Topic: Monster Hunter Rise

@Ryu_Niiyama
There’s no getting around the fact you’ll have to learn through experience, and sometimes it’s best to just do that in single player. BUT. I got into the series hunting with a vet, and it was a huge help. Of course, we used voice chat so I could ask questions whenever I wanted. You can post your questions here and you’ll get answers all the same.

If Ulysses is willing to do Low Rank with you, I’d say go for it, BUT, you really should play some single player first. The hub for multiplayer, even for low rank, starts you off hunting Aknosom, I don’t even think you end up hunting Aknosom until 3-star quests in the village. So the Hub kind of throws you in the deep end if you’re completely new. I strongly suggest doing all the tutorial quests in the village, then spend some time in the training area trying the different weapons, and once you find one you like, you need to learn how to use it properly. If you don’t know how to use your weapon properly it’s like playing a fighting game without knowing any of the moves for the character you’re using. Learning your weapon is an absolute must and should be top priority. Just make sure it’s a weapon you like, which is why I recommend trying them all out.

You can then watch a Gaijin Hunter, Arreks or Rurikhan YT tutorial for that weapon (10-15 min) to get most of the combos down and really learn what it can do. Remember that you cannot run with your weapon drawn which kills your mobility, so you should always sheath your weapon before running around to reposition. Learn to hit a few times and dodge rollaway. Don’t get greedy because that’s what gets you killed. Most new players just wail on the monster until they get knocked down. Try not to do that. You’ll get knocked down, there’s no avoiding it, but learn from those mistakes so you don’t repeat them.

Then, after doing the tutorials, trying the weapons in the training area and picking one, and watching a tutorial for it to learn how to use it properly, I’d at least do the 1 star and 2 star quests to get accustomed to the game, the cadence of progress, etc. at that point you should at least start getting familiar with how the game operates, and at that point I would then say if you want to jump online, go for it.

But that’s just my two cents.

@Ryu_Niiyama

I know this may seem like a lot, and... it kinda is. But I wrote this starter guide precisely for people like you who are new and need a little bit of help getting their bearings. Settings in the options are actually pretty crucial, and it’s something most new players won’t know anything about or what settings they should have, so I’ve gone through and listed it out for you. Trust me when I say there’s reasons for everything. Like manual sheath. Having the game automatically sheath your weapon can get you killed and is a pain in the butt. Never used to be a thing and I don’t know why they started setting it to the default option as of World. In any case, I really recommend you read through this and make your settings match the ones I have listed here, and then peruse the 15 point guide and glean what you can. You may not remember all of it but you’ll at least remember some of it, and you can always reference it later after you’ve played some and maybe the rest will sink in at that time.

GAME SETTINGS
Target Arrow: HIDE
Player Silhouette: TYPE 1

CONTROLS
Button Hold: SHORT
Sheath: MANUAL
Dash: L3 or R

CAMERA
Cam Distance: 40

GYROSCOPE
Gyro Functionality: ON
Right Analog Up/Down: ON
Normal Gyro (Camera): OFF

#1 Run by holding R or clicking Left Analog (provided settings match the above recommendations). Cannot run with weapon drawn.

#2 Always grab supplies from the blue item box at the start of a quest. You can enter the tent to restock supplies from your personal stash if you run out mid-hunt.

#3 Holding L allows you access to two menus- the radial menu and the item bar. For the radial menu, use the right analog to point at the shortcut item you want to use. Shortcut items can be changed in the menu via + for Menu, then Radial Menu Settings, then Quests, then Shortcut 1, then use right analog to point at the item to swap out, then select Item Pouch, and find the item to swap it with. For the item bar, simply use Y/A to pan left/right through the list to find the item you wish to use. Press Y while your weapon is sheathed to use a selected item.

NOTE: For Radial Menu, I recommend Mega Potions (heal), Antidotes (cure poison), Well Done Steaks (Increase depleted max stamina) and Nulberries (cure elemental blights), and the Palamute icon (Ride Palamute). You have more slots than that but these are ones that are really useful. Later you may add Max Potions and other such things, but for now, these are the basics.

