Why one Monster Hunter Rise player is spending hundreds of hours making the same switch axe

Last week, Reddit user The_Walrus_Wrangler joked that somebody in the Monster Hunter Rise community should take on the challenge of crafting 1,000 of the Origami Axe switch axe since its flavor text says it can "grant a wish if one can somehow collect a thousand of them." The next day, Monster Hunter streamer Ceph0rend was already approaching 200 axes crafted.

Crafting one Origami Axe takes 8,250 zenny, one Aknosom crest, two Volvidon shell, and two Golden Muck from Almudron. The kicker is that you also need a Kamura ticket for each axe, which you can only get by clearing village quests. Anyone who's cleared the village campaign can tell you that you don't get a lot of these things, so Ceph0rend had to optimize the crafting process as much as possible.

A friend linked to me this Reddit thread and I would sayI'm *possibly* gunning for 200 today pic.twitter.com/rYElKDZHGPApril 17, 2021

Speaking to Gamesradar over Twitter, Ceph0rend says that he focuses on hunting Aknosom since you can only get one crest per hunt. Kamura tickets drop in batches of five, so he gets five Aknosom crests at a time, all the while sending his Meowcenaries to collect Volvidon and Almudron materials in the background. Kamura tickets drop after every five to 40 village quests in his experience, so if he gets lucky and the tickets come early, he'll finish off any Volvidon or Almudron materials the old-fashioned way. Otherwise, once the crests are ready, he'll spam the 20-second Roly Poly quest to farm quests for tickets and speed up the Meowcenaries. I can't help but think of kitchen line work as he describes prepping for one batch, filling the blanks, collecting the tickets, and finally finishing things off.

"It's about an hour and a half-ish on average per batch of five," he says. "Deep in the back of my mind I'm still quite sure there's a more efficient way to get them though."

When I spoke with him, Ceph0rend was approaching 250 axes crafted, which would have taken him around 70 hours by his estimation. To reach his goal of 1,000 (ideally within eight weeks, he says), he'll need to invest another 220 hours or so at this pace. I had to ask: what's keeping him going through all this? What will he wish for when hits 1,000 Origami Axes?

"There were these ducks in Monster Hunter Frontier, they act like poogies/cohoots, they're very cute and I really miss them," he says, sharing the picture above. "I'm no hero, just a man who really misses his ducks."

We can only hope that the legend of 1,000 paper cranes holds up in the world of Monster Hunter Rise, and that Ceph0rend gets his wish at the end of this grind. If not, perhaps Capcom will descend from on high with a duck Cohoot skin at the very least. Come on, Capcom. Do it for the ducks.