Monster Hunter World – Hunting 101

Introducing Monster Hunter World 101 – a summary of the things/ items you need to become a better hunter!

Hunt Preparation

If you are new to Monster Hunter: World, there are high chances you will get lost in the overwhelming item list. Starting from the innocent rock that you picked up in the hunt to the fancy ore that you don’t know how you get. Items and materials are major components in Monster Hunters. Knowing the usage of these items is the key to master the art of monsters hunting.

MHW Items

For newcomers, these items can be overwhelming.

Recovery & HP Boosts Items

Pretty straightforward, these are the ones that help you survive the hunt and recover from that’s deadly Nergigante Dive-bomb.

  • Potion –  These are used to recover a chunk of your HP, to me the amount of HP is pretty little but is a needed to craft Mega-Potion.
  • Mega-Potion – Combining Potion with Honey to create this – Restore 70% of your HP – Take some time to drink up though, drink with responsibility. You can also keep a stack of 10 Honey in your inventory to make sure HP is always in the good state. This will result in 20 Mega Potion!

Honey can also the first material you can get easily during your journey. It’s appear all over the five maps of Monster Hunter World.

Monster Hunter World - Mega Potion

Mega-Potion – Combining Potion and Honey

  • Antidote – Poison cure, useful for certain monsters like Pukei Pukei or attacks from the Rathalos family.
  • Herbal Medicine – Combining Antidote with Blue Mushroom. Similar to other pill-type items, this takes very little time to consume and can also you a small HP recovery along with the curative effect of Antidote.

MHW - Hunting Tips Herbal Medicine.jpg

  • Cool Drink – Needed for any hot areas (Lava area in Elder’s Recess map) you don’t want constantly watch out for heal drop when fighting that angry-flame-spitting Lavasioth

Later game, you will encounter monster that has ability to set the area around it on fire and causing damage overtime. Making Cool Drink a great addition to your items

  • Life Powder – A must for multiplayer, this item help provide quick HP recovery for all members around you, sometime you may not be the greatest damage dealer, but you can be an awesome supporter.
  • Nullberry – Another curation item for later bosses that can halve your little HP bar by half. These can be gathered easily at Rotting Valve
  • Well done Steak – I neglect this when first time playing Monster Hunter World, but in the long run, this is a must for every hunter. In Monster Hunters series, stamina cap will decrease as the hunt go on (normally after around 15 minutes) . Keep these in your inventory to quickly catch a breath.
MHW - Hunting Tips BBQ2.jpg

Learn to create a BBQ hunters!

  • Ancient Potion – Fully Restore HP and increase HP cap, quickly to use also, can only keep one in your inventory, so use it wisely
  • Nutrient & Mega Nutrient – These will give you some additional HP (temporary) I am not a fan of these, but well, use this in some tougher fights is a wise choice. Combining Nutrient with Honey will net you the Mega Nutrient.

Traps and Tools

MHW - Hunting Tips - Using Traps

A hunter must know how to utilize traps

These are what make you become a smart hunter. Traps are used to keep the monster at bay and save you some time or let you prepare for a big attack, there are many types of traps/ tool, below are some of the most used ones.

Traps

  • Shock TrapThunder Bug + Trap Tool, make the monster paralyzed (no effect on Elder Dragons)
Capturing - Trap - ThunderBug.jpg

Bugs are used in traps – random monster hunter lore…

  • Pitfall Trap – Ivy + Net + Trap Tool, again, keep the monster in position, but this time leaving the head vulnerable to attack.

Bombs

  • Tranq Bomb – Combining Sleep Herb + Parashroom – Two of these on a immobilize monsters (by traps) will put them into sleep capturing the monsters in the process.

Remember to only use this when you know for sure that monsters are tired/weak. Capturing monster is one of two ways to complete the hunt.

Check out here: Monster Hunter World – Kill or Capture

  • Barrel Bomb – A small bomb that will explode after a set amount of time, not much usage beside being the starting material for the below.
  • Large Barrel Bomb – You can hold two of these in your inventory. This mostly used when the monsters go back to its cave and sleep, put two bombs in front of their faces and “wake” it up. The damage while the monster is sleeping is doubled, hence use these in this situation will net out the most of it.
  • Mega Barrel Bomb – As the name suggests, the biggest version of these bombs, dealing massive damage when struck.

As a tradition of the series, your natural instict whenever a monster is sleeping is to plant a bomb in front of their heads. This will also quickly reminds other players on the hunt on the tradition, and they will follow your lead.

Make sure you always carries two Mega-Barrel Bombs during any hunts!

Monster Hunter World 101 - Monster Hunter: World - Large Barrel Bomb

Bigger version of Barrel Bomb

Monster Hunter World 101 - MHW Mega Barrel Bomb

No need for explanation…

Monster Hunter World Slinger “Pods”

A new feature of Monster Hunter: World – The slinger, this add to the versatility of play-styles, where you can use it to grapple and traverse high places or simply throwing distract at monsters.

Don’t look down on this small gadget, there are various “ammo” that you can pick up during the hunt or craft from inventory, below are some example:

  • Environmental Pod: These are the one that you can pick during your hunt, ranging from Stone/Fire Pod that you can pick on the ground, to the more powerful Bomb Pod or Dragon Pod that dropped from Monster Part, these are mainly used for quick damage and to attack the environment to cause structure damage.
  • Flash Pod – Explained in this post – Monster Hunter: World – Hunt or Capture? Making from Flash Bug, this can save you some time to drink up that Potion or Antidote. What more? For those flying monsters, this help saves you a lot of time trying to touch them.
  • Dung Pod – Making from Sh**t – literally. At first, I don’t know what these are used for, but turn out it’s the best to make the monster run away, use these in tight situations when you have to face two tough monsters at the same time
  • Screamer Pod – Emit a sound that makes underground monster come to the surface and become stunned, something for your next Diablos hunt.

