Video Game / Monster Hunter: World

A new world awaits.

Once you board this ship, there is no turning back. The next ground your feet will touch will be that of the New World.

— The Admiral

Monster Hunter: World is the first main entry in the fifth generation of Capcom's popular Monster Hunter franchise, released on January 26, 2018 on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and on August 9, 2018 on PC. It is the first major title to be truly released on a home console rather than a handheld since Monster Hunter 3 on the Wii,^note Portable 3rd, 3 Ultimate and Generations Ultimate were first released on handheld systems before their home console ports resulting in a huge jump in graphical power and overhauled game mechanics.

The player takes control of a hunter sent to the New World, a largely unexplored continent far from the series' usual setting, with the Guild's Fifth Fleet to join a research expedition. The main subject of that research? The Elder Crossing: a migration of Elder Dragons to the New World which historically occurred every few centuries, but now takes place every decade. As the player explores the New World alongside their Handler—a chipper young woman tasked with taking care of their logistics—and their Palico combat buddy, the secrets behind the continent's unique ecosystems and the Elder Crossing slowly come to light.

The game is currently Capcom's best selling game of all time, with total shipments of over 23 million units by Jan 2024.

An Expansion Pack subtitled Iceborne was released September 6, 2019 for consoles, and on January 9th, 2020 for PC. The expansion features a new story scenario where the appearance of a new Elder Dragon, the icy Velkhana, leads the Research Commission to settle and investigate a second island. Iceborne also introduces the new Master Rank^note The renamed version of the previous games' G Rank difficulty, updates to every weapon's gameplay, and new and returning monsters.

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This game provides examples of the following:

