Monster Hunter Wilds is finally here, ready to take players on an epic journey across uncharted lands and giant hunt monsters alongside their friends. However, Monster Hunter Wilds is jam-packed with all kinds of complex gameplay mechanics and concepts that will overwhelm new players who have never played Monster Hunter before. Worse yet, some features don’t even get explained and are hidden so deeply that you might miss them on your first playthrough.
Even we Monster Hunter veterans at Windows Central have gone through Monster Hunter Wilds and discovered seven helpful things we wished we had known in our first playthrough. So, we’re going to share them with you today to help newcomers not make the same mistakes we did and have your first playthrough more fun.
Please note that there are slight spoilers in this guide, so read at your own risk.
Multiplayer setup
The Monster Hunter franchise has featured infamously convoluted multiplayer systems in many of its games, and Monster Hunter Wilds is no different. If you wish to start hunting with your friends online, you’re going to have to set up several things to make it happen.
To start playing multiplayer with your friends, you need to start an Online Single Player Lobby, a regular Lobby, or a Private Lobby in the title screen menu where you select your save file.
Once that’s done and you get into the game, you can invite your friends into your Lobby directly via the “Invite a friend” option in the main menu. Alternatively, you can join a Lobby already made by players you become Hunter Friends with in-game by following them and sending them your Guild Profile, or just joining random players via Recommended Lobby.
If you don’t want random people to join your group’s Lobby, you can create a Private Lobby where you hand out Private Lobby codes for players to join or you can create a Squad Lobby instead.
Squads and Squad Lobbys are created in-game by talking to Felicita at the Squad Information Counter in the Windward Plains Base Camp. Here, you can invite your friends to a Squad and have them create special Squad Lobbies where only members of the Squad can join without needing Private Lobby codes.
Things don’t end there because after all your friends are in your lobby, you will need to understand the concept of Link Parties and Environmental Link Parties.
Link Parties are where you form 4-player parties to join quests posted by the Handler, Alma in the base camp, or by a player in the Link Party. Environmental Link Parties, on the other hand, are for free-roaming the various hunting locales of Monster Hunter Wilds. You can’t be in Link Parties and Environmental Link Parties at the same time so you will need to choose which party type depending on your needs.
If you want to progress through the story quests or play regular quests, form Link parties. If you want to free-roam the locales to help your friends gather materials, look for Pop-up Camp locations, and hunt monsters in the field, then you will need to form Environmental Link Parties.
Speaking of story quests, it’s important to note the main campaign will force players to progress through sections of hunts solo before being allowed to join other players online. Thankfully, unlike Monster Hunter World, you can skip the cutscenes to get through these sections faster, and once you’re done, the game will send an automatic invitation link to all members of your Link Party so they can join your hunt immediately.
Focus Strikes are for more than just hitting monster wounds
One of the new gameplay mechanics of Monster Hunter Wilds is Focus Mode. By holding the Left trigger, you activate an aiming reticle that will allow you to redirect your attacks mid-combo so you can’t miss hitting a monster. Focus Mode also highlights special weak points on a monster’s body called Wounds which will inflict additional damage to them if a player manages to hit them.
Focus Mode also allows access to a special attack for each weapon type called the Focus Strike by pressing RB. If you hit a monster’s Wound with a Focus Strike, it will cause the monster to trip and destroy the wound dealing insane amounts of damage. Additionally, destroying wounds rewards the player with monster parts to craft gear with at the smithy back at the base camp.
However, Focus Strikes can also be used on a monster without Wounds on specific parts of their body after they unleash their ultimate attack (which will be highlighted in Focus Mode). This window of opportunity is pretty short, however, so you will need to fire off your Focus Strike quickly to take advantage of this exposed weak spot and deal massive damage to the enemy.
Don’t forget to customize your controls in the options menu
A lot of Monster Hunter Wilds’ default control may feel cumbersome to some players. I know I had a hard time trying to activate Focus Mode in the heat of battle using the default of holding the left trigger while trying to execute combos with melee weapons. Thankfully, Monster Hunter Wilds has a metric ton of ways you can customize the controls in the options menu to suit your personal preferences.
