Monster Hunter World: Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Find a Weapon You Like

Tips and Tricks for Monster Hunter World Beginners

If there’s one thing you absolutely must do before setting off on your adventure in Monster Hunter World, it’s finding a weapon type that speaks to you and suits your play style. The combat in Monster Hunter World can be a little clunky, and if you’re not using a weapon that you like, you’re not going to enjoy the combat very much. And considering that every quest and assignment basically revolves around combat, this is a pretty important tip to keep in mind.

At the start of the game, when you get access to your room, talk to the housekeeper and go to the training area. Here, you’ll be able to experiment with every weapon type in the game. The more beginner-friendly ones include the sword and shield, dual blades, and long sword. These are slightly faster weapons that are easy to pick up and learn. Once you’ve gotten a feel for the combat, try the more interesting ones like the bow gun and gunlance.

I also recommend the insect glaive, which attacks quickly and has a very useful move set that lets you do mounted attacks if you time it right.

Cook, and Watch Your Stamina

Tips and Tricks for Monster Hunter World Beginners

Your stamina bar is the most important thing to watch out for in Monster Hunter World. You don’t need it to attack, but it’s useful for sprinting and rolling out of harm’s way. If you deplete your entire stamina bar, your character will be immobilized for a few seconds – more than enough time for a monster to land a killing combo on you and send you back to camp.

If your max stamina bar gets cut, you can always bring it back up (or extend it) by cooking raw meat. Meat is obtained from any of the docile animals out in the wild, and you can cook it by using the BBQ Spit in your inventory. Watch out for the color of the meat and the change in the musical cues as it roasts over the spit. Burnt meat will restore health, rare meat will increase your max stamina slightly, and well-done meat will increase your max stamina greatly.

Use the Environment

Tips and Tricks for Monster Hunter World Beginners

As you explore the different locales in Monster Hunter World, your map will get updated with all sorts of useful icons to let you know where to find different resources. At the start of the game, you’ll want to keep an eye out for herbs and honey. Herbs give you two potions, while a potion and honey gives you a mega-potion. Try to keep your stock of potions topped up at all times. There are also Vigorwasps all over the place (they’re these glowing green, bulbous flies) that will restore your health if you interact with them.

Your map also highlights the locations of potential traps that you can set, such as vines and falling boulders. If you’re hunting a monster, you can always lure it to one of these areas before setting off a trap to weaken it and give you a few free hits. Your map also comes in handy when you need to find specific resources for delivery quests. Once you discover a collection node in the environment, it’ll be marked on your map forever.

Learn the Basics of Combat

Tips and Tricks for Monster Hunter World Beginners

Monster Hunter World might be the most accessible entry in the series yet, but it still doesn’t do that great a job of explaining how combat works. You could beat the story by simply mashing buttons until the beast is defeated, but you’re certainly not going to have a good time doing that.

Below your stamina bar, you’ll see a sword meter that flashes different colors depending on your weapon’s sharpness. Green is good, yellow is okay, and red is bad. When your sharpness meter is red, you might as well be hitting the monster with a stick. You’ll want to sharpen your weapon by using a whetstone in your inventory. This thing has infinite uses, so don’t be afraid to use it as much as you want.

When fighting a monster, try to target its vulnerable parts to hack them off and weaken it. The tail and head are always a good bet, and doing this can reward you with extra monster materials as well.

Do Optional Quests to Upgrade Your Armor

Tips and Tricks for Monster Hunter World Beginners

Lastly, while it can be tempting to barrel through the main assignments in Monster Hunter World, you’re not going to get very far if you don’t upgrade your armor to keep up with the challenges. New armor can be forged at the smithy, but you’ll need monster parts to craft them. It’s a bit of a grind, but checking back at the resource center every now and then will allow you to discover optional quests that give you the monster parts you need, along with extra rewards like money and Research Points.

Do all the optional quests you can handle, and then go craft that cool-looking armor set you’ve been eyeing this entire time. You’ll need Armor Spheres to upgrade your armor set as well, and we recommend holding onto these until you’ve settled on a good armor set as these can be quite hard to come by.

Be sure to check our wiki for more information on Monster Hunter World.