‘Monster Hunter World’ Secrets: 15 Things You May Not Know

Jeremy Ray
Games
Games

Many, many hours into Monster Hunter World, you’ll still have no chance of knowing absolutely everything.

It’s a game that manages to sneak you into NG+ so subtly you won’t even realise until you’re halfway in it. Nergigante might be the kinda-sorta main objective, but this being a Monster Hunter game, of course it doesn’t end there.

We’ve put together a list of things that you might not yet know, and hopefully it’ll help you on your hunts — or perhaps you’ll just find it interesting.

Let’s start with poison.

Poison Works A Bit Differently

You can start building up poison on a monster right after you’ve poisoned them. You don’t have to wait for it to wear off. However, like most status effects, the amount of poison damage you need to trigger the effect increases every time you trigger it.

Counting the Mounting

The edges of the screen will go dark and blurry when a monster is about to buck and try to shake you off. If you press R2 when you see this, you’ll brace yourself and not lose stamina. Depleting your stamina bar can see you thrown off.

You might also want to brace if you see them about to rub their back against a solid wall. If you’re unsure, better safe than sorry.

Mounting is considered to be another “ailment” by the game, similar to poison or paralysis. As such, it’s subject to the same kind of diminishing returns. Just like it’ll take more and more poisoned hits to inflict the ailment, it’ll take more and more altitudinal damage to trigger a mount.

Sling That Thing

You should be using the slinger in every fight. Some cases are very specific, like when a Barroth or Juryotodus covers itself in mud, if you sling watermoss at them it’ll soften that mud armour and chip it off. Or when you’re fighting Nergigante and the crystal ammo or dragon ammo can break off its spikes.

But even if there’s no situation-specific use case, you should always be carrying around flash pods to blind them, and dung pods to make Bazelgeuse go away. Damn Bazelgeuse.

Nighty Night

Some little critters only come out at certain times of the day!

The Prism Hercudrome, in particular, is necessary for the secret Rainbow Bright achievement and only comes out at dawn or dusk. You can find it in one of the secluded beaches near the starting camp in the Ancient Forest.

Unlock Your True Power

Some weapons have a hidden elemental attack. If your weapon has a greyed out elemental attack on its info screen, you won’t get the benefit of that until you find a piece of gear that specifically says it unlocks hidden elements.

What you’re looking for is the Free Elem/Ammo Up skill. Each level of this skill will unlock a third of your weapon’s elemental power (or if you have a ranged weapon, it can expand clip sizes).

Luckily, you can sort gear at the workshop by skills, so just select Free Elem/Ammo Up and see which pieces fit the requirements. The Awakening Charm also carries this effect.

The “Oh Dang” Button

If you haven’t been using your Farcaster, it’s an instant escape! Very handy. A wingdrake will come to fly you back to camp and the invincibility frames start almost straight away.

The Monster Hunter World interface isn’t the best, and sometimes rotating through all of your items can be frustrating mid-combat. There’s no great solution for that, but pick whatever works best for you — whether that’s reserving a spot on the item wheel for an instant escape, or reducing the amount of usable items to make it easier to find on your normal item button.

Tailriders For Life

If you upgrade your tailriders enough, they’ll set traps for you!

This is obviously super useful, though it won’t work against some enemies like Nergigante. Plus, as if you need a reason to deepen your alliance with the true stars of the game, the felynes.

No More Guesswork

Sometimes it can be hard to find the first bit of evidence from a monster. If you don’t want to waste any time, go back to your tent and grab the basic Hunting Horn. If you play the Scoutfly Power Up song it’ll instantly upgrade your Scoutflies to level one for your target. That’ll get you started much quicker.

All Ghillied Up

If you want two monsters to fight each other and leave you alone, it’s a lot more effective to crouch inside a bush than using the Ghillie Mantle. The latter option will just make them look around for you.

Two Bonks Make Them Right

If you see a teammate who’s stunned, you can actually knock them out of it! Definitely do this.

It’s similar to how your palico will knock you out of a stunned state sometimes, but don’t rely on their furry friend to do it at the right time. If you see the monster gearing up for a big attack, this should be your top priority.

Hunter Ranks Go Pretty High

The game actually goes for a long time after beating Nergigante. Up to over Hunter Rank 100. It’s insane. After the high rank monsters you have elder dragons, elderseal to hamper their super abilities, and then you get into tempered versions of everything.

My goodness.

Elemental, My Dear Watson

Certain areas have attrition effects on your health bar. There’s effluvial gas, and extreme heat. Both of these have armour that can protect you from the effects, if you’re out of the consumables that do the same thing.

Hornetaur chest armour nullifies effluvium, and items with Heat Guard (such as the Lavasioth Mails or Barnos Jackets) will do the same for those lava areas. You should also be picking up chillshrooms whenever you can.

Dealing With Roars

If your weapon is capable of blocking, you can block a roar. You can even roll through it, just as if it were an attack. Rolling requires very exact timing, but if you’re using a weapon like the great hammer, you don’t have much choice.

There’s also an armour skill called Earplugs that helps out with this. The full Bazelgeuse armour set offers top tier Earplugs, which means full protection from any roar. Any excuse to kill Bazelgeuse over and over is good enough for us.

…Damn Bazelgeuse.

Do Try This At Home

Cats are absolutely transfixed by Monster Hunter World. Just look at all the cats on the internet who can’t take their eyes off it!

Monster Hunter World Is Going to Be Alright

Monster Hunter World was Capcom’s best selling game ever. It sold six million units even before the recent PC launch, which brings it to a mostly new audience. The positive critical reception plus amazing word of mouth and shareable moments mean it will enjoy a solid period of sales to come.

No longer limited to a Nintendo handheld, for many this is the introduction to the Monster Hunter franchise, and it’s made quite the splash.

Jeremy Ray
Decade-long games critic and esports aficionado. Started in competitive Counter-Strike, then moved into broadcast, online, print and interpretative pantomime. You merely adopted the lag. I was born in it.