Summary
- Register loadouts for quick access in item pouch with 25 slots. Crafting max potions early helps maximize healing.
- Unselect items in pouch to avoid clutter. Use attack and defense buffs for 30 min boosts.
- Customize radial menus for quick access and crafting shortcuts. Collect Nourishing Extract in mid-game for upgraded loadouts.
Veteran Monster Hunter players will mostly be familiar with setting up their item pouches and radial menus to create different loadouts, but new players might find the concept a bit overwhelming. Fortunately, Monster Hunter Wilds does more than ever to make managing and saving item loadouts as easy and convenient as possible.
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For a brief overview, loadouts are how players manage their various consumable items. Players have an item pouch, displayed in the bottom right corner during gameplay, and customizable radial menus that can be brought up at will. The item pouch will show all items players currently have on them as a scroll bar, and radial menus allow quick access to a selection of these items. Even though the system is convenient, there’s a lot to understand, so here are some tips for putting together the best loadouts in Monster Hunter Wilds.
1
Managing And Registering A Loadout
Easy Refills
The players’ item pouch has 25 slots available to fill with consumable items to take out on hunts. At any time, players can register their current item loadout to save it for quick access later.
Once selected again, this automatically fills the item pouch with the selected items, replenishing them if possible/necessary. It’s a good idea to set up a basic early game loadout stocked with healing items, buffs, and support items as soon as players can.
2
Unselecting Items In The Pouch
Get Rid Of Clutter In The Scroll Bar
Near the start of the game, the player will receive a variety of different infinite-use hunting items known as essential items. These will all appear in the item pouch scroll bar and can make it difficult to scroll through mid-hunt.
However, players can easily solve this by managing their item pouch. Clicking on a specific item will toggle it off, meaning it won’t appear in the scroll bar. It’s a good idea to do this with items that are used infrequently, like the fishing rod, etc.
3
Healing Item Tips
How To Stock Up On Heals
Healing items are the first thing that new players should put in a loadout, and knowing a few basic tips can help maximize the amount of heals that players can bring on a hunt. To start with, players will have potions and mega-potions readily accessible, and they can bring 10 each of these on a hunt. Combining a potion with honey can craft a mega-potion, so if players bring a stack of honey as well, that’s effectively 20 of the larger heals. Players can also bring a stack of herbs to craft back the basic potions when they’re used.
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Then there are max potions. Players might not realize that they can craft these right from the start of the game, as long as they have the ingredients. Max potions need a catalyst (which has to be crafted with bitterbug broth and honey) and a mandragora. Players can only bring two on a hunt, but bringing the ingredients as well means they can be replenished. Filling a loadout with all these items makes it pretty difficult to run out of healing in any of the early game hunts.
4
Don’t Skip Attack And Defense Buffs
Long And Short-Term Buffs
As well as healing items, buff items are craftable from very early in the game, and players should definitely slot them into their standard loadout. The most important buffs are the long-term buffs for attack and defense. These last 30 minutes, so only one of each is needed for any hunt. They come from the Demondrug (attack) and Armor Skin (defense) items.
Both of these items can stack with other temporary buffs to attack and defense, too. Demondrug is crafted with a catalyst and a might seed, and Armor Skin is crafted with a catalyst and an adamant seed.
Automatic Crafting And Switching Loadouts On The Go
As well as being able to save an item pouch loadout, players can also customize and save a variety of radial menus to allow for quick access to items during combat. One nice feature of Radial menus in Monster Hunter Wilds is that they also act as quick crafting shortcuts, so if a player is out of an item but has the ingredients, they can still use it just by selecting the item from the radial menu.
Once a player has an item pouch with 25 items in it, it becomes more difficult to manage the item pouch scroll bar under pressure. Setting up radial menus for the most essential items, i.e. a menu for health and stamina recovery, a menu for status recovery, and so on, can help with the player’s ability to quickly use consumables on a hunt.
A Vital Mid-Game Crafting Ingredient For Improved Loadouts
Once players reach the fifth area of the game, they can start collecting a resource called nourishing extract. This is a crafting item that will help players start to upgrade their loadout with better versions of their early game items. Nourishing extract can be combined with several different items, including the demondrug and armorskin potions, to make mega versions of those potions with stronger buffs.
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Nourishing extract can also be combined with immunizers to create ancient potions. These restore both health and stamina to full, so they’re a powerful item. Players can only carry one on a hunt, but carrying extra extracts and immunizers again means players can craft more in the wild. Players can start picking up these extracts once they find Guardian Seikret, Guardian Doshaguma, and Guardian Ebony Odogaron.
7
Permanent Buff Items
Side Quest Rewards
Later on in the story campaign of Monster Hunter Wilds, players will have the option to earn some items that provide attack and defense buffs, but they don’t have to be consumed; they can provide the buffs just by sitting in the player’s item pouch.
The power charm boosts attack, and can be earned by completing the side quest “As Gatekeeper.” The armor charm is the defense equivalent, and can be obtained from the “Secure Wounded Hollow” side mission. These handy items should be slotted into any later game loadout for the passive buffs.
8
Use Different Loadouts To Counter Specific Threats
Status Recovery Items And Hitting Monster Weaknesses
There’s no one item template to deal with everything in Monster Hunter Wilds. While it’s good to establish a basic loadout, players will also want to customize loadouts and radial menus to help them deal with specific situations. For example, if the objective is to capture a monster rather than kill it, then having a radial menu setup with items like tranq bombs and shock traps can make that much more convenient.
Some monsters will have weaknesses to item effects like blindbugs, others will inflict specific status ailments on the player. Having loadouts and menus set up with the items for dealing with these types of threats can help make hunts go a lot easier. Learning to use item pouch loadouts and radial menus for different scenarios will help make the Monster Hunter Wilds experience a lot smoother and less overwhelming for new players in the long run.
- Released
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February 28, 2025
- ESRB
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T For Teen // Violence, Blood, Crude Humor
- OpenCritic Rating
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Mighty