Monster Hunter Wilds is finally here! If you’re planning to gear up over the weekend you’ve come to the right place. While we’ve shared our review score, we’ve found that this title is the most approachable for new hunters looking to get into the series.
If you’re thinking about jumping into Monster Hunter Wilds for the first time, here are 10 tips to get you started.
#1. Try Out All The Weapons
Seeing 14 weapons arrayed before you can be pretty daunting, but try each of them once because you might be surprised. When I first played Monster Hunter, I wanted to use Heavy Bowgun or Charge Blade — but eventually I landed on Hunting Horn and Longsword. When you start a new game, you’ll have a basic weapon in each of the 14 types, and in Monster Hunter Wilds, you can now carry two weapons and switch on your Seikret.
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A common question is: If I’m new, what weapon should I start with? I think that comes to what kind of role you want to play. All weapons have a learning curve where you’ll find new combos and the best roles, and no one weapon is better than the rest. However, I think the Sword and Shield, paired with a Hammer, is the best approach for new players. Give it a try!
#2. Remember To Eat Before A Hunt
Food is a huge part of Monster Hunter, and Capcom has gone to great lengths to make the food look incredible (check out our story on the food in Monster Hunter Wilds). Eating before a hunt has several benefits, and you can specifically pick ingredients to give you bonuses like increasing your elemental resistance. Eating will firstly boost your health and stamina. Don’t want the hassle of picking specific ingredients? Choose the Recommended Meal option, which will pre-select ingredients to help with what you’re currently hunting.
When you’ve chosen your hunt, you can cook a meal in your tent at base camp. But if you forget to, you can use your pop-up grill while out in the wilds — a super handy, new feature in Wilds.
#3. Use Your Seikret, But Gather Items While You Do
One of the biggest new additions to Monster Hunter Wilds is the Seikret. You unlock your personal Seikret early in the story, and they’ll serve as your faithful mount throughout your hunting journey. The biggest thing is that by jumping on your Seikret they’ll auto-navigate you to the monster that you’re hunting, and they have access to shortcuts around the map that you don’t while on foot. However, it’s easy to forget that just because your Seikret is running you to where you need to go, you can still do things en route.
Of course, you can use your slinger to collect herbs, mushrooms, honey and other items while you’re travelling. However, you can also use healing tems, sharpen your weapons and use emotes and coordinate with your team. Riding your Seikret is a great time-saver, but it also provides a huge utility boost because you can do most things, whether mounted or not.
#4. Study The Monsters
The story will progress through a series of increasingly difficult hunts and introduce monster types naturally. However, you can also head out to look around the maps and observe monsters in their natural habitat. By doing this and completing hunts outside of the campaign, you’ll automatically fill out your Monster Field Guide, which can be accessed in your menu. This will uncover the elemental resistances and weaknesses of the monsters, as well as what parts you can obtain from individual monsters; which have tails that can be cut off, and what environment they appear in.
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This information also gets updated in your hunt Assignment menu and can help inform what weapon elements you should bring with you — there’s no sense bringing a fire weapon to fight a water monster!
#5. Plan Your Upgrades And The Monster Parts You Need
Using the information in your Monster Field Guide, you can see which parts come from what monsters. By heading to the blacksmith, you can see what materials you need to craft base weapons and then each individual upgrade.
A very useful tool is in the Upgrade Weapons tab at the top menu of the Blacksmith screen.
This will show what weapons you currently have built and the upgrades available to you. Once you know the parts you need, you can crosscheck that with the hunter notes and see what monsters you get them from. Some you’ll get just from killing and carving the monster, while others are from breaking specific parts. The Monster Field Guide will have all that detail.
Be aware that low-rank and high-rank monsters give our different materials, and some materials, like tails need to be cut off to be harvested.
#6. Complete Optional Assignments
It’s easy to focus on the story missions; each time you complete one the next one will be given to you by the rest of your team. However, taking the time to complete optional assignments will get you more materials to make armour and weapons. There aren’t many difficulty spikes in the campaign, but having stronger armour and weapons will always be useful when going up against bigger monsters.
There are also Optional Assignments that come from NPCs that will often net you new items or abilities. Some of these are big upgrades, like new abilities for your Palico, or upgraded bombs – so they’re worth completing when they appear.
#7. Understand Low-Rank And High-Rank
In previous Monster Hunter titles, low-rank and high-rank were split into different menus, however, in Monster Hunter Wilds these are combined. When you’re looking at Optional Assignments, pay attention to the star rating next to the monster. Stars highlight the relative difficulty, with higher star ratings implying more difficult monsters. Early on, you’ll also notice all of your assignments come with blue stars.
Then later on in the campaign, you’ll see orange stars, which are high-rank quests that will come with higher rewards. Once you start on high-rank quests, you’ll have access to high-rank weapons and armour, which significantly boost the power of their low-rank counterparts.
Later in the game you may need to complete a mix of high-rank and low-rank quests, depending on what materials you’re farming — so check the monster rewards and plan effectively.
#8. Get High-Rank Armour ASAP
Following on from the above — once you start getting high-rank quests, take on some optional quests or complete expeditions to get high-rank armour. The jump in power is such that even weaker monsters will give high-rank gear that supersedes low-rank gear from stronger monsters.
You’ll also note that high-rank armour comes in an Alpha and Beta version. The short description of these armour pieces essentially says that Alpha has defined stats and resistances, while Beta has more open slots to customise what you want to get out of the set.
#9. Learn To Use Wounds And Focus Mode
Wounds and Focus Mode are two new additions to Monster Hunter Wilds that drastically increase your potential damage output and provide a bit more tactical application to your hunts. When you damage the monster, you’ll notice scratches and open wounds appear on their skin.
When you enter Focus Mode, the wounds will glow red. If you damage those areas, eventually the wound will ‘break’, causing the monster to flinch and take a good chunk of damage. If you use your special ability while in Focus mode, you’ll break the wound immediately and flinch the monster, you just have to hit the right spot.
There are other bonuses per weapon for these attacks; for Longsword, you’ll improve your weapon, while for Hunting Horn, you can pre-load musical notes while the attack hits.
#10. Don’t Fight Alone
Monster Hunter Wilds does a fantastic job of making you feel like a part of a larger team. Throughout the story, you’ll meet other hunters, shopkeepers, townsfolk, and tribal leaders who contribute to the story. However, in hunts, you’ll always have the option to take Support Hunters or other players with you.
Don’t get caught up in trying to solo monsters because unless you’re a glutton for punishment, playing with friends and allies is always more fun. There are functional benefits as well, such as a Hammer or Hunting Horn user being far better at stunning a monster’s head. While a Longsword or Great Sword will excel in cutting tails. You can also share the load of stacking bombs, dropping traps and throwing tranquilisers to capture monsters.
Lastly, if you’re looking for folks to play with, search for SOS flares at your Handler’s Quest Counter. There’s nothing better than helping out someone on a hunt and feeling that sense of camaraderie — and who knows, you may make a new friend doing it!
These are just some of the starting tips for new players who are getting into Monster Hunter Wilds on launch day. There’s an astonishing amount of content in the game, but the latest title feels like it is more new-player-friendly.
If you jump in and find other tips, be sure to share them with other new players, Monster Hunter games evolve and periodically add new content over each game’s lifecycle, so with any luck we’ll be hunting through the wilds for years to come.
