Monster Hunter Stories 3 may be a lot of things, but simple isn’t really one of them. Between RNG-heavy gameplay, obstinate companions and numerous, sometimes obtuse gameplay systems, new players expecting a quaint jaunt may find themselves confused at times. This page will hopefully answer some of your questions in Monster Hunter Stories 3 by providing numerous handy hints and tips for new players!

Page Breakdown¶

Monsties and Progression¶

• You must keep Ratha in your party the entire game, and there are some fights where you’ll need to use Ratha. That being the case, you’d do well to make sure he’s strong enough to compete - teach him skills that boost his stats, give him different attack types, and so on.

• You should try to keep the Monsties in your party elementally diverse. Fighting an enemy weak against fire? Use Ratha! Weak against lightning? Bring out Kobi-Tadachi! The more elemental coverage you have, the easier your life will be.

• Not only should you keep your Monsties elementally diverse, teaching them new skills via the Rite of Channeling so they have different attack types is a good idea, too. Ratha, for example, has access to the Savage Fireball skill by default, a Power-type attack, but teaching him something like, say, Venom Flame (another fire elemental skill) will allow him to use Technique-type attacks. This will make it easier for you to land Double Attacks and win Head-to-Head clashes!

• Teach your primary fire Monstie - be it Ratha, an Anjanath, or whatever else strikes your fancy - the Fireball Frolic skill. You won’t be disappointed.

• While having a strong roster of Monsties with various different elemental powers is a good idea, you also want to ensure your roster of Monsties are capable of traversing the world - you will need Monsties that can fly, jump, wall climb, swim and ground dive, at the very least!

• New weapons and armor will become available to craft when you find new monster materials - check back at the Merchant Melynx or the local smith whenever you defeat a new monster to see what you can now craft or upgrade.

• Decorations can be equipped into weapon and armor slots (all weapons and armor have between 0-3 slots) to give said gear various effects and properties - weapon skill and passives for weapons and… everything else, including resistances, stat-boosters and various boons on armor. Want to upgrade to a new weapon but don’t like the skills on it? Use decorations to give your new toy the same skills as your old toy!

• Decorations can be equipped on multiple pieces of gear at once. There’s no good excuse not to use them!

• Decorations aren’t redundant! If you find a new decoration of the same type as an old one, the two will combine to provide a superior effect! For example, Health Boost (S) will upgrade to Health Boost (M).

• Fully upgrading a weapon or armor will give you a new decoration, and in the case of armor, it’s the first (upper left) skill on the list. Even if an old weapon or suit of armor doesn’t have appealing stats anymore, maxing it out can still prove beneficial!

• Decorations can also be found in chests, earned by completing quest, or purchased from Merchant Melynx.

• Monster Dens spawn randomly on the map when you zone-in. If you don’t see any Monster Dens to your liking, leave the area and return.

• The quality of egg you harvest from nests - normal, gold or rainbow - is determined by the type of Monster Den you’re in (rare or super rare will yield better eggs on average) and the rank of monsters in the region the Monster Den is located in. Rarer eggs means more potent genes.

• You can tell the rarity of a gene at a glance by the color of its border. Skill genes and low quality (S) genes will have no border, (M) genes will have a bronze border, (L) genes will have a gold border and (XL) genes will have a platinum border. This is not to be confused with improved skill genes, which will have an “S” on the gene icon.

• Release hatched Monsties in a region they’re native to in order to increase their rank in said region. This will increase the quality of that type of Monstie when you find and hatch their eggs in that region - you’ve no good reason to keep a Monstie before they’re Rank S in a region!

• To release Monsties in a region, you must set up a Camp, and to set up a Camp you need to defeat the Feral Monster in said region.

• Mutant variants for some monsters can be created by meeting specific habitat conditions, especially be sure to check your Monsterpedia after rescuing an endangered monster egg from an Invasive Monster den. Undiscovered variants will appear as black silhouettes in the Monsterpedia!

• Defeating a monster in a normal battle (not one-shotting them on the field) will give you a chance to cause the monster to flee to a Retreat Den upon defeat. These Retreat Dens will almost always have two nests, you’ll have a ton of time to search them for choice eggs, and will always yield eggs of the defeated monster’s type. There’s no better way to farm for specific monster eggs, and hence, genes.

