Monster Hunter Rise: A beginner's guide to the new hunt

If you're new to the world of Monster Hunter, welcome! Rise is as good a starting point as the series has seen, but it can still be a little vague with its explanations. Here's some expert advice to help you get started...

Whether Monster Hunter Rise is your very first experience of the Monster Hunter series or this isn't your first rodeo, a lot has changed in Rise. It might be one of the best games on Game Pass but it sure doesn't explain some of its systems and mechanics well... although veterans will know that's pretty much par for the course for the series. Here, we'll try to break down some of the basics in the hope that more players will get to experience the joy of MonHun.

Monster Hunter Rise: Everything you need to know to get started

What weapon type is best?

There's not strictly a 'best' weapon class in Monster Hunter in general, since even though damage output does differ somewhat between them, they're all designed to fill different roles. Sword & Shield is a reliable all-round option that seems to get better with each game, and it's a great choice for newcomers as it has quick combos, the ability to guard, and you can use items without sheathing your weapon, plus it's a lot of fun. That quick item usage means that S&S is also a great support weapon, along with Hunting Horn, which was once an expert weapon but is easier to use than ever in Rise, so don't be afraid to try it out. Hunting Horn and Hammer are the two impact-type weapons, which can knock out monsters by dealing enough damage to the head, making up for their lack of ability to sever tails like the bladed weapons can. Long Sword and Great Sword are brilliant at this, with their superior reach allowing them to slash at tails and other elevated parts that many weapons can't easily reach. Gunlance can be a little fiddly to learn, since the Long, Wide, and Normal variants all require different play styles and builds to get them to perform at their best, while its simpler cousin Lance is the single best defensive weapon in the game — slap some Guard and aggro skills on your set and you'll be an unbreakable tank that can hold a monster's attention while your team goes to work on it, making up for its weaker damage than some other classes.

Dual Blades and Insect Glaive are the best picks for agile weapons, though you'll need to be mindful of their high stamina usage, while Switch Axe and Charge Blade are flashy options that can take a little learning to use well but look and feel great once you get a feel for them. Finally there's the ranged trio of Bow and the Light and Heavy Bowguns... while great, these are hard to recommend to new players as they rely heavily on ammo and coatings, which can be a little expensive and resource-intensive which may slow your progress, but they're certainly worth trying out a bit later once you've got some cash and materials to spare. There's no 'bad' weapon archetype in Monster Hunter and all can be powerful in the right hands, so give a few types a try in the training area (you start with the basic Kamura weapon of each type in your item box) and see which feels right for you. Better yet, get a feel for a few, as some are better in certain fights than others — Hammer and Horn can pretty much stunlock the Raths by going to town on their heads, for example, while Lance can turn aggressive monsters like Tigrex and Diablos from pretty scary fights into basically free ones. Use whatever you like, learn to use its full kit, and you can't really go wrong!

Weapon elements and status effects

The default weapons are non-elemental — or Raw as it is sometimes known — but as you work your way up the weapon tree, you'll find a dizzying array of options if you want to really taste the painbow. Elemental and status weapons typically have lower base attack values in exchange for either additional damage in one of five flavours — Fire, Water, Thunder, Ice, or Dragon — or the ability to cause status build-up that will eventually trigger the effect. Elemental can work for all weapon types so long as you're targeting a monster's weakness with your weapon of choice each hunt, but status is a little different and because of how the build-up works, quick weapons like Sword & Shield and Dual Blades work best as status appliers. Status build-up on monsters will decay over time, so you need to keep actively attacking to prevent this and to reach the threshold to activate the effect. Resistance to that ailment will also increase after each application, so you'll have to work a bit harder for the next one.

As for what they all do, Paralysis is one of the best general options as it holds the monster in place for a while, making it easy for impact weapons to guarantee knockouts for even more free damage and/or for cutting weapons to go to work on tails without the monster moving around. Sleep is good as the first instance of damage to a sleeping monster does massively increased damage, but this requires coordination — more often than not, online players will miss the cue that the monster is about to sleep (the music stops playing) and wake it with a normal hit, which loses out on a lot of damage compared to what a Hammer or Great Sword could do with their massive blows or even to the common tactic of simply surrounding a dozing foe with bombs to give it a rude awakening. Poison applies a damage-over-time effect when it procs, which sounds nice but the damage is pretty underwhelming so this is best used against low-tolerance monsters for more activations (and Daora in the endgame, as it disables some of its annoying wind effects). Finally, Blast triggers explosions after enough damage is dealt which does decent damage and can help break monster parts, making it a good general purpose status, although some monsters are more resistant to it than others, as with the other ailments — after beating them once, you can check the monster logs in your Hunter's Notes menu to see which are weak to which elements and statuses to make sure you go into a fight prepared.

