinsect feeding yet. Depending on how you feed your Kinsect, you will be locking your Kinsect into different upgrade paths, so let’s discuss the end possibilities of the Kinsect. Maxed out Kinsects will have innate skills depending on which stat you focused in, and will have stat buffs and losses that are innate too.
Before we get started, let’s go over the skills you will find in the following tables. “Extract Up” will grant you additional buffs on top of what you already get when you have a specific color. “Extract Sustain” will grant a longer buff duration for specific colors. Double Up will add +20 seconds to essences that are absorbed if the same color is still active. Triple Up increases the duration of all three essence buffs (similar to the Buff Extend Kinsect skill in 4 Ultimate ) from 60 to 90 seconds.
| Kinsect | Stat Changes | Innate Skills |
|---|---|---|
| Power 1 | +20% power / -10% weight, reduced stamina charge duration, reduced flying distance | Red Extract Up (L), Red Extract Sustain (S) |
| Power 2 | +20% power / -10% weight, reduced flying distance | Red Extract Up (S), Red Extract Sustain (L) |
| Weight 1 | +20% weight / -10% speed | Green Extract Up (S), Orange Extract Up (L), Orange Extract Earplugs Effect |
| Weight 2 | +20% weight / -10% speed, reduced flying distance | Green Extract Up (L), Orange Extract Up (S), Orange Extract Sustain |
| Speed 1 | +20% speed / -10% power, reduced charge time, increased flying distance | White Extract Up (L), Double Up |
| Speed 2 | +20% speed / -10% power, +20% elemental damage, increased flying distance | White Extract Up (S) |
| Balanced | +5% to all stats | Triple Up |
As you can see, there’s a variety of Kinsects to pick from. So now, let’s finally talk about feeding them properly so you get the Kinsect you want!
Kinsects that are grayed out do not have the stat caps met. Sorry!
When you first open up the menu to Feeding Jelly, you will see a list of Jellies to pick from and on the left you will see three bars next to Power, Weight, and Speed, along with numbers representing your Kinsect’s current stats. Feeding a regular Jelly increases a stat by +10. Jelly+ gives +50, and Jelly++ gives you +100, or a maxed out bar. Thus, there is nothing lost using regular Jellies, Jelly+ and Jelly++ simply make the process faster!
Each time you max out a bar, the message reading “To next level” will drop by one . Once it drops to zero, you will be banned from feeding Jelly. So back out of the menu and Upgrade Kinsect , and you will be able to level it up! Keep on doing this and eventually those question marks will turn into bugs. Now, depending on what you chose to focus on, different bugs will unlock. For example, feeding nothing but Speed Jellies will unlock the Windchopper, but Alucanid and Rigiprayne will be grayed out. You would need to feed them more Power and Heavy Jellies to unlock those instead.
If you are aiming for your final Kinsect to be, say, a Speed Kinsect, then you can ignore the fact that the other Kinsects are grayed out and go on ahead and upgrade. Note that Balanced Kinsects are the trickiest to obtain, they require a higher level than the other three Kinsect types and you have to feed the Jellies in a, well, balanced manner. If you really, really want Triple Up then make sure you plan your Jellies carefully, as you cannot undo Jellies like you can Ambrosia.
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