#4 Try out all the weapons and see which one you like most. MH is a game that’s all about mastering a single weapon, not bouncing back and forth (unless you’re more experienced and have already mastered those weapons). So you should find a weapon you like and then practice, practice, practice. Learn the combos. Take an Expedition quest and sit by camp practicing combos, or, go to the training room. In the + menu, find Hunter’s Notes to see some basic moves and combos for the weapon. Watch a Gaijin Hunter, Arrekz or Rurikhan tutorial on YouTube for your weapon. Make sure it’s a Rise specific tutorial as moves have changed since World. I recommend Long Sword, Hunting Horn or Dual Blades for new players. Sword and Shield is often recommended but, personally I don’t find it very satisfying to use. Perhaps you might though. I prefer the more complex Switch Axe and Charge Blade, which are the two weapons that transition and morph between two forms.

#5 Explore and gather herbs, bugs, seeds, mushrooms, etc. Crafting plays a huge role in the full game. Auto crafting will at least craft some things for you if you gather the right materials. Green Herbs make potions, and Honey with Potions make Mega Potions. Flashbugs make flash bombs, etc.

#6 Gather as many spirit birds as possible. Green extend your health bar permanently for that quest, yellow extends stamina, red extends attack and orange extends defense. In the full game you would normally eat a pre-hunt meal that would extend your Health and Stamina but spirit birds also do this, and should not be ignored. Learn a quick 3 minute path that gets a lot of bang for buck with spirit birds and get used to running that path at the start of every quest to boost your health and stamina before finding the monster.

#7 The wirebug is crucial. Commit it to muscle memory. With weapon sheathed, hold ZL to use the wirebug (NOTE: If using a ranged weapon, since ZL is your aiming button, the wirebug button gets mapped to R instead of ZL). ZL + X = 45 degree angle upwards. ZL + A = straight shot across. ZL + ZR = wherever your reticle is pointing, which is easy to fine tune your aim if you have Gyro enabled with the recommended settings above. In combat, with your weapon drawn, you have two separate wirebug attacks, one with ZL + X and one with ZL + A Learn what they are for your weapon and how you can use them to close distance with a monster or go right into a combo, etc.

#8 Use the Wirefall technique. When hit by the monster and you go flying, immediately use ZL + B + (direction you point with left analog) to spring back to your feet with the wirebug. Since monster Hunter is based on animation commitments, getting knocked down can put you at a serious disadvantage due to the time it takes to recover and get back on your feet. Drill this move into your mind. Etch it in your memory. ZL + B when hit to do a wirefall recovery. Best new move in the game.

#9 Use the camera lock-on. If you click the right analog, it toggles the lock-on icon in the top right between different monsters. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS lock-on to the monster before you start fighting them. Once locked onto a specific monster, tap L at any time to swing the camera directly at them. This is also something you need to etch into your memory. You should constantly be tapping L to adjust the camera as needed during a fight. Not to say you shouldn’t use the right analog stick for the camera at all, but it shouldn’t be your main method of retargeting your camera at the monster. That’s what lock-on is for. DON’T NEGLECT LOCK-ON!

#10 Keep an eye on your health, stamina and sharpness meter. The health bar is the top green bar, the stamina bar is the yellow bar underneath, and the sharpness bar is the knife icon with colors underneath that. Always try to keep your sharpness in the green. Not only do you do less damage at lower levels of sharpness but you can actually bounce off of the monster when you attack. Not good. It locks you into a bounce animation that can get you killed. To sharpen, use a whetstone. You can easily access your whetstone with the radial menu (Hold L, point analog straight up at the yellow whetstone icon and release). You can also sharpen while riding your palamute, which is a good technique to use if you need to sharpen in the middle of combat. As for health, use potions, mega potions or max potions. For stamina, your max amount slowly decreases over time. Any red portion of the stamina bar is lost max stamina, and can be replenished by useing a ration given by the blue item box, or a well done steak (which will also be in your radial menu now if you followed this guide). Always upkeep your stamina. It’s sucks having half a stamina bar.

#11 Don’t leave your weapon drawn in between attacks. Don’t do it! When your weapon is drawn your mobility sucks. It absolutely destroys your movement speed. This is a game where you are supposed to sheath your weapon (tap Y while weapon is drawn) in between bursts of attacks. General cadence of battle should be: wait for opening —> draw attack and follow up with a short combo —> once you see a tell that the monster is about to attack, dodge roll out of the way —> sheath weapon —> run around and reposition —> rinse and repeat. It should be a constant back and forth between attack, then sheath, attack, then sheath.