Tropes A-D

• Absurdly High Level Cap: Once the various caps are unlocked, Hunter and Master Rank can go up to 999. Many of the game's achievements can be gotten before hitting Rank 50 of either, and an average player would have completed everything before they even reached MR 300.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The "Mind's Eye" ability, which allows you to always cut without bouncing off the target's hide, returns. The Switch Axe and Charge Blade now have a built-in powered mode for their Sword forms that allows you to gain this ability as an inherent weapon feature.
• Acid Attack: True to its name, Acidic Glavenus trades the Playing with Fire traits of its parent species with attacks that make use of its corrosive saliva. Similar to Deviljho's, it is capable of reducing the hunter's defense, which makes this monster very dangerous during combat.
• Actionized Sequel: While the games have always had a lot of action in them, World makes a number of changes that cut down on prep time and get the player into the action quicker. In earlier games, you would have to wander the map (or go through the trouble of activating certain armor abilities) to find your target, while World's scoutfly tracking mechanic speeds up this process significantly. Gathering materials is also much quicker and an auto-crafting feature has been introduced. Gunner gameplay in particular has been given an action-oriented revamp, and the supply box includes a variety of ammo which saves time on ammo crafting. Cutscenes and story setpieces are much more dynamic and action-packed than they were in 4/4U.
• Air Jousting:
  • A fair number of Turf Wars between airborne monsters happen this way.
    • Legiana versus Paolumu has the latter puff up and try to shoot air blasts at Legiana, but the Legiana is way too agile to get hit by those attacks and predictably trashes Paolumu by grabbing it by the neck and hurling it to the ground. The same scenario happens if either monster is replaced by their Iceborne subspecies (Shrieking Legiana and Nightshade Paolumu).
    • Kushala Daora versus either Teostra or Lunastra. Both participants will viciously wrestle each other in the air, taking equal damage in the process before breaking off and roaring at each other. Velkhana reuses the same animation as Kushala Daora when faced against either Teostra or Lunastra.
  • An aerial brawl ensues between two huge monsters near the end of the introductory cutscene for the Guiding Lands. A Bazelgeuse tries to attack the Sapphire Star and the Handler while they're still in the air, only for Ruiner Nergigante to intercept Bazelgeuse and savagely wrestle it out to the point they both crash far away from the protagonists.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: The Guiding Lands, the area unlocked after beating the final boss of Iceborne's storyline, is a Zorah Magdaros corpse that's given way to an ecosystem remarkably similar to a mishmash of all the locales in the game, complete with their respective monsters. It originally only had regions to represent the Ancient Forest, Wildspire Waste, Coral Highlands and Rotten Vale, but later updates added areas to represent the Elder's Recess and Hoarfrost Reach as well.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Has its own page.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different:
  • The Witcher event has you temporarily play as Geralt himself, and the gameplay changes to match.
  • The (formerly available) live-action film tie-in quests have the player playing as Artemis, with a limited load out matching what is seen in the film.
• Androcles' Lion: In The Witcher 3 crossover event, Geralt comes across roots that have trapped and killed several Pukei-Pukei. If he finds and rescues the one that's still alive, it will later jump in during the final battle with the Leshen and help him.
• Antagonist Title: Velkhana, the flagship monster of the Iceborne expansion, has the in-universe title of "The Iceborne Wyvern".
• Anti-Magic:
  • A new part of Dragon Elemental weapons is the elderseal mechanic, which will lower the effectiveness of Elder Dragon attacks and special abilities. Previous, more specific anti-Elder exploits, such as poisoning Kushala Daora to disable its wind barrier, have been removed as a result.
  • Another example on the monsters' side is the return of Dragonblight, a status ailment the player can get from certain monsters' attacks, which completely nullifies the elemental or status-effect portion of your weapon's damage until it wears off or you take a nulberry.
• Apocalypse How: Continental.
  • Towards the end of Low Rank, it's revealed that the Zorah Magdaros that was supposed to have died in the Rotten Vale has instead redirected its attention toward the Everstream, a network of underground energy that connects the entirety of the New World; if it dies there, the bioenergy it releases will surge into the Everstream and overload the network, making the entire New World go kablooey and take everything and everyone on the continent with it. The last few Quests in Low Rank are thus spent trying to avert total annihilation.
  • In Iceborne Shara Ishvalda's seismic powers are stated as being able to negatively impact entire ecosystems, it comes to the point where nature itself steps in and sends Ruiner Nergigante to kill it.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: It's an increase from previous games, but it's still a limit — there can be three large monsters in a map at any given time. Some event quests will have four or more targets, but only three will be present at any given time with new targets spawning upon others being defeated.
• Arc Number: Five. The player arrives with the Fifth Fleet, the Creation Myth "The Tale of the Five" is introduced, there are five maps, and version 1 features five Elder Dragons (not counting the giants), all on the first entry of the fifth generation.
• Arm Cannon: The Slinger is a weapon mounted on Hunters' left arms that, in addition to having a grappling hook, allows one to fire an array of ammunition, from simple stones to knives coated in status ailment-afflicting materials to small bombs.
• Armor of Invincibility: It won't make you invincible, but the Fatalis armor is still, without a doubt, the most powerful suit of armor in the game. The only downside is that it can't recreate certain set bonuses - Master's Touch from Teostra's armor, True Critical Element from Silver Rathalos's armor, etc - but if you can live without those, it'll more than make up the difference.
  • A higher defense value than everything else, with only Arch-Tempered Velkhana's gamma set matching that amount.
  • The first set bonus, Inheritance, grants you simultaneous access to every Secret skill in the game - increasing the level cap for numerous abilities - when previously individual secret skills were restricted to specific sets of armor, usually at a minimum three pieces whereas Fatalis's armor only needs two.
  • The second bonus, Transcendence, grants True Razor Sharp/Shot - halves sharpness use for melee weapons, and chance of not using ammunition for ranged weapons, respectively - AND gives a significant boost to your health and stamina at all times, even after fainting.
  • Finally, every piece in the beta set includes three Level 4 decoration slots, for a total of 15 with all five pieces, which translates to a very large increase in skills you can slot, particularly if you've had some good Decoration RNG. Even Fatalis' full alpha set doesn't have half that many Level 4 slots, much less most armor sets from the last quarter of Master Rank.
• The Artifact:
  • The game features a Gathering Hub for multiplayer missions as in previous games. In World version 1, the only reason to bother heading up to the Hub was to take on Arena Quests—all other quest types are now multiplayer by default and can be accessed from any quest board. Returning to the Hub after a quest wasn't even an option; you could only start an expedition or return to the Astera tradeyard. It was almost like players were being actively discouraged from bothering with the Hub. Capcom has taken conscious actions to address this: the version 2 update adds the option to return to the Hub following a quest; seasonal festivals, which redecorate the hub, were introduced; and the version 3 update introduces Siege Quests, which are a group effort among 16 players in the same Hub.
  • As in previous games, in High Rank missions you will occasionally be dropped off somewhere besides camp. This would create the additional difficulty of having to trek to the camp on foot (or use a Farcaster) to grab supplies, and there is also the chance that you will spawn in a secret material-gathering area that cannot be reached by any other means. However, this game introduces the ability to fast-travel to camps when you're not engaging a monster, and secret spawn areas no longer exist, making the random location spawn almost pointless. The other key risk of this High Rank quirk is still present—there's a chance you may spawn right in front of your target. A later patch ensured that any landing not by the monster will instead drop the player next to a special mining deposit containing armor orbs, bringing the mechanic more in line with previous games.
• Artificial Brilliance: The game boasts a fleshed-out ecosystem for its game world, with monsters that behave in realistic ways, including well-defined food chains and territorial beasts lashing out at any perceived interlopers, including other monsters which may throw themselves into a battle you're engaged in. This opens up new strategies such as luring one monster into another's territory and letting them weaken each other before going in for the kill. In many cases, monsters are also smart enough to Know When to Fold 'Em and pull a Tactical Withdrawal to tend to their wounds.
• Attack Its Weak Point:
  • Every monster has parts of its body that are more vulnerable than others and often to different types of damage. Breaking parts can weaken related attacks, such as breaking the wings to reduce their use of flying attacks. The skill Weakness Exploit encourages this.
  • Zorah Magdaros has four magmacores and two stone "scabs" which can be destroyed for loot and to weaken him. In particular, taking out all three magmacores during the final stage of his fight prevents him from using his charge attack.
• Attack the Injury: The Clutch Claw wounding mechanic temporarily weakens a body part, increasing damage taken and preventing weapon deflection even on normally hard body parts.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Fire elemental weapons, seeing as the vast majority of monsters are either neutral or resistant to it.
  • Weapons with high raw damage and negative affinity, depending on the amount; -10%, for example, isn't too big of a deal, but bigger penalties, such as those from Diablos and Deviljho weapons, come at the cost of doing less damage rather consistently. It's possible to balance this out with Weakness Exploit, which requires hitting soft spots consistently, or Affinity Augment, the former of which can be easier said than done.
  • The Bludgeoner skill, which increases damage if you're using a weapon with green Sharpness or lower. Blue- and white-Sharpness weapons deal more damage and can exploit weak points and avoid bouncing more easily than green Sharpness, and the only fully-upgraded weapons that can take advantage of it are the Zorah Magdaros weapons, which leaves several weapon classes unable to take advantage. It is most useful in Low Rank, where blue Sharpness is unobtainable, but otherwise Bludgeoner is not recommended to build for in the endgame.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Seeing a Teostra and Lunastra together was said to be a very rare occurrence, but the fact that the latter makes her debut by saving the former from a Nergigante implies this is the case. They even use a special cooperative attack, something even the Raths don't have, themselves a strong and loving pair.
• Background Music Override: The theme for the High-Rank wanderer Bazelgeuse, like Deviljho's, overrides all other themes (excluding, as usual, Elder Dragon themes). Of course, once it attacks, you soon understand why it starts off sounding like an Air Raid siren. World's first DLC pack added the Deviljho, whose theme overrides Bazelgeuse's.
• Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic: There's no luck control for drops as they happen (which is common to the series, leading to fandom jokes about a desire sensor messing with the player). However, World has the melding pot, which can be used to create a number of Rare Random Drops directly. The resources needed for this are rare but drop with much more certainty than the items themselves, making unsuccessful hunts still give meaningful progress.
• Bag of Spilling: Downplayed and lampshaded in the opening scenes. It's heavily implied everyone in the Commission fleet had to leave most of their gear at home, since there's only so much space on the ships. Depending on character creation, the PC might start with a basic set of armor, but loses whatever weapon they had during the Action Prologue. Of course it could have been much worse—one NPC hunter seen during the initial tour laments she had to ditch all her gear just to make it ashore.
• Ballistic Bone: The Radobaan can attack by throwing pieces of its improvised bone armor at hunters.
• Barrier Change Boss:
  • Kulve Taroth starts the battle immune to Ice damage, but weak to Thunder damage. Once her golden mantle comes off, these weaknesses swap, and she gains a greater weakness to Dragon as well. Like Barroth, however, Water retains the same effectiveness throughout the fight, so you can just focus on Water damage if you wish.
  • The Iceborne version of Alatreon changes weaknesses depending on its elemental state, Ice for Fire Active, Fire for Ice Active and Dragon for Dragon Active. This is important, as while it's not completely immune to all other types of damage, you have to deal enough elemental damage to topple it in under 3 minutes to weaken it, or else it'll perform its Escaton Judgement move and cart you instantaneously.
• Battle Amongst the Flames:
  • Alatreon is introduced as alternatively freezing up the air in the Secluded Valley, then swapping to its Fire Active mode to incinerate a large portion of the arena, and considering its Special Assignment always starts in Fire Active, you will always begin the fight in a blazing inferno. Even if Alatreon starts in Ice Active, the arena is still covered in flames, though they're much less pronounced unless Alatreon manages to switch to its Fire Active mode.
  • After Fatalis unleashes its second 'nova' flame and you come back from hiding behind the iron gate, the arena now has a few patches of fire that can damage you if you stand on them. Additionally, the castle in the background is lit with several flames on its walls and towers, such is Fatalis's destructive power.
• Battle Couple: Teostra and his own female counterpart Lunastra can now get in on the action. Both are Elder Dragons, which makes fighting both at the same time even more epic.
• Battleship Raid: The second half of the Zorah Magdaros fight involves manning a series of cannons placed along a defensive barrier to try and drive him back. It's also possible to climb back onto him when he attacks to reach a magmacore on his head and the big one on his back.
• Beam-O-War: Savage Deviljho ties against some Elder Dragons by way of using its own Dragonblight breath to counter their elemental ones, resulting in an explosion that blows away both Jho and its rival. Contestants include Namielle, Velkhana and Blackveil Vaal Hazak, all of which are Master Rank threats.
• Behemoth Battle: Turf Wars between monsters in the same area area have become a part of the Monster Hunter series since this game. When specific monsters meet up, they'll trigger a special fight sequence between them, which can deal major damage to the parties involved.
• Benevolent Architecture: Or landscaping, in this case; the various maps are nicely designed to accommodate hunting, with a wide range of environmental hazards, ramps, ledges, vines for climbing, grapple points, and more.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: Two examples in Iceborne:
  • Besides bringing back Glavenus from Monster Hunter Generations (being capable of sharpening its tail to perform a fiery spin attack with it), the expansion also has the Acidic subspecies that secretes an armor-eating acid along the tail blade.
  • Velkhana uses the tip of its tail as a lance to jab at hunters from various angles.
• Big Bad:
  • In vanilla World, Xeno'jiiva, an implied extraterrestrial Elder Dragon, who is the cause of the Elder Crossing happening much quicker than previously recorded, and the reason for the recent changes in Elder Dragon behavior.
  • In Iceborne, Shara Ishvalda, a demonic Elder Dragon who can manipulate the earth itself, causing earthquakes, reshaping biomes and subsequently driving many monsters into habitats they normally wouldn't approach.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • The Field Team leader saves both the PC and the Handler from a hungry Great Jagras and the Anjanath that later appears near the beginning of the game.
  • During the initial battle against Zorah Magadaros, the Huntsman jumps in to save everyone when Nergigante suddenly shows up and begins wreaking havoc.
  • Following the final battle, the Admiral leaps in to save you from falling to your death in the collapse of Xeno'jiiva's lair.
  • From a gameplay perspective, anyone who comes in a map if the leader shoots an SOS flare.
• Big Eater:
  • The Handler's character schtick in World is that she loves food. She worked her way up to being an A-Lister and joined the expedition to the New World just so she could taste test everything edible it has to offer. At least, that's what she says until much later mentioning an "investigation of [her] own" that she needs to complete.
  • Also the Fiver Bro, who passes his quests on to you so he can spend more time eating.
  • Every PC Hunter, honestly. The Canteen cutscene has your character wolf down an entire platter of food in a single sitting, with the upgraded platters getting almost comical in the amount of food consumed.
• Bleak Level: The Rotten Vale is a massive boneyard filled with the remains of dead monsters, toxic gas, and deadly acid pools. It is revealed that the vale is not simply a mass grave for monsters: it is the final destination of elder dragons near the end of their lives, whose bodies subsequently provide nourishment for the beautiful Coral Highlands above.
• Bloodless Carnage: It's certainly almost bloodless. Blood spray in the previous games provided some feedback on whether you were making good hits, but World introduces damage numbers.
• Blow You Away: The Paolumu can inflate its throat pouch to float around and unleash mini-tornadoes that can stun Hunters. The Iceborne expansion adds the Nightshade Paolumu, a subspecies which expels a powerful sleeping gas, then blows that gas around during the hunt.
• Boats into Buildings: Astera's Gathering Hub and the Third Fleet base are both built from the ships the Hunters used to sail to the New World. Quite how Astera's ship made it on top of of a cliff is another story.
