Hunts are the central gameplay feature in Monster Hunter Wilds. It’s all in the title, after all! Grabbing a weapon and going to town on whatever unsuspecting beast you have your eye on is the main thing you’ll be engaged with for however many hours you’re playing this game.
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But not every hunt has to end in death! Indeed, it’s possible to capture your enemy monsters, and this has numerous benefits. For one, you can end fights a little earlier, and for two, you get the same amount of rewards (even though you miss out on carving the monster’s corpse)!
How To Capture Monsters
There are three elements to capturing a monster:
- Weakening the monster until it’s very low on health.
- Trapping the monster.
- Tranquilising the monster.
To sum it up simply, you need to weaken a monster until it’s within ‘capture’ range, and then set up the second two points simultaneously. A monster must be tranquilised using one of the two tranquilisation methods, and while it is tranquilised, it must be inside a trap. If all three boxes are ticked, the monster is considered trapped and the hunt will be over.
How To Know When A Monster Is Ready To Capture
There are a few ways to know that a monster is weak enough for you to begin the capturing process:
- The first is when your Palico or a support NPC alerts you to the fact that the monster is very weak.
- The second is when the monster starts to visibly salivate. Not all monsters will do this, however.
- The third is when a skull icon appears next to the monster’s icon on the mini-map.
The skull icon is the most surefire way to know that a monster can be captured. The shouts from your allies and the salivation are good tells, but they are not 100 percent accurate to capturability.
How To Get Traps
There are two types of trap that you can bring to a quest: 
Pitfall Trap
and 
Shock Trap
.
You can only carry one of each type of trap with you at one time, so it can be beneficial to take along the crafting materials with you so you can craft some more on the fly if you want to use traps offensively during a fight or you mess up the actual capture.
There are also alternate versions of traps that may be added to your Seikret’s pouch at the start of a quest, and your Palico may also set traps for monsters randomly throughout a hunt.
Some monsters are immune to one trap type, so it’s good practice to make sure you have both types with you at all times if you’re going for captures over slaying!
How To Tranquilise A Monster
There are three ways to tranquilise a monster:
- Using Tranq Bombs so that they explode within the monster’s vicinity. Multiple Tranq Bombs will be necessary.
- Shooting it with Tranq Ammo, which can only be used by Light Bowgun and Heavy Bowgun users as a long-range alternative to Tranq Bombs.
- Shooting it with Tranq Blades, which are long-range Slinger Ammo.
|
Item |
How To Obtain |
|---|---|
|
Sleep Herb + Parashroom |
|
|
Tranq Ammo |
Tranq Bomb + Normal Ammo |
|
Tranq Blade |
Tranq Bomb + Throwing Knife |
|
Obtain from Windward Plains, Scarlet Forest, or Iceshard Cliffs. |
|
|
Obtain from Windward Plains. |
Tranq Bomb
Sleep Herb
ParashroomIt’s easiest to tranquilise a monster once it’s trapped, but it is possible to use these methods to tranquilise the monster before you trap it.
If this is the case, the tranquilised monster will be considered captured the moment it falls into the trap you use.
How To Tell If A Monster Cannot Be Captured
There are some monsters in the game that cannot be captured, no matter what you do. This includes some story monsters that need to be killed to progress the narrative, but also some entire monster species. There are two ways to determine this:
- If an objective tells you to ‘Slay’ or ‘Repel’ a monster rather than ‘Hunt’ a monster, then the objective will only be completed if you kill it (or deal enough damage in some ‘Repel’ cases); capturing it will not work.
- When you look up the monster in the Field Guide, you’ll be given stats on how many times you have Hunted and Captured it. If the monster is capturable, this box will contain a number. If the monster cannot be captured, it will contain a ‘—–‘.
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