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Even when you're past the tricky, early acclimatisation stage, you're going to need Monster Hunter World tips. This isn't a game that you just learn in a couple of hours and then get steadily better at. It's an ever-evolving Matroshka doll that constantly reveals new layers and new depths, for days and even weeks after starting. As such, once you've mastered everything in our Monster Hunter World starter guide, you'll want to familiarise yourself with some more advanced knowledge.

1. How To Mount On Monster Hunter World

Below, you'll find your roadmap to elevated greatness, ranging from simply being more effective in combat, to higher-level loadout and character build knowledge, to what to expect when the game changes into something new all over again at High Rank. Particularly if you'e just picking up Monster Hunter World now for its delayed PC release, you're going to want to dig in and prep to make the absolute best out of your hunting career. It takes effort and insight, but ye gods is it worth it. So let's get you set up.

1. Be prepared

Being prepared isn’t just for Boy Scouts (though, if the Boy Scouts existed in the Monster Hunter universe, I suspect they’d be hunters). Monster Hunter provides a tremendous suite of tools, gear, and consumables to streamline and optimize your hunter for every battle, but it doesn’t force you to employ any of them, and it’s easy to be hasty and and launch yourself into a fight you’re not prepared for (and end up triple-carting your battered carcass back to camp under a giant Mission Failed flag).

You can move to either the monster's head, back, or tail (if it has one) and mash attack to deal mounting damage. You need to press R2 in to hold on while the monster is about to attack. Just watch the monster to tell when you need to, and there are also button prompts that show you what buttons to press when you start the game. Take on the role of a hunter venturing into a new continent where you track down and slay ferocious beasts in heart-pounding battles. Strategically use the surrounding environment including terrain, vegetation and wildlife to your advantage in battle or become hindered by the hazards they present.

While it’s tempting to just stack armor that has the highest defense rating, for instance, and while that strategy might serve you against some early foes, you’ll inevitably hit a brick wall in the form of a monster with massive elemental damage or particularly lethal status effects. Do your homework, research what the monster’s strengths and weaknesses are (the game provides a robust field guide for just this purpose), and prepare accordingly.

Fighting a Kirin that scorches the earth with massive tempests of lightning? Bring armor strong against thunder, eat a meal at the canteen that boosts elemental resistance, and bring along the mantle that negates thunder damage. Suddenly, instead of being one hit by a single arc of lightning, you’re able to go toe-to-toe with the deadly Elder Dragon and shrugging off its most potent attacks. And no matter what you’re facing, always, every single time, bring some mega nutrients or max potions and some cooked meat to maximize your health and stamina bars.

2. Bring plenty of heals

No matter how timely your blocks or artful your dodges, you’re going to get hit in Monster Hunter World. A lot. It’s a game that makes fights necessarily unpredictable and challenging (that’s one of the key reasons it’s so charming, in fact), and this means that, inevitably, you’re going to take the occasional walloping. But more so than any Monster Hunter that’s come before it, World gives you a huge number of ways to quickly heal up your wounds and get back into the fight. Take liberal advantage of them, especially early on when you’re still finding your footing or mastering a new weapon.

This doesn’t just mean to stack potions and mega potions, though that’s an obvious first step. It also means that bringing along a palico with the healing vigorwasp gadget and getting it leveled up is a huge early game priority. And always be aware of the wild vigorwasps in the enviornment, and the vitallies, both of which provide large, almost instant healing out in the field at zero cost to you.

Need even more healing? Add the healing station specialized tool, which provides a constant heal over time as long as you’re within its radius, or pack the vitality mantle which makes you invulnerable to a certain amount of damage, so you’re not as reliant on other healing in the first place. If you’re still having trouble, throw in some extra max potions and ancient potions.

3. Always be mounting

Mounting is a fairly new mechanic in the Monster Hunter series, and so even a lot of vets aren’t properly familiar with it. But it’s an incredibly handy trick if you can master it, and can be the source of a huge amount of fairly low-risk damage, and a great way to break some of the trickier parts of a monster’s anatomy (more on that later). When you’re fighting a monster, particularly some of the trickier flying wyverns, always be aware of ledges and cliffs you can scale and leap from. Land a mid-air attack on a monster and you’ll automatically mount it (and don’t worry about the occasional miss, there’s is absolutely no falling damage in Monster Hunter World).