• Bombardier Mook: Bazelgeuse is a wyvern that hunts by flying over its prey and scattering its explosive scales over the ground below, swooping down afterwards to prey on whatever died in the blast. It prefers to open fights with a bombing run of this sort, often not even landing, but unlike other examples of this trope it's a formidable fighter and just as dangerous up close as when flying overhead.
• Book Ends:
  • The game opens with a cutscene of your character on the ship to the New World, where the Excitable A-Lister talks to you and asks if you're nervous, then accidentally spills his mug on someone's books when the Serious Handler interrupts. The final DLC starts with a cutscene of your character on a ship back to the Old World to fight Fatalis; the bits with the Excitable A-Lister and Serious Handler play out as before, but this time the player's Handler is there to save the book from the A-Lister's drink.
  • During your rematch against Zorah Magdaros (which technically counts as the first time in World where you actually triumph over an Elder Dragon), you can alter the music by hitting the Elder Dragon with the Dragonator; Zorah's Leitmotif dissipates and gives way to the series' main theme, "Proof of a Hero". During the last stretch of the fight against Fatalis, the very final Elder Dragon added to World, "Proof of a Hero" starts playing once you hit it with the Dragonator that was inoperational until then; the only difference is that Zorah Magdaros's fight uses an arrange specifically composed for World, while Fatalis's is lifted straight from the original game.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Your Palico starts with the Vigorwasp Spray. Despite being the very first Palico Gadget you have, it's easily just as useful as any of the other Gadgets you get down the line; the free healing is a godsend in the middle of large monster hunts, it saves you Potions and Mega Potions, your Palico uses the Gadget with decent frequency, and at higher levels its potency rises and your Palico can set a stationary Vigorwasp that you can trigger yourself or even deliver a Vigorwasp to you on command. Taken even further in Iceborne where the gadget can now revive a downed hunter once-per-hunt without penalty.
  • Nergigante weapons are also this, and it appears to be by design. They have great raw attack, high elderseal, and superb sharpness without much in the way of weaknesses as far as weapons go aside from their lack of customization. They fit very easily into any endgame playstyle that doesn't require heavy customization or specific weapon attributes, such as slots or elements, to work properly.
  • Deviljho weapons have the same benefits as Nergigante weapons and the added bonus that they are a separate weapon tree. This allows construction of the weapon with only Deviljho parts where Nergigante weapons require a large amount of ore to build the base weapon. They also have a higher affinity penalty (a -25% to -30% hit) than Nergigante weapons (which have 0% affinty), but this is offset with higher damage numbers right off the bat.
  • Barroth weaponry. Not only do they offer great raw damage (among the highest in their class), they have a considerable defence bonus, two slots for decorations, and are very easy to make - Barroth is a rather straightforward monster to fight, with plenty of Investigations for Wyvern Gems, and the only problem part being the single Nergigante Horn for the final upgrade. The only downside to the weapons are the slight malus to Affinity, which is easy to patch over with an appropriate skill (and if not, is easy enough to live with).
  • Great Jagras Weapons of all things. While not too amazing without Non-Elemental Boost, the Great Jagras is by far the easiest monster to fight, making them quite easy to make. The Jagras Hacker, for example was one of the more common Great Swords prior to Deviljho's launch.
  • And as usual, there is nothing wrong with sticking with the regular ore and bone upgrade paths. In fact, Grand Barong (the final bone HR Sword & Shield) is a top-tier choice for its Rank.
  • The Earplugs skill. All it does is stop you flinching when a monster roars. Thanks for the free attack windows.
  • Elemental resistances and resistance skills. Increasing elemental resistance both reduces damage from that element and increases the chance of resisting the associated blight. Resistance skills can also cover specific debuffs not governed by elements, such as Stun.
  • Level 3 Effluvia Resistance is a niche Skill only useful against Vaal Hazaak. It renders the player completely immune to the monster's signature debuff and trivializes the ticking damage, which are the most difficult part of the encounter to manage.
  • Health Boost increases your maximum health beyond what is possible with eating or Max Potions, unlike earlier games, and is easy to fit into a set compared to the survivability it grants.
  • Farming expeditions by following monsters and collecting their tracks rather than fighting them. Following a monster as it patrols for thirty minutes may be boring, but doing so can net significantly more investigations as compared to fighting the monster in the same time period. In Master Rank, following Savage Deviljho around is one of the best ways to unlock tier 6 investigations such as Elder Dragons.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy: In areas with hanging boulders, monsters have a tendency to idle in a spot where said hazard can be dropped on them. The most notable instance of this is the first phase of Xeno'jiiva, where four boulders can be dropped onto him.
• Boss-Only Level:
  • The optional arena maps almost any large monster, the Great Ravine and the Everstream for Zorah Magadros, Confluence of Fates for Xeno'jiiva and Origin Isle for Shara Ishvalda. Quests that involves Elder Dragons are also this, as no other large monsters will spawn on the map.
  • Kulve Taroth is the only monster that spawns in the Caverns of El Dorado map. Gajalaka are also present, but their main interest is in stealing loot rather than fighting hunters.
  • The Seliana Supply Cache becomes the theater of a fight against Velkhana during the course of Iceborne's story. The map is also reused as an arena for events featuring Velkhana, Frostfang Barioth and three Tempered Elder Dragons (Kushala Daora, Teostra and Lunastra).
  • The Secluded Valley is home to two extremely powerful monsters, each of them fighting you on their own; Safi'jiiva(the adult form of Xeno'jiiva) and Alatreon, who comes to occupy the Secluded Valley not long after Safi'jiiva was initially repelled. Like most Elder Dragons, these two are the only monsters that spawn on the completely barren arena.
  • Castle Schrade, true to the very first Monster Hunter game, is home to the one and only Fatalis, and there's nothing else standing between you and it.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • The Rocksteady Mantle - a specialized tool that negates all knockback and halves damage taken from attacks, including roars - a huge advantage as it allows you to pile on damage on the monster. It is probably the last tool unlocked in the game by doing a quest that involves Beating a Tempered Vaal Hazak AND Tempered Odogaron and is unlocked only after beating several tempered Elder Dragons via investigations. Subverted however as while it is the latest unlock the player will most likely still have monsters to hunt and gear to produce meaning they can use it due to the effect it provides.
  • The Rainbow Pigment which allows hunters to have their armor shift in all the colors of the rainbow is only rewarded via quest that unlocks after completing every Assigned and Optional quest, having captured every monster capable of being caught at least once, and having maxed out the research for at least 15 monsters.
  • The Lunastra equipment has high Affinity, long natural white Sharpness, strong Blast properties, many slots, and comes with built-in Set Bonus skills like Guts, Hasten Recovery, and Razor Sharp/Spare Shot. Fully upgrading them requires a ticket from completing either the aforementioned quest or reaching HR 100 and completing a three-Tempered Elder Dragon Boss Rush.
  • Layered Armor Sets allows the Hunters to wear other select pieces of armor on top of their already equipped armor to avoid looking like a clown with Rainbow Pimp Gear or to clown it even further. In High Rank, layered armor can be obtained by collecting tickets from time-limited event quests that the CAPCOM team made. Obtaining tickets from a Crossover event quest will get you rare layered armor such as the coveted Drachen layered armor from Final Fantasy XIV, as this can only be obtained once you complete the quest "A Visitor from Eorzea (Extreme)". Master Rank meanwhile lets players craft a wider variety of layered armors using materials from the endgame Guiding Lands.
  • Fatalis's weapons are some of the strongest in the game, possessing insanely high raw damage (albeit with a large affinity penalty to counteract it), two 4-decoration slots, high Elderseal value and purple sharpness; meanwhile, its armor set bonus unlocks all secret skills, and each of its pieces has tons of 4-decoration slots, thus offering an extreme amount of versatility. However, forging those requires beating the aforementioned Fatalis (or Plunderblade-steal his materials until you get lucky, if you're unable to defeat Fatalis) which is by far the hardest fight in the game and the very last monster to be introduced in Iceborne, barring the event quest Arch-Tempered Velkhana.
• Brats with Slingshots: World introduces a new mechanic called the "Slinger", a wrist-mounted slingshot. The Slinger can be used to fire either makeshift projectiles gathered from the environment or various inventory items (such as knives with various coatings) and other objects (like flash-bugs) with precision accuracy. Pre-Iceborne, the Sword and Shield was the only weapon class able to fire their Slinger without sheathing their weapon, but with Iceborne purchased all weapons can use the Slinger without sheathing. While it originally served as an utility item without much damage potential, Iceborne upgraded it into the Clutch Claw, which, among its many applications, allows you to grapple onto monsters and shoot your entire stock of Slinger ammo (or if you are running the Stonethrower skill, the amount equal to max ammo pre-skill) for a Flinch Shot that propels the target forward, potentially into a wall or another monster, dealing heavy damage upon colliding and toppling them.
• Breaking Old Trends: Iceborne is the first Monster Hunter Expansion Pack to be released as an add-on to the base game rather than as a separate game, and in the West, it breaks the convention of taking the existing title and adding "Ultimate" onto the end of it (although in Japan, where G/Master Rank expansions have a "G" at the end, this tradition was already broken with Monster Hunter XX, one generation prior; that version still has the "Ultimate" part in the West). It also renames G Rank to Master Rank.
• Brutal Bonus Level:
  • "The White Winds of the New World," the traditional Boss Rush that requires completing almost all base-game quests before it. This pits you against all four apex monsters (Odogaron and Legiana, Rathalos and Diablos), two at a time. Unlike past examples, though, you can take other hunters with you.
  • "The Sapphire Star's Guidance" requires reaching HR 100 and has you fight Tempered versions of Nergigante, Kushala Daora, and Teostra all at once. Then there's the event quest "The Thronetaker," which swaps Kushala Daora with Lunastra.
  • The event quest "A Visitor from Eorzea (Extreme)" pits you against a Tempered Behemoth, taking the hardest boss in the game and cranking it up to eleven: even more absurd health and damage, a shorter time limit, larger meteors that inflict Defense Down, shorter Charybdis castings, and comets are only summoned by dealing damage to Behemoth. The result is a nightmare reserved for only the top echelon of hunters. Even the best solo speedrunners in the world win with just seconds on the clock, while Time Attack communities gave up against a monster that was nigh-impossible even without TA restrictions. The reward is purely cosmetic; anything else would be unfair.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: The otherwise desert-like Wildspire Waste is split in half by a river that creates a large mire in the middle of the area.
• The Bus Came Back: After nine years, World sees the return of Lunastra as a huntable Monster with its third free update.
• Call-Back:
  • A few older monsters are often referenced by NPCs.
  • The first time you cook a Well-done Steak, the Handler will say it looks "So Tasty!", in a tone similar the clip that played in previous games when you successfully cook one.
  • The sea captain can bring back sellable stones that are named after previous cities from previous games.
  • The Commander will say "You're the one to get it done!", the Catchphrase of the Caravaneer, when giving postgame assignments.
  • Glavenus is introduced fighting against a Rathian, just like it did in the Generations trailer.
  • Barioth's intro plays a bar from "Subzero White Knight", the battle theme of the Frozen Tundra from Tri, where it first appeared.
  • The fight against the Greater Rathalos in the movie tie-in quest is set to the original game's Rathalos theme.
• Cannibalism Superpower: As shown in this game, Savage Deviljho, which itself comes to be after eating flesh from other, non-Savage Deviljho, can get into fights with Elder Dragons... and it actually scores a tie with most of them. It's otherwise completely unheard of for a normal monster to even survive a fight with an Elder Dragon, let alone match them.
• Canon Character All Along: The Fatalis update reveals that the Excitable A-Lister is actually the Ace Cadet from Monster Hunter 4, providing a direct link between the fourth and fifth generation games.
• Carnivorous Healing Factor: Played With; large monsters can kill and eat smaller ones, but doing so only restores their stamina for the purposes of World's fatigue system, not any health.
• Casting a Shadow: Ebony Odogaron, introduced in Iceborne, is a subspecies of Odogaron that is capable of inflicting Dragonblight from its breath, similar to Deviljho and its Savage variant (though it's obviously less powerful than either of those). It can also spit or vomit the flesh it recently ate from a previous prey, and said flesh will also be contaminated with the dragon element.
• Cap:
  • The Item Pouch limits the number of any consumable item that can be brought on a quest, with the exact number varying based on the item. This can be worked around to an extent by gathering material in the fields and crafting more items.
  • Gathered crafting materials such as herbs and bugs are limited to 10 per stack in the Pouch, which limits a player's ability to farm them during a quest.
  • Players can only carry two of each type of Large bomb at any given time. Additionally, only two Large bombs can be planted per Hunter; any additional bombs must be set down after setting off the first set.
  • Hunter Rank is initially based solely on story progress. Once Xeno'jiiva is defeated, Hunter Ranks are unlocked up to 49 where an additional unlock is required. Interestingly, any experience earned prior to Xeno'jiiva is saved up and added to the player's Hunter Rank after the unlock.
  • Master Rank follows a similar capping setup as Hunter Rank, requiring the player clear specific missions to continue. The last soft cap is at 99 for killing Nergigante, while both Hunter and Master Rank will cap at 999.
• Central Theme: Gameplay example and Story Example:
  • Open-Ended Exploration. Not only was World the first game to be announced in a Western Event rather than a Japanese one, the setting involves traveling in a new world. And much like Tri before it, it mostly featured new monsters in lieu of a returning monsters. It also has worldwide connectivity.
  • The game's actual story tends to deal a lot with life, death, and rebirth. One of the main maps, the Coral Highlands, has a plethora of beautiful lifeform, but wouldn't exist without The Rotten Vale, which is underneath and also where the majority of life falls to die. That's before getting into the monsters; Zorah Magdaros travels to the new world so it can die peacefully. The Problem? Its death would essentially cause a nasty explosion that would wipe out a huge chunk of life because of the massive bio-energy it contains. Once it's redirected back to the ocean, its death can instead start a new ecosystem, which is heavily implied to be the Guiding Lands in Iceborne. The Elder Dragon Xeno'jiiva is also one such example of being birth through the death of other Elder Dragons.
• Character Customization: World features a robust character creation system, allowing you to control every bit of your hunter's appearance except for their build.
• Character Select Forcing: Happens with Alatreon in Iceborne, who can cause Escaton Judgment, an instant kill nuke that can only be weakened by using elemental weapons; and some elements will be better choices in certain phases compared to others. Granted, it is possible to just use either a Raw weapon anyway and just carting to just the Judgements, but it’s not recommended outside of single player.
• Cherry Tapping:
  • The Capture Net does 2 damage if shot at anything other than an endemic creature. This has a surprisingly wide range of applications; Kelbi Horns can almost always be extracted from Kelbi if you shoot the net at a Kelbi enough times, and the net can be used to kill insects like Vespoids without breaking them.
  • The Clutch Claw does only slightly more damage than the Capture Net, so if you have Iceborne, you can also use it to collect Kelbi Horns and leave insect corpses intact.
• Chrome Champion: Tempered Monsters have a distinctive metallic sheen, and they're way tougher than their normal counterparts. Arch-Tempered Monsters takes this even further.
• Circling Vultures: Revolture. They are endemic birds that can be found in several habitats. Revoltures are scavengers much like vultures. If they are not seen on the ground, they are seen flying around in the air above monsters, either waiting to eat any of the monster’s leftovers or waiting for the monster they are following to die, then feast on its body. In habitats where Revoltures are present, killing a monster at an open field is usually all it takes to lure in a flock of these birds as they chow down on the corpse.
• Color-Coded Item Tiers: Dependent on the rarity of the items: 1 = white, 2 = grey, 3 = yellow, 4 = green, 5 = teal, 6 = blue, 7 = purple, 8 = orange, 9 = red, 10 = ice blue, 11 = gold, 12 = silver.
• Color Motif: In regards to supspecies introduced in Iceborne, many of them are either golden (ie. Coral Pukei-Pukei, Viper Tobi-Kadachi) or purple (ie. Nighshade Paolumu, Seething Bazelgeuse, Ebony Odogaron) to signal them being stronger than their nominate counterparts.
• Colossus Climb:
  • Mounting comes back from the fourth generation, although whether you get bucked is now dependent on your stamina instead of a unique mounting gauge. If you can hang on until the monster exhausts itself, you can trigger a Finishing Move to end the mount and stun the monster.
