AWKWARD ZOMBIE

I havent touched any of the DLC actually. I assuemd it ewas mostly G-rank or post game things.
Is that not the case

that is 100% not the case, quite a lot of it is actually low or high rank, especially the early stuff.

which kinda sucks when you're a ways above where the DLC quest is supposed to be played and so the equipment is fucking useless.

Ah man thats super disappointing.

All this DLC talk made me think of an interesting run to do.
Aside from the starting weapons & armour, only use DLC exclusive equipment. (Personal choice whether to allow or disallow upgrading of starter weapon.)
Regular monsters on DLC don't count, it has to be DLC equipment such as Star Knight, Master Sword, etc.

At some point I think it'd be impossible to beat monsters within the time constraint if you only had starting weapons, unless you could abusive items and bombs, or let palicos do all the work.
The armor I could understand, never getting hit would be spiffy. You'd have to use upgraded weapons to even do damage after a certain point though.

Beat the Emerald Congalala. I'm really tired of monsters that want to annoy me to death.

Also I swear to god finding a good Arena partner online is a Herculean feat.

There's a low rank event Kut-Ku that gives a Hunting Horn, and a Double Rathalos that gives a Longsword.
You should be able to beat a Kut-Ku with a starter weapon, especially a Bowgun.
Then use the Hunting Horn to beat the Raths for the Longsword. Use that to get High Rank.

Additional problems include:

-I don't think there's much you can do for armor in High Rank until you get some good weapons. The Yukumo stuff might be alright, but at the end of the quest chain is the Seregios on the ship, which can be difficult since there's very little room. Also, the other armor quests have you fighting super beefed up monsters (I think they do G-Rank damage?), which would basically mean getting one-shot (or daisies near it) constantly in Low Rank armor. I don't really remember a lot of the high rank events soooo I might be wrong here.

-Your major issue is G-Rank. I don't think there's a single G-Rank event armor you can get until at least G3, and by that point monsters will be tearing through any armors you have at high rank. In G1 I think the only weapons you can get are a Water SnS guarded by a super-sized Tigrex, and the Arm Cannon that you have to fight a Frenzy Garuga for. Granted, if you can get to G3 and get Star Knight, then GG rest of game.

I managed to beat Gore Magala somehow without fainting. It still kicked me around a whole bunch, but I got it! I tried capping it, but it broke out of the shock trap super fast or maybe the tranq bombs weren't landing? It's kinda hard to tell since it's so large.

monsters break out of traps more and more quickly depending on a number of factors, including their total health and how many traps of the same kind you've been using.

the best strategy is to beat it until it's limping, let it run off to sleep, put a trap directly under it (shock traps will immediately work but you have to wake the thing up for a pitfall to activate) and then slam tranq bombs/shots onto it. should only ever take two of the tranq.

Yeah, I almost always trap when monsters are taking a nap unless I'm trying it during an expedition or am way ahead of it's escape route. I've been pretty good about trapping, usually the go to for traps whenever I play with my friends. I'm guessing it broke out of the trap the split second I threw down the 2nd tranq.

Welp, breaking Monoblos' horn only took about 18 million goddamn years, but I did it.

This is why hammer is best weapon.

Also I've started doing the DLC quests and the Animal Crossing one is adorable. All the regular fish and bugs are replaced by ones from AC.

I typically go for shooting it in the face with a ludicrous amount of ice arrows.

Ah man I didn't know I had to do multiplayer stuff to rank up my online HR thing, I thought it progressed with the story. So I gotta get my friends together at some point and blast through this.

Eventually multiplayer becomes the norm, so that's a good idea. G-rank in particular is all online quests scaled for two people. There's maybe five total singleplayer missions that are unlocked through progressing through multiplayer.