#12 Experiment with your items. While you should generally keep mega potions selected on your item bar for quick and easy use with Y when in a jam, don’t be afraid to pan through the items and try some of them out. You can lay traps, set bombs (small ones can be thrown, large ones must be detonated with attack), throw elemental beetles you gather, etc. Don’t neglect the tools in your kit!

#13 If a monster is getting low on health, two things will happen. They will start limping if they leave the area, and a small blue icon will appear under their lock-on icon in the top right corner. That lets you know they can be captured (unfortunately you cannot capture in the demo because the game does not give you tranquilizer bombs) and are near death. If the monster retreats to its nest and goes to sleep, the first hit to wake it up does double damage. Try to set larger barrel bombs by its head, then attack his head to wake it up, making sure you hit the bomb first so that the explosion does the first damage and gets doubled. You can also use ZL + X to wiredash into the air at a 45 degree angle, and dunk a large bomb downward onto the monster. If you set two bombs near their head, then bomb dunk them from the sky with the third, not only does it do major damage, it does it with crazy style.

#14 Mounting and riding monsters. Most aerial attacks and wirebug attacks deal mount damage. If you deal enough you can mount the monster and head ram them into walls to do big damage, or use them to attack other monsters. Be sure to do the tutorial quest teaching this mechanic.

#15 Hunt online with others and learn through observation. There’s no substitute for watching a veteran Hunter with your own two eyes.

@Ryu_Niiyama mainly what Jax has said, And I also strongly suggest you do single player first, bc if you go online you might not want to ever do quest by yourself, your comfort zone will be multiplayer and not single, making it hard to want to do quest yourself, I started out going to SOS and people helping my quest, but I would never do a quest by myself, I got out of my comfort zone with it, but luckily you never have done ether so you can start getting used to single player first thing.

@DarthNocturnal
My style of gamer right there. Exactly what I did too. Wait til you see the Rakna-Kadaki charge blade (doooope!). You may already have if you played the demo. Still. It's so good. Needs handicraft because it doesn't have much blue and green, but it looks so good I don't even care.

And the chameleos charge blade, muah! And the Narwa Charge Blade? My heart flutters just thinking about it. Magnamalo? Oh so good.

And if you're a charge blade aficionado as I am, you may also enjoy Switch axe. And man... don't even get me started on all the killer Switch Axes in this game. Nargacuga, Almudron, Bazelgeuse, Royal Ludroth, Narwa, Chameleos... there's too many! Gotta catch em all!

Lobby open guys. 5477

Gonna do the last 2 HR7 Quests, and if someone joins, maybe we can hit a few rampages for outfit tickets, maybe hit Narwa, Almudron, etc. Need mats. Got an Almudron orb but used it upgrading his Switch Axe- need another for his armor now.

People keep going online at bad times for me. xD
I'm about to eat and stuff, lol

I understand the sentiment that some gamers will understand the game better if they play alone. But on the other hand, many gamers like myself gravitate to a franchise even more so due to the fun of playing with others! I love Monster Hunter for many reasons, like the incredible music, the imaginative yet grounded fantasy world, the airships, wyverians and bowguns...

But I also love Monster Hunter because of the fact that you can go on quests with other players. I was introduced to Monster Hunter by an old friend, and my first quests were messing around in beginner quests as we tried to figure the game out. I'll never forget those memories, and combined with playing Phantasy Star Online with them on Gamecube (not to mention growing up with Runescape, an old-school, survivalist MMO), part of the draw of a game is having fun with other people.

So even though I do agree that playing by yourself in many ways will help you improve your skill with the game, I also think first impressions matter. And some people like myself enjoy a game exponentially more when we experience it with others, which can make the difference between having a decent experience with the game and immediately loving a game.

@JaxonH Don't forget Teo's Switchaxe! Makes me want to drop bowguns if only for a moment! And Teo's HH was one of my favorite weapons to use back in World.

@JaxonH I'll join you if there's room in the lobby! I need to farm as well now that I've cleared the HR cap.

