How to Sneak Attack and Ride Monsters in Monster Hunter Wilds

Monster Hunter Wilds gives you your own Seikrat which lets you chase down monsters faster than ever, ensuring minimum downtime between action segments. Besides the standard one-on-one combat, you can choose alternative approaches such as sneak attacks and mounting and riding monsters in Monster Hunter Wilds.

How to Perform a Sneak Attack in Monster Hunter Wilds

To perform a sneak attack you need to walk up to a monster unnoticed from behind. This will give you a prompt to perform a sneak attack. However, you won’t get the prompt if your weapon is equipped. You must sheathe your weapon and sneak up behind the monster. Crouching (X/A button) will allow you to sneak up on monsters more easily, too.

Once you perform a Sneak Attack, you’ll get a special attack animation and the monster will be momentarily stunned. This lets you set up follow-up attacks more easily. Make use of your surroundings such as hiding in bushes when approaching a monster, as this makes you much harder to detect. You can find Bush icons around the map, so keep an eye out for these when you’re looking for a place to hide.

How to Ride a Monster in Monster Hunter Wilds

You must perform aerial attacks with your weapon to mount and ride a monster. Each one has a damage threshold and you have to jump off your Seikrat and perform an aerial attack to successfully mount a monster. Jumping off your Seikrat isn’t necessary as other aerial attacks can also get the job done. However, in my time playing I found it’s the most consistent method of getting on the back of your target. Even monsters in the air can be mounted with a well-placed aerial attack.

Your weapon type will affect how easy it is for you to mount and ride monsters. For example, the Dual Blades deal low damage numbers so it will take several aerial attacks. Meanwhile, if you use the Greatsword, you can mount and ride a monster with just one or two aerial attacks. The same goes for the Longsword. Once you’ve mounted a monster they’ll build up resistance to aerial attacks and mounts, so you’ll have to deal more damage than last time. This ensures that subsequent mounts are harder than the last.

Think of mounting like a status effect you can apply to monsters, and the damage required goes up with every mount. Theoretically, it’s possible to mount a monster more than five times per encounter. You just need to spam aerial attacks, and some weapons such as the Insect Glaive excel at this strategy. Colliding monsters with nearby destructible objects like ruins will net you a lot of monster materials and deal big damage numbers.

While you’re mounted on a monster, your stamina will constantly be drained and you will fall off if the bar fully depletes. Furthermore, the monster will try to shake you off its back and you’ll have to move around to avoid this. You can move between the monster’s head, torso, and tail.

You can either hop off early or brace when the monster tries to knock you off. It will always try to shake you off the body part you mount initially, and you can track the amount of resistance at a body part from the icon on the bottom left. Bracing allows you to reduce the stamina loss during a mount.

Once you’re riding a monster, you’ll have access to weapon and dagger attacks. Weapon attacks deal more damage and dagger attacks are faster. Both of these attacks will open up and inflict wounds on whatever region you attack.

Your mount finishes when you create a wound and then perform a weapon attack on top of it. Weapon attacks on wounds have unique finisher animations. We suggest making use of the mount mechanic to open up as many wounds as possible on the monster’s body while riding it. You can then use these wounds for Focus Strikes later in the fight.

That’s all you need to know about performing sneak attacks and mounting and riding monsters in Monster Hunter Wilds. For more guides, learn how to catch the elusive Sandstar and how to find the Golden Fish.