  • The first half of the Zorah Magdaros fight plays out like this, with Hunters running and climbing along his volcano back to attack various weak points. Once the second half of the fight starts it's still possible to leap back onto his body to any weak points you previously missed, though his constant movements make this more difficult.
• Combat and Support:
  • This is how hunter teams are composed in World; one Hunter, who handles the field work and the monster hunting, is paired with one Handler, who manages all the Quests and paperwork to send them on monster hunts.
  • This is also how a hunter and their palico works, with the palico having various tools to heal or buff the hunter.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: Once again, the on-screen attack stats for weapons are bloated with arbitrary weapon-specific multipliers that don't actually factor into anything, much like in older games prior to Generations (which uses "true attack" values without the multipliers).
• Continuity Snarl: According to series lore, elder dragons are predisposed to hating humans because of their subjugation under the pre-Hunter civilization. However, in World, elder dragons are among the many large monsters who only attack if provoked. The New World is stated to be where elder dragons travel to to die, so it's possible that these specimens are simply older and more docile.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Aside from the Elder Dragon's standards immunity to traps, bosses that are multiplayer-based or fought as a Final Boss are either immune or resistant (e.g. Shara Ishvalda and Kulve Taroth only staggers as opposed to being knocked down) to the Clutch Claw's Flinch Shot (where throwing them into the wall will result in them being stunned for several seconds, allowing the hunter to wail on them during the duration) that is introduced to Iceborne.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Zigzagged.
  • When you're perched atop Zorah Magdaros, who's basically a living volcano with streams of lava pouring through its crevices, you don't suffer any ill effects. However, standing near an active magma core will cause damage over time, which is why the Handler recommends a Cool Drink.
  • Inside the hotter zones of the Elder Recess where the lava pools are present, you'll suffer damage over time unless you use a Cool Drink. However, this only applies when actually in rooms with the lava, indicating the heat doesn't radiate much.
  • While a Cool Drink will protect players from heat damage, standing on actual lava will cause constant fire damage until you get out of it. Still downplayed in that your feet don't melt off.
• Cool Versus Awesome: Turf Wars. Two giant monsters in the same area clash together and inflict hundreds of points of damage on each other. Also, the Lunastra introduction quest features a tag team of her and a wounded Teostra fighting a Nergigante; the Nergigante beats a hasty retreat and the Teostra leaves to lick his wounds, leaving you to deal with his Violently Protective Girlfriend.
• Corpse Land: The Rotten Vale, being home to the hideous Fanged Wyvern Odogaron and the Elder Dragon Vaal Hazak. It also functions as an "elephant's graveyard" for Elder Dragons in general.
• Cosplay:
  • The game features Layered Armor, which allows the player to give their character the appearance of one set of armor while actually wearing another. Thanks to the Crossovers mentioned below, this extends to other game franchises, meaning your Hunter can look like Dante^note Dante is a special case; while the rest of the outfits literally transform your Hunter into those characters, the DMC crossover just gives you Dante's iconic costume (and a white wig) for your Hunter to wear, Ryu, Sakura Kasugano, Leon Kennedy, Claire Redfield, Aloy, Geralt of Rivia, Ciri, or Bayek.
  • Paid DLC cosmetics allow you to dress up the Handler in previous Guild Representatives' outfits. You can also dress her as Chun-Li or, more disturbingly, Mister X.
• Counter-Attack: World adds a new move to Long Sword's arsenal called the Foresight Slash that's very reminiscent of Generations Ultimate Valor Style's evasion action. By pressing R2+O at any time, even during a combo, you will dodge backwards, then execute a horizontal slash. However, if an enemy strikes you during your invulnerability frames, you will leave behind a blue aura "ghost", and, following the horizontal slash, you can perform a Spirit Slash that can be immediately chained into your Spirit Roundhouse finisher, even if you have no Spirit Gauge.
• Cowardly Boss: As usual, most large monsters will retreat to different parts of an area after taking enough damage, forcing the player to find them again. This game removes the need for painting them to keep track of their movements (which was a traditional mechanic from all previous games), but the more vertical stages means some monsters can run really far away during their hunts. It can be painful to do decent damage to a Rathalos in the Ancient Forest in the dense forest floor for it to suddenly fly all the way up to its next at the top of the stage, then have it return to the same area as soon as you catch up.
• Crazy Workplace: The Research Base, a colony of scholars who were stranded in the wilderness after a giant-pterodactyl-thing attacked their airship. They're surprisingly okay with this turn of events, and have spent the past few years in comfortable exploration of the region. The Base itself is no ordinary building, but a tower of candles and books converted from the airship's wreckage.
• Creation Myth: The "Tale of the Five" is introduced in this game. It describes reality before creation: a white, unending void inhabited only by humans and five dragons. When asked why nothing had a beginning or an end, instead of answering, the dragons vomited an ocean and swam away to combine their bodies to form the New World. One man managed to find the island with the guidance of the Sapphire Star and brought back scales from the Five, which the humans used to create the Old World themselves, and time began to flow...but the New World would remain in the collective memory as a sacred site and an uninhabited, untouched paradise. It is very heavily implied that the crystal meteor you find in the Elder's Recess is the Sapphire Star itself..
• Critical Hit Class: Not only possible but actually quite viable. By stacking skills like Weakness Exploit, Critical Eye and Attack Boost and combining it with a weapon with natural affinity, it's possible to build a character who can hit with a critical strike with nearly every attack as long as it hits a monster weakspot. Even 100% affinity (you crit with every attack, which worth reminding effectively amounts to a 25% damage boost) is reachable. Keep in mind though that the focus on attack skills at the expense of any defence and elemental resistance skills might risk your character becoming something of a Glass Cannon - if you get stunned, it's probably all over.
• Crossover:
  • On the PS4 version, some DLC missions will reward you with gear based on Horizon Zero Dawn that gives your Palico the appearance of a cat-like Watcher and your hunter the full appearance of Aloy, as well as her Bow. Iceborne advances this trope up to eleven and even adds unique gears which introduce the Horizon Zero Dawn mechanics into the game. Similar DLC exists for Street Fighter, Mega Man and Devil May Cry.
  • The collaboration with Final Fantasy XIV introduced Behemoth as a huntable monster to complement Rathalos' appearance in FFXIV, and gear that makes your Palico look and sound like a Moogle.
  • A quest chain based on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt brings Geralt to the New World, and lets you play as him for a quest.
  • A new crossover is added in that introduces Assassin's Creed to the game.
• Crutch Character:
  • The Zorah Magdaros repulsion mission that closes Low Rank nets you a package of Zorah Magdaros parts, which can be used to create High Rank Blast Element weapons and Zorah α/β armor that couples the weapon with Blast Attack, both of which are reasonably stronger than any of the other High Rank equipment you can create from the High Rank versions of previously-encountered lesser monsters. That said, Zorah armour is not the end-all-and-be-all and you'll want to get a replacement suit soon enough.
  • The free Guardian set released a few days ahead of Iceborne is explicitly designed to help new players speed through the base game and reach the new content quickly.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: A lot of turf wars end up this way, showcasing a monster's dominance over the other. Diablos vs. Barroth ends with a clash of heads which results in Diablos easily bulling Barroth aside. Paolumu vs. Odogaron ends horribly for Paolumu as the Odogaron savagely body slams the bat monster into the grounds. The king of this trope however is The Dreaded Deviljho: Diablos? Deviljho catches it mid-charge and suplexes it. Odogaron? Doesn't even get a turf war, Deviljho just picks him up and swings him around like a ragdoll.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Many turf wars have both monsters getting injured, showcasing how they are roughly evenly matched. In the base game, Barroth vs. Jyuratodus and Deviljho vs. Bazelgeuse are the only non-Elder Dragon turf wars that end in draws. Elder Dragons themselves have turf wars that also result in draws. Iceborne brings in more monsters, showing more battles where both sides are injured. These fights typically involve both monsters having similar ranks/threat levels. Examples include Rathalos vs. Nargacuga and Diablos vs. Glavenus.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Averted; cutscenes don't just show your Hunter using tricks that you can do in-game, but they actually serve as a means of introducing mechanics to new players by showing them exactly what you're capable of doing.
• Cycle of Hurting: It's possible for a monster to trap a Hunter in a chain of attacks that keep them knocked down long enough for the next to hit.
  • Tempered Kirin is particularly bad for this. It's a fast-moving monster with a lot of wide-reaching area thunder attacks that often appear without warning, can knock Hunters flying, and can inflict paralysis as well.
  • A group of Gajalaka can achieve this thanks to having the ability to inflict Sleep and Paralysis with their daggers. Combined with their high damage explosives which can stun, it's possible for them to stunlock both Hunters and monsters.
  • With high enough damage, a Hunter can keep monsters trapped in a cycle of being downed and vulnerable. Working Sleep and Paralysis abilites, flinch shots, or traps into the cycle can extend it even further.
  • Master Rank Black Diablos has an ability where she burrows into a leaping charge into a burrow, chaining the ability several times. Players will be constantly knocked over and carted if unlucky. However, using a Screamer Pod will knock her out of a burrow, leaving her vulnerable for a short period, before she'll try to continue the chain only for another Screamer Pod to stun her.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: How many of you veteran players sheathed your weapon instead of blocking or using attack inputs involving the shoulder button when coming from the 3DS's 4 Ultimate or Generations, or the Switch's Generations Ultimate? Not even reversing the shoulder button mappings in either game makes them perfectly align one way or the other for things like sheathing your weapon (which you have to do with Y in the 4th-generation games) or dashing while sheathed (same button for weapon inputs in 4th-gen, different shoulder button in World that also sheathes while drawn). And this isn't even getting into all the mechanical changes...
• Deadly Euphemism: It's become something of a joke among players that, in game, "research" really means "track to its home, kick in the door, murder it, and fashion a new hat from its organs." Because so many missions send you out to "research" monsters that are an immediate threat to expedition personnel and operations, with the explicit objective of removing that threat. While you can often capture the monsters instead of murdering them, Elder Dragons can't be captured. So when you're sent to "research" one of them, murder is your only option.
• Death by a Thousand Cuts: Cactaurs from Final Fantasy were introduced into the game along with Behemoth. Striking one causes it to execute its Signature Attack, "1000 Needles". It's a good way to kill yourself...or if you're clever, do a thousand points of damage to a monster unfortunate enough to be nearby!
• Death from Above: Nergigante and Bazelgeuse both make lovely uses of them.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Kushala Daora will never go to the volcanic areas of Elder's Recess on its own, but if you lure it near lava using the Challenger Mantle, its tornadoes can catch fire. They don't gain a fire element, though. Similarly, a tornado spawned on top of a patch of Lunastra's blue fire will become a blue fire tornado.
  • Normally, when Kirin and Rajang engage in a Turf War, it ends with Rajang snapping Kirin's horn off and munching on it. If Kirin has already lost its horn, though, Rajang will instead do his signature "punch to the ground", roaring at Kirin as if angry that it doesn't have a tasty horn.
  • Glavenus and Rathalos have a Turf War that ends in Glavenus coming out on top... unless they are fighting in Rathalos' home territory, the giant tree in the Ancient Forest. There, Rathalos comes out the clear winner, tossing Glavenus around like it does Anjanath.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • The Great Sword has long been a poster boy for this trope among the weapon choices, but new to World is using the True Charge Slash on a sleeping monster. It requires a lot of spacing practice to perform right and there's quite a bit that can go wrong, but it's possible to do damage in the four-digit figures with one hit. Here is a video example of the move being performed on a sleeping Bazelgeuse.
  • Learning to use the Jump emote properly during the Behemoth hunt. Getting the timing for it is tricky because it has to be precise but being able to time when to Jump is a lifesaver whenever Behemoth is casting Ecliptic Meteor, especially when you're nowhere near a Comet to hide behind. In the Extreme Behemoth hunt, knowing how to use the Jump is all but required as Behemoth's final phase is a DPS check that, depending on how well the party does, may or may not make Behemoth drop a Comet before its third and final Ecliptic Meteor in the final area.
• Discard and Draw: α armor sets have more skills built in but fewer Decoration slots, while β armor sets have more Decoration slots but fewer built-in skills. Whichever one is the best depends on the build being used.
• Dishing Out Dirt:
  • The base game introduces Jyuratodus, a swamp-dwelling Piscine Wyvern that, like Barroth, wears armor made of hardened mud and spits out gobs of mud to slow down hunters.
  • The Iceborne expansion introduces the Elder Dragon Shara Ishvalda, which starts the fight coated in stone armor and can use its sonic powers to create patches of loose sand that will slow your hunter down.
• Disc-One Nuke: Since stronger monsters roam the map at all times, even earlier in the game, you can obtain especially powerful gear early in the game if you manage to hunt them:
  • The Wyvern Blade "Fall" Long Sword and Rathslinger I Bow are Fire element with high raw and 15% affinity and can be obtained as early as entering the Wildspire Waste and hunting Rathian.
  • The Rathalos armor has over thrice the defense of anything available in the early-game and can be obtained before leaving the Ancient Forest. (Now, have fun with that Rathalos in the meantime, but if you pull it off...)
  • The Diablos armor also has way high defense compared to anything else and grants Bludgeoner as a Set Bonus — normally Awesome, but Impractical but useful since only green Sharpness is available in Low Rank — and can be obtained as soon as you reach the Wildspire Waste.
  • The Guardian Armor set, given with purchase of the Iceborne expansion for a limited time. Its intended purpose is to allow people to quickly speed through the base game to access the new content, and it doesn't disappoint: each individual piece gives fifty defense when the most basic armor starts at two, plus Fire/Ice/Dragon resistances and extremely-helpful skills like Health Boost and Divine Blessing, and it can be equipped from the very beginning of the game on a new character. As a result, all but a few Low Rank monsters do Scratch Damage per attack, and High Rank can be coasted through as well (via upgrading) if you wish. Its only drawback - compared to other High Rank armor sets - is the extremely-limited Decoration slots.
• Downloadable Content: For the base game, there are some purchasable cosmetic goodies.
• Driving Question: "What is the purpose of the Elder Crossing?" Answering this question is why the Expedition was dispatched and serves as the core plot of the game. Even after driving off Zorah Magdaros, the reason for its increasing regularity continues to drive the plot.
• Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer: By using an SOS Flare in the middle of a Quest, you can enable other players to hop into the Quest you're playing to assist you even if you've already started, which could not be done in previous games.
• Drop-In Nemesis:
  • If Bazelgeuse is on a map with you, it'll come running in search of a free meal if it hears the distressed cry of another large monster (which it can do from a surprisingly large distance due to its acute hearing.) Once its theme overtakes the area's battle theme, you'd best start running or get those Dung Pods ready, else you're in for an explosive surprise. The frequency with which it does this is such that Monster Hunter: Rise gave it the title "Party Crasher".
  • Banbaro in Iceborne is normally a docile monster that can appear almost anywhere. If it sees you fighting another monster, however, it will flip out and start tossing boulders and dead trees at the both of you.
  • Ebony Odogaron and Fulgur Anjanath appear in all biomes. They usually thrash the resident apex monster of the region in a Turf War, however, so it's sometimes a relief to see them charging into the fray.
  • Ruiner Nergigante is constantly on the hunt for other Elder Dragons to chow down on, so it appears anywhere they can appear. It beats all of them in Turf Wars, so this can be used to your advantage; you just need to watch out for its spike attacks, which inflict bleeding.
  • On a lesser example, Tigrex and Velkhana can appear in all but one region (the Coral Highlands and the Elder's Recess, respectively) at any time; the latter, being an Elder Dragon, will ruin your prey's day, while the former, being a hyperactive, aggressive Pseudo-Flying Wyvern, will normally ruin your day instead.
• Dynamic Difficulty: Unlike previous games, which cleanly split up offline (single-player, easier Quests) and online (Quests designed to be played by four players) Quests, World employs this in all Quests due to Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer; taking on a Quest solo will use single-player difficulty, while adding more players causes the Quest difficulty to shift to multiplayer difficulty in real-time. Iceborne further staggered the difficulty by adding a two-player difficulty tier between the existing ones, with the game still scaling accordingly as more players join.

