Here’s our third piece on all things Monster Hunter Rise! It’s a random smattering of advice for those in the thick of a Barroth’s mud swamp already, but here’s hoping you find some cool things here. In case you haven’t yet, check out our Beginner’s Tips and Intermediate Progression Tips to get you up to speed to a Hunter’s life.

• A good Dango recipe I like: Weakener (large monsters start out with a bit lower HP), Booster (you get an attack buff for like 7-plus minutes), and Defender (can save your life by lowering damage done to you). Use a Dango ticket to ensure the skills all pop, if you need to, like for Urgent Quests.

• Take a picture of everything you see for the first time, using your camera. You’ll be thankful I told you. Especially these little buggery Rock Lizards.

• Visit the Cohoot Nest in the Buddy Plaza every now and then, for free Lagniapples mostly.
• Don’t be afraid to sell monster parts and ores (but leave a few for yourself). A good tip is whenever I’m strapped for zenny, I sell half of some of the most-stocked parts I have (looking at you, Rathian Scales and Carbalite Ore).
• Consider a melee weapon’s sharpness when comparing it to another, should you be looking to upgrade. Sometimes, there might be a weapon with higher attack, but if it only has sliver of blue sharpness, I’ll take a weapon with a lower attack power but longer swaths of green sharpness. Conversely, a weapon may have lower attack than another, but have a better supply of blue sharpness.
• Unlock your Argosy submarines ASAP – these are essentially item duplicators. Get your highest level cats and dogs on these if you’re not bring them (they can gain experience here too).

• The Izuchi armor is a good starter armor set to build and upgrade. Same goes for its equivalent in High Rank quests.
• Upgrading armors can bottleneck you in Armor Spheres early on. Make sure you accept the max of 5 optional subquests before setting out for an actual quest, because these usually give out Armor Spheres.

• Some weapons may seem weak at first, compared to others of its tier – but check out its Rampage skill options, because that is usually where they make up for it.
• Remember that you can Fast Travel to camps in this game, while on a quest. You’ll have to unlock the Sub-camps though, by finding their locations, and then doing a sidequest (usually delivering a number of items, or killing small monsters).
• Level a Gatherer Palico up to 20, to unlock their Pilfer skill. It can sometimes steal rare item drops from large monsters, on top of gathering materials on its own.

• Check your Hunter’s Notes often! It gets filled up with useful information, like which element or weapon a monster is weak to.

Rare Materials in Monster Hunter Rise: Where can I find…

• Sinister Cloth: send your Buddies to do Meowcenaries quests with a shiny location, they’ll have a small chance of bringing home 1 to 2 of these every now and then
• Novacrystals: Flooded Forest mining outcrops (blue ones are better). For any mining expedition you want to do, bring the Leather Armor set, which has the Geologist skill, increasing the amount of ore you get from outcrops.
• Gracium and Icium: Flooded Forest mining outcrops
• Fucium, Firestone, Firecell Stone: Lava Caverns mining outcrops
• Wisplantern: Shimmering Berries in the Shrine Ruins
• Boatshell: Oyster Beds in the Frost Islands
• King Rhino: bring a Large Barrel Bomb and climb the pyramid in the Flooded Forest. Explode the wall there and get the relic record and the bug.
• Bismuth Prism: Iridescent Ores in the Lava Caverns
• Rock Lizard: any map, but make sure to eat the Dango Summoner ball before going on a quest.
• Bnahabra Wing and Altaroth Jaw and other insect parts: these obviously come from the aforementioned small monsters, but usually, they explode and dont leave a body to carve when you hit them with your big-ass hammer. Here’s the tip: buy Poison Smoke Bombs from Rondine in the Argosy, and smoke these bugs out instead and watch them wither, leaving behind a perfectly carveable body.

Got a tip for us and other hunters not mentioned here? Let us know in a message or comment at our Facebook fan page!

Monster Hunter Rise is now available for the Nintendo Switch.