• While gold and rainbow eggs have superior genes, the exact genes any hatched Monstie has is random. Just because you CAN get Fire Atk Boost (XL) from a Monstie doesn’t mean you will - you may have to farm several eggs of the same monster type to get what you want.

• There is no penalty for swapping genes via the Rite of Channeling! Stockpile your best genes on your favorite Monsties, and when you find a shinier, prettier, betterer Monstie, swap them over!

• You can have 700 Monsties in your stable at once. This is more than enough to stockpile whatever genes you could possibly wish. If you find you don’t want some Monsties, just release them in their native habitat. Best case scenario, they increase the monster rank of that region, worst case scenario, they do nothing except stop cluttering your stables!

• While it may be tempting to just stack a bunch of stat-boosting genes on your favorite Monsties, keep in mind the Bingo benefits you’ll get by placing genes on the 3x3 gene grid. If you make Bingo with a color or an icon, the Monstie will get increasing benefits - the more Bingos, the more gains! A grid full of the same color genes can grant that Monstie a 150% bonus to their elemental damage, which is pretty huge!

• Rainbow genes don’t give the Monstie any benefits, but they count as all types of genes for the purpose of scoring Bingos - place one in the middle of the grid and you’ll have an easier time stacking up Bingos!

• Some genes and/or gene slots will be locked until a Monstie hits a certain level. You can use Catalyst Keys to unlock these slots before hitting the indicated level, but putting an under-leveled Monstie in your party and letting them passively earn EXP as other Monsties do the fighting works well, too.

Exploration and Quests¶

• Loot everything you can! You don’t know when you’ll need the materials you gain from looting, and even if you don’t, you’ll get EXP and Trade Points for collecting materials.

• No quests expire in Monster Hunter Stories 3, so if you’re not feeling like doing any side content, ignore it. You can always go back to it later… save for some quests in Azuria Castle, which will become inaccessible for a while during the main story.

• Complete Thea’s first Side Story to unlock the Poogie Hunter ability. This will give you a message when an undiscovered Poogie is nearby!

• Side Stories will teach your companions superior skills, give them access to new weapons and, eventually, allow them to use a second Monstie in combat. They’re well worth completing.

• Enemies are stronger at night, and in rare circumstances, new enemies will appear.

• You can only find Invasive Species at night. If you enter the demesne of an Invasive Monster, your character will comment on needing to return at night. The music also changes whenever you enter the domain of an Invasive Monster, even during the day, so you can tell where you have to return at night.

• Some flying enemies disdain the terrestrial, and will not indulge you just because you want to fight them. While you can play their game and try to fly into them with your own flying Monstie, you’re better off hitting them with a breath attack. Just wait for them to stop periodically during their flight pattern and shoot them to the ground!

• Be on the lookout for caves, out-of-reach ledges, breakable walls, holes you can ground dive through, and other terrain features that may hide treasure or rare monsters!

• Monster difficulty isn’t strictly region-based. Every region will have monsters that are too strong to reasonably fight on your first encounter, so don’t feel the need to try that Deviljho on your first visit to the Canalta Timberland! This also applies to some Feral Monsters, so you probably won’t be setting up Camps in and developing every region on your first visit.

• If you attack an enemy on the field before they can make contact with you, you’ll ambush the enemy, reducing them to around 80% of their HP and gaining a free turn. If the enemy ambushes you, they’ll get a free turn!

• If you can flee from battle, you will almost always succeed. Just hold down to flee a fight. There is no penalty from fleeing (unless you’re in a Monster Den - if you flee or are defeated in a Monster Den you’ll be evicted and the Monster Den will vanish), so abuse this any time you find yourself at a disadvantage! There’s no reason to fight any normal battle without an ambush!

• If you out-level an enemy by several levels, you’ll defeat them instantly by attacking them in the field. This still earns you materials, but they’ll never flee to a Retreat Den and you’ll get less - if any - EXP.

• You can also just run into an underleveled enemy to start a fight normally, then instantly defeat them by pressing + . This gets you rewards, of course, but also earns you more EXP and enemies defeated this way may flee to a Retreat Den.