Tropes E-O

• Easy Level Trick:
  • Egg Quests were infamous in previous games because while carrying the egg your movement is much slower and you can't attack or block. In World you can just wear the Ghillie Mantle, which makes you effectively invisible to monsters. You can walk past a Rathian's face holding a Wyvern Egg and the most she'll do is hover around you in confusion.
  • Beyond the Blasting Scales requires you kill two tempered Bazelgeuses, each of which is a difficult fight. However, one Bazelgeuse can be lured to the other at which point they will begin fighting one another. Done properly, it's possible to have one kill the other and then kill the nearly dead survivor.
  • Behemoth can be cheesed by having one player mount him and then only move and brace as needed without attacking. Behemoth will run around the arena trying to shake off the player while not using any of his spells, leaving the rest of the party free to attack. With this it's entirely possible to push Behemoth to flee to the next area without ever dealing with an ability. The strategy isn't foolproof, as it can interfere with Ecliptic Meteor if performed at the wrong time, especially on Extreme.
  • The quest to kill a Rathalos counts any Rathalos as completing it. So killing a Rathalos in the arena (instead of the forest suggested in the quest), where they can't fly away, may be weakened by monsters like a Paolumu, and has less walls to corner you against, will still work.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • Vaal Hazak has the imagery of a Dracolich and can revive smaller monsters. It can also weaponize some deadly gases against the hunter. Unlike other Elder Dragons, it looks less a classical description of one and more of an undead demon.
  • The final monster, Xeno'jiiva, is an Elder Dragon that came from outer space. Not only does it have the very imagery of one, with Extra Eyes, glowing body parts, and unnatural flame colors, it's also responsible for the crossing of various other elder dragons crossing into the new world, to take the bioenergy.
  • Guest Fighter Behemoth is not one back in its homeland, merely being The Dreaded instead. In Monster Hunter however, a Low Fantasy setting, it would qualify in-universe, being a magical High Fantasy threat that has invaded said setting, the former being rich on magic, while magic does not traditionally exist in Monster Hunter.
  • Shara Ishvalda, the final monster in Iceborne. While draconic like the other examples, it looks more like a hideous corruption of a Hindu God, and has massive power over the earth. What truly makes it eerie is how it knows of a fourth wall, as it constantly looks at you. No, not your character. YOU.
  • Safi'Jiiva, the adult form of Xeno'Jiiva, while looking like a very traditional red Western dragon, has abilities that are anything but standard. It keeps the blue fire beams and explosions of its younger form, though it's far more proficient with them. It also has the ability to drain the life energy from the land around it, killing it to feed itself. Lastly, its ultimate attack has it drop what appear to be a pair of rotating, tiny blue stars that generate one of the largest explosions of any attack in the series, annihilating virtually anything on impact.
• Eldritch Location: Possibly the Guiding Lands. It's a very small and compact mass of land boasting multiple ecosystems existing side by side in ways that shouldn't be geologically possible, and which is also populated by nearly every type of monster in the New World (and a few others outside of it), all of which are stronger than those on the mainland due to the place's unique energies. The fact that the Guiding Lands might actually be what became of Zorah Magdaros likely has something to do with it.
• Elemental Tiers:
  • Fire gets the short end of the stick in the base game—several monsters^note Rathalos, Anjanath, Uragaan, and Lavasioth can grant you Fire-elemental weapons, but they themselves are resistant to the element, and only a couple of monsters (Vaal Hazak and the event-only Ancient Leshen) are strong enough to necessitate taking advantage of their Fire weakness. Iceborne attempts to correct this by introducing several monsters, including major targets Velkhana and Namielle, that are weak to Fire.
  • Dragon itself also has shades of this, with only a few monsters being truly weak to it. While the Elderseal mechanic is a useful counter to special Elder Dragon abilities, the element typically doesn't provide a particularly high damage bonus against Elder Dragons. In fact, as of the endgame in Iceborne, only two lategame monsters are particularly weak to it (Savage Deviljho and Ruiner Nergigante, although the former is also equally weak to Electric), the least out of the relevant monsters in the game.
  • On the other unbalanced end of the scale is Ice. Many lategame monsters are weak to it, especially with the monsters introduced in Iceborne; with a total nine monsters^note Teostra and Lunastra, Seething Bazelgeuse, Rajang and Furious Rajang, Shara Ishvalda, Raging Brachydios, Kulve Taroth without her mantle, and Alatreon in Fire Active, it's almost as much as the other elemental weaknesses combined.
• Elephant Graveyard: The Rotten Vale is ultimately revealed to be the destination of the Elder Crossing: the place where Elder Dragons go to die.
• Escort Mission: The appropriately named "The Best Kind of Quest" involves protecting The Handler and a group of scholars as they try to push a cart to a piece of slag that's of significant interest to them. It's a downplayed example; while you do have to "escort" them in the traditional sense, you never come across any monsters who are inherently hostile to you... unless you want to piss off that Rathian you walk past. Once you get to the slag, the Quest turns into a straightforward hunt afterwards.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": As per standard for the series, all characters are only known by their job. This leads to some amusing names such as Meowscular Chef and Fiver Bro.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Averted. In previous games, any large monster, including herbivores, would attack you on sight. Thanks to World's refined monster behavior, most large monsters you come across will not antagonize you, and are perfectly willing to pass you by unless you provoke them in some way—which, to be fair, can simply mean approaching them in some cases. Some monsters, such as Tzitzi-Ya-Ku, are more likely to attack other large monsters than Hunters.
• Excuse Plot: Interestingly, while the game has a fairly intricate storyline featuring colonization, environmentalism, and quite a bit of Character Development, every conflict in said storyline is still resolved by you going out and killing assorted monsters — it's all just a justification to get the actual monster hunting right to the forefront.
• Expansion Pack: Iceborne, which is on the scale of previous G-rank Updated Rereleases. The expansion adds the highest quest rank, a new cold-weather area, new and returning monsters, and additional hunter moves.
• Experience Booster: Some Event quests that focus on hunting two or more Tempered monsters give bonus XP to help with gaining levels.
• Experienced Protagonist: World's hunter is stated to already be one of the best hunters in the Old World, a far cry from the normal green-horn hunter in previous games.
• Eyepatch of Power: The Dragonking Eyepatch is a high-level headpiece that gives the Hunter up to two levels of the powerful Weakness Exploit skill, a lot more protection than you would expect of a little strap of cloth, and according to the description, a more badass appearance.
  "Put this baby on to double your manliness instantly. Ideal for the grittier guys and gals."
• Fame Gate: Certain story, optional, and event quests can only be received after the player has achieved a certain level of Hunter or Master Rank.
• Fastball Special: The Deviljho combines this with Grievous Harm with a Body when it picks up a smaller monster such as the Great Jagras or a Kulu-ya-Ku; it chews on the monster for a bit, slinging it around in its jaws like a rag doll, then hucks the monster at you with incredible speed, which hurts both unfortunate parties a lot.
• Fearful Symmetry: The Turf War between Diablos and Black Diablos plays out with them squaring off and locking horns, struggling back and forth until one is overpowered and thrown to the ground. The victor is randomly decided.
• Feed It a Bomb: Dodogama is a monster that likes to attack by swallowing rocks, which mix with its saliva to create a powerful explosive that it spits at your hunter, dealing damage and inflicting the Blastblight effect. One way to deal with it is to attack its mouth at the right time (either by a melee or ranged attack, or shooting it with a Bomb Pod or Crystalburst from your slinger) to set off the explosive rocks, doing damage and stunning Dodogama.
• Fiendish Fish:
  • Jyuratodus is a Piscine Wyvern that dwells in swamps and attacks with mud, not unlike Barroth. The Iceborne expansion introduces Beotodus, which dwells in snowy mountains and attacks with snow. Both are also aggressive monsters that will attack you either on sight or with little provocation.
  • The Catfish make a return but are now known as Gajau and will jump out of the water to get you.
• Final-Exam Boss: In Iceborne, the raid boss Safi'jiiva is a downplayed example. Most of its moveset is based off of its adolescent form Xeno'jiiva, but it takes a few cues from other monsters, including Namielle (a thin laser attack that causes ground eruptions) and Behemoth (a Draw Aggro mechanic and a One-Hit Kill attack that can only be avoided by ducking behind convenient boulders).
• Flunky Boss: The game introduces two pack-hunting Fanged Wyverns in the place of previous games' raptorial Bird Wyverns: Great Jagras and Great Girros who will hound on you to hinder your hunts.
• Fluorescent Footprints: Invoked by the Scoutflies, a swarm of tiny bioluminescent insects carried by hunters to track their quarry. They trail out along a monster's scent and illuminate footprints and other signs of their passage.
• Food Porn: True to form from this series, all food is rendered in crisp, mouth-watering high-definition graphics.
• Forgot About His Powers: In the Iceborne expansion, one of the story missions is defending Seliana from Velkhana's attack. As part of the defense, the hunters raise a large barricade to block Velkhana's path and give the player a chance to weaken it. One problem with that: Velkhana can fly. Despite this, the dragon just sits on the ground and attacks the barricade rather than just flapping its wings a few times to fly above it.
• Four Is Death: The fourth area is the Rotten Vale, a land of death and decay.
• Full Health Bonus: The Peak Performance skill increases your attack when your health is full, whereas Maximum Might increases your affinity, the chance to land a Critical Hit, when your stamina is full instead.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: While there are some pretty notable counter-examples noted below, the game is also pretty good about this.
  • In previous MH titles, you had to pay a certain amount of money before taking on a mission as a "contract fee"; basically insurance in case you failed the client. In World, there are no contract fees... because you're not actually taking standard guild contracts like you do in Old World games. Astera, the Research Base, and Seliana in Iceborne are the only human-wyverian civilization for hundreds of miles; everything you do is done directly for the Research Commission. There's no need for contract fees because all of your work in World is done directly for the Guild and its state-level supporters back across the sea.
  • Gunners and Blademasters now using the same armor is explained as a change that was advocated for by the Second Fleet's engineers decades ago in order to save on resources in the New World. Ultimately the added convenience/utility meant the Guild as a whole would adopt the change (and thus in Rise Gunners and Blademasters are still using the same armors).
  • While previous Battleship Raid style bosses such as Lao Shen Lung and Jhen Mohran were indicated to be epic undertakings that involved whole armies/fleets (as seen in the ecology video for Jhen Mohran), Zorah Magdaros, their equivalent in this game, is the first time where this is actually a factor in the fight, with AI hunters helping you load cannons to fight off the absolutely colossal dragon.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • During the main story, you can kill an assigned monster outside of the main quest, and it will count - for example, having to fight a Paolumu and defeating it in Expedition mode/the optional quest of another player will count. Oddly enough however, it won't count if you do it before the game tells you to.
  • There are a series of sidequests to capture a given monster instead of killing it. If you capture a monster, it will be at base being examined by the person who issues those quests, and those quests open up once you've beaten the monster for the first time in the story. For those who like going out of their way to capture monsters the first time, or in general, this occasionally leads to asking you to capture a monster that you've already captured (and for bonus points, might even be sleeping right behind him as he gives the quest).
  • In a few rare quests, you're asked to handle a particular monster, and you slay it/carve the parts as per usual... however, said monsters are still alive and live to be part of another quest. Key examples include a Teostra in the Wildland Waste, who you "kill" yet it manages to flee to the arena, which quickly serves as your introduction to Lunastra; Ruiner Nergigante, who despite being "killed" and heavily crushed by rocks afterward, is still alive and comes back to kill the Not Quite Dead Shara Ishvalda, and a Kirin who serves as your introduction to Rajang.
  • Elder Dragons are immune to traps, meaning you can't capture them. Unfortunately, this is inconsistently applied when it comes to natural traps: you can drop hanging boulders on an Elder's head just fine, but "special" environmental traps like the Ancient Forest's natural dam or the Hoarfrost Reach's avalanche zone have absolutely no effect despite unleashing a massive waterfall or tons of falling snow respectively.
• Gang Up on the Human: Despite the "Turf War" mechanic (See Mêlée à Trois), monsters have a tendency to prefer the human. Usually, a Turf War will only kick in once a fight - and once that is said and done, even if the monster hasn't fled the area, it will sometimes join up against the invader.
  • If you can successfully make one monster hostile to you and have another monster that is only hostile to the first monster and hide, it'll become a Curb-Stomp Battle in favor of the one that is not mad at you, because the other monster will spend half its time attacking the other monster and the other half trying to sniff you out while their enemy will continually attack them.
  • This is also heavily downplayed compared to previous games, as small monsters will back away from larger monsters and hunters if they start clashing in their area. Monsters will fight each other even if they do focus on the human more than the other monster. Gajalakas will direct their ire towards large monsters first, ignoring the hunter unless there is no large monster in the area at which point they become instantly hostile to the hunter, although their attacks will still affect the hunter if they're in the way of them.
  • Played straight if fighting either a Rathalos or Rathian; dealing damage to either will always draw the other one (if they're present on the map during the quest) to the immediate location of the fight after which the two Raths will tag team the hunter unless one of them is driven off with a dung pod.
  • Teostra and Lunastra are an even more dangerous pair, especially when they sync up their supernova attacks for a one-two-three blast of damage. Witnessing their teaming up on you is actually worth research points. Thankfully they're not as likely as the Rath pair to join up with one another if you attack one in a different area.
• Genius Loci: A lot of The Official Complete Works book is devoted to a in-universe researcher formulating a theory that the New World is itself a living organism the Elder Dragons nurture and feed via their bioenergy. In turn they theorize that the human explorers arrived in time to discover and stop the destructive actions of Xeno'jiva and its kin due to subconsciously responding to a distress signal from the New World itself. Downplayed in that they don't argue that the New World is necessarily sapient, but that it could be sentient.
• Genre Shift: The "Trouble in the Ancient Forest Quest" that came about from the Witcher add-on plays out like a vertical slice of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. NPCs are conversed with via dialogue trees, there are optional side quests to complete, and the whole adventure boasts multiple endings. It's even accompanied by music and sound effects from The Witcher 3.
• Geo Effects: Most of the maps in World have at least one or two environmental hazards that you can use to your advantage. For example, the Rathalos nest in the Ancient Forest is positioned near a dam, which you or a monster may break to create a huge damage/stun opportunity. The Wildspire Waste features a similar quicksand trap above a Diablos den.
• Get Out!: A variation appears in the endgame of Iceborne when it becomes clear that Fatalis is about to assault Castle Schrade before it can be fortified, the General screams to his soldiers: "GET OUT!"
• Giant Corpse World:
  • The Rotten Vale is a region where elder dragons go to die, and is formed from the corpses of two immense serpentine dragons known as Dalamadur. They're so huge that even centuries (or possibly millennia) after their deaths, their bodies are still decomposing.
  • The endgame area of the Iceborne expansion, the Guiding Lands, is heavily implied to stand upon the corpse of a Zorah Magdaros, a titanic volcano dragon; when one such dragon was previously encountered in the original story, it was speculated that the vast stores of bioenergy it was set to release upon its death would be enough to birth an entire new ecosystem.
• Glass Cannon: Nergigante can put out staggering amounts of damage, but due to genetic stagnation over several generations, its health pool is very low compared to other Elder Dragons, meaning it goes down relatively easy.
• Green Hill Zone: The Ancient Forest, which serves as a beginner-friendly hunting area without any environmental hazards.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Deviljho will forcibly demonstrate its status as an apex predator by seizing smaller monsters that happen to be in the vicinity with its jaws, then attempting to bludgeon you with them or simply hurling them at you at high velocity.
• Guest Fighter:
  • The v.5 update introduced the Behemoth in its Final Fantasy XIV incarnation as a huntable monster, a first for the franchise.
  • Armor sets of Ryu and Sakura, Aloy, Bayek, and Mega Man (for the Palico) are available as DLC. Unlike the Dante armor set, these change your character's appearance and voice to match that of the character.
  • Geralt appears as a playable character in a DLC quest line, bringing The Witcher mechanics with him. A Leshen appears as a huntable monster in the same quest, and by completing his hunt (and the much harder Ancient Leshen hunt) the player can unlock armor that turns their character into Geralt or Ciri.
  • Iceborne, the expansion for World, adds in an event for Resident Evil 2 Remake that gives the player layered armor to turn them into Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield — and turns the Handler into Mr. X.
• Hailfire Peaks: The Guiding Lands, the endgame sandbox in Iceborne, has all of the biomes from previous regions contained in one massive area, with otherwise disparate regions directly bordering one another.
• Harder Than Hard:
  • Arch-Tempered monsters, beefed up versions of the already dangerous tempered Elder Dragons. Even with endgame gear tailored specifically to fight them, it is entirely possible to go from full health to carted back to camp in a single attack. And if you were fighting them with friends, well...
  • Behemoth and Leshen were already difficult encounters. Then Capcom introduced Extreme Behemoth and Ancient Leshen which amp up the challenge even more.
• Having a Blast: Dodogama is a Fanged Wyvern similar to Great Jagras that can use its own saliva to turn the rocks it eats into explosive projectiles it can then spit back at prey and hunters during battle.
• Hellhound: We get the Rotten Vale's own Odogaron; a creature that looks like a dog that has been Flayed Alive. It's a fast, and vicious animal that's known to attack anything in sight with an immunity to the Dragon element. On the flipside, its immunity means it's suffering from a chronic case of Suicidal Overconfidence and being Too Dumb to Live, as it is known to even attack Elder Dragons and Deviljho with no regard whatsoever for its own safety.
• Helpful Mook: Happens often as a result of turf wars; smaller monsters often have a tendency to inadvertently help with larger ones, particularly ones like the Tzitzi-Ya-Ku which is able to stun flying monsters out of the air (which is often a godsend for weapons with poor aerial range) the second they see them.
• Hitbox Dissonance: It wouldn't be Monster Hunter without this, after all.
  • Anjanath's attacks have deceptively huge hitboxes. It isn't uncommon for players to get hit even if they're behind something. That is, if the Anjanath doesn't just come leaping through it.
  • Nergigante's dive is similarly deceptive, since the shrapnel and rubble created by the dive seems to count as the attack as well, hitting you with full strength even if you're nowhere near it.
  • Teostra's explosive blast can cause this as well. It's been known to hit players who're nowhere near the blast. Part of the reason behind this is due to the fact that the effect hits so quickly that players who think they dodged it still get hit.
  • In the player's favour with Insect glaive, sometimes attacks that look like they missed will be counted as hits while performing some aerial attacks.
  • Finally there are also those little edges of attacks that seem to hit you even if you just barely made contact that still count for full damage from the attack, such as a monster's heel as it comes down or the edge of the monster's tail during a charge.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Dodogama can inflict serious damage by spitting rocks mixed with its explosive saliva. However, a well-timed attack or slinger shot can detonate the rocks in its mouth, stunning the monster and doing quite a bit of damage to it.
• Hollywood Acid: Downplayed. In the bottom level of the Rotten Vale there are pools of acid, which are light blue and glow. Standing in them causes damage over time but not any worse than standing in lava.
• Hopeless Boss Fight:
  • The third beta featured a mission against Nergigante, and gave you 15 minutes to kill an Elder Dragon with fairly low-tier weapons and armor. It was possible, but probably not without a full party. Anyone who managed to complete this staggering task was rewarded with Nergigante materials in the full game.
  • The second encounter with Zorah Magdaros is doomed to fail. Without the Dragonator, the Hunters cannot put out enough damage to slow him down, with or without the sudden appearance of Nergigante.
• Horrifying the Horror: It's implied that the Alatreons, horrifying beasts in and of themselves whose elemental powers break all the known rules of nature, are fleeing the Old World in great numbers because even they're frightened of being on the same continent as Fatalis.
• Hub City: Astera, the New World's main research outpost. Seliana becomes this in Iceborne.
• Hydro-Electro Combo: Introduced in Iceborne, Namielle is an Elder Dragon resembling a sea creature who attacks with water and electricity, leaving puddles of water around the area that it can electrify.
• An Ice Person: There are many ice-related monsters, though only Legiana appears in the base game, whereas the others are exclusive to the Iceborne expansion:
  • Legiana is a large Flying Wyvern that uses the membranes located in the back of its neck to blow cold winds to attack its prey (and hunters during battle). The Shrieking variant, introduced in Iceborne, has an even greater control of its chilling abilities thanks to its quick adaptation into the Hoarfrost Reach (the standard species usually inhabits warmer areas like Coral Highlands).
  • Iceborne introduces Beotudus, a Piscine Wyvern similar to Jyuratodus and Lavasioth; but instead of covering itself in mud or lava respectively, it opts for snow. It is capable of navigating through ice and snow with ease, and can fling the snow that covers its body onto hunters during battle, not unlike Jade Barroth.
  • The flagship monster of the Iceborne expansion is Velkhana, a majestic-looking (yet lethal) Elder Dragon that looks like a slender, non-metallic version of Kushala Daora. It uses its ore-infused scales to spew a supercooled fluid which, upon touching the ground, creates spiky chunks of ice that explode near-instantly. The fluid can also freeze small monsters, and for a brief moment it can also freeze hunters.
  • A post-release update for Iceborne introduces Frostfang Barioth, a variant of Barioth whose ice powers are strengthened to the point of them being at sub-zero temperature, like exhaling a cold breath similar to that of Velkhana (including the ability to leave a chilling trail on the ground), or shooting explosive ice projectiles with a major Knockback power.
• I Choose to Stay: Following Xeno'jiiva's death, all of the hunters in Astera decide to stay for the challenge and/or to study the new monsters more. A wise choice, as once Xeno'jiiva is dead, all sorts of other monster activity starts springing up, attributed to its death. The end of Iceborne forces this to end, temporarily, with the revelation that Fatalis has reawakened in the Old World at Castle Schrade, an event so catastrophic that defeating it takes priority over literally anything else and forcing the hunters deployed to the New World to return immediately.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Who would willingly go to the "Rotten Vale"?
• Immune to Flinching: World gives the Great Sword a new move: a shoulder tackle. What's special about this shoulder tackle is that it deals impact damage at point blank range and has super armor, allowing the player to tank through monster attacks given proper timing, then transition into a charge. You can even interrupt charges with tackles to immediately transition into the next tier charge attack without needing to perform the previous attack in the chain.
• Infinity -1 Sword: The Defender line of gear introduced in Iceborne. They're cheap but effective, meant for new players and fresh characters to quickly climb through the base game. However, they quickly become obsolete once you start reaching the postgame and Iceborne content.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Safi'Jiiva weapons. Whether done solo or with a group, the siege usually takes several attempts to actually kill the dragon. After you've killed him, a small pool of weapons are generated, but you can only actually grab three or four. You are guaranteed a single weapon of the same type as the one you used to kill it with, but its element is randomized. Then, to upgrade your chosen weapon you must use various levels of dracolite to get upgrades - only available from beating Safi'Jiiva or sacrificing Safi weapons to the Melder - but these are somewhat randomized ^note Every level you get a choice of 3 possible upgrades, from 1 to 5 stars with a hidden 6 star appearing if a slotted upgrade is at 5 stars, though you're limited to a single one - if you don't want any of the presented upgrades, you can 'store' the energy instead, which allows for increased chances of higher-level upgrades the next time(s) until you upgrade again. Each individual upgrade can be improved from 1 star to 5 (plus a single one to 6), and you can have multiple versions of an upgrade slotted, up to five total; it's recommended to add weaker upgrades first then improve them overtime, rather than wait for high-level ones right off the bat. Also, aside from Decoration slot levels overlapping, these upgrades stack with weapon augmentations. Do all this over numerous hunts against Safi'Jiiva, and you now have a fierce weapon with customization beyond any other.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: When the research commission tries to defend Seliana from being frozen over by Velkhana, their response to it is to create a barricade between it and the Dragonslayer that only reach couple of meters high and doesn't even prevent the dragon from flying. And yet it worked because Velkhana somehow didn't think to simply fly over it or heck just climb the Absurdly Ineffective Barricade.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • You first fight Zorah Magdaros fairly early on, and it drops materials with higher Rarity than you've got by that point. Not only does this indicate that you're going to fight it later on, it indicates to Monster Hunter newbies that there is a High Rank.
  • While looking for quests to join, it's fairly possible to be spoiled by the fact that subspecies make a return after being absent from Generations.
  • Many menu examples. One major one is that all event quests are available to see from the beginning of the game, though greyed out, including ones with monsters which haven't been seen yet, and notably a series of quests which lists every monster that can be found in every area except the Everstream. Similarly, the crafting menu lists materials and recipes both as "???" until the player acquires the means to get them, except when forging charms, where they're given several recipes they don't have any ingredients for and are told exactly what those ingredients are before they even get to the area which contains them.
  • If you get a chance to look at your notes on the Ruiner Nergigante after you finish your first fight with it, you'll notice that the number you've successfully hunted down is still zero despite having defeated the beast and carved its body for parts, and that you only get generic bone and blood parts. It's your first clue that the Ruiner Nergigante you defeated isn't quite dead.
  • Much like the base game's Final Boss before it, Shara Isvalda's name is kept a mystery to the player. However, if you leave the fight for any reason and attempt to retry it, its name is revealed in the assignment's description.
• "Jaws" First-Person Perspective: Great Jagras, Paolumu, and Odogaron are introduced this way.
• Jungle Japes: The Ancient Forest is an enormous old-growth rainforest centered around a single, colossal tree.
• Jungle Jazz: Rajang's Leitmotif in the Iceborne expansion contains several brassy elements.
• Kaizo Trap: Fighting some monsters in their lairs can be significantly more dangerous than their low health would imply.
  • Diablos can burrow or walk into the falling sand walls of its lair and charge out at an unexpected angle with little warning.
  • Nergigante's lair is narrow which makes dodging his lethal divebomb attack even more difficult. It will also slam through walls of the lair to instantly cover its body in hardened spikes, allowing faster divebombs.
  • Kushala Daora can instantly fill most of its lair with tornadoes or wind walls, greatly reducing visibility and available room for fighting.
  • Teostra and Lunastra's lair in the Elder's Recess has a hardened magma floor. When disturbed during a fight, cracks will begin spewing lava before exploding, which deals high damage and can send you flying. In the Wildspire Wastes they instead use the Diablos lair, whose small size makes escaping a nova much more difficult.
  • Kulve Taroth will melt the ceiling of her lair during the final phase, causing molten gold to fall onto unwary hunters. In High Rank this is just random spots, but in Master Rank she can cover large swathes of the room at once.
  • When successfully jumping Behemoth's Ecliptic Meteor, your character will move in the air to land roughly where Behemoth's head is. The game does not stop to check whether or not you'll wind up getting hit by one of its Charybdis tornadoes afterwards though, and the damage from it may very well be enough to cause a cart (and potentially even fail the quest).
  • Barioth's lair in Hoarfrost Reach is narrow enough that its charge can potentially reach wall-to-wall and any tornadoes will fill a large portion of the floor. It can also jump onto walls and run across the ceiling to the other side quickly.
• Kamehame Hadoken: As part of the Street Fighter V Arcade Edition collaboration, you can purchase a Hadoken Gesture for $3.99. In addition to looking exactly like its Street Fighter counterpart, the gesture deals minor damage if it makes contact with an enemy.
• Knockout Gas:
  • Radobaan, Uragaan's smaller cousin introduced, has a back that can be mined for bones. However, one must be careful when doing so, as it can also release sleeping gas from its back.
  • Paolumu has a subspecies introduced in the Iceborne expansion, Nightshade Paolumu, who mixes chemicals in its air sac to produce a sleep gas, which it can then shoot out in lingering clouds.
• Last Ditch Move:
  • Nergigante has a divebomb attack which is capable of one-shotting the player. Ordinarily the player needs to damage them enough for thorns to appear on its entire body before the attack is available. However, once near death Nergigante retreats to its lair and will ram through walls, damaging itself in exchange for quickly charging a divebomb attack.
  • True to form from the series it's from, the Behemoth will do this. More specifically, once its HP hits 0, it will perform one final casting of Ecliptic Meteor before going down. If you're too far away from the Comets and haven't mastered dodging the blast with the FFXIV Jump Emote, say hello to the cart. This CAN cause you to fail the quest.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: In the process of streamlining Monster Hunter's traditional elements, quite a few things are different in World than in older games. To elaborate:
  • Sub-areas of maps are now seamless, instead of being separate instanced areas.
  • Instead of using paintballs to track enemies, you now train scoutflies by finding traces like footprints or feathers, then the scoutflies will automatically track monsters on the map for you.
  • You now use the same armor between Blademaster and Gunner weapons. Instead, what differentiates the two types is boosted defense for Blademasters and boosted elemental resistances for Gunners.
  • Armor Skills work completely different than in previous games. Earlier in the series, gear features Skill Points for particular Skills, and a Skill will only activate if your combined gear built up enough points. In World, having a Skill on your equipment outright gives you the Skill's effect. In addition, having more of the same Skill equipped at once can boost the effectiveness of that Skill, and certain Armor sets can have Set Bonuses that grant an additional Skill on top of the ones granted by your Armor if you wear enough pieces of the same Set.
  • Charms and Decorations have switched functions: instead of finding Charms out on the field with randomized Skill Point distribution based on Charm type and Rarity, Charms are now crafted from materials through the Smithy and are upgraded the same way as weapons, with upgrades increasing the number of Skill Points that the Charm grants. Decorations are found as randomized rewards and can be melded into other Decorations, just like Charms used to.
  • The base camp has been substantially upgraded; among other things, you can change weapons, restock supplies, and eat at a canteen, where previously you would be stuck once you began a mission.
  • There's actual voiced dialogue now, though you are free to use the traditional "Monster Hunter Language" (as the game calls it) if you want.
  • By default, color-coded damage numbers are now shown for attacks.
  • The highest quest rank introduced in Iceborne is named Master Rank instead of G Rank.
  • World also marks the first time where characters in the game are given actual names, as opposed to just being referred to by their position - beyond the Crossover character Geralt of Rivia, the final DLC update reveals the name of the A-Lister, Aiden, along with his master Julius.
• Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid: Downplayed. Areas where lava can be walked on treat it as solid floor rather than a liquid. While Lavasioth is able to freely swim through it as usual, the lava that spatters off of its body is viscous and doesn't spread much before it cools and hardens.
• Lethal Lava Land: The Elder's Recess is a place full of lava flows and enormous crystals created by the resulting pressure and heat.
• The Lifestream: The New World has the Everstream. It's basically a bunch of lava tunnels that provide the energy for life all over the New World. Zorah Magdaros wants to go there and die. Unfortunately, this would have catastrophic consequences given the immense energy its death would release, so it's up to the Commission to drive it away.
• Life Drain: The Health Regen augment is essentially Life-Steal built in to your weapons.
• Limit Break: World imbues the Generations spirit into its Bowguns, as both the Light and Heavy Bowguns are now armed with "Special Shots" that are independent of your normal ammo, are tied to the weapon itself, and can only be used when you have Special Shot gauge left to spare. Special Shots pack an enormous punch and come in several different varieties, like the Light Bowgun's "Wyvernblast", which plants a landmine that can be detonated with attacks or shots, or the Heavy Bowgun's "Wyvernheart" (More Dakka) and "Wyvernsnipe" (Pierce Ammo + Stuff Blowing Up) Shots.

