Regarding the Driftsmelting process (2025-12-28, v112)

[Stampeder]

現状/Current Status

Currently, if you perform the following steps, the selected Driftsmelt equipment would be different and can lead to users unintentionally driftsmelting a different equipment than the one they are focusing on:

1. In the Equipment screen, tap any equipment (let’s call this Equipment A) to view its detail, then tap the “Change” button in the Driftsmelt Slot section.
2. In the resultant “Change Skill” screen, tap the “Driftsmelt this equipment” button.
3. In the resultant “Driftsmelting” screen, observe that the equipment selected at the top of the screen is Equipment A.
4. Proceed to select any available driftstone or driftgem and tap the “Driftsmelt” button, then “Driftsmelt” button again to start the driftsmelting process for Equipment A.
5. [A few minutes later…] While doing other stuff, suppose that you found a piece of equipment (let’s call this Equipment B) that has a lot of unwanted skills that you want to delete.
6. Repeat steps 1 to 3, but selecting Equipment B instead.
7. On the resultant Driftsmelting screen, tap on the Equipment B’s icon at the top.
8. In the resultant equipment details screen for Equipment B, scroll down to the list of Driftsmelt Skills.
9. Tap the trashcan icon to the right of the “All skills x/20” label.
10. Proceed to remove the driftsmelted skills you do not want to keep.
11. When done, close this screen and back out all the way to the Field Map.
12. Proceed to clock the distance needed to driftsmelt Equipment A.
13. [2km later…] Proceed to check the driftsmelting result for Equipment A.
14. Do whatever you want with the freshly driftsmelted skill, then tap the “Back to Driftsmelting” button.
15. Observe that the equipment selected at the top of the screen is still Equipment B.

Expectation

• I think I am not in the minority to say that it is expected that after being done with driftsmelting Equipment A, when going back to the Driftmelting screen, Equipment A is expected to be the equipment that is selected for driftsmelting.
• But because the game’s way of handling the equipment selection process for driftsmelting, it can lead to unintentional driftsmelting of the wrong equipment, which is what I believed to have caused reports of this nature, one of which is reported here: Driftsmelting another armour using Insta-Smelt solution while there is already an ongoing driftsmelt process would cause the target armour to be swapped to the armour used in insta-smelting
• Also, in the past, you can manage the skills directly from the Equipment screen without having to go to the Driftsmelting screen. This is no longer the case, which makes for very bad UX because of this ongoing UX problem that was already reported at least since Oct 2024 (Re-select the same Selected Equipment after completing a driftsmelt). This wasn’t that bad back then because we can still delete skill from the Equipment screen without going to the Driftsmelting screen. Now it’s not the case.

The UX for driftsmelting is just poor and feels like an afterthought than anything.

I am feeling disappointed with how a time-consuming topic for the consumers is being ignored for so long and even made worse with poor UX design. You can’t even pay back a person’s time because time is non-transferable. One design can impact everyone in the playerbase negatively and none of the people in the company can even make up for it, and none have even tried for the last 14 months. Do we actually have someone in the company overlooking the UX? This is an important role that many software companies seem to forget about.

提案/Suggestion

Please improve the UX for the driftsmelting process. This list of designs ought to be mandatory.

1. When driftsmelting an equipment and tapping the “Back to Driftsmelting” button, that same equipment must be selected automatically by default.
   • As mentioned in the Oct 2024 post linked above, I believe most people would be driftsmelting the same equipment over and over until they’re done with it. If they want to change the equipment to driftsmelt, they will be doing that from the Select button on the Driftsmelting screen or select the equipment from their Equipment Screen (personally I take this path 99% of the time as it is much faster to select from my loadouts then scroll through the entire list of equipment just to find a single piece of equipment to driftsmelt).
2. Reinstate the Delete button in the Equipment Screen.
   • Currently it takes too much taps just to get to the Delete Skill screen, and it causes the equipment to be changed unintentionally.

Please review.

[takemizuchi3]

I usually delete unwanted skills by overwriting them right after Driftsmelting, but it’s definitely weird that that’s the only time we can actually organize them.

The translation was incorrect, so I’ve corrected it.

[Stampeder]

The votes on my past posts may be zero, but the feedback from the ground is far from being zero. Almost every other day, or during time-limited events, I will almost always see feedback about how a player driftsmelted the wrong equipment.

I myself also driftsmelted a wrong piece of equipment just two days ago because of the UX issue described above. Luckily it wasn’t my driftgem that got smelted.

I even saw some players citing the driftsmelting process as one of their major reasons for feeling disheartened about the game and were coming very close to quitting (some did quit and I never saw them again).

And yet, all I can do is to report these problems and hope that it’s improved for everyone across the board, besides helping to remind the community to watch out for “traps laid by the game”. I really don’t want to use this kind of language, but there’s no other language to make the human mind be more alert than this.

[Stampeder]

@takemizuchi3

I only erased unnecessary skills by overwriting the completed vote transfer and refinement, but it’s certainly a mystery why the refined skills can only be organized in that process.

Yeah! It’s strange! For a time I was wondering where did the delete button go

[Stampeder]

Lol I nearly started driftsmelting the wrong equipment again because I was confirming the steps when I was writing this report. Luckily I paused to look at the selected equipment again.

I don’t know about other players, but I want to enjoy the hunt, and the only threat about Monster Hunter should be from the monsters attacking me, not about the game UX trying to trap me.

[KysartSarglin]

@Stampeder I’ll be honest and rude. I want to believe you, but everything point the other direction.

I have instant and normal driftsmelted a lot of pieces and never, ever, had your problem. Yeah, maybe still less driftsmelt than you, but I take my time, see which piece is selected for insta or normal and start.

The point is this: everytime you have to driftsmelt you have to select the piece, be it normal or istant driftsmelting. And after, you have to do it again because the last piece selected will be the last one you have chosen (for normal or instant, based on which one you did as last one).

So take your time and don’t rush. I know that this game with the clock spawn may trigger you, and you rush to don’t lose HAT/EDI/a specific monster, but this will only lead to miss your target for driftsmelt.

Again, with this I am not saying that I don’t believe you or that the UX can not be improven. UX can definitely be improven and those bugs may happen … but for sure taking your time may avoid this type of problems for that specific feature (if not ever most of the time). Because many say what you are saying, but most of the time is do to something they are missing or doing wrong … or, even worse, they try to mess with the code clicking everything that may lead to this type of bugs. Avoid it, unless you really need it to report a bug.

Said this, please check the piece everytime before clicking to start the driftsmelting, hoping anyway they will improve UX and those bugs will not happen to you again (if they really did).