How To Mount On Monster Hunter World

Once on its back, the mounting process becomes something of a mini-game, where you’ll be hammering the attack button to weaken it enough to deliver a final attack and knock it prone. But it will be constantly attempting to shake it off, and you’ll need to hit a button to brace yourself, or move up or down its body to avoid specific attacks. It sounds difficult but is actually quite simple once you get the hang of it, but make sure you pay attention to the tutorials the first few times you mount, because eventually they’ll disappear, and you’ll be left with only visual cues to indicate when you should move, or brace, or charge a final attack. When the camera zooms in and changes angles, it’s time for that last strike, so deliver it quickly and be ready to hit the monster with your best attacks immediately after you’ve knocked it down.

4. Always be breaking

As in previous games, monsters have a huge number of spots on their bodies that can be shattered or cleaved. Finding these spots and exploiting their weaknesses is key to not only delivering additional damage (broken areas will often expose the soft tissue beneath, meaning strikes there are much more impactful), but also crucial to collecting some of the rarest crafting materials.

Do your best to focus your attacks on a single area, especially if you’re looking for a specific mat. Need a noseridge to make some new helm you’re craving? Chances are you’ll need to break the monster in questions face to get it as a post-hunt reward. One lovely new quality-of-lfe improvement that World adds is the ability to see exactly why you got every reward when you receive them after a hunt, so pay attention to the text that indicates whether it’s for completing the quest, capturing a monster, breaking a body part, etc. That way, if you discover you need twelve of them to make a complete set of armor, you’ll know precisely how to farm them.

5. Use the environment

More than any past Monster Hunter game, World encourages you to interact with its living environments. There are some obvious, important ways to do so, like the aforementioned vigorwasps or by interacting with the tracking materials you need to locate your prey. But there are some less obvious (and less explicitly explained) pieces of the environment you should also be aware of.

For instance, there are a number of natural traps strewn around the hunting grounds that clever fighters can bend to their advantage, from rock falls to vine traps to waterfalls. Not only do they deal massive damage, but they often leave your prey disoriented or immobilized, meaning it’s a perfect time to launch your most devastating combos without fear of retribution. And always be aware of the arena you’re fighting in. Generally, open areas with lots of space to move around and dodge in are the best — getting caught in a tight little nest with a rampaging anjanath is a bad time, believe me. But also be aware of natural ledges and pits that can provide you with the opportunity to mount or make a quick escape to heal, and of clumps of high grass that let you conceal yourself for a well-timed sharpening. Perhaps most importantly of all, watch out for poisoncups or paratoads, interactable flora and fauna in the environment that you can lure monsters into and afflict them with devastating status effects, without needing to harvest or craft anything.

6. Stack bounties

Finally, take full and liberal advantage of the bounty system. The way armor upgrading works has been changed a bit in Monster Hunter World, and it now requires a much larger number of armor spheres to improve your existing gear. One of the primary ways you get these precious spheres is through the bounty system, mini-objectives you pick up in town that you can complete while going about the business of your main or optional quests.

First and most obviously you want to always make sure you have a full slate of bounties when you go out a-questin’. But also try, whenever possible, to stack bounties of the same type. It’s possible, for instance, to get multiple bounties that task you with collecting honey, which means that every time you harvest honey (which you should be doing anyway, by the way, it’s one of the most vital crafting ingredients in the game) you’ll be getting rewarded multiples. Stacking bounties like this means less work for you and more precious armor spheres to feed your hungry gear.

7. Pay attention to Armor Skills

You won't need this stuff immediately, but it's worth learning about as early as possible. You see, while the 'basic' armour stats list will give details of elemental resistances - say, for instance, if a piece is particularly good at blocking fire damage - when you really want to dig deep into building specialist, high-level armour sets, Armor Skills are where it's at. Pulled up on a separate menu in the blacksmiths' shop, Armor Skill cover a lot of functions, from increasing your resistance to status effects like poison, to boosting your health, to all kinds of other, more situational gameplay modifiers. What's more, they stack too, meaning that wearing multiple bits of kit with a specific perk will increase its strength. When you want to create really personalised character builds, Armor Skills will have you covered.