Weapon sharpness

Sharpness is a crucial mechanic in Monster Hunter. At its most basic level, this affects whether or not your attacks will land clean on a monster or fail to break through its hide or armour — attacks with an orange sharpness weapon are more likely to be deflected than with blue, for instance. This alone makes it important to look out for weapons with higher sharpness, and you can see when you craft a weapon what kind of sharpness bar it has (the second bar shown below is how that will improve when using the full Handicraft armour skill). Large chunks of one good colour are always nice, since you won't need to stop and sharpen so often mid-hunt. There's another factor that the game doesn't tell you, however, and that's the fact that different sharpness grades also convey damage bonuses and penalties to overall attack damage. Raw and elemental damage weapons work a little differently, with better bonuses for raw — 5% for green, 20% for blue, and 32% for white — and harsher penalties for elemental, where you need to be at least in green to be doing base damage, with steep drop-offs at each tier below and lesser benefits from higher tiers. Raw weapon users especially will want to consider this when making new gear, although there are a few skills that can help offset lower sharpness too... the maxed Bludgeoner armour skill gives a flat 10% damage boost when in green or below, while Dulling Strike weapon Ramp-Up skill has a similar effect, only with a pretty low activation chance and a bigger damage boost, and the two do stack. There's also the Mind's Eye armour skill, which can prevent attacks from being deflected at all and even do extra damage to tough monster parts.

Know your role

When hunting in multiplayer, you'll want to bear in mind that some attacks can trip up and interrupt your allies, which could mess with their combos and damage output, plus it can be really frustrating to get knocked around by someone who is just swinging wildly. Monster heads are typically weakest to impact damage so if there's a Hammer or Hunting Horn user in the group, let them do their thing up front and try to avoid hitting them so they can get as many stuns and knockdowns as possible. If you're the only person running a bladed weapon, you'll be the only one with a reliable way of cutting off monster tails for extra drops, so focus on that if you can and your buddies will be grateful. In general, just be mindful of positioning compared to other hunters and which of your attacks interfere with other players — especially against smaller monsters, things can get pretty chaotic when everyone piles in to take advantage of an opening but just do your best to put some damage in without messing with your fellow hunters too much! If you get frustrated with having this happen to you or use a weapon that need to be landing its full combos to be effective, the Flinch Free armour skill can be very useful as having three levels in this prevents these interruptions, although it might be tricky to find room for it, especially on earlier sets.

Armour skills

Skills have been streamlined considerably since the early Monster Hunter games, where they used to only come online when a set amount of points had been invested in any given skill. Now, things are much simpler, with each armour piece or decoration straight-up contributing one or more levels in the skill in question. Most armour sets have a theme to the skills they carry — tanky brute Diablos' set is all about guarding while the Rathalos set deals in pure raw offence. Using a full set suitable for your weapon or play style is a good call as you also get additional elemental resistances when using three or more pieces of a set, although once you get into High Rank and unlock Decorations, the extra flexibility of slotting in more skills makes mixed sets much more viable. At its most basic, you might want to swap out one or two piece of a set that contribute little to your build for ones that fit better, but you can also get creative and make a mish-mash suit with parts of all kinds of things if you can get the skills and slots to align nicely. When forging armour at the Smithy, hit X to open the sub-menu and you can sort by skills, showing exactly what pieces of which set contain the skill you're looking for. Experiment a little to see how much more you can make your armour work for you... you can always cover it up with the Layered Armour glamour option if it looks a mess!

Bunny Dango explained

Eating before a hunt is another Monster Hunter staple, and again, it's been made much more transparent over the years. Rise's version is Bunny Dango, which as always gives your maximum health and stamina a decent boost for the fight, but also lets you pick three choices of possible bonus skills. It even shows the probability of each being triggered for this meal, with more powerful options typically having a lower success rate. This allows you to pick possible perks that work for you, and most of them are fairly minor so it won't matter too much if they don't activate, but if you do desperately want one in particular, you can use a Dango Ticket to all-but-guarantee activation on all skills, or quickly load into an Expedition Tour and leave to quickly refresh the canteen if you don't get what you're after then try again. New options are added by both progressing the story and fulfilling various requests and missions, so be sure to keep on top of those if you want to get the best food buffs.

