MONSTER HUNTER: WORLD – 10 Tips for New Hunters!

1) Don’t Be Afraid To Experiment Early On

Monster Hunter World features fourteen different weapon types, and each of them has a distinct feel and playstyle. Even weapons which might at first seem similar, such as the Lance and Gunlance, often end up feeling quite different once you take them out into a hunt. You are given a basic version of each weapon straight off the bat, and the early upgrades can be made pretty cheaply, so it’s worth testing out as many as possible before you get to the later game.

Spending a little time in the training room or going on a hunt or two with each weapon could completely win you over to its style.

2) Eat Well, Hunt Well

Visiting Astera’s Canteen offers you the chance to sample a culinary feast from the Meowscular Chef and his band of faithful palico assistants. You should always eat a meal before going out on a hunt – doing so will grant you a notable bonus to your max stamina and health, as well as a selection of attack and defence boosts and the chance at some powerful additional food buffs. It’s cheap, and makes a huge difference to your survivability.

If you want a quick and easy option, the Chef’s Choice will guarantee you the biggest health boost – but if you’re after something more specific, there are a wealth of dishes catered towards buffing specific stats. If you want to get even more fancy, you can craft a meal from scratch with the ingredients currently at your disposal. More will unlock as you progress the campaign, complete certain optional missions, and find rare materials out in the wild, so the canteen will only become more beneficial over time.

If you do forget to eat before heading out, don’t worry! In World, your Handler can cook you a meal at any of the campsites. If you get carted during a hunt, you’ll lose your current buffs, but can eat again if more than ten minutes have passed since your last meal. Otherwise, you’ll have to rely on any Nutrients, Steaks, Rations, and Max or Ancient Potions you have in stock to boost your health and stamina back up.

3) Use The Environment To Your Advantage

The environments of Monster Hunter World are lush, varied, and packed with goodies and opportunities for you to take advantage of during your hunts. First of all, you’ll come across plenty of small objects which you can load into your slinger. Simple objects like Stones and Redpits won’t deal much damage, but they can still be used to trigger environmental hazards like boulders and stalactites which can be dropped onto your foes.

Other slinger ammo has more specific utility, such as using puddle pods to knock mud off a Barroth, Brightmoss to stun flying monsters out of the sky, or Scatternuts to force Kula Ya-Ku to stumble and drop its rock. You can also craft items out of certain materials, such as Flash Pods to temporarily blind and ground airborne creatures and Dung Pods, which are great for forcing any interfering monsters to leave you alone while you’re fighting something else.

You can also use your slinger to latch on to the golden Wedge Beetles you’ll spot higher up, allowing you to quickly traverse certain areas or perform drop attacks onto monsters to try and mount them. Similarly, slopes and ledges can present fantastic mounting opportunities, as well as those mushroom-covered walls that you can run up. Mounting your enemies is a great way to open up a big damage opportunity, as completing a mount will allow you to deal some decent hits and knock the monster down for quite some time.

4) Be Considerate Of Your Teammates

Hunting alone can be a great way to learn a new monsters attack patterns or make some quick money, but a big part of the joy of Monster Hunter is teaming up with other hunters. But if you want to have the best time when playing in a team, it’s important to be a considerate teammate! For starters, don’t take more than your fair share of the shared supply items provided at the start of a hunt unless you’re sure everyone else already has what they need.

When you’re actually fighting a monster, be mindful of your positioning and which attacks you’re using. Certain attacks can trip or knock back other players, so try to avoid using them in close proximity to your teammates! Take a look at the weapon types by everyone’s names and decide where you’re most useful – blunt weapons such as hammers and hunting horns should take priority for attacking the head as they can knock monsters out; slicing weapons with good reach such as longswords and greatswords should work on cutting off tails; while players with fast weapons such as the dual blades excel at attacking the creature’s legs and feet to try and trip it up.

