How Does Flayer Work in Monster Hunter Wilds

Skills in Monster Hunter Wilds often come with vague descriptions that don’t really explain what the practical effects of them are in terms of hard stats and actual numbers, forcing players to simply guess at it.

Flayer is an Equipment skill that is a perfect example of this. The in-game description tells players that using this skill will make it ‘easier to inflict Wounds’ but doesn’t really say by how much.

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What Does Flayer Skill Do in Monster Hunter Wilds

flayer skill description in monster hunter wilds

The Flayer skill in MH Wilds has the following description:

Makes it easier to inflict wounds. Upon inflicting enough damage, also deals additional non-elemental damage.

There are five levels to Flayer, each making inflicting wounds increasingly easier. However, the game does not give players hard stats to gauge what Flayer actually does and how it impacts gameplay.

Level 1: Makes it ~5% easier to inflict wounds. Also deals additional non-elemental damage.
Level 2: Makes it ~10% easier to inflict wounds. Also deals slightly more additional non-elemental damage.
Level 3: Makes it ~15% easier to inflict wounds. Also deals moderately more additional non-elemental damage.
Level 4: Makes it ~20% easier to inflict wounds. Also deals more additional non-elemental damage.
Level 5: Makes it ~30% easier to inflict wounds. Also deals much more additional non-elemental damage.

Flayer does two things:

Make Wounds appear more often.
Randomly deals a raw physical damage hit when attacking monsters (does not need to be targeting a Wound).

Wounds in Monster Hunter Wilds occur when a significant amount of damage is applied to an area on the monster’s body. Flayer makes inflicting Wounds easier by lowering the damage cap, allowing hunters to put less effort into the process. This does not mean that Wounds pop up randomly as a result of lucky hits; it only makes them occur more often.

While this seems completely broken on the surface, in practice, it is much less so. A big reason for this is that after an open Wound is destroyed, that area of the monster becomes scarred. Scarred areas cannot be Wounded again. This means the more Wounds you create with Flayer, the more surface area of the monster becomes unusable for creating Wounds.

However, Flayer has another thing going for it: random burst damage hits on weapon attacks. From testing, it appears that this is a flat damage attack that scales with the level of the Flayer Skill as well as the weapon being used. These can deal as much 300+ damage, but such numbers only appear with weapons that deal damage in big hits like the Greatsword, making the skill best paired with slow, hard-hitters like GS instead of fast attackers like Dual Blades.

Weapon elemental damage does not affect the Flayer skill.

Is Flayer Worth It in Monster Hunter Wilds

A hunter fighting a Chatacabra with a wound in Monster Hunter Wilds

It depends, but in most cases, not really. The reason this is the case is that if you’re running Flayer with something like Partbreaker (destroying Wounds deals more damage), the idea is that you will be able to create so many Wounds on the monster that the bonus damage would be more than what flat damage boosting skills would give you. In practice, this is not the case. While Wounds do appear more frequently using Flayer, it’s not to such an extent that you can rely on it or chain destroy them. The non-elemental burst hits are good, but other skills are better.

This puts Flayer in the awkward position of being okay for a lot of builds but not the best. And when you’re finalizing an endgame build, merely okay is simply not good enough.

How to Get Flayer in Monster Hunter Wilds

Flayer is an equipment skill that can be equipped at various levels using the following gear.

If you like the look of the Arkveld Set that Flayer comes with, but don’t want to use it, you can transmog it using Layered armor without actually having to equip it.