Quest types

On the quest boards, you'll notice that various missions have symbols on the left-hand side. Ones that don't are just your standard run-of-the-mill quests (bar Event quests in the Gathering Hub, which often have unique rewards), but the others are worth paying attention to. The ones with the guild symbol at the top of the list are your Key Quests, and you'll need to complete a certain number of these in order to unlock the next Tier's Urgent Quest, then in turn the next level of more difficult missions. You don't need to do all of them, although there are achievements tied to doing everything in the Village, Low Rank hub, and High Rank hub lists, so completionists will be busy polishing off the lot — you can come back to clean up Village and Low Rank hub missions once you're geared up with High Rank equipment to make a lot of the missions much faster, though, so don't think you need to do everything before moving on. The other main icon to look out for is the speech bubble, which denotes a request tied to it. Finishing this quest will unlock something useful, so it's usually worth prioritising these missions when you can, as they may unlock new menu items, Switch Skills, and more.

Palamute riding

Taking a Palamute into the hunt isn't just useful for the bit of extra damage they provide — since you can ride them, there are a lot of additional benefits. For one, you can perform actions that would otherwise slow or stop movement like healing and sharpening your weapon while riding, even in battle. It's easier than ever to find a sharpening window now you can do it on the move, so don't be afraid to hold B and call your canine companion over if your weapon is looking a little sorry for itself. While riding, you can also gather materials on the move, climb certain surfaces faster and without consuming stamina, and leap off to initiate aerial attacks that might be able to open an opportunity for some Wyvern Riding.

Wyvern Riding

New to Monster Hunter Rise, Wyvern Riding is a cross between World's mounts and Iceborne's Clutch Claw that actually lets you take full control of a monster for a short time. To initiate this, you either need to hit a monster with airborne blows (which have a blue highlight on the damage numbers) or make multiple monsters fight one another, which seems to be a much quicker and more reliable way of triggering this state. Ride-ready monsters will fall prone and give off an obvious visual effect, but don't be so quick to hop aboard — any attack will activate the ride, so with target monsters especially, you're best off using the pre-ride stun to activate it with your strongest attack if possible. Once on, you have light and heavy attacks as well as a dodge action, and the specific monster attacks you pull out can be altered with directional inputs as well. Dodges effectively parry other monsters' attacks, giving you an opening to try and hit back and eventually build the ride gauge until you can unleash a Mounted Punisher attack. Fun fact: since the ridden monster is effectively an ally, you are generally immune to the effects of these, so go get stuck in and put some more damage into the downed beast. Your temporary friend will leave the area after this attack, leaving you free to deal with the single monster in peace, although there is another option. If there are no other monsters around, you can run your ride into walls and hazards by pressing X, but you'll need to hit A soon after to maintain your grip until the third slam which will topple the creature. Better yet, if a ride opportunity is triggered and taken on a target monster and there is another around, you can let it your temporary ally get beaten up a bit, then press X when the gauge gets low to run the two beasts into one another, which will give a ride opportunity on the other so you can deal even more damage.

Wirebug usage

The Wirebug is another new Rise feature and man, it does a lot of different things. The two-stock Wirebug gauge fuels a ton of different actions, including weapon-specific special attacks, evasive moves, and mobility tools, so it's going to take some getting used to, both in terms of the many options you have available and how best to use (and save) the resource. Silkbind attacks vary in usefulness by weapon type, although they're one way to spend this gauge, so get a feel what yours do and how much they cost before spamming them. You'll also need that same resource for getting around quickly, with one stock consumed each time you Wiredash — LT+Y goes up, LT+B goes down (or forward on the ground), and LT+RT goes in the direction the camera is pointing. On top of that, Wirefall (LT+A, aimed with directional input) lets you combo-breaker most attacks while sheathing your weapon, potentially (and hopefully) presenting an opportunity to squeeze in a heal as the monster that just wrecked you continues its onslaught somewhere else. Wirefall can be a lifesaver, so think twice about burning your whole gauge on big attacks or showboating... but also be careful about Wirefalling into additional damage. It's easily done.

That's all we have for now, but if there are any other aspects of Monster Hunter's idiosyncratic design that you don't fully understand, drop a comment below and we can update the article and/or dive into the discussion below to help out both new players and those struggling to deal with some fairly major changes compared to World. Hit us up, and happy hunting!

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Written by Luke Albigés

Luke runs the TA news team, contributing where he can primarily with reviews and other long-form features — crafts he has honed across two decades of print and online gaming media experience, having worked with the likes of gamesTM, Eurogamer, Play, Retro Gamer, Edge, and many more. He loves all things Monster Hunter, enjoys a good D&D session, and has played way too much Destiny.