8. Looking for more damage output? Boost your Affinity rating

And on the subject of higher-level gear stats, every weapon has an Affinity rating. Affinity is basically your chance of landing a high damage, critical hit, and its rating can be negative as well as positive or neutral. Although a negative rating will increase your chances of scoring hits lower than your standard damage output, it isn't necessarily a problem, as high raw damage can be more than enough. But if you want to negate low Affinity or improve a positive rating, then you'll want to look out for Armor Skills that increase the stat, like Critical Eye or Attack Boost.

9. Be aware that High Rank is coming

You might notice, throughout your various journeys through the many locations, menus, and additional menus of Monster Hunter World, various references to Low Rank. For the first 30 hours or so, this will be your home. But of course, if Low Rank exists, surely High Rank hunting must also be a thing, to define that existence by contrast, right?

Very right. Be aware that however powerful you begin to feel, however many glorious, grandstanding monsters you’ve killed and captured, however many tens of hours you’ve put in, if you’re playing at Low Rank you’re still just playing the tutorial. When you step up to the next phase, a lot will change. Things will get tougher, but you’ll get a stack more freedom and gameplay options to compensate. New gear types, and whole new systems will come into play. And Monster Hunter’s ecosystem will expand a great deal, bringing a whole raft of surprises.

10. Know when (and how) High Rank starts

Don't worry about doing any overly specific grinding. If you keep playing Monster Hunter World, you will get there eventually. All you need to do is make a point of coming back to the main story missions amid all the Investigations, Expeditions, Arena Quests, Bounties, and material grinding you're no doubt getting entirely sidetracked by.

When you finally make it through to the second, main-game confrontation with Zorah Magdaros, you're nearly there. Get through that, complete the follow-up mission, Invader in the Waste, and when you get back to Astera, you'll find that High Rank monster hunting has unlocked, and things have rather changed. Howso, exactly? Well...

11. High Rank armour is more complicated (but potentially way more powerful)

When you go to the Smithy after hitting High Rank, you'll notice that the Forge Equipment option now comes with separate tabs for High and Low Rank armour. The Low Rank stuff, you're already familiar with. The High Rank selection though, works differently.

The main thing to be aware of is that each HR armour set comes in two versions, denoted Alpha and Beta. The overall gist here is that Alpha armour comes with an array of those all-important Armour Skills built in, while Beta armour has less Skills in its vanilla form, but comes with additional Jewel slots allowing you to customise its Skills at will.

It's a longer, harder road, but by designing and crafting custom perk sets (whether going full Beta or mixing and matching armour pieces), you can create some incredibly powerful, incredibly specific, personalised armour. Theres' a reason that Monster Hunter World has so much space for pre-set gear load-outs, and High Rank is it. Just be aware though, that not all Low Rank armour has a High Rank equivalent, so you might have to say goodbye to - or at least redesign - some of your beloved existing sets as you move on. Just something to be aware of if you're going all-out with building multiple armour set-ups at Low Rank. But whatever your long-term game-plan turns out to be, you really need to...

12. Build a High Rank armour set as quickly as possible

Any set. Just get /something/ that's up to High Rank defence levels, or you're going to get wrecked very quickly indeed. High Rank's monster can do ridiculous damage, even if you think you've mastered fighting their Low Rank versions, so until you're kitted out, you're going to be in real danger. There's a significant jump in defence ratings between top-level Low Rank gear and introductory High Rank kit, so competitive armour is the absolute first thing you need in order to legitimately stake a claim in the big leagues.

13. Decorations (Gems and Jewels) are your path to High Rank power

Decorations come in two forms. Gems are a crafting material required to make certain High Rank armour pieces, while Jewels are the aforementioned trinkets that allow you to custom mod your gear. You'll get both as loot drops from High Rank activities, though Gems can also be acquired at the Melding Pot resource exchange service that opens up in Astera in the run up to High Rank.

Both are rare, random drops, and will require a fair degree of High Rank grinding to get hold of, and rarer, better Decorations will come from tougher activities. Aside from High Rank quests overall, you'll want to keep an eye on Tempered Investigations and limited-timed Event Quests as you become more powerful.

14. High Rank Quests and Investigations need selecting especially

Like in the Smithy, you'll now find that the Quest Board map is tabbed into Low and High Rank versions too. This is because Low Rank play remains available, regardless of your new status as a High Rank big-shot. Because really you're not that big a shot at all yet.