Monster Hunter World Power Up Charms

These are pretty hidden to me (as a newbie in Monster Hunters series) This is unlocked after mission Guiding Zorah Magdaros. These small items help increase your stat by simply keeping them in your inventory. There are two types of charms:

  • Power Charm – Increase attack by 8
MHW - Power Charm

Power Charm – Take up one inventory slot in compensating for damage

  • Armor Charm – Increase defend by 12.

But it does not stop there – You can combine these Charm with Bazelgeuse Talon to turn it into the below:

  • Power Talon – Further increase your damage (ATK) to 13.
MHW Power Talon

Upgraded version of Power Charm

  • Armor Talon – Further increase your defence (DEF) to 18.
MHW - Armor Talon.jpg

The upgraded version of Armor Charm

Monster Hunter: World Crafting Talon

You will need a Bazelgeuse Talon to upgrade these charms

Monster Hunter - Bazelgeuse

Bazelgeuse – The B52 of Monster Hunters, hunting this down should be your first priority once step into high rank

You can also keep both Power Charm & Power Talon at the same time! This can add in more bonus to your ATK, but this depends on your play style as the downside of this is it take up 4 inventory slot.

In The Hunt

With all the preparation, you are ready, but what about the actual hunt? Things may go south during the hunt as the monsters will change their pattern after a while. Below are some more tips to consider when you are transported to the map.

Nutrient is key 

In the beginning, Monster Hunter World already reminds us that meal is an essential part of a hunt. This mechanic gives you additional boosts to your stat and gives us some easier time.

MHW - Hunting Tips - Meals video.jpg

Make sure you are full before the fight hunters!

You can either pick a meal at Asteria’s canteen or choose a plump at any camp and pick a meal of your choice. The selection will expand along with the materials you can collect during your journey.

MHW - Hunting Tips - Meals.jpg

You can either choose a preset meal or pick a custom meal.

Some quick tips I gathered during my playthrough:

  • Home cook rather than preset – Spend some time design your custom meal, as it allows you to select the materials needed and increase your chances of activating those sweet food skills
  • Fresh ingredient adds in 10 HP to the result, I mostly use these ingredients to get the most HP boosts.
  • You will lose all these buff if you get “carted” (KO by the monsters) Try to utilize this to the fullest!

Know the hunting phases

After sighting the monster, you will start the fight, but that’s not all to it, during this time, the monster will go through many stages and each time, their behaviour will change accordingly. Same as previous titles, HP Bar is a luxury thing in Monster Hunter, knowing these stages is your best bet to know when to wrap up the hunt.

Below is a list of stages that the monster will go through during the fight:

  • White – This is the default state of the monster, they are walking, eating, or simply taking a yawn.
  • Yellow – This is when you engage the monster, it will start to attack back at this stage, the attacks of this stage are pretty basic, you can easily block or dodge out of the way, this is the time to learn some of the monster’s moveset.
  • Red – Enraged, after a while the Monster will enter rage mode, where its attacks move is changed and become more deadly. This is a sign for you not to be greedy and be cautious on every attack as some of them can one hit cart you to the Handler.
  • Skull Flashing – This icon meaning the monster is at its end, if you want to capture it, this is a guaranteed capture. The rate that this appears is pretty random though, so you sometimes cannot wait for this to plan your capture
  • Cripple/ Groaning – This is the absolute sight that you have dealt enough damage to the monster, it will move slowly and become tired. If you see the monster at this stage and want to capture it, this is your chance

Chek out this  a full hunt of Rathalos, note the eye icon next to the monster is changed from White to Red and finally it becomes weak (indicating by movement)

If it flies, Flash it

It took me more than 60 hours to realize this simple trick. At first, I thought Flash Pod is a rare resource and rarely used it in fights. One day, I accidentally shot a flash toward the Rathalos when it was flying and bam, a whole new world open up to me.

During your journey, there will be many flying monsters starting from the fluffy Paolumu to the mighty Kushala Daora. These flying wyverns/ dragons (as the game categorized) unleashed there most powerful attacks while airborne. A Flash to their face will take these big monsters down to the ground. This offer a chance for your strongest attacks.

Take caution though, after two or three shots, the more powerful monsters will start to resist it, use this with caution!

While this is super helpful for starter when facing those love-the-sky monsters like Rathalos or Bazelguese. Beware the upgraded version of them though! Tempered Elder Dragons sometime immune to these flash (or at least has a better endurance to the Flash)

Try Capture the Monster

There are two ways to finish the hunt in Monster Hunter World, slaying them down and capturing. After capturing a monster, you can see the monster sleeping back at Asteria like this

Monster Hunter: World_20180321211009

Capture the monster for “research” purpose

The number of materials in between Capturing and Slaying the monster is a little different. According to my “research” here:

Monster Hunter World Hunt vs Capture Materials

You can also try out yourself, just follow the simple steps – prepare some immobilize traps like Pitfall Trap or Shock Trap, some Tranq Bomb and make sure you don’t accidentally kill the monster.

Did you fight Greatest Jagras? This upgraded version of Great Jagras highlight the essential of Capturing the monster!

Conclusion

That’s for the basic stuff, Monster Hunter World has been released for a year now (With the Appreciation Fest going on as well) If you are new to the series, make sure you understand all the formalities of a hunter! If you are still deciding on which weapon to main, or to switch. Check out my guides below:

Ranged Weapons Guide

Melee Weapons Guide

Comments
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