Just defeated Reza and Shrowd, where do I go from here?

Congrats! You’ve reached end game!! Your masteries grind has now begun. Open your Mastery check list and start checking each box off (slayer mastery AND behemoth mastery) Doing the masteries will help gear you up for trials. Good luck slayer!

I have no real build as of now, and I don't have many cells either.

Keep fusing cells at the middle man.

Upgrade your chamber, grip, and prism on Repeaters first. Upgrade the barrels last. As long as the chamber, grip, and prism on Repeaters is maxed, a +0 barrel that counters the behemoth's element does more damage than a +15 barrel vs. Neutral.

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At what point should I consider getting into trials (got my ass kicked today)

This week's trials are harder. Would probably just form a team as group trials are easier, or just wait it out till next week.

You can easily do Escalations 10-50 as soon as u get a decent Iceborne build going. For that I would recommend upgrading Boreus chest and Boreus legs, and fusing together one Iceborne+3 cell. A Hellion Iceborne build like this should work well. Switch one Wild Frenzy cell to Berserker if u can/wish. More DPS.

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Should I just keep grinding materials in an attempt to piece a build together (I'm using this)? Honestly not quite sure what is optimal from here on out.

I wouldn't use any of the builds from the Post-Trials or Pre-Trials section if I wasn't sure I could kill the behemoth before they have a chance to get up, or if I could dodge easily in the case they did get up. All of those builds seem to use Predator which is only effective if u don't get hit very often.

If u do get hit often, I would just recommend grabbing a discipline build or an Iceborne build.

This guide should help. It segregates builds based on weapon type and skill level.

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You probably want to look towards progressing:

Dope Malkarion Cosmetics for leveling lantern to lvl 25. 50 armor and power rating on top of it. A good 45 escalation runs or so which is 900 minutes of extra playtime at 20 min/run. Grab the cosmetics quick because I am not sure how much time is left for getting those. May just be till Jan30.

Normal Trials to get two Berserker cells and one Discipline cell. Also, mods and specials from the Trials store for your weapon if they are good perhaps.

Grinding mastery for your weapon and behemoth mastery.

Farming all the good armors and weapons in-game: List of best weapons and armors to upgrade first.

Generally Trials is doable at around 500 power all around. So probably grind up to level 10+ armor/weapons and you should be fine, especially if you can get a decent team together.

If you're wanting to get better Trials times, then maybe try out Heroic+ Patrols to get the mats needed for leveling armor/weapons to 11-15, just to squeeze out as much efficiency as you can.

As for cells, make sure you're collecting the free daily login bonus (found in the shop for 0 platinum) every 23 hours to get free cells and ace chips.

If you happen to have some Iceborne cells, I highly recommend trying out Escalation 10-50. Gives you another thing to grind for with Malkarion gear, and it's a lot more doable than Trials.

Tbh if you're struggling in general, +6 Iceborne is fantastic until you can get used to reading behemoth movement and dodging mostly everything that comes your way.

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Escalation 10-50 is fun