Monster Hunter Now tips and tricks for beginners

If you’re new to the Monster Hunter franchise or a seasoned veteran, Monster Hunter NowThere are many new features, which can be difficult to comprehend.

Niantic’s augmented reality take on the monster hunting franchise has you roaming around (in real life) to find monsters to hunt and materials to make new gear out of. As you upgrade your gear, you’ll be able to take down stronger monsters and then upgrade your gear even more.

Here are some helpful tips that you can use to get up-to-speed.

Don’t bother completing armor sets — pick and choose based on perks

Image: Niantic/Capcom

Upgrade your equipment to certain levels and you will unlock perks for each piece of armor. Instead of completing an entire armor set, choose armor pieces that have skills you can use. If you are often thrown around by monsters, it may be worth equipping and upgrading the Jagras Helm. It gives you the Firm Foothold skill, which reduces the knockback as you increase its level.

As you progress through the narrative, more monsters will appear.

If you’re tired of taking out Kulu-Ya-Ku and Jagras, don’t worry — more monsters will unlock as you progress. You’ll be stuck with the same handful of beasts for a while, but just keep taking down monsters and collecting materials to complete your quests and you’ll see a larger variety of enemies in no time.

In combat, the most important elements are:

We were able to overcome a wall in the Rathian five-star encounter with the paralysis upgrade. Our recommendation is, once you have settled on your weapon type of choice, is to have a variety of elements at the ready, and to upgrade them up as much as your armor sets — making those leaps in difficulty much less daunting.

Remember to open the app, even if you’re not going to hunt monsters in the moment

You’ll need to collect lots of materials, both for your missions and to upgrade your gear. Even if you’re not feeling up to hunting a bunch of monsters, you should open the app occasionally so you Felyne friend can collect materials around you. It’ll only take a few seconds for your Palico to grab the nearby materials and you can close the app right after it’s finished.

Changes in the environment around you

Don’t worry too much about being stuck in the same drab area just because you live in the suburbs. The habitats will shift often enough that you should be able to encounter a variety of monsters, even if you’re confined to one neighborhood.

Don’t forget to complete both the storyline and your special quests

Image: Niantic/Capcom

Special quests, on the other hand, are daily tasks that you can accomplish to earn HRP and craft materials. most of them are easy enough to complete and you’ll get them done just by playing the game, so make sure to claim the rewards as you do.

Tap only when you are within the range of resource points

Something worth knowing for those coming from Niantic’s other games, such as Pokémon GoIs that what you’re saying? Monster Hunter Now is more temperamental about the game’s equivalent of PokéStops, called Gathering Points. The Gathering Points won’t register your current location if you touch them too early. This will require you to tap and exit each time. A minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things, but does means resource gathering isn’t as quick fire as we’d like.

The small monsters you have are much more valuable than you might think

Small monsters – which take just a few hits of your weapon to defeat – will regularly litter the map, and you’ll be forgiven for ignoring them in favor of larger ones with more valuable crafting parts. But fighting them has multiple benefits: They have unique drops required for various armor and weapon upgrades (you’ll need these more often than you’d think!) They also help you build your Special Skill gauge, which is perhaps even more valuable. The gauge is persistent between battles. This means you can use a powerful attack at the beginning of a large-scale monster fight.