• Make My Monster Grow: The Final Fantasy XIV collaboration additionally includes a unique Kulu-Ya-Ku fight that involves battling a Kulu-Ya-Ku who grows much larger after being mutated by the Crystal. Not only is it twice as large, it wields the Crystal as a weapon in place of a rock.
• Making a Splash: Two monsters introduced in Iceborne:
  • Coral Pukei-Pukei is a subspecies that replaces the poisonous attacks of its standard cousin with water-based ones. It uses its tail to absorb a large volume of water from the spongy plants that grow in Coral Highlands. During battle, the stored water can be shot at hunters as powerful jets, or also as globules from its mouth (similar to Kecha Wacha).
  • Namielle is a mysterious Elder Dragon that combines traits from aquatic animals like jellyfish and manta rays. It is capable of absorbing and then manipulating large amounts of water, and use it during battle in conjunction with electricity produced from its body to inflict a mix of water and electric damage.
• Mascot: Nergigante is the most advertised monster of the game, with Anjanath also being prominently featured. Velkhana is the flagship of Iceborne.
• Mêlée à Trois:
  • Unlike previous games, where pissing off multiple monsters in a given area would cause them to gang up on you, World changes how monsters interact so that if another monster enters the immediate vicinity of another, they will sometimes try to fight each other, even if you're in the middle of fighting one of them. The "Turf War" mechanic not only gives you a major opportunity to either recover or wail on your target while it's distracted, monster-on-monster combat has been buffed in World so that monsters attacking each other inflict several hundreds or even thousands of damage at a time. And while it's very possible for your wounded quarry to be killed in a fight with another monster, it's important to note that due to how "Turf Wars" work those fights in particular will never result in a dead monster (the animation of a monster getting up from a Turf War automatically prevents either from dying in one - they'll leave the Turf War with precisely one hit point instead to account for it); simply throwing a stone at it after it's over will finish the job if they're that close.
  • If any version of a Rathalos and Rathian are on a map together, attacking one will bring the other to the fight. They'll then go for a two-on-one until one of them is either damaged enough or a dung pod is used.
  • Teostra and Lunastra stick to the same areas and will work together to fight the Hunter. One special Event quest takes this further by having the duo get into a Turf War with Nergigante.
• Metronomic Man Mashing: Starting from Iceborne, the Rajang uses this as its preferred technique against Flying Wyverns, grabbing them out of the air by the tail, then bashing them against the ground few times before tossing them into the nearest wall. The scary thing is how easily it does it, considering most Flying Wyverns are formidable threats in their own right, cementing the Fanged Beast's place in the power hierarchy.
• The Migration: The story of World is centered around the Elder Crossing, a phenomenon that occurs every 10 years whereupon Elder Dragons migrate to the New World. Countless Hunters, scholars, and so forth have been sent from the Commission to the New World in order to investigate and find the truth about the Elder Crossing.
• Money Multiplier: Investigations can randomly receive a bonus that increases the zenny award for completion. Lucky Vouchers also double the zenny award of any mission with a cash reward.
• Money Sink: Fully upgrading an augmented piece of max rarity armor in Iceborne costs 360,000 zeni, meaning a single set of armor will cost 1.8 million zeni to fully upgrade. And given players will often build multiple sets of armor, the amount of money sunk into armor can skyrocket.
• More Dakka: Heavy Bowguns' "Wyvernheart" Special Ammo, which allows the Heavy Bowgun to rapidly pump out shells into a desired target. Unlike Siege Mode, this is completely separate from your existing ammunition types and has effectively unlimited ammo, but must recharge between uses. Iceborne ups the ante with a special modification for the Heavy Bowgun that increases the damage of Wyvernheart's bullets the longer it keeps firing.
• My Name Is ???: Any tracks/traces from a monster that you haven't identified yet in the game will be designated as "???". Similarly, after reaching High Rank, you start encountering tracks labelled "??? Rathian", showing that they are similar, but also different from regular Rathian tracks. The final boss is also labelled ??? during the fight, though this is because they don't actually have a name yet. The boss gets a name after it is defeated: Xeno'jiiva.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Huntsman is a walking, talking example of one to previous Monster Hunter protagonists. He wears a unique version of Rathian armour in the old pattern with a full-cover helmet that conceals his face (and that he never takes off), and he refuses to use new-fangled technology like the slinger or the scoutflies.
  • Furthermore, the Huntsman has a particular focus, after Nergigante, on Teostra, with a lot of implication that he's fought one or more before. Unsurprisingly, his blademaster armor is specifically a model from Monster Hunter Dos, and there's some further implication he's even none other than the star of the intro to MH2G. Teostra is one of the central monsters of Dos/2G.
  • The Barioth's intro cinematic plays a sample from "Subzero White Knight", the battle theme for the Frozen Tundra in Tri.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: By the end of Iceborne it becomes clear that Nergigante is the ecosystem's natural means of dealing with Elder Dragons going out of control. Had the Hunters not intervened, it would have gone for the exact same objectives.
• Nobody Poops: Both averted and played straight.
  • Played straight in that the player character, despite a diet of rich protein in vast quantities, never stops to relieve themselves.
  • Averted with the monsters. Like most titles in the series, they produce Dung, which players will be eager to collect to produce Dung Pods. Sometimes a monster will even stop, crouch for a moment, and walk away from a new dung pile that wasn't there before.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: One of the selected preset characters looks like Tommy Wiseau.
• No Fair Cheating: Partway through Iceborne, you're tasked with hunting a Nargacuga and a Glavenus, while searching for traces of Velkhana the same way you did with Nergigante. Even if you max out the investigation meter via expeditions and optional quests, the game won't let you progress until you've beaten both assigned monsters.
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • Diablos is considered an Apex Predator despite being a Herbivore. This might actually be a title for the strongest monsters in the locale rather than an actual predator.
  • One example that's actually invoked and explained by the head biologist; he explains that "Elder Dragon" is less of a term for dragons and more of a term for unusual monsters that don't fall into the regular evolutionary tree.
• Non-Malicious Monster: As part of simulating the game's ecosystem, monster behavior has been modified to reflect actual animal behavior. While predators and more territorial monsters will attack the Hunter on sight, other species will not. Some will give a warning roar if the Hunter gets too close and only attack if they persist while others will completely ignore the Hunter's presence.
• No OSHA Compliance:
  • The Research Base is a candlelit tower of wood, exposed books, and draperies. They're lucky the nearby monsters aren't of the fire-breathing variety...
  • Astera, built by the same group, is also comprised entirely of wood and stacks of books exposed to the elements. The kitchen and forge are in stone caves, but if a fire started anywhere else, it would burn the whole town down before hitting the sea beneath. It's a good thing none of the Anjanaths held there have ever woken up and torched it.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: The two crossover monsters, the Behemoth from Final Fantasy and the Leshen from The Witcher, both qualify. In their home universes, they're considered powerful, but not overly so; upper-mid-tier foes, perhaps. In Monster Hunter, they're treated as top-level threats that require multiple elite hunters to deal with, largely because the hunters have no magical abilities and have no experience fighting beings that can command magic. And in the Leshen's case, it's stated that the Monster Hunter world has a far greater amount of Life Energy, meaning the Leshen, as a nature spirit, is much more powerful there than it is in its home universe.
• No-Sell:
  • As in the rest of the series, Elder Dragons are completely immune to traps. There are also some specific immunities, such as Kirin being immune to Flash Pods.
  • Monsters will gradually become more resistant to repeatedly used status effects, and in version 3, Tempered monsters will become completely immune after being hit with enough Flash Pods.
  • "Decorations" add abilities to armor sets. Combining "Guard" at level 5 with "Guard Up" allows players to shrug off attacks that would otherwise one-shot them, and still others that would normally bypass guard altogether.
• Not Quite Dead:
  • "Blazing Sun" ends with the Teostra defeated and then carved by the Hunter per usual. Despite this, it's apparently only wounded and reappears in "Pandora's Arena" where it's recovering from the injuries.
  • In "To the Guided" the Ruiner Nergigante seemingly dies and its body is even carved. At the end of the next mission it reappears, having apparently faked its death to lure out Shara Ishvalda and let the Hunters weaken it.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • The base game has Behemoth, hailing from Final Fantasy XIV, who takes this up to eleven with its Ecliptic Meteor attack. Throughout the fight, the Behemoth will drop comets that stay on the battlefield. Unless you are hiding behind one of said comets, Ecliptic Meteor WILL cart you instantly when it lands^note There are a few other ways to avoid the attack: Do the Dragoon Jump emote with very precise timing, or be inside the campground's tent or canteen (but you have to be there before Behemoth initiates the attack, since once it starts up those locations will be locked down). This can lead to a Total Party Kill for unprepared parties — hope you didn't break the comets! To make matters even worse, Ecliptic Meteor hits the ENTIRE map, so just fleeing to a different region isn't good enough. During the final phase it gets even crueller: Behemoth has a DPS check, and if you don't do enough damage within a set amount of time it'll drop an Ecliptic Meteor without laying down any comets first, which will more than likely spell Quest Failed unless all your teammates have the food bonus that negates their first cart.
  • Iceborne has raid boss Safi'jiiva, whose Sapphire of the Emperor attack takes its cues from Behemoth. The primary difference is that the boulders that drop during the battle can't be shattered like Behemoth's comets, but otherwise it follows the exact same pattern as Ecliptic Meteor, including the final phase DPS check.
• Optional Boss:
  • Kirin is the only Elder Dragon in the base game that is not part of the main plot. The quests that unlock it are all optional and not apparently related to an Elder Dragon-scale threat.
  • Elder Dragons added post-launch, such as Kulve Taroth and Lunastra, also count as they are independent from the plot.
• Orchestral Bombing: Bazelgeuse's theme is a bombastic piece evocative of old warplane and bombing propaganda videos. Considering its main method of attack being carpet bombing its preys with exploding scales, this fits all too well.
• Orphaned Etymology: It's clearly only used for a pickle pun, but the Handler refers to her meeting with the Deviljho as "that wasn't kosher". Kosher is a Jewish word related to dietary laws, and the pickles are only called kosher because they're frequently sold in delis.
• Outside-Context Problem:
  • Leshen is this to the Commission - unlike the various bestial but still understandable monsters that dominate the Monster Hunter universe, Leshen is a very angry humanoid nature spirit from a Dark Fantasy universe. Notably, you aren't the one to hunt it - the Commission instead hires Geralt to kill it, as he's fought it before.
  • Behemoth is a Downplayed example - its magical abilities are certainly unlike anything ever seen in the New World, but it still has enough similarities to existing monsters that the commission is willing to send hunters after it, unlike with Leshen. Other monsters can create tornadoes, lightning, and eruptions through (at least seemingly) mundane biology, though not all at once.
• Overly Long Fighting Animation: The game avoids this for the most part, except for two notably problematic monsters. Bazelgeuse, when enraged, will use an extended version of its "bombing run" attack that can last for nearly 30 seconds. The final boss of the main game, Xeno'jiiva, has a mouth laser that can drag on for almost as long.

