Well, it’s not totally wrong. The announcement means that a blue whale or fugitive khalk appeared somewhere at sea or on the continent. They are large monsters, meaning you can’t hunt them single-handedly. You should hunt them down together with other Adventurers, and with matchlocks. It can feel daunting for a beginner.

However, this does not mean these hunting bosses are out of your league. While engaging them requires several Adventurers, a matchlock, and a land mount or ship, this is all it takes to participate. Stop worrying and just give it a try!

The icon they’re displayed with resembles that of a deer. Whenever you see an enemy with this icon, know that attacking it with your usual weapons will do very little damage. They need to be attacked with a hunting matchlock.

The more you hunt, the more hunting life skill experience you’ll receive, and the higher your hunting life skill level will become.

– How to Operate a Matchlock

After equipping it, you can reload a matchlock by right clicking your mouse. You can fire it by left clicking.
You can crouch by pressing the Q key, and while crouched the shooting range and reloading speed of the matchlock increases.
You can evade enemy attacks by pressing any of the WASD keys + Shift key together.
Certain matchlocks allow you to unleash a powerful attack with the F key once your character’s black spirit rage has reached 100%.
For those hunting targets that are constantly on the move, you can also use a matchlock while riding a mount.

Like with other weaponry, a matchlock can be enhanced. However, you need to be careful because the enhancement level will drop if you fail after the enhancement level reaches +7.

It will depend on the target to hunt, but in any case, a mount is essential for the more important foes.
For example, blue whales are hunted in the open sea, so you’ll have to be on board a ship when hunting them. Since a ship can have several people on board, if an Adventurer takes the role of maneuvering the ship the rest can hunt right away without any major restriction.
Fugitive khalks appear in a few locations throughout the continent, constantly flying around.
Because of that, you have to hunt by following them on horseback.

When dealing with big hunting monsters with high attack power, such as khalks, giant lionesses, and elephants, if you ride a horse and go on horseback hunting, you can move easily enough to evade their attacks while reloading the matchlock. It can make hunting a little easier.

This is the most important thing to remember.
Even if you have prepared all the above, it serves no purpose without a butcher knife.

After defeating a hunting monster, you must use a butcher knife to gather from it.
Once you have gathered from their corpse with a butcher knife, you’ll get hunting life skill experience.

There are different types of butcher knives that can be employed, depending on your gathering level. All will work for this. The main difference is the speed at which you’ll gather with them, and their durability (number of times you can gather with them).

Users who have experienced hunting to some extent will agree that the time it takes to reload a matchlock feels very long.
While reloading the matchlock, you are defenseless from monster attacks, and the longer the reload time, the longer it takes to hunt.

If these feel very frustrating, eat a hunter's salad before setting out on a hunt.
Hunter's salad and fresh hunter's salad increase the reload speed of the matchlock, so hunting after eating this dish will make the experience more enjoyable.

Like the hunter's salad, khalk's fermented wine is also very helpful for hunting.
It can be said that it is more helpful than the hunter's salad because it not only increases the reload speed of the matchlock, but also increases your attack power and movement speed.
You can buy it from the Central Market, but it's also good to make it yourself through cooking once you’ve hunted a fugitive khalk and obtained its horns.

Elixirs that raise critical hits are also helpful for hunting.
If you use an elixir that increases the critical hit ability level, or critical hit rate, and proceed with hunting, you will be able to defeat hunting monsters with a lot of health a little faster.

In addition to this, all dishes, elixirs, draughts, perfumes, and scrolls that have a life experience gain increase option allow you to quickly raise your hunting level and equip a more powerful matchlock, so if you can afford it, it is recommended that you prepare as much as possible before setting out on a hunt.

On that tab you will also find the Hunting leap quests, available every once in a while as you progress through your hunting life skill levels.

In the Recurring tab you will find a list of daily quests that lead you to hunt several animals in Balenos and the islands beyond it.

We recommend you start with the quest [Daily] Easy Game given by Chuck Laurie near the town of Olvia. After completing his first few quests, you’ll unlock a hunting questline from Chief Igor Bartali, in Velia.
Once that questline is completed, many hunting quests all over the islands of Balenos will be unlocked.

Most of those quests are done on the islands north of Balenos.
Due to the nature of the quests that require you to cross the sea, it is a good idea to bring a sea mount such as a fishing boat or a sailboat.
When you complete these quests, you can receive various rewards including titles and matchlocks.
 
Among the monsters to hunt in the Balenos islands, the difficulty level is low, except for the king brown bear and the boss wolf.
The brown bear does a knockback attack, and the boss wolf and giant wolf summon wolf cubs to assist them.

If you have raised your hunting life skill level through the quests above, and equipped a powerful matchlock, you can now go to defeat blue whales and fugitive khalks.
However, if you want to have more experience before tackling cooperative hunting, it's good to practice with other hunting targets you can defeat alone.

Now is the time to search for monsters to hunt in other territories.
Below will be introduced the different locations you can find hunting targets, and their rewards.

