Good times last night. Tried to hunt a Rathian with just a friend and myself. I was a HR19, but he was still an HR9 at the time. Did pretty well until we got slammed by a few fireballs. Our third and final death was thanks to this attack I'd never seen it do. It pinned me down and started pecking me to death. There was some meter that I guess was the game's way of saying "PRESS SOME BUTTON AND GET OUT OF THIS!".
Then we joined up with Tron and a friend of his who were having the same problem we were. Needless to say, the four of us had some good hunts and did some killin'. I kept saying, "No, this is my last hunt" about 3-4 times before finally going to bed.
Got almost 50 hours sunk into this game and I've still got so much more to do. That's about $1 an hour. Good value I'd say.