Monster Hunter Wilds Beginner's Guide: First 5 Hours Without Getting Destroyed

Stop reading guides mid-hunt

I spent my first two hours in Monster Hunter Wilds tabbing out to check weapon tutorials every time a Chatacabra charged me. Dumbest thing I've ever done. Just dumb.

Don't do that. It'll get you carted more often than not and it breaks the flow completely.

Wilds is actually the most newcomer-friendly Monster Hunter ever made. But only if you use the tools Capcom built for you instead of fighting them. And I mean actually use them, not just acknowledge they exist and then ignore them. Like I did. For two whole hours. You'd think I would have learned faster but nope.

First thing you need to know: your Seikret mount is not a cosmetic bird. I ignored mine for the first three hunts and that was a mistake. Walking isn't faster. Not even close. Hold up on the d-pad or the call button on keyboard and this raptor-looking thing scoops you up mid-sprint while you sharpen your weapon and heal and switch to your secondary weapon all without stopping. The Seikret has auto-navigation too which I completely missed until way too late. Open the map, pick a waypoint, and it'll pathfind there while you scroll through your item pouch organizing potions. I didn't realize auto-navigate existed until the Doshaguma hunt and thinking about all the time I wasted manually steering through the Windward Plains still annoys me.

So then there's Focus Mode. Hold L2 on controller or the aim key on PC and a crosshair appears that lets you aim attacks precisely instead of hoping your Great Sword lands somewhere in the monster's general zip code. Big difference when you're actually playing and not just reading about it. More importantly, wounds glow red in Focus Mode and hitting a wounded spot with a Focus Strike gives you a free knockdown plus bonus materials. Every weapon can rip wounds and the game does not explain this well enough or at all really. I went four hunts before discovering Focus Strikes. Four. And immediately tripled my material drops from breaks. Kind of embarrassing but at least now you know.

Dual weapons are the other thing the tutorial mentions once then forgets about forever. Your Seikret carries a second weapon for you and pressing right on the d-pad while mounted swaps between them mid-hunt. So you can bring a Great Sword for big openings and a Sword and Shield for when the monster won't stop moving. Or a ranged weapon for flying wyverns and a melee weapon for grounded fights and suddenly every matchup is manageable. I run Hammer as primary for KO potential and Light Bowgun as secondary for status ammo and this setup has never let me down. It's not mandatory to use both. Plenty of people stick to one weapon and that's fine. But having a backup means you're never in a matchup your main weapon can't handle. Peace of mind. Worth it.

About the 14 weapon types that the training area lets you test against a stationary pole that behaves nothing like an actual monster. Don't try all of them or you'll burn an hour learning nothing useful. Pick a weapon that matches how you want to play and commit hard.

Want big damage numbers and don't mind being slow? Great Sword or Hammer. Want to dance around the monster hitting it constantly? Dual Blades. Want to block everything and counter? Lance or Gunlance. I started with Insect Glaive because aerial combat looked cool but realized I was spending more time managing extracts than actually fighting so I switched to Switch Axe and never looked back. The Switch Axe has this satisfying rhythm of building up charge in axe mode then unloading it in sword mode with the Zero Sum Discharge where you latch onto the monster and explode in its face. It's cinematic and doesn't require a PhD in kinsect management. Not that there's anything wrong with Insect Glaive and I'm sure good Glaive players make it look effortless. I just couldn't get it to work for me.

The story campaign in Wilds is fully voiced and weirdly good. Your hunter actually speaks which is still jarring if you've played older Monster Hunter games where your character just nodded silently while everyone explained the apocalypse. You have a handler named Alma and a Palico who says things now instead of just meowing. Wild. The opening sets you up as part of the Avis Unit expedition into the Forbidden Lands and a kid named Nata escaped some monster attack he calls the White Wraith. The first few hours are a guided tour where the game teaches you systems one at a time and I kind of loved the story despite expecting not to care at all. I think veterans will bounce off the voiced protagonist but I thought it worked and made me actually pay attention to cutscenes which never happened in World.

Early armor doesn't matter much and I learned this the expensive way by wasting zenny on sets I replaced immediately. Craft whatever has the highest defense from the monsters you can actually kill and move on because the real gear decisions start around the third map when elemental resistances become relevant. Before that, just upgrade your weapon and don't stress about minmaxing. I still cringe thinking about it.

Pop-up camps are portable fast travel points you deploy in the field and they're more important than they seem. Place them near monster spawn zones because they let you restock items and eat meals without returning to base and having a camp near a sleeping monster means free barrel bomb wakeup hits. Simple trick. Huge payoff. I learned it from watching speedrunners and it's been a staple of my hunts ever since.

Eat before every hunt with your portable BBQ grill that cooks raw meat into steaks and rations anywhere while giving max HP and stamina boosts plus food skills. The cooking animation is fun a couple times then you skip it forever. The ingredients you gather in the field change what buffs you get so hoard everything but especially herbs and honey and blue mushrooms because Mega Potions don't craft themselves.

The SOS flare system is something I was too proud to use at first and that pride cost me hours. If a hunt is going badly, fire an SOS flare and other players can join and in Wilds this includes NPC Support Hunters if no real players respond. I'm not exaggerating when I say they're actually competent. They heal themselves and they attack and they don't triple cart. On release week when servers were unstable this saved my Arkveld hunt and I probably would have quit for the night without it. Don't be too proud. I was and I regret it.

I still cart sometimes and everyone does and the biggest difference between new hunters and veterans isn't skill or gear or some secret technique or anything like that. It's that veterans expect to cart and treat it as information instead of failure and then they adjust accordingly and queue up again. That's Monster Hunter and honestly that's the whole game right there. There's a bunch of other stuff to learn too but you'll figure it out as you go.