Frontier: Hunter Festival

Hunter Festival (Japanese: 狩人祭, Romaji: Kariudo-matsuri) is one of the 4 weekly events exclusive to Monster Hunter Frontier. It was introduced in the update of Monster Hunter Frontier 2.5 on April 14th, 2008. To date, there have been more than 90 Hunter Festivals in total.

Description
 The Hunter Festival is one of the four weekly rotating events in Monster Hunter Frontier. The other three events are Sky Corridor, Extreme Conquest War and Parone. Unlike the other events, the Hunter Festival consists of 3 phases, each of them having a time span of 1 week.

The first phase is the sign-up week. This is when Guild Leaders can sign-up their Guilds to participate in the Hunter Festival. Upon doing so, the Guild will be randomly assigned to one of the 2 team colors that will compete with each other. There's a blue team and a red team.

The second phase is the hunting week. During this week players can collect points by slaying or capturing monsters, as well as delivering certain carry-items (wyvern eggs, herbivore eggs, soothstone ore, powderstone, etc) and donate these to the Hunter Festival.

The third and final phase is the reward week. This is when the point total of all Guild donations from both sides have been calculated and compared to one another. The side with the highest amount of points will be declared the winner and gain access to the highly sought-after Winner Quests.

The 2 teams
During the first week of the Hunter Festival, Guild Leaders can sign-up their Guild to participate in the Hunter Festival. After doing so, the Guild will be randomly assigned to one of the 2 team colors that will be competing against each other. There is a blue team and a red team.

After a Guild has been signed up, a message will appear for the Guild Leader saying which team color they have been assigned to. Consequently, the color of their team will show up as a symbol next to the name of all the guild members for the entirety of the Hunter Festival. This symbol is either a blue flame icon or a red flame icon.

The goal is to collect Soul Points (Jikkon) and donate it to the Guild. This applies to all guilds of both sides and the side that has the highest amount of points by the end of the 2nd week will be declared the winner and gain access to Winner Quests.

Soul Points (Jikkon)
Soul Points (Japanese: 入魂, Romaji: Jikkon) are the special points that can be collected during the 2nd week of the Hunter Festival, the hunting week. These points can be gathered in the following ways:
 * 1) Slaying or capturing big monsters.
 * 2) Delivering carry-items (wyvern eggs and anything of the sort).
 * 3) Sending out a Partnya (felyne companion) to collect souls through My Support.

While the first 2 methods involve clearing quests, the 3rd can only be done while outside of a quest. It is also possible to obtain large amount of points by competing in the Guild Time Attack Tournaments that are held during the hunting week. Higher placings award more points.

There is also a cap to how many soul points or jikkon can be kept at a time before having to donate them. This cap was originally 99 points but was raised twice during the Monster Hunter Frontier G updates. The first time it was raised to 200 points, the second time to 500.

Lastly, there are fixed Personal Bonus Multipliers that will apply to players who have donated a certain amount of soul points:

These numbers will apply in the Reward Point Calculation during the final week of the Hunter Festival.

Reward Points & Calculations
In the third and final week of the Hunter Festival, also known as the reward week, the combined total of Soul Points donated by both teams will have been calculated and compared, resulting in 1 team being declared as the winner. All participants who have donated will be able to claim rewards based on the amount of Soul Points they have turned in individually and as a Guild.

The rewards consist of Festival Points and a couple of related items needed to craft festival equipment and initiate Winner Quests. The amount of Festival Points that are rewarded to each player individually is done according to the following formula: A few examples of this calculation can be found in the tables below (winner/loser multiplier is excluded):
 * (Guild's Total Points / # of donating participants) * Personal Bonus Multiplier * Festival Multiplier * Winning / Losing Multiplier.

The next table shows a simulation of the effects under the same circumstances with a higher Festival Multiplier:

The 3rd and final table below shows how drastically point loss can apply in a more extreme situation:

Because of this formula, players will not receive festival points proportionally to their share in the Guild Total Donation Pool. In other words, when a Guild has collected 100000 Soul Points, a player who has donated 20000 will not receive more festival points than one who has only donated 5000 because they both receive the same personal bonus multiplier.

This could be seen as unfair from both the perspective of a player who has donated a lot of points, as well as from one who has not. Ultimately, points are distributed equally among those who have participated (donated points) in the Hunter Festival.

There is also a cap to how many Festival Points a player can have at a time. Players can have a maximum amount of 100000 Festival Points before capping out. Festival Points are carried over from one Hunter Festival to another, so there is no immediate need to spend them as soon as possible.

However, this does mean that when the next Hunter Festival has ended, players should spend the points from the previous festival before claiming them again. Claiming Festival Points can only be done once. Doing so while already capped will result in the newly claimed points going to waste. As such, it is well-advised to spend points every now and then.

Benefits
There are several benefits to actively participating in Hunter Festivals:
 * 1) Donating Soul Points in sufficient amounts allows players to claim special items such as Transcend upgrade materials, Extreme Conquest War Recommendation Proofs and 祭典の叙情詩 to craft the Ninfa (ニンファ) Armor and related weapons (G-Rank only).
 * 2) Obtaining Festival Points to spend in the Festival Shop and being able to buy extremely rare items in bulk such as the majority of the Hardcore and G Hardcore Carves.
 * 3) Obtaining items and materials that are required to craft Festival Equipment.
 * 4) Obtaining the items necessary to initiate Winner Quests and gain access to exclusive G-Rank Festival Equipment and decorations.