MH4U Charm Sniping Guide
MH4U Charm Sniping Guide by Banchan000
Hello everyone, I took the liberty of translating the guide (http://ryogakucx.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-118.html) and trying it out myself for about 3-4 hours. Basically the guide is an extremely convoluted method of getting super reliable times (essentially doing a bunch of meaningless actions to take up an exact amount of time). I have distilled the essence of charm sniping down to a simple general-purpose post, so expect to do some math on your own. I am not entirely sure how to use the program yet, so there are some convenience features I am missing out on, but it is still usable.
What this guide is: How to fix the first skill and keep resetting for the second skill
What this guide isn’t: How to get Atk+14 every time.
This will probably turn away 99% of people, because unless you are godlike with your click timing it becomes basically the same as normal charm grinding. If you didn’t notice, in the link the entire bottom 2 pages or so is the author reporting all of his failures. Yes, that is 30 GOOD resets for the charm (after practicing for 4 hours I can only do it properly half the time at best).
Nothing in this guide requires you to do anything as fast as you can, so take your time. Precision is important, speed isn’t.
Here is the basic concept:
There are charm tables and charm sequence numbers. Each charm table has precisely 5400 charm sequence numbers associated with it. Your goal is to choose the correct charm sequence number and the correct charm, then repeatedly farm it until you get what you want.
Step 0: Install the correct programs. http://www1.axfc.net/u/3256025 Install it using Windows XP compatibility settings.
Run seed1.exe, then click the following buttons to open the timer
http://imgur.com/xheYrrm http://imgur.com/Uifa6IV
Note that you can input values for timer 1 and timer 2 in these boxes (left and right respectively). This will give you a countdown timer with audio cues (very nice)
Finally, here is the original spreadsheet (translated version down in the guide) http://www1.axfc.net/u/3256025
Step 1: Charm Table. Your charm table depends on the precise system time when you hit “Yes” to load your character.
a. Choose some arbitrary base time (IE: 12/04/2012 00:00)
b. Go to System Settings -> Date/Time -> Change Date.
c. Change it to the base date
d. Change the time to the base time, but don’t press confirm yet
e. Press confirm and hit f1 on your computer simultaneously
f. Exit System Settings and launch MonHun
g. Select your character but don’t press “Yes” to load him/her yet
h. Hit “Yes” and f2 (or f1) on your computer simultaneously. Using only f1 can lead to neat tricks like using plier handles
i (optional). Check your food. Record which ones are fresh and which ones are prime. This is an indicator of your charm table (Easy way to check if you did it right)
Now your first timer contains the precise number of seconds:milliseconds since 00:00 12/04/2012. Record this number somewhere, you’ll need to replicate this time within about +- 250ms every time. (250ms is based on a lot of trial and error, someone correct me if I’m wrong)
Note: If you landed on tables 1-12, you’re in good shape. If you landed on 13-17, I have no idea. The guide only mentions tables 1-12 (which all happen to have 5400 entries). However, 13/15 have 200, and 14, 16, 17 have 54 entries
You can try your luck using 200 or 54 instead of 5400, or just retry to get into the 1-12 charm tables.
Step 2: Figure out your charm sequence number
a. Go to Maximeld XIV and choose Juju melding
b. Choose your 3 timeworn (important) charms, but don’t press “Yes”
c. Hit “Yes” and f3 (or f1) on your computer simultaneously
d. Go do a steak quest (The guide uses goldenfish because ending by subquest is faster than steak quest).
e. Come back and claim your talismans. Note which ones are timeworn and which are enduring.
f. Look at only the first skill on your talisman. Reference the following spreadsheet I translated: https://github.com/Thomas-Kim/mh4u-charm-snipe/raw/master/seed1.xlsx
g. Now you know your charm sequence number and charm table. Unless you got super lucky, you most likely didn’t get what you wanted, but that’s OK.
Step 3: Snipe your charm
a. Reference the spreadsheet to find a particular charm sequence number that is appealing to you. Pick one that has the same charm table as you.
b. Every second, 45 charm sequence numbers are cycled through by the RNG seed. Here is some math:
Let csn_orig = the charm sequence number of your first batch
Let csn_target = the charm sequence number you want to get
Let t2_orig = the value of timer 2 for your first batch
Let t2_target = the value of timer 2 for your target
t2_target = t2_orig + (csn_target - csn_orig) / 45
Your goal is to calculate t2_target.
Basically if your target csn is 45 more than your original csn, you need your timer 2 to be 1 second longer. If your resulting time is too short, you can add 5400/45 = 120 seconds to t2_target. Put differently, every 120 seconds the charm sequence number will roll over and restart from 1.
c. Restart the whole process, using your new calculated target csn for timer 2 and getting the same time for timer 1.
So what does this mean? Essentially the margin of error to get your target charm can be as low as +- 11ms, so you want to ideally pick a block of sequence numbers you don’t mind getting instead of aiming for that razor thin 22ms time slot.
Disclaimer: This guide isn’t complete or comprehensive. I don’t even guarantee it’s correct, but I verified everything I said in-game. The program appears to be able to figure out charm tables and charm sequence numbers for certain skill combinations for you, but I haven’t figured it out yet. I’m hoping to do a translation of the program, but since I can’t find the source code it might take a while.
Here is a screenshot showing my really bad hacking job so far http://imgur.com/EkgDCjE
If anyone is familiar with VBA programming and Windows and wants to tell me how to redirect string pointers when modifying a binary that would be much appreciated. I can’t fit a lot of the skill names in the character limit
Also if you have any specific questions I probably can’t answer them. I basically dumped everything I know into the above post. If anyone has further information (esp. regarding specific charm tables and stat ranges), please make a post and I can try to integrate it with the guide.
the old github link doesn’t work
Really appreciate you taking the time to write all this up. I knew there had to be a way to go about it since I heard rumors about the JP MonHun community figuring it out, but only came across broken links and nothing really concrete from the usual English sources.
Also wanted to note a couple of things. Using my limited Japanese knowledge and after looking at the full program that was provided in the link, the tables that are referenced haven’t been updated for 4U/4G, evident by the differences in maximum values for certain skills in the first and second slots. The timer is still important and it looks like there’s a separate link for it provided on the JP blog. Could save a couple of steps for those interested since you only need the translated excel and the timer. Just my two cents.
Still, the dream would be an updated version of the full fledged program, but this is a good start. Seriously, thanks again.