Keep one eye on your teammate’s health and status if you can, so you can help them when they get into danger. If you see that someone has been inflicted with stun, paralysis, or sleep, you can run over and knock them out of it. Lifepowder is the easiest way to help out a fellow hunter when they’re in trouble – toss one in the air and everyone nearby gets healed – only a small amount, but often enough to keep you alive in a pinch. It’s easy to make, so don’t leave town without some! The Wide-Range armor skill will allow you to even more easily keep everyone in tip-top shape, if you want to focus more heavily on a supporting role.

Finally, if a teammate successfully mounts a monster – don’t flash it! Doing so will knock your teammate off their back and miss out on the opportunity for a big knockdown. Only use a flash if the mounting player actually asks for it, perhaps if they’re about to run out of stamina. Be a thoughtful teammate, and your fellow hunters will love you for it!

5) Get Down And Stay Down!

You’ll face off against many dangerous beasties in Monster Hunter World, so it’s important to prioritize staying alive above all else. After all, each faint cuts heavily into your mission rewards – and too many of them will cause the entire hunt to be a write-off. Obviously your best bet is to stay on the move, utilizing the sprint and dodge rolls to steer clear of incoming attacks; remember that you can also hold sprint to move faster while using potions and other items. But when an especially big attack is coming in and you’re not sure how to avoid it, remember that the safest place to be is often on the ground.

While your weapon is sheathed, sprinting away from a monster and pressing the dodge button will cause your hunter to perform a “Superman dive” to prone. This is your most powerful evasive tool, as you won’t be hit during either the dive or the time you’re lying on the ground – even if the attack goes right through you! You’re also completely safe from damage when lying on the ground after being knocked down, and you can stay on the ground for longer than normal by simply not pressing any buttons if you think another big hit is incoming. So restrain yourself from the impulse to mash buttons after you get whacked!

6) Remember Your ABCs: Always Be Collecting

When you first start out in World, you’ll need resources. The more you have, the more supplies you’ll be able to craft back in town, and more supplies means smoother hunts in the future. As you progress through the storyline, you’ll start to unlock several ways to gain additional resources passively over time, but it’s still well worth grabbing everything you run past while out on a hunt. Flowers, mushrooms, bugs – you name it, you’ll probably want it sooner or later.

High priority items to keep an eye out for from the get-go are green and blue herbs, honey, blue mushrooms, flashbugs, and bitterbugs; but anything you can get your hands on will come in handy eventually. Items with a check mark next to them in your crafting list will be automatically crafted when you pick up the required materials – you can turn this on or off for any items you want the game to make for you in the background. You can also manually craft items mid-hunt, if you need to.

It’s also well worth mining ore spots, gathering from bone piles, and collecting from resource spots such as unique mushroom colonies. The ores and bones are frequently used for weapon and armor crafting, while items gathered from resource spots will earn you a wealth of research points as well as having a chance to unlock new canteen ingredients. You should make extra effort to collect from any natural resource you spot that is sparkling, as it’ll either grant more resources than normal or offer a higher chance at rare items.

Don’t forget the supply box either! Be sure to check it at the start of every hunt; you don’t get to keep first-aid kits and rations after a hunt ends, but they’re effectively free potions and food so you should use those up before dipping into your own resources. You do, however, get to keep some other items that you’re given, including the bowgun ammo, so if you collect that each time you hunt you’ll be able to build up a stockpile in no time!

7) Minimise Your Downtime With Loadouts

Wandering around Astera, browsing the blacksmith’s offerings, or hanging out with your friends in the Gathering Hub between missions is a lot of fun! But when it’s time to hunt, you don’t want to be spending ages fiddling about with your items and equipment setup. Thankfully, Monster Hunter World lets you save multiple loadouts for both your items and your equipment, so make the most of them! It’s a good idea to clear out any unnecessary items to make space to collect more resources, and you can restock your key supplies such as potions, antidotes, and traps all in just a couple of button presses.

