On May 31st, Monster Hunter: World 4.00 Patch with the 3rd Major Free Update has been applied to the game. The new Elder Dragon called Lunastra has been added with two armor sets and 42 Rarity 8 weapons, 3 in each weapon tree.

In order to slay this new Elder Dragon, you need to do three types of Special Assignments given by NPCs at Astera. The first assignment is given by the Huntsman near the Fleet Commander. He gives you a ★8 quest named "The Blazing Sun", asking you to slay a High-Rank Teostra in the Wildspire Waste.

Upon slaying Teostra, you can then accept the next Special Assignment called "Pandora’s Arena" from the Second Fleet Master at the Smithy. This ★8 quest takes place at the Special Arena and has a cutscene where the wounded Teostra you captured in the last quest is ambushed by Nergigante. However, Lunastra gets between the two monsters and faces Nergigante together with Teostra. Nergigante and Teostra soon run away, and the fight against Lunastra begins.

Lunastra is agiler and has a wider range of attacks than Teostra, making the fight quite difficult as the Special Arena itself is considerably small. The fire left on the ground from Lunastra’s hits becomes quite deadly as it grows larger. You can mitigate the damage taken by drinking a Cool Drink.

However, you can’t really defeat Lunastra in this assignment. The monster runs away when the HP drops below a certain point, and the quest is completed. Note that the fighting time is only a short 15 minutes, so you need to focus on dealing as much damage as possible by aiming for weak spots.

Upon completing the quest, the Huntsman then gives another Special Assignment called "No Remorse, No Surrender". This quest requires the hunter to slay the Teostra and Lunastra that ran away to the Elder’s Recess. Although the difficulty is still at ★8, the fight is quite intense since you need to face and defeat two Elder Dragons at the same time.

It will not be easy to face both dragons at the same place and the same time; there will be many deadly attacks coming from every direction. What’s more is that the two dragons perform a joint attack which deals a significant amount of AoE damage, so it is always recommended that you avoid fighting if the two dragons are in the same area. Keep track of the duration of Cool Drink since it can take quite a long time to slay the two dragons.

The good news is that it is not as difficult as the last assignment since you’ve got plenty of time and a wide area. It is, however, still recommended that you hunt them with party members.

(Source: Capcom Channel Streaming)

And that is the end of the Lunstra-related quests. The Huntsman gives you a Temporal Mantle, which is a new specialized tool, as a quest reward. It allows a wearer to nullify damage from powerful attacks by automatically evading.

The Second Fleet Master at the Smithy then gives you a Delivery Quest called Breaking out the Brigade. The delivery list includes 5000 Research Points, 5 Hunter King Coins, and 5 High Commendations. The hunter receives the Brigade Layered Armor which is a new layered armor upon completing the quest.

Lunastra weapons and armors

Lunastraα and β sets provide a Lunastra Favor effect as a set bonus. Two pieces give a stamina Cap Up skill, and 4 pieces give a Mind’s Eye/Ballistics skill, but they don’t really provide better effects than other armor, so the armor isn’t used much.

For Lunastra weapons, they all feature Blast Element and White Sharpness. The Rarity 7 weapon can be upgraded to three different types of 8 Rarity weapons depending on a material; "Blaze" from Bazelgeuse, "Ruin" from Nergigante, and "Styx" from Xeno’jiiva.

Each weapon has a unique skill even though they are originally a weapon. These skills are the effects of the armor sets derived from those monsters. For example, Blaze has the same skill as the Bazelgeuse armor set, Guts. Ruin has Hasten Recovery, and Styx has Razor Sharp/Spare Shot.

Because the armor set becomes almost unnecessary, it is expected that the weapons will be used more frequently with the set effects.