Combat¶

• Most attacks in the game have one of three different attack types: Power (red) beats Technique (green), which in turn beats Speed (blue) and Speed beats Power. When an enemy monster uses an attack with one of these attack types, counter with an attack type that beats the one the enemy used! Yeah, it’s a bit of rhoshambo randomness to keep mundane attacks a bit more interesting - win one of these Head-to-Head contests and you’ll take less damage and deal more, lose and you’ll take more damage and deal less.

• If you or your Monstie is being attacked by a single-target ability with an attack type you will see a blue or yellow line connecting you to the monster. Ensure that you and your Monstie are attacking the same part of the same enemy with the same attack type (Power, Technique, Speed) and that your character is using a normal attack (not a skill) and if you win the Head-to-Head you’ll perform a Double Attack, dealing substantially more damage and negating the enemy’s attack entirely!

• There’s unfortunately a lot you can’t control in combat - your companion and their Monstie will do whatever they want, including provoke counterattacks or use items at inopportune times. You can, however, control your protagonist and their Monstie, and while giving direct commands to your Monstie may hinder Kinship growth, sometimes it’s better than letting them do as they wish - when you need to score Double Attack, destroy a specific enemy part or just keep your dumb Monstie from provoking a backlash attack.

• Like in standard Monster Hunter games, you can be KO’d three times per fight before you lose. This is represented by the number of Hearts you have - you and your Monstie share a Heart pool while your companion and their Monstie share one.

• Getting one-shot by powerful enemies is just part of the game - if you lose a Heart, it’s usually no big deal. Even if your whole party is wiped (losing two Hearts each) you can still make a comeback! Use Vital Essences to recover lost Hearts and keep on fighting!

• If your companion and their Monstie lose all their Hearts, the fight will continue, they’ll just be unable to participate for a few turns. Never waste Vital Essences on your companion or their Monstie - the fight only ends when you run out of Hearts!

• Try not to switch Monsties too often in combat, as the longer you fight alongside a Monstie, the more your Kinship gauge will fill! When your Kingship gauge is full you can mount your Monstie, getting a full health bar and gaining the ability to perform special Kinship attacks. You will dismount after using a Kinship attack.

• The longer you remain mounted on your Monstie, the more your Kinship gauge will fill! This is represented by a number inside the Kinship gauge, and at Kinship Lv3 you’ll deal massive damage with your Kinship attack!

• If you’re defeated while mounted on your Monstie, you’ll survive (although your Monstie may find themselves at 1 HP!) and you’ll be dismounted, losing access to your Kinship attack. Being mounted has many benefits, but if you misjudge and get dismounted you’ll waste your Kinship attack!

• Your companion will mount their Monstie automatically when their Kinship gauge is full, and will usually refrain from using their Kinship skill until either the target is almost defeated or they’re about to be dismounted.

• If you and your companion are both mounted at the same time, you can perform a Double Kinship Attack, dealing immense damage!

• Kinship attacks negate an enemy’s turn, so if you sense the monster is about to do something nasty that may dismount you, you may as well cut your losses and use your Kinship attack!

• If you’re defeated in combat you’ll either get the option to retry or you’ll be sent back to the last checkpoint without losing any progress. There’s not really much penalty for losing, so you might as well try your luck against enemies to see where you stand!

• When you attack large monsters you’ll often get a choice as to what part to attack. Deal enough damage and you’ll break the part, which can hinder an enemy in various ways, including knocking them down, weakening their attacks, changing their phase, rendering them especially vulnerable to followup attacks, or simply diminishing their Wyvernsoul gauge.

• Feral enemies will have at least one body part covered in Blightstone - target these at your own peril, as they’ll perform a powerful backlash attack when these are struck! You’ll usually know not to attack that part when you see the blue aura coming off of it. You may have to manually command your Monstie to not attack these, lest they touch the stove top and cost you Hearts.

• Different parts of enemy monsters are usually weak to different types of damage - Slashing (Great Swords and Long Swords), Blunt (Hammers and Hunting Horns) and Piercing (Bows and Gunlances). Pay attention to the icons when targeting monster parts and use what suits your target!

• You can have three weapons equipped at once and switch between them freely in combat. Either find a weapon type you like and have multiple different elemental versions for general combat, or if head-hunting a specific enemy, bring three different weapon types of the correct element… or some combination of the two!

• Eat meals before big fights! Even basic meals give you useful benefits and the materials required to cook them are as simple to acquire as bullying some skittish herbivores on the field.