Beat him up when he is on all fours.  Get away when he is on two legs because he does that fall down and crush you move.

You have to do certain key quests and an urgent in the online portion of the game in order to go up from one HR to the next up until HR8.  In other words, you are capped.   The game keeps track of all of your experience like it did in Tri, but doesn't tell you about it.  After you get to HR8 and talk to the guy at the counter you automatically get bumped up depending on your invisible (up until that point) experience points.  BTW, I don't think that you get experience for offline questing.  I will look into this today and confirm or disprove this.

And I have no idea how that jerk turns impossible if that is what you were asking me.

Offline, or Moga Village? I do a fair bit of grinding in the Marina, but not networked.

Good question.  I will do an egg delivery today and check it out for you.

A more productive day today than yesterday, where i was bogged down in Baggi Hide and Jaggi Scales. Today it was King's Crest, and learning just how much Ivory Lagiacrus sucks (although i'm sure it's much like Brachydios and Plesioth, where i just need more runs to get to know it)

You'd think a high thunder-res armor like mine would help more, though . At least i have a good fire lance, and now have a solid hook in every branch of the lance tree.

had no time to play mh for a few days :(

I'm thinking to maybe try the gunner route ...
maybe bow ... heard the kelbi bow is pretty good to farm bosses because it breaks parts pretty good.
but have no gear for the gunner route ... so back to farming tomorrow hopefully.

finally broke the 100h mark ...

farmed my giginox x armor set today ... and a few diablos and black diablos for the kelbi bow.
but he wont drop the horns I needed :(
maybe another day.

Ended the night on a bit of a breach of etiquette: our team, which had just beaten Ivory Lagiacrus for *my* urgent, went down against him for the next guy's urgent. I was at the end of the night mode, so i just powered off from the "failed" screen.

Do feel bad about it... Otherwise a great night, lots of HR4 quests, got my HR5, upgraded to Spiral Splash.

Next, i think, comes Ceadeus to upgrade Spiral Splash yet more, letting me hunt Agnaktor+ with impunity

ok not another day, but idk how many (black) diablos I've slain to get the kelbi bow ...
now trying to get a hang of it ... looks pretty fun for a secondary weapon ...

next farming jhen and duramboros for destroyer decorations ...

Okay. Here's the deal.

You gain experience points for ANY quest that you go on. The only thing that you don't gain experience for is hunting in Moga Village for resources.

This makes leveling up rather easy and I should be at 999HR in a couple of months.