@Ulysses Thank you for the offer but after that book JaxonH wrote I think I’d better go through single player first. It does sound like the series is as dense as ever ( I have bought every monster hunter since the WiiU and that’s still the only one I have any proficiency at because 10 hours in I hit a wall and exit the franchise again. ) so that may be a problem again for me. However I did go all out on this one (deluxe edition and all the amiibo) so I am hoping this one will click. I will add you to my friend list if that is ok though. I likely can’t get online until the weekends. As I tend to work late shifts. I was on a break when I last posted.

@JaxonH Ok you got me with the fighting game analogy (my favorite genre) so I will try to treat it like that. Which means scheduled training. Cool. TY!

@JaxonH Oh ya, is the chameleos CB any good? Edit: also if I use CB, is SA harder the play or.

For those that don't know, the first event is now live and you need to grab it from the courier to access it.

Alright, fought Teo, I'm done, I know there's Apex Rathian and Mizu quests but...eh...I got to download Pokemon Snap. And apparently this game prevents downloads for whatever reason...even while offline.

Excellent Hunts with @Ulysses and @FattyWhale_42

Got up to HR40 and took out Teostra, carved a gem from the tail, and made like 500k zenny in Fatty’s Mining Tour.

Didn’t get a chance to do Rampages because I have to sleep. But I’m very much looking forward to doing some rampages and farming outfit tickets.

@Snatcher
It’s decent enough. Not the best in the game but by no means bad. About on par with most high tier end game weapons. It certainly looks awesome.

I think Switch Axe is easier to learn than Charge Blade, and I’m actually beginning to like it even more. The key is learning to attack with your big axe to build up the gauge, then switch with ZR into Sword mode which does bigger damage. And while attacking in sword mode you build up an amped gage that lets you pull off a crazy cool move where are you latch onto the monster and just pepper them with explosive damage over and over.

I like swapping between both SA and CB.

@JaxonH oh ok Thanks, I think I will make it my 3rd main. I have yet to get on rise, been playing Iceborn, but back on rise I got alot of prep to do, I'm going to go for the bazel armor, then after that i'm going to get the melos longsword bc that think is sick, then After that, I going to probably rank up by then so whatever elder dragon is next.

Just fought Teostra a couple times. WOW what an action packed fight! I don't think I've ever seen Teostra so energetic.

That armor is incredible for crit builds as well. I feel like this will be the meta build most people use for melee weapons if they want to min-max. Probably mostly Teostra armor while replacing one, maybe two pieces for something with better slots or a desired skill.

I haven't got to him yet but could you list the stats for his armour so I can figure out if I want/ which pieces I'll want before hands

@Jrpglover
Head piece: Crit Eye lvl 3, Crit Boost lvl 1, one lvl 1 slot

Chest piece: Teostra's Blessing lvl 1, Crit Eye lvl 1, Master's Touch lvl 1, one lvl 1 slot

Arm piece: Teostra's Blessing lvl 1, Crit Eye lvl 1, Crit Boost lvl 1, one lvl 2 slot

Waist piece: Teostra's Blessing lvl 1, Crit eye lvl 1, one lvl 3 slot

Leg piece: Teostra's Blessing lvl 1, Master's Touch lvl 1, one lvl 1 slot

Teostra's Blessing increases fire attack and blast buildup by 5 and 10% at the first two levels, level 3 negates poison as well and level 4 also negates theft.

I love the Teostra, Chameleos and Kushala armor. It's really grown on me the more I see it.

Never been into super-meta with affinity though. Rather than trim a minute or two off a hunt I tend to gravitate toward skills where I can notice a tangible difference. when active. Load Shells to charge phials from yellow on charge blade, quick sheath, rapid morph, handicraft, razor sharp, evasion, wirebug whisperer, stun res, etc

@JaxonH I've definitely noticed a huge difference with Master's Touch. Remember when I was trying to get some Handicraft to increase my white sharpness time? Ha! Forget that. With my current 86% affinity I very rarely lose sharpness at all with Master's Touch. Now my tiny sliver of white sharpness lasts about as long as it takes to fight a monster until it runs away. It's great.

@TeeJay
Better than Razor Sharp 3? I think razor sharp is 45% longer lasting. Does it only work when hitting crits?