Tropes P-Z

• Paper-Thin Disguise: The Ghillie Mantle is introduced in the Ancient Forest where it makes sense to disguise yourself as part of the green vegetation. It makes less sense that it just as easily fools monsters in the nearby desert, colorful highlands, corpse pit, active volcano, and deep snow-covered island. It also only reaches to your waist, leaving your legs completely exposed, and continues to function even when half the leaves have fallen off.
• Patchwork Map: While the game's various settings (the Ancient Forest, the Wildspire Wastes, the Coral Highlands, the Rotten Vale, Elder's Recess, and Hoarfrost Reach) are distant enough to not be obvious, Iceborne introduces the Guiding Lands, a single zone that contains elements of all the other levels slapped together, which the Research Commission notes is highly unusual.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse:
  • The Gajalakas. Their miniature size belies their surprisingly high attack power; one hit from them can deal as much damage as the average hit from a large monster, and they typically show up in packs of three or four.
  • The Boaboa. The Master Rank answer to Gajalakas, their damage is also comparable to a monsters and they appear in similarly large groups.
  • Mini crown monsters. Despite being vastly smaller than typical for their species, they still hit as hard as a normal-sized monster.
  • Compared to the other Apex Predators, the Odogaron is much smaller. It doesn't prevent it from being such. While its damage is on par with the other large monsters of the Rotten Vale, it hits much faster, especially when enraged.
• Piñata Enemy:
  • Zorah Magdaros is barely a threat to players but is often seen as a Crutch Character due to the vast amount of High Rank materials that can be harvested in a single fight. His shell is studded with ore deposits containing both his crafting materials and High Rank ores; his magma cores drop loot when destroyed; and he has a chance to drop loot when shot with cannons during the final phase. If a player is willing to invest a little extra time, the ore deposits and magma cores will eventually reset and can be harvested for additional loot.
  • Kulve Taroth is quite difficult but the sheer volume of loot she drops is incredible. Where most monsters only drop "shiny" loot when body parts are destroyed or special conditions are met, Kulve has a chance to drop shinies on any hit. A single phase can see dozens of shiny drops litter the floor. Then there's her horn plating which, when broken off, creates a carve item worth three pieces of loot and if her horns are broken they are worth four pieces of loot. And the after-battle bonus for beating her can reward up to eighteen pieces of loot.
  • The game introduces two event-exclusive examples of this as part of its one-year anniversary, Arch-Tempered versions of the Great Jagras and Lavasioth — the most-fought and least-fought monsters in the game, respectively. Both of them have breath weapons (after a fashion): Greatest Jagras projectile-vomit its lunch, Lavasioth retains its ability to spit fireballs, and each time they use these attacks the projectile leaves behind a decoration jewel. Jagras takes it a step further, since it retains a strategy from the original version: smacking its full belly repeatedly will eventually make it fall on its side and puke up its lunch, potentially leaving upwards of 10 decorations in a pile next to its head.
• Plague Doctor: The Great Girros armor sets resemble the traditional costume of a plague doctor. Fittingly, they're one of the sets that give the Effluvial Expert skill, which protects your health from being sapped in the lower levels of the Rotten Vale.
• Playing with Fire:
  • Anjanath is a territorial Brute Wyvern that attacks hunters and preys by spewing fire from its mouth, which is produced in its throat.
  • Bazelgeuse is, on principle, a Flying Wyvern that opts for attacks based on explosive power. However, the Blastblight ailment is only inflicted on other monsters, so the only effect the hunters receive from the explosive attacks is burning due to the ensuing fire. The Iceborne expansion adds the Seething variant, whose fiery sttacks are far stronger.
  • Zorah Magdaros is a massive Elder Dragon capable of releasing large bodies of lava from its magamcores, though it does so without actively attacking anyone, as it's merely making way across the land it's roaming in.
  • Kulve Taroth is a massive Elder Dragon capable of exhaling superheated air, which it can use to melt resistant metals like gold and make the surrounding terrain a lot more difficult for hunters.
  • Xeno'jiva is a powerful Elder Dragon which, thanks to the bioenergy it consumes from the fellow Elder Dragons that approach it to die of old age, is capable of spewing exceptionally strong flames colored blue in the form of explosive bursts. However, it doesn't have a very good control of it, likely due to its relatively young age. However, its adult form introduced in Iceborne, Safi'jiva, not only has greater control of fire as well as the ability to absorb the bioenergy that lies in its surroundings, but also a Limit Break skill that allows it to imbue much of the surrounding area with blue fire, and after a while it spits a very small drop-like fireball that ignites everything around, which can kill the hunters if they don't take cover.
• Poisonous Person:
  • Pukei-Pukei is a Bird Wyvern reminiscent of a chameleon (though with a behavior more similar to that of Gypceros, including having an elongated tongue). It is capable of inflicting poison with its mouth as well as with its tail, and said poison may have additional effects or properties depending on the monster's diet.
  • The Iceborne expansion introduces Viper Tobi-Kadachi, a subspecies that replaces the electrical powers of its standard cousin in favor of inflicting poison from its fangs and the spikes in its back (which can also be used as projectiles) onto its prey and hunters. When used in conjunction with paralizying bits to incapacitate its enemies, the poison can become a lethal element in its favor.
• Power Creep:
  • Each major title update in the vanilla game added bigger and nastier monsters, and as such added weapons and armor to fight them that continued to surpass the base roster, prior to the release of Iceborne. First was Deviljho ^note weapons that had some of the highest raw damage in the game plus white Sharpness with any level of Handicraft, then came Kulve Taroth ^note had weapons that outclassed the majority of the craftable roster, if one is lucky enough to find them, Lunastra ^note have high Affinity, many high-level slots, natural white Sharpness, and come with Set Bonus skills built-in, with the near-invinciblity Temporal Mantle added on the side, Behemoth ^note whose Drachen armor set places an emphasis on critical hits in a meta built on it, plus tons of slots, then finally, Arch-Tempered Kulve Taroth ^note whose Kjarr weapons have skills like Critical Status and Critical Element built in, on top of their already astounding stats.
  • Iceborne's free title updates followed the trend by adding progressively stronger monsters as well as their associated, game-changing equipment and set bonuses. First was Rajang ^note immense raw damage on par with Savage Deviljho gear, but with Thunder damage; then Safi'jiiva ^note unparalleled weapon customization and extremely useful armor bonus set for elemental builds; then Raging Brachydios ^note extremely powerful raw damage on weapons along with purple sharpness and good decoration slots, and an armor set with a generous quantity of high level decoration slots and Furious Rajang ^note equally powerful weapons that tend more towards affinity and sharpness, as well as an armor set optimized for risky Heroics-based builds, as well as the return of Kulve Taroth in Master Rank ^note Taroth and Kjarr can now be upgraded to their Rarity 12 form, and her armor set boasts one of the best skillsets for support; then Alatreon ^note the very best Dragon elemental weapons and some particularly potent armor pieces if used individually; and finally, Fatalis ^note the best possible raw weapons in the game, along with an armor set that unlocks all secrets and is generous beyond compare with decoration slots.
• Power Nullifier: "Elderseal", a weapon characteristic added in this game, prevents Elder Dragons from using some of their more powerful attacks and can cancel out their auras and abilities.
• Power-Up Food: Take a trip to the Canteen and let the crew of culinary Palicoes cook you up a delicious meal to gain buffs for the next quest.
• Purple Is Powerful: Tempered Monsters have a purple outline around their icon while looking at quest information. Was eventually subverted with the addition of Arch Tempered Monsters, which have a Thick Red Outline instead. A lot of supspecies introduced in Iceborne that are purple are also much stronger than their nominate counterparts.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: Layered Armour sets, which when equipped appear in place of your functional armour. The latter is lampshaded by the smith when he gives you a free set at the start of the expansion, commenting that layered armour is "good for hiding the clown suits".
• Rare Random Drop:
  • Plates and gems are the rarest monster parts and are required for high end armor and weapons. Their drop rate can be increased slightly by breaking as many parts of the monster as possible, but they are never guaranteed. They can also be gotten by the Melder, if one has various Wyvernian Tickets, but these require taking on Limited Bounties overtime.
  • The various Streamstones are special items that allow you to further augment a fully-upgraded HR weapon like in 4 Ultimate. However, they only drop incredibly rarely from high-level Tempered Monster quests. ^note Hero's Streamstones in particular have a drop rate of 3% from Tempered Elder Dragon investigations. And there are seven types of them, effectively making it a 0.43% chance of getting the one you want from a TED quest. In Iceborne, there are Spiritvein Gems in the Guiding Lands that serve a similar purpose for MR weapons/armor, but in addition to the post-slain rewards RNG, they also have a chance to drop from the Tempered Monsters themselves during battle, much like their other items.
  • Attack Jewels are among the most coveted Decorations, but many hunters have gone hundreds of hours without obtaining more than the ones given for free. The listed changes of a given Feystone being an Attack Jewel are between 0.05 and 0.81%. And despite other Jewels being of similar rarity, for some reason you're far more likely to end up with multiple Artillery or Critical Jewels than Attack Jewels.
• Recurring Boss:
  • Zorah Magdaros is encountered three times in the story: In the prologue where you can only flee; at the end of the first act when you can fight back but ultimately lose; and at the end of Low Rank when he is finally driven off.
  • Velkhana is this in Iceborne.
• Recurring Element: Several:
  • One of the first monsters you fight is a weaker monster that serves as the King Mook of a weaker monster. Though unlike previous games, these monsters are Fanged Wyverns reminiscent of lizards rather than Theropod Bird Wyverns.
  • A weak and comical "true" Bird Wyvern that acts as the hunter's first real challenge.
  • A Flying Wyvern that does not take after any reptilian monsters and is a source of an item needed for boosting drink buffs.
  • A Massive Elder Dragon that cannot be fought on land, and hunters must use cannons and ballistae.
  • An Invasive Elder Dragon level monster that shows up in High Rank, with a Background Music Override telling you to get the hell out of there lest you or a few fellow hunters get carted.
  • Tempered Monsters continue the concept of beefier, stronger monsters that serve as a post-game challenge. Arch Tempered takes it even further and are the closest equivalents to Apex Monsters from 4U/Deviants from Generations.
  • A newer monster that challenges Rathalos. Only this time, Rathalos comes out on top.
• Retcon: Lunastra was said to be the more docile between her and Teostra during the second generation games lore. She's actually more aggressive here, and her Nova Attack is actually much more dangerous due to Damage Over Time and causing stagger.
• Remember the New Guy?: Played straight with Nergigante, who is treated as a dreaded "Eater of Elders" that the Guild is familiar with and is possibly a corrective force of nature... yet never made its presence known in prior games when other Elder Dragons or monsters were poised to cause gigantic ecological disasters. Inverted with Alatreon and Fatalis though, who are treated as monsters never before encountered by hunters in spite of the Excitable A-Lister's appearance in 4U as the Ace Cadet.
• Replay Mode: An odd case, as while you can still replay the cutscenes and monster ecologies like in many other Monster Hunter games, the Gallery recording them has to be accessed through an out-of-game menu (which was the case with the older games up to Portable 3rd, but from 3 Ultimate onward the games used to have the Gallery accessed in-game by talking to a butler inside the hunter's bedroom). Like in 4 and 4 Ultimate, the cutscenes are replayed in real time, allowing the game to show the Hunter with their current armor, which likely won't be the one they wore when they originally fought the monsters shown.
• Revisiting the Roots: Despite all the departures from the formula, there are elements of this. For example, World brings us back to relative realism after the comparatively fantastical Generations games. World also marks a return to the PlayStation line again after several Nintendo-exclusive entries.
• Ribcage Ridge: There's one in the Rotten Vale, easily identifiable as a Dalamadur's remains.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter:
  • Poogies return (But not Moofahs) and many endemic life can be captured and treated as adorable pets. The former can even be petted/carried! Beyond looking for small, hidden treasure around Astera, this has no gameplay benefits.
  • Paolumu is the one of the closest for large monsters, compared to the more terrifying ones, but even that's before it becomes provoked.
  • Dodogama's beady eyes, oversized lower jaw, and general pudgy-ness, coupled with the fact that it isn't aggressive to the player unless provoked and is content with munching on rocks, has earned it a bit of a following.
• Rocket-Powered Weapon: The winning design of the first fan weapon design content, the Wyvern Ignition◊, is a rocket powered greatsword.
• Running Gag: The Handler asking the Player Character why they came to the New World at various points in the game. She never gets an answer.
  The Handler: DO YOU EVEN HAVE A REASON?!
• Sand Worm: Introduced in Iceborne, Beotodus is a Piscine Wyvern that swims through the deep snow of Hoarfrost Reach.
• Savage Setpiece: Due to the updated engine in the game, most monsters are perfectly content to just pass you by without even giving you a second look (as compared to in the Old World games, where all monsters would immediately go for your jugular as soon as they saw you.) However, if you so much as poke them with your weapon, said monsters will immediately be ready for a fight.
• Scare Chord: There's a creepy strings glissando whenever a monster like Bazelgeuse approaches at you and joins the battle.
• Serious Business: The Meowscular Chef is the first chef to not participate in the cooking cutscenes. He stands still, arms folded with his eye shut. He only applies a finishing garnish or decoration to the meal in the end, to a dramatic effect. He joins in the cooking once the Canteen is upgraded to its max.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: The game brings the concept of "Turf Wars", where certain large monsters will fight each other as soon as they make eye contact, especially if one species competes with (or preys upon) the other. Naturally, Hunters are encouraged to exploit this mechanic as much as possible, as it tends to deal a lot of damage to the ones involved.
• Set Bonus: Many armor sets have special skills that activate if you're wearing a certain number of pieces from the same set.
• Shifting Sand Land: The Wildspire Waste, a rocky desert known for its eponymous giant anthills. Also contains wetlands in the south.
• Shock and Awe: Tobi-Kadachi, a fast and agile Fanged Wyvern that can attack with electricity after brushing itself against the ground and trees, is introduced in the base game. The Iceborne expansion features Fulgur Anjanath, the first Brute Wyvern in the series to employ electricity, and Namielle, an Elder Dragon that sprays watery mucus on its opponents and surrounding area, then striking them with electricity.
• Shop Fodder: Trade-in items such as the various metal eggs, Argosy stones, and Bandit Mantle scales only exist to be sold for zenny.
• Shoryuken: You can purchase a Dragon Punch Gesture in World for $3.99 USD. It has invulnerability frames when performed, which has niche applications, but is otherwise nothing game-changing.
• Shown Their Work: World features two interconnected ecosystems: the Coral Highlands and the Rotten Vale beneath it. Animals from the Highlands die and drop into the Vale, where scavengers will eat their corpses. The detritus created by these rotting carcasses is eventually blown upward back into the Highlands, providing it with necessary nutrients. Other than the fact that this is all taking place on land, this cycle is a fairly accurate depiction of the marine snow and upwelling processes seen in the ocean.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: Radobaan is a monster that secretes a tar-like substance from its body, and rolls around in the copious amounts of bones found in the Rotten Vale in order to serve as armor. It can also fling these bones at enemies.
• Skippable Boss: Nergigante during both Zorah Magdaros fights. It will stay in a set fight arena and can be safely ignored as it will eventually retreat once enough time has passed. This is not the case for Arch-Tempered Zorah Magdaros; ignoring it will only delay the final stage.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Hoarfrost Reach, the central map of Iceborne, is a massive frozen forest inhabited by large, ice-powered monsters like Beotudus, Barioth and Velkhana. Some of the snow is dense, which makes mobility difficult.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: The Strategist Spectacles. Text flavor aside, it gives players a small, but notable increase in the critical eye skill. It also gives a small boost to elemental resistances.
• Solid Gold Poop: There's nothing golden about it, but monster dung is a valuable resource for players to harvest thanks to its uncanny ability to drive most monsters away when crafted into Dung Pods. Very useful to have when a tough monster like Bazelgeuse shows up to interrupt your hunt. However, they do not work on Arch Tempered monsters, and a dung-soiled monster may end up turning around and coming after the hunter if it gets hit while running away.
• Sorting Algorithm of Threatening Geography: The first explorable area is the Ancient Forest, a coastal region replete with flora. Next is the Wildspire Waste, a mountainous desert with some swampland. Third is the Coral Highlands, an Under the Sea level, minus the actual sea, with picturesque coral growths and bizarre wildlife. Fourth is Rotten Vale, a Bleak Level filled with corpses and toxic gas. Finally, there is the Elder's Recess, a Lethal Lava Land replete with quartz-like crystal growths. The Iceborne expansion adds the Hoarfrost Reach, a Slippy-Slidey Ice World; and the Guiding Lands, an endgame sandbox that features all of the biomes from the game combined in one region. Certain bosses are fought in special arenas that grow increasingly hostile as their difficulty goes up, such as: the Everstream, one of the magmatic energy conduits of the New World where players fight Zorah Magdaros; the Confluence of Fates, a crystaline nest home to Xeno'jiiva; Origin Island, a desolate island where Ruiner Nergigante and Shara Ishvalda are fought; and Castle Schrade, a Nostalgia Level from earlier Monster Hunter games that takes place in castle ruins that are home to Fatalis.
• Speaking Simlish: In the majority of installments, all voiced human dialogue is in a made-up "Monster Hunter Language". World introduces actual voice acting in various languages, but this can also be turned off and replaced with the standard gibberish.
• Spin Attack:
  • The Dual Blades feature a new aerial spin attack that makes you look like Levi from Attack on Titan.
  • The Hammer has two spinning attacks, one for dealing multiple blows while moving and the other for a smaller number of strong blows in one spot.
• Stealth Pun: Rathalos is the apex predator of the Ancient Forest. His animal motif is the Lion. Basically, he's the King of the Jungle.
• Subsystem Damage: Per previous titles, each monster has multiple parts that can be broken or severed. Each break will in some way hinder the monster's fighting ability, such as cutting off severing a tail to reduce the range of a tail smack.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: Odogaron, which is essentially the Monster equivalent of a honey badger. It will take on a Radobaan, something twice its size, and Vaal Hazak, which is an Elder Dragon, a title only given to monsters capable of causing natural disasters. Averted in the former, however, as it is perfectly capable of taking down Radobaan with ease.
• Superboss:
  • Tempered Deviljho is unique in that he is the only tempered monster that can only be fought during a special event. He has the special reward of dropping extra streamstones, including ones normally only dropped by tempered Elder Dragons.
  • Arch-Tempered Elder Dragons are similar to Tempered Deviljho in that they can only be fought during an event. In addition to having extra health and doing more damage, their movesets and patrols are adjusted. Defeating them rewards access to a unique variant of their armor set.
• Super Mode:
  • Tempered monsters. Just like 4U and Generations frenzied and hyper monsters respectively, these are stronger than usual monsters that the player doesn't fight till after post-game. Unlike frenzied or hypers, however, Elder Dragons can now be tempered. Arch-Tempered monsters added in ver 4.00 fill the roles of apex monsters and deviants, being even stronger versions of said monsters.
  • World extends the Charge Blade's Element Up capabilities by enabling you to charge your Sword with Phial power. By entering Element Up, then initiating a Charge in Sword Mode and holding the Light Attack button during the Charge until you see your Shield burst with energy, then release the Light Attack button, your Sword will become charged. While charged, this grants, among other things, Mind's Eye as a weapon ability, which additionally allows you to strike with your Sword even if you're in Overcharge state, and the ability to apply a Phial burst upon landing any attack in Sword Mode that deals Phial-based additional damage.
  • World grants Switch Axe the ability to enter Amped Mode, which rewards aggressiveness in Sword Mode with even stronger Sword Mode attacks and the ability to apply a Phial burst when landing any attack in Sword Mode that deals Phial-based additional damage. In addition, being in Amped Mode transforms the Element Discharge into the powerful Zero Sum Discharge, which involves mounting a target, then stabbing the Switch Axe into the target while unleashing a full power Element Discharge.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Bazelgeuse is a highly territorial Flying Wyvern with short temper. It has a lot in common with, and in practice is the successor of, Seregios from 4 Ultimate. Both Bazelgeuse and Seregios would meet four years later in Monster Hunter: Rise Sunbreak, averting the trope in their case.
• Suspicious Videogame Generosity:
  • Meta example; when Lunastra was added, so was a very powerful mantle that was basically an automatic Adept mode from Generations built into it. Not only would it be very useful against Lunastra in future hunts, it essentially became a recommended tool against the Arch-Tempered Monsters.
  • After a full year of free gameplay updates, Iceborne finally ends with the arrival of Fatalis. When you get the special assignment to fight it, you are given five carts instead of the standard three. It's extremely suspicious because even previous dreaded monsters like Extreme Behemoth, Alatreon, and Safi'Jiva didn't warrant this. Turns out this is just so players can get used to the fact that Fatalis is by far the most difficult monster in the entire game. It has at roughly a dozen one-shot kill moves, is insanely hard-hitting and unforgivingly fast in it's attack combos. And if you've managed to get to half-health and haven't managed to break its horns at least once, it will enter a super-charged mode, where every single fire attack can be an instant cart, regardless of whatever resistance you have. It should also be mentioned that the typical hunt time of 50 minutes is cut down to half an hour, giving you no breathing room and forcing you to plan how you fight it very carefully. And what's worse is that, after you (eventually) beat it in the special assignment (which only requires you to get it to 75% HP, and that's still extremely difficult solo), the event quest that comes after does not give you the mercy of five carts, taking away the generosity altogether.
