Things We Wish We Knew Before Starting Monster Hunter Wilds

The highly-anticipated Monster Hunter Wilds launched simultaneously for the first time on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. The Monster Hunter fandom has grown considerably since the release of Monster Hunter World in 2018, and with Wilds, it’s never been a better time to jump in and see what all the fuss and fun is about.

While Monster Hunter Wilds is undoubtedly the most approachable game in the series, there’s still a lot to learn when you first start. If you’re looking for advice to help you find your footing faster in the Forbidden Lands, these ten tips will set you on the right track.

Pick A Weapon And Stick With It

There are 14 weapons to choose from at the start of Monster Hunter Wilds, each with its own strengths, weaknesses, and unique playstyle. While you’re encouraged to experiment in the training grounds to find the right weapon for you, we highly recommend that once you settle on a weapon, you stick with it through most of the campaign, if not into the endgame.

Every weapon is complex and difficult to learn, and it will take you many hours to master all the intricacies of any one of them – especially if you start with one of the more difficult ones like Switch Axe or Insect Glaive. While it’s true that some weapons have advantages against certain monsters, you can and should main a weapon until you’ve completely mastered it.

Monster Hunter Wilds is the first game in the series that lets you equip two different weapons at once. This is a great feature for veterans of the series, but as a beginner, we’d still recommend using one weapon.

You can equip two different weapons of the same type, so it’s a good idea to select two with different elemental or status condition effects.

Learn Your Core Combos

Spamming light and heavy attacks will only get you so far in Monster Hunter Wilds. You may be able to button mash against some of the smaller monsters, but eventually, you’ll need to employ a little more discipline if you want any hope of surviving. The sooner you start practising your basic weapon combos, the more prepared you’ll be for the toughest fights.

You can find your weapon’s recommended combos by opening the pause menu, navigating over to the “Info” tab, scrolling down to “Play Guide” and then selecting “Weapon Controls”.

From there just choose your weapon, then page over two times and you’ll find a list of useful basic combos. Learning these will help you start to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your weapon and how best to manage your spacing and timing when going in for the attack.

Don’t Grind Until You Hit A Wall

There are countless weapons and armor sets to craft in Monster Hunter Wilds, each requiring a different pile of monster parts and resources to make. If you’re just a couple of items short of upgrading a weapon or completing an armor set you may be tempted to pause the campaign and farm some monsters you’ve already hunted, but you really don’t need to do that.

“The Wall” is a common phenomenon in Monster Hunter games. You’re cruising along hunting monster after monster until suddenly and without warning you encounter one that seems way harder than the rest. This is The Wall, and you shouldn’t need to farm for upgrades until you hit it.

You can safely get through the main campaign with a simple bone or iron weapon, so there’s no reason to grind until you’ve finished the story. Keep in mind that Low Rank gear is going to be immediately replaced once you reach High Rank, so don’t worry about building a wide variety of elemental armor and weapons. It will all be useless in the end game.

Don’t Be Afraid To Call In Some Help

There’s no shame in calling in reinforcements, and in fact, Monster Hunter is really meant to be played with friends. Wilds is the first game in the series that allows you to call in NPC hunters to help, so even if you’re the kind of person who avoids other people in games, you can still get some backup when you need it.

Monster Hunter Wilds’ difficulty scales with the number of hunters in the party, so while the monster you’re hunting will get beefier, you’ll also have the benefit of giving the creature multiple targets to focus on, instead of just you and your Palico. If you’re struggling, call for help.

Loadouts Make Battle Prep A Breeze

There’s a lot of item management in Monster Hunter Wilds, which can be a real drag when you just want to get out there and start the hunt. Instead of manually refilling your potions, antidotes, and traps before every mission, do yourself a favor and set up a loadout.

To create a loadout, start by organizing a standard inventory in your item pouch that you’d feel comfortable taking on any hunt. I recommend equipping Mega Potions, Antidote, Nulberry, Dung Pod, Flash Pod, Hot Drink, Cool Drink, Shock Traps, Tranq Bombs, Well Done Meet, and Rations.

Then head into your tent, click transfer items, then item pouch. Now press the left stick to enter the loadout menu. From here, open the submenu and select “Register Loadout”. Now your loadout is saved and you can come here to automatically refill your bags with all the items you need before every hunt.

Don’t Forget To Eat!

Eating food gives you important buffs that you won’t want to miss out on before heading into a fight. Eating a meal raises your health and stamina to its max, which will help you survive in battle. Unfortunately the bonus effects from eating food only last for so long, so you’ll need to eat again after a few hunts.

To eat, simply equip your portable BBQ grill from the quick access menu and use it. Choose “Grill a Meal” and choose “Reccomended Meal.” If you have any additional ingredients, you can add those to the dish for an additional perk, which is defined beneath the name of the ingredient.

If you’ve collected any Raw Meat from roaming herbivores, you can also Grill Meat that you can eat during the battle when you need a quick boost to your health and stamina.

Target Wounds To Speed Up Hunts

Monster Hunter Wilds has a mechanic that allows you to target a monster’s wounds and deal bonus damage to them. By repeatedly attacking the same place on a monster’s body you’ll eventually expose a wound. You can identify wounds by holding down the left trigger and looking for glowing red spots on the monster.

Hitting wounds deals bonus damage, and if you hit them enough they’ll eventually get destroyed, which temporarily staggers the monster and interrupts its attacks.

Every weapon has a specific attack that can instantly destroy wounds called a Focus Strike, Focus Slash, Focus Blow, Focus Fire, Focus Blast, or Focus Assault. This move is activated by holding the left trigger and pressing the right button. Each attack has a slightly different effect, but they are all effective at instantly destroying a monster’s wound for massive damage and stagger.

Monster Weaknesses Don’t Really Matter Until Endgame

Using elemental weapons to capitalise on a monster’s weakness is a great way to speed up your hunts in the end game, but as your progress through the campaign, these weaknesses don’t really matter.

Instead of spending time building an arsenal of weapons with different elemental types, focus on clearing the campaign and getting to the endgame where your investments will actually matter.

Mount Up When You Need A Breather

One of biggest differences between Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Wilds is the introduction of the seikret. This bird-like mount is extremely versatile and capable of assisting you in battle in a number of ways. With a simple press of a button, you can call your seikret and instantly mount up, even if your already running or, as is often the case, laying on the ground after suffering a monster attack.

Use the seikret often whenever you need to quickly get away or catch your breath. There are a lot of things you can do while mounted, including sharpening, drinking potions, and swapping between weapons. The seikret allows you to move quickly while performing these maintence actions, so take advantage of it.

Collect Pretty Much Everything

Your seikret rides aren’t just for sucking down potions and sharpening your blades every time the monster you’re hunting runs to a new environment. While the seikret follows the monster’s trail on autopilot, you have the opportunity to harvest valuable resources from your surroundings.

Treat seikret rides as a mini-game to see how much bitterbug, adament seed, and honey you can collect during fight intermissions. Everything you can grab will be a useful crafting material somewhere down the road. This counts double for harvesting parts from monsters you’ve defeated. Even if you don’t craft anything with those parts, you can always convert extra material into armor spheres.