These include but are not limited to:
- Being able to adjust Focus Mode so it can be activated by toggling it via pressing the Left Trigger instead of holding the trigger down. You can also adjust the activation method for melee weapons and ranged weapons separately so the melee weapons’ Focus Mode can be toggled and ranged weapons’ Focus Mode can be held down or vice versa.
- Adjusting the radial menu so items are used by pressing down on the analog stick instead of releasing it.
- Adjusting the Seikret so it doesn’t automatically go into Auto-explore Mode when you mount it.
- Adjusting the D-pad and face button configurations.
- And much more.
Set up Pop-up Camps in safe locations to avoid wasting Guild points
While exploring the regions of the Forbidden Lands, you may come across locations where you can set up Pop-up Camps. These will allow you to create camps where you can prepare your gear, heal up, eat food to gain buffs and open up fast-travel locations.
However, if a Pop-up tent is placed in a dangerous or insecure spot, then there’s a risk it could get destroyed by monsters if they spot it. If a camp gets wrecked, you will have to spend precious Guild Points to fix it. Fortunately, some places are completely safe to put a Pop-Up Camp in so it doesn’t get destroyed by monsters.
You will know if it’s a safe spot if it is marked as such in the Pop-up Camp management menu when you speak to Tek, the Pop-up Camp Meowster in the Windward Plains base camp. I’d recommend putting your camps in Safe locations only because while they may be a bit further away from a monster’s usual stomping ground, they aren’t ‘that’ far way, and it will save you from wasting your resources to fix them.
Complete sidequests to unlock content
As you progress through Low Rank and High Rank quests, you will come across several sidequests handed by NPCs in both your base camp and in small villages scattered throughout the Forbidden Lands. It’s highly recommended you complete these side quests when you can because they can unlock gameplay mechanics and content.
For example, completing sidequests handed out by your Palico will upgrade its combat abilities. In addition, completing certain sidequests for various villagers will unlock feast invitations where you can eat food to gain many passive buffs for an hour, while other sidequests will unlock the ability to send villagers on errands to gather crafting materials for you.
Fight monsters with high Strength levels for better rewards
When you complete the Low-Rank main questline and get approved to do High-Rank quests, you will start to notice monsters having Strength levels on the map. These indicate how tough they are to fight and what bonus rewards they will give you when you slay them.
As your Hunter Rank increases while progressing in High Rank, you will encounter monsters with higher Strength levels and bonus rewards. If you’re looking for a challenge and extra materials to craft gear, upgrade your Hunter Rank by completing quests so you can start hunting these strong monsters.
Pass the time in your Camp
Monster Hunter Wilds features a dynamic day-and-night & seasonal cycle that rapidly changes the environment and affects what monsters and gathering points will show in each region of the Forbidden Lands. For example, when the Windward Plains is in an Inclemency period, the weather will become extremely volatile, and there’s a chance that the region’s apex predator, Rey Dau, will appear.
However, waiting for these changes in weather patterns and times of day to hunt a desired monster or find a specific gathering node can take a while. Thankfully, you can rest at your Base Camp or Pop-up Camps to pass the time until you get the weather pattern or time of day you want for a fee of 300 Guild Points.
Do note that resting is unavailable while on Quests and only available while free-roaming the maps.
Good luck on your wild journey into Monster Hunter Wilds
And there you have our seven beginner tips to make your first-time playthrough of Monster Hunter Wilds more enjoyable. Yet the greatest piece of advice we can offer to any new Monster Hunter player is to take their time and not rush the game, tempting as it may be to rush to the endgame content.
Spend time in the training room learning the intricacies of Monster Hunter Wilds’ 14 weapon types. Explore the regions to uncover secrets even we might’ve missed, and learn the attack patterns of the monsters you will spend many hours hunting so you can farm their materials efficiently to craft the slickest-looking armor and show them off to your friends.
Monster Hunter Wilds, the next-gen successor to one of Capcom’s best Xbox games and best PC games, Monster Hunter World, is scheduled to launch on February 28, 2025, for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam.