You still have tens, if not hundreds of experience levels to work through, an absolute stack of stuff to discover - including whole new versions and subspecies of monsters to track down before you can start battling them - and not a great number of High Rank quests to choose from when you get going. See High Rank as a new starting point, with Low Rank as your foundation for getting strong enough to take it on properly. Just make sure you're on the right tab when you do want to hit the harder stuff.

15. Pay attention to the new, High Rank vendors, and understand how they work

While the main store in Astera will stock up with new stuff at High Rank, you also really want to look out for the visiting Argosy trade ship. A bit like Xur in Destiny, the Argosy will appear and leave on a semi-regular timer – turning up after a few quests have been completed, hanging around for a bit, and then heading off for a few more quests – and will sell you rare goods whenever it’s present. Be aware that the Argosy only takes Research Points as currency, not that you won’t have loads by the time you hit High Rank. Additionally, you can request that the ship makes specific stops on its next trip in order to pick up the specific stuff you want for its following visit. That, friends, is service. So make use of it.

Monster Hunter World mounts is one of the game's more advanced combat manoeuvres. It can be extremely useful during tougher fights, so it's well worth taking the time to learn.

As well as this article, we also have Monster Hunter World tips which can help you decide when to farm, what to forage and what to do between hunts, and our Monster Hunter World walkthrough and guide can help with main quest and story progress.

How to mount a monster in Monster Hunter World

Mounting is essentially the art of getting onto a monster's back and doing enough damage to knock it over. Generally speaking, a mounted rider's individual attacks won't do much - if any - damage, but a successful mount will end with the chance to perform a charged attack.

Not only will this do significant damage to the area currently being ridden (extremely handy if you're trying to break a specific body part to collect a particular material), it will stun the monster, giving the entire hunting party the chance to pile on additional strikes unhindered.

How to mount a monster

To mount a creature, you need to strike it with your weapon while you're in the air. This is a two-step process: first, you need to physically get above the monster, and secondly, you need to successfully time your attack to connect with its body as you leap toward it.

To break this down, you must:

• Find a way to launch yourself into the air (by running off a high ledge, for instance)
• Attack the monster's body, head, or tail while airborne (weapon dependent, but Circle / B, Triangle / Y or the right trigger)
• If successful, you will initiate a mount

Bear in mind that different monsters have different resistances to mounted attacks, so don't be discouraged if your first attempt doesn't immediately succeed - even if your launch and timing seem impeccable.

It's worth persevering though: there's a hidden gauge tied to each monster that gradually fills whenever your airborne strike connects. Once full (which could take one or multiple attempts, depending on the monster - and will take longer while using the Insect Glaive), you're guaranteed a successful mount.

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Also be aware of diminishing returns: a monster's resistance to mounting increases every time you perform a successful mount during a hunt or expedition - so spamming a mounted attack on the same creature isn't a valid tactic for long. After even as few as two successful mounts, you might find it extremely difficult to initiate another.

Similarly, weapons such as the Insect Glaive, which are capable of dealing damage to a creature during a mount, will do significantly less damage on subsequent mounts.

How to find higher ground and begin a mount

To get above a creature in order to attempt a mount, you've two options.

Most hunters will need to use the environment to reach a higher vantage point. However, some weapons - namely Insect Glaives and Bows - feature attacks capable of launching you into the air from the ground. See below for more on using these weapons for mounting.

While in the air, strike a monster as usual to initiate a mount.

Those hunters relying on the environment to get airborne before attacking can:

• Hang onto a wall face and spring off
• Run up certain walls and leap away to attack
• Use the grappling hook to hoist up toward grapple-able overhangs
• Slide down a hill and hurl themselves at a target
• Swing on a tree vine and leap toward the monster at the optimum moment
• Find higher ground - a ledge or elevation - and run off

Depending on the monster, it mightn't require much height to initiate a mount at all.

You may need to lure a creature toward your higher vantage point before initiating a mount. If you're in a team, it's a good idea to divvy up the duties here; one player should act as the lure, guiding the monster to an agreed point on the map, as the others continue to pile on the damage. The mounter, meanwhile, should get into position, ready to pounce.

What to do once you've mounted a monster

Once you've successfully initiated a mount, and are on top of a monster, there are two parts to the rodeo sequence: attack and defence.

To attack the creature, simply spam Triangle / Y as shown on-screen. You can shift your position using the movement stick to focus your attacks on a specific area of a monster's body - handy if you're trying to break a certain part, such as the head or tail, to collect a specific reward for use at the smithy.