Many of the hunting quests everywhere will reward you with hunter’s tokens. These can be exchanged with Igor Bartali in Velia for rewards.

◈ The Balenos Mountains

The easiest and most comfortable hunting method for beginners is to catch deers, wild boars, and bears located in the Balenos Mountains.
It's a location close to Olvia and Velia, and it's an easy distance to travel on horseback or on foot, so it's a good place for Adventurers who are new to hunting to gain experience.

There are a total of 3 types of land hunting monsters that appear in the Balenos Mountains.
Giant elks, giant boars, and giant brown bears each have the <Wild> title above their names, so it is easy to distinguish them from normal monsters.

The deers are an ideal game for Adventurers who are just starting out hunting to test the performance of their matchlock. If you approach them, they will run away, so you can practice shooting at them while maintaining a certain distance.

When dealing with the boars and bears, please keep in mind that they’ll attack an Adventurer who approaches close first. Although their attack power is not very high, they’re a bit more complex as you need to keep moving to aim at them.

When you arrive at Lake Kaia, don't equip the matchlock right away. That is because the moment you equip it, your movement speed slows down and you can take damage from the nearby catfishmen.
Whether you're defeating or avoiding the local monsters, as you wander around, you'll likely see freshwater crocodiles swimming around. If you find them, look closely at their movement path, find a good spot, equip the matchlock, and hunt them.

Catfishman monsters are around the levels 49-50, so if you are a Lv. 55 or higher character, you will be able to hunt the freshwater crocodiles without being disturbed by them.

After hunting one, you can climb on top of the freshwater crocodile carcass and gather from it with your butcher knife to get hunting experience and meat. For reference, there are 3 freshwater crocodiles in North Kaia Lake and 4 in South Kaia Lake, and their respawn time is very long compared to other hunting monsters, so it is recommended to hunt them while jumping between servers.

There’s no shortage of them, but it is difficult to find one easily due to how big the sea is.
These monsters will not attack any mounts or characters, so you can hunt them with ease.
Like freshwater crocodiles, these whales float on the water when defeated. Climb on top of them and gather from their carcass to obtain hunting experience and rewards.

You can obtain sharp black crystal shards, hard black crystal shards, black gems that can enhance life skill mastery equipment, and more.
You can get various rewards from them, so if you want to go hunting for a while without leaving the sea, make sure to search for the humpback whales.

Talk to Zaaira, the Material Vendor NPC in Velia, and purchase the necessary item to craft the trap the quest describes.
Additionally, even if you don't accept these quests, you can lure these two hunting boss monsters with this trap.

The stuffed head trophies from these boss monsters give a powerful buff effect, so even if you don't go through the quest, try summoning and hunting them with the trap.

If you make the trap to lure the white wolf boss, go to the Agris Steppe, and if you make the trap to lure the king brown bear boss, go to Fleme Hills to use them.

Above you can see the system notifications when a blue whale (top) and fugitive khalk (bottom) appear in a server.

While it can be said that the main purpose for hunting blue whales and fugitive khalks is the fun to be had, the ingredient materials obtained from butchering their corpses offer a nice incentive.
You can craft blue grade accessories with some of the materials you obtain, and with others you can prepare useful dishes and alchemical elixirs.

In the case of blue whales, they appear at regular intervals three times a day for each channel.

There is nothing to be very careful about while hunting.
Since the blue whale is subtly fast, one of the party members can directly drive a fast boat (such as a fishing boat or sailboat) to constantly pursue the hunting boss, while the rest of the party members do their best to shoot at it.
Due to the vast amount of health the blue whales possess, the top 20 participating parties in the encounter will be rewarded with butchering rights.

The picture above shows the routes of the blue whales that can appear in the Calpheon (red line), Balenos (yellow line), and Mediah (blue line) seas. Make sure to follow those lines if your group is searching for a blue whale.

If you’re a first time hunter Adventurer, keep an eye on the server-wide chat channels in case you see people speak about these bosses. Occasionally, you can see others asking if blue whales have appeared, but most of the Adventurers that delve in this aspect of the game are professional whale hunters.

If you make friends with them and catch whales in a party, you can easily adapt and mingle.

Looting rights are limited to the top 20 parties that have participated in hunting the blue whales, and the party that enters the ranking is given a chance to butcher the boss once per party member.

In the pictures below you can see the routes the fugitive khalks travel.
Unlike blue whales, they are relatively easy to find because the route is short and there are no major restrictions on movement.
However, if there is one thing to be cautious about, it is that you must ride your horse well. That is because you have to be paying attention to two things at once: Whether you're looking at the sky, or maneuvering the horse. It's something you get used to once you've done it a few times.

The rules for acquiring looting rights are the same as for blue whales, only the top 20 parties can butcher the defeated fugitive khalk.

Remember that when a master matchlock has been reformed with this heart, its name will change and it cannot be sold on any NPC shop nor registered in the Central Market.

You can use a mirror of equilibrium to extract the [Hunting] Gauche Master Matchlock to obtain [Hunting] Master Matchlock x1 and Steel x1.