Your preference may vary, but I like to have different item setups depending upon the type and power level of the monsters I’m about to go up against. It’s worth noting also that your current radial menu setup will save to the item loadout, so if you change that you’ll want to re-register it. Similarly, your equipment loadout will save any decorations you slot into your gear as well as any custom armor colors you may have applied – meaning it’s invaluable once you start to build out more complex builds later on.

It’s also worth remembering that you can go into the tent that’s in each campsite if you want to switch your equipment or items mid-mission. If you forget to bring something important with you, or decide that the weapon you currently have equipped isn’t working well for the hunt you’re on, you can fast-travel to camp and swap out in no time – especially so if you’re making good use of saved loadouts!

8) “Optional” Missions? Get Them Done!

As you’re progressing through World’s campaign, you will naturally be drawn to the assigned missions where the newest stuff is. But you’ll pick up plenty of optional missions along the way, too – and while some of them might sound a little boring, many of them are well worth your time. In particular, any optional mission which has a speech bubble next to it will grant you some tangible reward, whether that’s a new piece of equipment, an additional canteen ingredient, improvements to your farm, or simply a hefty stack of research points.

Completing certain optional missions will sometimes unlock other optional missions as well, so ideally you should aim to complete them all eventually. In a similar vein, certain NPCs around Astera and out in the wilds may task you with “delivery requests” which require you to turn specific items in to the research team in Astera. These are also well worth taking the time to complete, as they’ll offer similar rewards to the optional missions. Don’t let the name put you off – they may be optional, but it certainly doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile!

9) Don’t Hang Around In Low Rank Too Long!

Monster Hunter World’s main story is split into two distinct chunks. For the first part of the game, you’ll be working your way through what is known as “low rank” missions – these are denoted by the blue stars. Low Rank is when you’ll be getting used to the game’s basic mechanics, meeting most of the monsters for the first time, and discovering which weapon types you enjoy the most. You may be tempted to spend a bunch of time grinding out fights and crafting tons of different gear pieces – but, trust me, don’t bother!

Once you reach the “High Rank” missions, which have orange stars, you’ll unlock the ability to craft new variants of all of the different armor sets, as well as a bunch of new ones going forwards. As soon as you hit this point, feel free to make anything that takes your fancy, as you’ll be able to upgrade it all the way into the end game. You’ll also unlock additional weapon tiers, although these do upgrade from the low-rank weapons. High Rank is where Monster Hunter World really hits its stride, and it’s where you’ll spend most of your time with the game.

So while you certainly shouldn’t rush through the early missions, bear in mind that the game has somewhat of a soft reset partway through and that’s when you’ll really want to start considering what gear you want to make going forwards.

10) Investigations Are Your Best Friend

Investigations can seem a little overwhelming at first, but they’re your ticket to getting the rarest material drops as well as making a ton of money. Investigations are randomly generated, and you’ll be given new ones from time to time when you pick up monster tracks, break parts off a monster, or successfully make a kill or capture. You’ll also get some from your Tailraiders on occasion. All the Investigations you’ve been given appear in a big list viewable at the research team in Astera. From here, you can tick the ones you’re actually interested in, and they’ll then show up in the Investigations menu at the quest board.

When viewing an Investigation, you’ll be able to see whether it’s Low-Rank or High-Rank (based on the star color), as well as noting any special conditions. More difficult conditions, such as having fewer faints allowed, are denoted by an exclamation mark, while the green up arrows indicate a more generous restriction or an increased payout. Some investigations will also have special world conditions, such as an upsurge in the number of gathering spots.

Completing an Investigation not only nets you the standard end-of-mission goodies, but also grants several Special Rewards which can come in bronze, silver, and gold varieties. Bronze rewards are okay, but silver and gold Investigation rewards have a much higher chance to drop rare parts, making them one of the best ways to get your hands on the most elusive monster materials. If you’re looking to farm a complete monster set or are trying to track down specific parts, completing Investigations should usually be your number one priority.

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