There’s a lot of RNG to the combat in Monster Hunter Stories 3, including one of the most important aspects - you can’t give commands to your companions or their Monsties, so you’ve just got to hope they do the right thing at the right time in the right situation. While the willfulness of your companions will be a constant source of annoyance, you can at least control your own attacks and those of your Monstie, picking specific actions, targets and in some cases, the attack type (aka weapon triangle). This page will cover how attack types work and how to predict and respond to enemy attack in Monster Hunter Stories 3.

Page Breakdown¶

Head-to-Heads and Attack Types¶

There are three different attack types in Monster Hunter Stories 3… well, technically four, but we’ll focus on the three attack types that influence each other. Most skills have a “type” ascribed to them, conveniently color-coded: power (red), technical (green) and speed (blue), and different types of attacks counter each other:

• Power beats Technical
• Technical beats Speed
• Speed beats Power

The skills used by monsties will always have a set type - for example, Ratha’s Savage Fireball is always a Power attack. In addition some skills have no type whatsoever, and this is indicated by a yellow icon - these attacks aren’t strong or weak against anything.

Attacks used by monsters also have an attack type, and when targeted by a monster using an attack with a specific type you’ll enter a “Head-to-Head” engagement where the attack types used will influence the outcome of the Head-to-Head. If you use an attack type that beats the opponent you’ll deal more damage and sustain less, and vice versa, while if you use the same type of attack (or use a skill with no type) both attacks will deal their normal effects, instead.

Naturally you can’t control what your companions do - sometimes they’ll win Head-to-Heads and take less damage and other times they’ll lose or draw. Your own Monstie is likely to be limited, as well, as while you can command them to use different skills in response to what the enemy is doing, unless you went out of your way teaching monsties new skills with different attack types or are willing to switch to a different Monstie, you’re stuck using what skills they’ve naturally got, and most Monsties tend to focus on one type of attack, at best.

Your do, however, have complete control over what your protagonist does, being able to change the attack type of their (non-neutral) skills and basic attacks, and when a monster targets you for a Head-to-Head you can shift the outcome of this engagement in your favor by using a dominant attack type… if you know what the enemy is using. The problem is, you can’t see exactly what an enemy is doing until after your actions for that turn are selected, and it’s a bit too late to change things up by then!

We’ll cover ways to shift the odds in your favor below, but the takeaway is that using the appropriate attack type is useful in mitigating enemy damage, but it’s highly circumstantial, since enemies often will use neutral attacks or they’ll target your companions, which is entirely out of your control.

Double Attacks¶

Attack types are pretty simple when you know what’s coming - counter Power with Speed, Technical with Power and Speed with Technical - but if you or your Monstie are targeted by such an attack you can connive to achieve more. If you and your Monstie both respond to an attack type with the same dominant attack type you’ll perform a Double Attack, dealing even more damage and negating the enemy’s attack entirely. Note that you cannot use a skill to trigger a Double Attack, you must be using a normal attack (albeit of the correct attack type). Normally it’s not worth fussing over what your Monstie does, as this inhibits Kinship growth, but it’s worth overriding your Monstie’s attack or swapping the Monstie out if it means you’ll land a Double Attack!

Predicting Enemy Actions¶

Now that we’ve discussed how attack types work and why you should care, it’s time for the meat of this page! Combat in Monster Hunter Stories 3 is fairly “on rails” - no amount of clever strategy will overcome a huge level deficit and most fights are low-key timed inasmuch as monsters tend to have overwhelmingly power attacks they charge into and unleash. You may cleverly survive a few of these by unleashing traps, staggering the enemy or using kinship skills, but if you can’t close the fight out fast enough, you’ll eventually get party-wiped.

All that said, knowing what the enemy is doing and reacting accordingly can buy you a few crucial turns, prevent you from losing Hearts, and all sorts of things that are generally going to make the outcome more likely to turn out in your favor.

While it’s true that you can’t see what, exactly, the enemy is doing ahead of time, you do get some indicators that should give you a general idea. Pair this with the fact that enemies routines are very predictable and enemies generally have very few attacks they rotate between and before long you’ll easily be able to tell what a troublesome monster is up to!

At the start of every turn you’ll see three different icons that let you know what the enemy monster is planning to do that turn, as follows:

• A yellow or blue line: The monster is targeting the player or companion (respectively) with an attack or skill of an attack type. Use a dominant attack type in response to mitigate damage!
• A red arrow: The monster is targeting an individual with a neutral or unblockable attack. What you do in response won’t mitigate the monster’s attack.
• Nothing: Yeah, not really an icon, but the absence of anything almost always means the monster is going to use a powerful, party-wide attack. This is a good time to try to break a part or use a kinship attack, if possible! Almost all wipes will come from these attacks.

Monsters tend to only have a handful of attacks that they’ll use in regular rotation, but monsters also tend to have two phases - as combat advances you’ll see the monster start acting up and will be told it “looks angry” or is “acting strange” or some such, letting you know it is switching phases (likewise it’ll revert to the base phase when it “calms down”). The monster’s attacks and skills can change between phases and which attack type it prefers will also change. For example, a monster may start out using Technique attacks and switch to Power attacks when it changes phases.

Unfortunately some trial-and-error is necessary to learn exactly what a monster is going to do, but even knowing what the icons mean should inform your actions. If a monster is attacking a character at full health, you probably don’t need to heal, if they’re targeting you with a neutral attack type (red arrow), then you don’t need to worry about your own attack type. If they’re targeting your Monstie with an attack that has an actionable attack type, consider manually commanding them to use a skill with an attack type that’s dominant or switch to a different Monstie who can… and consider using a normal attack with a matching attack type as your Monstie to try to land a Double Attack!

Aside from trial and error there’s not much you can do the learn specifically what a monster is doing, but there is a cheat you can use to help sometimes guess a monster’s attack type: you can’t see what the monster is doing ahead of time, but you can see what your companions are doing, and there’s no reason you can’t take a little peak and cheat off their work. They won’t always be right, and they won’t always indulge you by using a skill with an attack type at all, but sometimes they do have insight you lack. The best part is, if you mess up, you can just blame your lying companions!

Between paying attention to who the enemy is targeting and the icons their attacks preemptively show and learning from your companions, you can enjoy a definite edge against your enemies even without having to painstakingly memorize their attacks! That said, sometimes strong enemies will demand a try or two, even when RNG isn’t on your side.