  • There's an event quest that pits you against a Tempered Furious Rajang, which also gives you five carts. It has considerably less health than Fatalis. Unlike Fatalis, the arena you fight it in has nothing you can use against it, it's far more agile, and all of its attacks can still smack you flat in two hits, even with Fatalis gear.
• Tactical Suicide Boss:
  • Safi'jiiva in Iceborne has a special Fantastic Nuke attack called the "Sapphire Star of the Emperor", which can only be avoided by hiding behind rocks in the arena a la Fatalis. The rocks are indestructible the first time it does this, but they get destroyed by the attack on subsequent times. Fortunately, it occasionally blasts a laser beam at the roof of the arena, sending flaming boulders down which can be used to avoid the attack when it happens again, combining this trope with Boss-Arena Idiocy.
  • While it is highly destructive (even more so once it's in Hellfire Mode), the Iceborne incarnation of Fatalis uses its "cone breath" attack often, which leaves a significant opening to pummel its head.
• Take Your Time:
  • The main story will wait if you choose to instead go run other missions instead. Taking your time is actually a very good idea as it's the key to building up your armor and weapons to deal with the story missions.
  • Averted with the optional Zorah Magdaros, Xeno'jiiva, and Shara Ishvalda missions (the last only available in Iceborne) that appear after completing Low Rank, High Rank, and Master Rank respectively. The missions are only available for the length of two missions, at which point they despawn. Thankfully, they will randomly respawn.
• Temporary Online Content: The free DLC events are now a limited, one-time thing like in Tri as opposed to an extra quest that's saved permanently on your system. Fortunately, said events are in rotation and will return when enough time passes and all of them become available at once during the seasonal festival events (Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring).
• That's No Moon: The Hunter's ship ends up aground on a volcanic rock. But as you navigate it, it starts to move. You're on the back of the Zorah Magdaros.
• Theme Music Power-Up: In the final phase of the Fatalis fight, if you manage to connect with the Dragonator, the music will change from Fatalis' theme to "Proof of a Hero", the main theme of the Monster Hunter franchise. The same happens after using the Dragonator on Zorah Magdaros.
• Timed Mission:
  • All missions have a time limit, usually set at 50 minutes. Investigations often reduce that window, sometimes to as little as 15 minutes, in exchange for more rewards.
  • During Expeditions monsters will only remain on the map for a limited time, after which they will leave even if they are on the verge of death.
  • During the Deviljho assignment, the Handler accidentally gets stuck atop a raging Deviljho, requiring you to topple the beast before she falls off and ends up as Deviljho chow.
• Time-Limit Boss: Alatreon specimens found in the New World have a special gimmick present when fighting them. It performs a special move called Escaton Judgement every 3 minutes. You have to deal enough elemental damage to it to topple it, which weakens its Escaton Judgement to the point you can survive, otherwise it'll cart everyone in the area instantaneously.
• Too Awesome to Use: Defied with the Lucky Vouchers, since they're given out on a real-time basis but you plain lose out on new ones if you already have five. It encourages players to just use them.
• Trap Master: The various Lynians tribes all display a mastery of traps. Aside from Bugtrapper tailriders who can set out traps for free, groups of them may set traps at pre-determined locations on the map. Grimalkyne will use vines to ensnare a mounted monster that comes too close so the Hunter can attack, while Gajalaka and Boaboa trappers will knock any approaching monster prone before bombarding it with bottle rockets and spears, respectively.
• Trapped in Another World: The game has seen this happen three times, involving an Intercontinuity Crossover:
  • First was the Final Fantasy XIV event, where a portal from Eorzea has carried a moogle to Astera. However, he's not the one actually trapped, since he can leave any time he wants but wants to help with the creature that is. Behemoth.
  • Second was The Witcher event, with Geralt getting pulled in and looking for a way back. However, he decides to stay at least for a short while to take care of the Leshen that's rooted itself in the Ancient Forest, disrupting the balance of nature. He ends up finding a portal at the end though he's not completely sure where it will send him.
  • Third was an event for the Monster Hunter (2020) movie, which sees Artemis thrust into the MH world, not unlike what happens in the film.
• Tsuchinoko: It's possible to capture a tsuchinoko and keep it as a pet. However, they're incredibly rare since they're only available for capture during the Kulve Taroth event or during the final boss fight of Iceborne, and that's only if it spawns.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: A lot of time will be spent running between the smithy, canteen, and trade hub in Astera: they're all spread out, just like in a real outpost.
• Under the Sea: Subverted with the Coral Highlands. It looks just like a gorgeous coral reef, but there's no ocean. In fact, the entire thing is precariously perched atop cliffs. It does have jellyfish-like lifeforms that can be seen drifting through the air, which helps recreate the setting of an underwater biome.
• Variable Mix:
  • Each area's battle theme has three levels; one for if you're only facing Small Monsters(Jagras, Rapinos, etc...), one for minor Large Monsters(Great Jagras, Kulu-Ya-Ku, etc...), and one for the Apex predators and other powerful Monsters that don't have their own Leitmotif(Anjanath, Diablos, etc...). The music will freely ramp up(or down) as Monsters enter(or leave) the area and join the fight.
  • After the Iceborne update whenever you are mounted on a monster, the main instrumentals are subdued while a more prominent percussion track takes over the song. As an example, Zinogre's rock-oriented battle theme gains an impressive drum-line for the duration of the mount.
• Video Game Tools: Each Hunter has a forearm-mounted slingshot that can shoot rocks or pods for various effects, a grappling hook for climbing, or a net for catching bugs and small animals; and removed the consumability/breakability of many of the other tools. It also added a number of natural tools scattered around each area, such as plants that spilled healing nectar(or poison) and animals that could be grappled to swing or carry hunters around the map.
• Violation of Common Sense: Fatalis has a special attack called "Demise of Schrade", where it blasts out an enormous torrent of flames that become a One-Hit Kill after a certain point. The first and second times, you have a big wall of metal to hide behind, but that's it. So how do you survive the subsequent blasts? Why, go through the fire and towards Fatalis, of course!
• Violently Protective Girlfriend:
  • While it always the case in older games, in this game a Rathian will know when a hunter is attacking a Rathalos and come to his aid, often with a surprise attack. The improved AI expands upon this with both monsters having increased tendency to attack in tandem while trying to kill a hunter.
  • This is how Lunastra gets introduced: it fends off a Nergigante who saw easy prey in a wounded Teostra, and then fights the Hunter to buy time for the Teostra to escape. Like Rathian, she will also soon intervene if you battle Teostra while she's in the area.
• Virtual Pet: Poogie returns, and if you pet him after a few quests in a row he'll enter a state of loving you to bits. After that you can carry him around to find Poogie costumes and other items. You can also capture various small wildlife in the different maps and let them loose as pets in your room; with each upgrade you can set more down, with the highest room upgrade allowing you to display a small zoo's worth of creatures, which you can then interact with by "resting" in your room.
• Wake-Up Call Boss:
  • Anjanath serves as the wall barring you from leaving the Ancient Forest for other locales. Its extreme aggression is a big change from the Great Jagras and Tobi-Kadachi you were fighting before that. It's also the first monster that will go out of its way to chase you down, demonstrating just how much the new open maps change the way the game is played.
  • Diablos makes the monsters encountered before it look like wet noodles. It has astounding speed and ferocity compared to anything encountered before it (even Anjanath), it is rather foul-tempered and territorial and will accordingly chase a hunter down to trample them to death, and is the first monster you encounter that can regularly hit for half your health in damage. The constant burrowing also prevents you from hitting it and lets it get surprise attacks on you, which complements its high attack power.
  • Nergigante is the first Elder Dragon players will kill and a forewarning of what's to come with its brethren. It's lightning fast and flight capable, its abilities are constantly changing due to his thorns growing and breaking, and its divebomb ability is not only a one-hit kill but it also has a massive AoE radius. Once low on health things get worse, as it will purposefully injure itself to generate thorns and divebomb more frequently while also retreating to a small lair where dodging is even harder.
  • With its implementation in the Spring Update, Deviljho takes this throne up once again, roaming about six star quests, seven star quests, and high-rank expeditions. A new player fresh into high-rank won't be even remotely close to being equipped to deal with it safely until very close to the end of the story.
  • Tempered Kirin, the very first Tempered Elder Dragon that players face at Hunter Rank 49, and the hardest hunt in the game so far (even more than Tempered Deviljho). Anyone who hasn't been building monster specific gear with the right resistances, or hasn't learned to play carefully, focusing on pure DPS, will quickly learn to do so during this hunt. Additionally, the hunt becomes much harder in groups due to its already powerful lightning attacks becoming almost guaranteed one-hit kills, meaning that players who've been using group hunts to get by are now made to learn to play the game solo.
  • Arch Tempered Vaal Hazak. While Tempered Deviljho^note Which is effectively a prototype Arch Tempered Monster and Arch Tempered Kirin were already established walls that only had slight changes elsewhere besides damage and durability, Arch Tempered Vaal Hazak has a tweaked AI that is not only more aggressive, it will effectively take advantage of its miasma armor by landing in the middle regions of the Rotten Vale where the damage over time from the area's effluvia.
  • Barioth serves this role in Iceborne. For anyone who got used to fighting tempered monsters from the base game, the first few enemies you face in the expansion are very manageable, with telegraphed attacks that are simple enough to avoid and which can be tanked fairly well with High Rank gear. Not so with Barioth. He is much more aggressive than anything that comes before him, hits much harder, and his movements are faster and more erratic. The encounter with Barioth serves to tell the player that the kid gloves are officially off now, and any hunter that stubbornly sticks to his or her old builds and gear at this point will be in for a world of hurt if they don't start making Master Rank equipment now.
• Warp Whistle: Hunters can fast-travel between camps outside of combat. Should a hunter find themself in battle and needing to return to camp, they can use a Farcaster to instantly whisk them to the nearest camp.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: The closest thing we have to a class system in Monster Hunter World. Each weapon style is unique and plays differently, filling a different role in a hunting party, with their own pros and cons. Here's a rundown:
  • Great Sword: Mighty Glacier. The ability to charge up slashes results in some of the most spectacular per-hit damage of any weapon in the game. Something of a beginner's trap, as while a straightforward weapon, timing and spacing are crucial; the very long windup between each attack leaves you wide open but landing a hit just right will inflict massive damage and possibly also stun the monster outright. It also has some decent defensive options, but the sword slows you to a crawl when drawn. This is a weapon that requires you to be observant, patient and know timings like the back of your hand, but the payoffs can be BIG when they come through.
  • Longsword: Quick Glass Cannon. Very fast, wide-reach combo attacks which build up into a devastating super attack provided by the Spirit Gauge system, which is repeated ad-infinitum. Longswords combine relatively safe moves that deal high damage with a lot of flash and elegance, and a lofty skill cap. The Longsword is a well-rounded weapon but the average mobility and inability to guard lessen its defensive capabilities. Its long reach and wide swings also makes it infamous in co-op play, as it can inadvertingly trip other players or send them flying. In other words, you must be mindful of your positioning at all times.
  • Sword and Shield: Jack of All Stats. A versatile, lightweight weapon capable of rapid attacks and quick movement. While the shield guard and physical damage is nothing too special, this is a weapon that really can do it all; it can deal both cutting and impact damage types, it is the only weapon in the game that allows you to use items while still drawn which is a feature with countless possible uses, and the fast attack rate makes it a decent choice for inflicting elemental or status ailment damage. It is a weapon with very few glaring faults, but it does count a very short reach among them. Touted often as a beginner's go-to, but some veteran players swear by it as a flexible, practical and reliable choice.
  • Dual Swords: Fragile Speedster. Similar to the Sword and Shield, but sacrificing the guard for blistering fast speed, superb mobility and repositioning options, and very high burst damage especially when combined with elements or status effects - there are even Dual Blades that combine the two in one, spelling double trouble for certain monsters. Things only get crazier when Demon Mode is activated, giving even more attacks and chaining Demon Dodges to become very hard to hit... at the cost of rapidly depleting sharpness and stamina. If you like aggressive and stylish, up-close-and-personal combat then Dual Blades will be your best friend.
  • Hammer: Powerful Glass Cannon. Short reach and no defensive options at all besides simply rolling out of the way, but obscenely high damage and fairly decent mobility too despite the weapon's considerable size and weight. Hitting a monster's head repeatedly will knock it to the ground, allowing brutal followups. The Hammer is the weapon for someone who likes playing with fire a bit, as it inflicts the most important status ailment of all - dead, and very quickly at that, at the expense of defence and, well, any personal safety.
  • Hunting Horn: Oddball Squishy Wizard that is so much more than a simple party cheerleader. The Hunting Horn is similar to the Hammer but each attack contributes a note to a melody that grants other players considerable buffs when played. However your damage drops off when you pause to play, and you're vulnerable to attack when you do. It also deals that ever-important blunt damage for KOs and breaking pieces off. As the least-used weapon in the community and a weapon that has fantastic utility as well as very viable damage potential, the Horn will never fail to steal the show for those of a lighthearted disposition.
  • Lance: Stone Wall. Stout and stoic, the Lance fills a "tank" role as an unstoppable juggernaut, trading raw damage output (which is good but not great) for good reach and the strongest guard in the game. While other weapons falter and dodge, the Lance stands proudly toe-to-toe with even the largest and most powerful monsters. Being able to uniquely attack from behind a guard means taking blows and poking when you see an opening. It also allows for charging attacks, granting a surprising amount of mobility and a relatively quick way to maintain the offensive. This is the weapon for players with a practical mind and a precise eye, who want to strike out from a rock-solid position and always have a response when something potentially painful comes flying your way.
  • Gunlance: Mighty Glacier turned up to eleven. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's just a Lance with a built-in cannon; the Gunlance is much more powerful on the offence with its Wyvernfire shots but loses many of the ordinary Lance's mobility and defence options, though the guard is still excellent. The Wyvernfire also, unfortunately, wears out the sharpness like no-one's business. It demands an excellent sense of timing for when to attack, to sharpen, and to fire off its shots, but can deal horrifying amounts of burst damage if those shots land.
  • Switch Axe: Jack of All Stats in axe form, Mighty Glacier in sword form. Similar to the trick weapons of Bloodborne which have two forms for different situations: use the long axe to play it safe until the monster is down, then switch to sword form and let them have it! The unique phial system also imparts a special property into the sword form which can be bonus attack power, an element or status effect, or even draining the monster's stamina. A complex, difficult to master weapon that never fails to thrill.
  • Charge Blade: Lightning Bruiser in sword and shield form, Glass Cannon in axe form. A mix between Sword and Shield and the Switch Axe, but requires a lot more dexterity than both of them. This weapon has the highest skill ceiling of any weapon, but any who take the time to master it are well rewarded with power, versatility and style in one package. Notable for using the same phial system as the Switch Axe and being the only bladed weapon in the series that can reliably stun monsters like a Hammer, so if you want to be able to do everything at once and are also cool under pressure, possess a sharp memory and want to pull off some staggering combos, the Charge Blade might be the one for you.
  • Insect Glaive: Mechanically Unusual Fighter, verging into Lightning Bruiser territory. A fast, fluid and unusual weapon consisting of a long spear paired with a supporting insect familiar called a Kinsect. It is the only weapon with an aerial moveset as well as a ground one, allowing you to parkour and trapeze with the monster in the air, striking in and out. Remember to take advantage of the Kinsect to collect extract and augment attacks with special properties. Not only does the Insect Glaive appeal to the daredevil hunter who seeks to add a touch of grace to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl, but it also offers a wealth of customization options as the possible combinations of glaive and Kinsect are staggeringly vast.
  • Light Bowgun: Squishy Wizard support. Utilises a variety of support ammo such as status effects, buffs and healing, while also allowing potshots from a safe distance, with good mobility and a high rate of fire. This is the weapon for a tactical mastermind who believes in being forever Crazy-Prepared, while having a selfless and protective attitude to your teammates.
  • Heavy Bowgun: Glass Cannon or ranged Mighty Glacier. Trades utility ammo and mobility for raw firepower and the longest effective range. Take advantage of explosive and elemental damage ammo with incredible damage potential! You can even fit a barrel-shield to your heavy bowgun for better defensive potential. For hunters who are stone-cold, ruthlessly efficient, and don't mind lugging around an artillery piece if it means blasting any monsters to kingdom come.
  • Bow: Fragile Speedster, bordering on Glass Cannon. A happy medium between the Light Bowgun's support and the Heavy Bowgun's raw damage potential, while generally dealing damage at a range just outside of the monster's reach. Arrow coatings can also readily apply a number of useful effects. Renowned for its great mobility and precision, but watch out for your Stamina.
• We Are as Mayflies: In The Witcher crossover, the Wyverian Botanist tells Geralt that he began studying plants because he was tired of watching Human companions come and go around him.
• Why Isn't It Attacking?: For the first time in the series, large monsters don't necessarily attack on sight. A few do, and some will attack if you begin to approach, but in many cases you can safely stroll at a monster's shoulder.
• Womb Level: Rotten Vale hunting area is the underbelly of the Coral Highlands, a giant mass of rotting flesh and viscera from all the creatures that die in the Highlands. The main part of the area consists of the corpses of two Dalamadur, giant serpentine Elder Dragons that are as big as a mountain in life.
• The Worf Effect:
  • If certain large monsters meet, they may have a Turf War, where they will engage in a brief but fierce fight. Most are fairly one-sided and each matchup will typically have the same result each time—for example, Anjanath beats Great Jagras and Tobi-Kadachi, but is beaten by Rathalos. In rarer cases, both monsters will take damage, though one will come out as victorious in the end, as is the case with Barroth fighting Jyuratodus and Nergigante fighting Teostra or Kushala Daora.
  • Deviljho shows itself as one of the game's biggest threats by picking fights with apex monsters in particular and always winning. Smaller monsters don't even stand a chance, and it will simply grab its opponent and use its body as a bludgeon. The only monster that gets away in the base game is Bazelgeuse and even it only escapes because Jho tries to tear its throat out and gets a mouthful of explosive scales for its trouble. The one that stands out is how Deviljho deals with Diablos: it catches and stops Diablos mid-charge and then suplexes it for a ton of damage. Scary for many players given Diablos has a reputation as a rather tough Wake-Up Call Boss and is a favourite for a lot of theoretical "who would win?" monster matchups.
  • Lunastra is introduced when Nergigante tries to jump a wounded Teostra. Lunastra arrives and the two proceed to tag-team Nergigante until he retreats with tail between his legs.
  • Many of the monsters introduced in Iceborne debut with custscenes featuring them trouncing a monster from the base game. Deviljho in particular gets tailwhipped into the ground by Yian Garuga.
  • Rajang's introductory cutscene has it defeating a Kirin by snapping the Elder Dragon's horn off. Kirin suffers the same fate in turf wars against Rajang as well.
  • Yian Garuga's intro cutscene had it taking on Deviljho and managing to send the World Eater running. Yian Garuga's turf war against Rajang ends with the latter throwing Yian Garuga around like a ragdoll.
  • The Huntsman is shown to be one of the toughest hunters in Astera and saves the player from Nergigante early in the base game's story. But then, in Iceborne, the Huntsman is shown going one on one with the Velkhana and is nearly killed to show that this new threat is nothing like the expedition has faced before.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: During the crossover event with The Witcher, Geralt ends up in a society that actually respects monster-hunting as the dangerous, specialized field it is. When he slays a Leshen, an Outside-Context Problem the Research Commission couldn't even approach, Astera is more than willing to follow their own guidelines and actually pay him a king's ransom. Geralt is forced to turn it down as he's about to head back to his own dimension, as Monster Hunter World's currency would be no good there.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Over 40 years the Guild has only managed to send five fleets to the New World to form and aid the Research Commission on account of the seas and the skies being turbulent on the best of days. This leaves the Research Commission cut off and makes returning home a borderline impossible task most of the time. And while the Research Commission makes their absolute best efforts to send couples expecting children home, it's far more common for children that are born in the New World, such as the Field Commander, to grow up there. Once the Zorah Magdaros crisis is solved, the seas calm enough that the Captain decides to start braving them on the Argosy to provide a line of imports from the Old World. Once Xeno'jiiva is slain, the seas and skies clear completely allowing the Research Commission and Guild to regularly send ships, supplies, and provide transport back home to the Old World should one desire; however most of the Commission's hunters have grown to love the new continent so much that they don't want to go back.

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