Watch out though: at regular intervals, the monster will attempt to buck you off - you can tell it's about to start bucking when the mini-map turns red.

Here, you'll need to hold the right bumper to brace and stop yourself from being thrown off. You might also need to shift to a different part of a creature's body if it starts trying to smash you into the scenery. Once the bucking subsides, it's safe to resume your strike.

If you mistime a brace and get thrown off, you've a small window in which to hit Triangle / Y to fire your grappling hook. If you're quick enough, you'll hoist yourself back on, ready to continue the rodeo. If you mess up completely, or run out of stamina, you'll dismount.

If all goes well, and sufficient damage is dealt during the attack stage, you'll get the opportunity to launch a final, powerful charged attack. Follow the prompt successfully and two things will happen: you'll deal significant damage to the area, and the creature will collapse on the ground, giving you and your teammates time to attack unhindered.

Coming in late June is a series of Monster Hunter World Iceborne beta dates to get your hands on the next expansion. Until then, it's worth scrubbing up on the base game. As well as our Monster Hunter World tips, our Monster Hunter World walkthrough and guide explains how Assigned missions, Expeditions and Investigations work, which will see you hunt Anjanath, Zorah Magdaros, Diablos, Odogaron, as well as Elder Dragons Kushala Daora, Teostra, Vaal Hazah, Xeno'Jiiva and Kirin, as well as the recently added Behemoth. If you are starting out, we recommend first using our weapon types list to decide the best weapon for you, learning how to join friends and Squads in multiplayer, plus how to capture monsters and mount monsters. There's plenty of optional stuff, too - such as Grimalkynes and Doodles, helping unlock Plunderblade and Gajalaka quests.

Other ways to mount in Monster Hunter World

Certain hunters won't need to find higher ground in order to begin a mounting attempt.

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This is because a handful of weapons - namely, the Insect Glaive and Bow - have a built in 'vault' move that enables hunters spring into the air from the ground, ready to launch a pre-mount strike. Once a mid-air attack connects, the mounting sequence will unfold as usual.

Mounting with the Insect Glaive

The Insect Glaive is one of the most effective weapons in terms of ease-of-mounting, purely because its vault move negates the need to find higher ground first.

Additionally, it's one of the few weapons that can perform above-negligible damage to a creature during a mount. To get into the air using the Insect Glaive, simply perform the R2 + Cross / X move with your weapon drawn.

As always, attack a creature while airborne to begin the mounting process for real.

Mounting with the Bow

Less well known is the fact that the Bow can also be used to initiate a mounting attack without needing to reach a higher vantage point first.

To start a mount from the ground, draw your weapon then begin a Charging Sidestep followed by a Lunging Melee Attack (that's L2 + Cross / X followed by triangle toward the end of the charge). If you're struggling with the timing, don't forget that you can speak to the Palico in your house to practice at the training area.

This move doesn't actually get you very far off the ground but it's still sufficient to begin the mounting sequence, provided that your attack connects while airborne.

Mounting with the Glider Mantle

Once you've completed the first story expedition in the Coral Highlands, you'll receive the Glider Mantle. Equip this cloak-like item and you'll gain the ability to drift slowly downwards, parachute-like, whenever you launch yourself off a high vantage point.

This makes it much easier to position yourself for a mounting attempt as you approach a monster, and offers a slightly longer window in which to initiate the first mounting strike too.

However, hunters who've become proficient at using the standard methods of mounting might choose to ignore the Glider Mantle altogether.

Skilled mounters will likely prefer to use their single mantle slot to equip other, notably more beneficial ones, such as the Rocksteady Mantle - which can prevent wind attack knockbacks, and stop stuns and staggers caused by monster roars and tremors.

Lobbing your teammates

In the mood for something a little flashier? Advanced (or at least, more adventurous) hunters can initiate a mount by getting a hunter friend to launch them into the air first. To launch another hunter skyward, simply run at them with an axe or hammer and strike them with a heavy blow. Just make sure they don't forget to hit their target on the way down.

It's extremely satisfying - not to mention hilarious - when done correctly, but is definitely one of the trickier ways to start a mount. Its success relies almost entirely on the accuracy, angle, and trajectory of the launcher's aim, but it's a fun trust-building exercise if nothing else.