There’s lots of choices you have to make in Monster Hunter, from the clothes you wear to the weapons you equip. Just choosing from one of the 14 weapon types available to you isn’t enough though. Now you have to make builds, choose looks, match them to the right monster you’re hunting. And a lot of that comes down to choosing whether you want an Elemental or Status Effect weapon.
These are staples of the Monster Hunter series, and Monster Hunter Wilds doesn’t shake the boat in that regard. However, making that choice is harder, especially when it comes to the utility offered by the various status effects. So here’s exactly how Status Effect weapons work, and when you might want to use them.
What Are Status Effect Weapons?
Every weapon in Monster Hunter Wilds has, with a few exceptions, either an Element or Status Effect associated with it. Elemental effects are a bit more self-explanatory, allowing you to deal a certain elemental damage type in addition to raw damage. Status Effect weapons are different though, and come with one of four status effects. Here’s each of them and what they do:
- Sleep – Causes the monster to fall asleep.
- Paralysis – Locks the monster in place similar to a Shock Trap.
- Poison – Causes the monster to take damage over time.
- Blast – Once enough build-up has accumulated, an explosion will trigger, causing a chunk of damage to the monster.
These effects can be varyingly useful, depending on how you’ve built your hunter, though each has a place in which they excel.
Are Status Effect Weapons Worth It?
This is the great debate, and as always the answer is ‘it depends’. Like Elemental weapons, monsters have various resistances to status ailments. For elements, this means you will ultimately be dealing less damage, though this isn’t the case for status effect weapons. Unless a monster is outright immune to a status effect, then you can still trigger it on them.
Note that each time you trigger a status effect on a monster, they gain more resistance to it for the remainder of the hunt.
Monsters with a stronger resistance will have a higher threshold before the status effect triggers, and as such would require consistent attacking for the build-up to not wear off quickly. This is less of an issue for fast weapons, such as the Dual Blades. While they will deal less build-up per strike than a heavier, slower weapons would, the sheer speed of attacks lets you build up status effects incredibly quickly.
It also depends entirely on what you want to achieve. If you want raw damage, then Blast is a great companion because it’s just more damage on top of your existing attacks. Pairing it with the Critical Element skill and some high affinity, and you can be getting critical hits and triggering Blast consistently and frequently. The same is true for poison and its damage-over-time.
Paralysis and Sleep are very different beasts though. The former acts like a stun trap, though doesn’t let you capture monsters. This does give you a great chance to lock the monster in place for massive damage though, even if it doesn’t deal inherent damage itself. Sleep does exactly that, though can be much harder to use effectively without planning, as a single hit will wake them back up.
The first hit on a sleeping monster will deal increased damage, which is why planting bombs is such an effective strategy.
When Should You Use A Status Effect Weapon?
As always, that is dependent upon the monster you are fighting. Before heading out on any hunt, make sure to check their stats in the Field Guide to see everything they are weak and resistant to. You don’t want to bring a Paralysis weapon to a Lala Barina hunt, for example.
On the other hand, a monster like Balahara is incredibly susceptible to Paralysis, which is great with how much they move around. You have to consider the utility of the status effect against the monster you are fighting, and how resistant they are to it.
Sleep can be highly effective if you’re in a team of coordinated hunters, and Paralysis can be very helpful on monsters that move quickly that you need to lock in place to break a certain part. If you’re more of a solo hunter or like pairing up with random hunters, then Poison and Blast are a much safer bet as other players have no chance of disturbing the effectiveness of those status effect.
In short, plan before every hunt whether this status effect is the most useful. Maybe you’d rather go for a weapon with a higher affinity and raw damage if a monster has no particular weaknesses.
