Intermediate Tips

Here are some tips for players who are stuck mid-game with certain challenges proving them a hard time or returning hunters getting ready for Iceborne.

Cultivate!

The Botanical Research NPC in Astera can grow useful items for you to use in your journey.

Some of the useful items we have found so far:

• Herb (for crafting Potions)
• Honey  (for crafting Mega Potions)
• Might Seed (for attack boost or sell for instant money)
• Flashbugs (for crafting Flash Pods)
• Thunderbugs (foo crafting Shock Traps)

Craft Thunder and Fire Weapons

We are heading into the frozen wilds, and a number of the monsters are weak to Thunder and Fire.

For example, the Piscine Wyvern, Beotodus, is weak to Fire and Thunder, while Tigrex is weak to Thunder. Barioth is weak to Fire.

Anjanath’s bow, high raw, high fire element.

The Anjanath Weapon Tree has high raw plus fire element at the cost of negative affinity, while Rathalos weapons have great raw and decent fire element, with positive affinity to boot.

The iconic Rathalos Armor and Long Sword.

Get Those Tools

Tools consist of Mantles and Boosters. Mantles are wearable cloaks that bestow hunters with bonuses and resistances useful against certain monsters. Boosters provide you and your team helpful buffs and heals. These tools offer great utility to the squad.

The Iceproof Mantle is invaluable as we head into Iceborne, providing extra Ice resistance and deep snow mobility.

Here are all the tools:

Mantles:

• Ghillie Mantle
  • Makes you temporarily invisible to monsters
• Vitality Mantle
  • Negates a Fixed Amount of Damage
• Glider Mantle
  • Allows gliding, grants the power to ride strong winds. Also makes it easier to mount monsters.
• Apothecary Mantle
  • Increases Status Buildup
• Bandit Mantle
  • Causes Rare Trade-In Item Drops
• Challenger Mantle
  • Aggros monsters
• Evasion Mantle
  • Increases evasion window, grants increased attack when evading at the last second.
• Fireproof Mantle
  • Increased Fire Res, immune to Fire Blight and Blast Blight
• Iceproof Mantle
  • Increased Ice Res, immune to Ice Blight, improves deep snow mobility
• Thunderproof Mantle
  • Increased Thunder Res, immune to Thunder Blight
• Waterproof Mantle
  • Increased Water Res, immune to Water Blight, improves deep water mobility
• Dragronproof Mantle
  • Increased Dragon Res, immune to Dragon Blight
• Immunity Mantle
  • Removes & Nullifies abnormal status effects
• Impact Mantle
  • Adds or improves exhaust/stun with attacks.
• Rocksteady Mantle
  • Eliminates flinching, provides Windproof, Earplugs, and Tremor Resistance. Reduces incoming damage.
• Temporal Mantle
  • Auto-dodge huge attacks, effectively being almost invincible. Think Ultra Instinct Goku.

Boosters:

• Health Booster
  • Places a smoker that gradually restores your health.
• Affinity Booster
  • Places a smoker that increases affinity.
• Cleanser Booster
  • Places a smoker that removes any abnormal status effects and elemental blights

Arekkz has compiled a video on how to unlock all of the tools stated above.

Finish Those Optional Quests

As you can see above, completing optional quests net you a boatload of utility items as well as certain items for deliveries. This helps you considerably for the final push later in the game.

Get All Palico Gadgets

Your cat partner is your invaluable ally, often helping you in ways you could not imagine. Provide your Palico with more tools to diversify its usefulness.

If you’re planning on hunting alone in Iceborne, the Palico’s Coral Orchestra will help a lot. It works like a Hunting Horn, and it buffs your hunter in all sorts of ways that make the fights less punishing.

Palico Gadgets also get buffs in Iceborne. For example, the Vigorwasp Spray at Level 11 can save you from a cart once with the Vigorwasp Revival.

Subsequently, completing these will also provide you with the Tailraider Rides. This is quite useful everywhere in the game. Think Uber rides, but with lizards and skunks as your drivers.

Stock Up On Items

Gather as many consumables that you can, the Tempered Elder Dragons will burn through your potion collections faster than a drunk wizard.

Flash Pods and Dung Pods are useful to change the flow of the fight.

Signs of severe hoarding disorder.

Dung Pods will be useful to deter monsters as invaders such as Bazelgeuse and Deviljho will start to interrupt fights at higher ranks.

Unlock The Augments

Once you hit HR29, you’ll have a chance to receive an illusive Warrior Streamstone by completing a Threat Level 2 Tempered Monster investigation. This will allow you to augment your weapon, bestowing it with special bonuses such as follows:

• Attack Increase (+5 True Attack Value) – Increases Attack. Stacks with other upgrades.
• Affinity Increase (+10% Affinity) – Increases Affinity. Stacks with other upgrades.
• Defense Increase (+10 Defense) – Increases Defense and has a chance to reduce damage taken each time you receive damage. Stacks with other upgrades.
• Slot Upgrade – Adds an extra jewel slot. Stack with other upgrades to increase slots level.
• Health Regen – Regain Health as you land attacks. Stack with other upgrades to increase the amount of health regained.

Only Warrior and Hero Streamstones can unlock augments for your weapons.

Rarity 6 weapons will have 3 augmentation slots and require 1 Warrior Streamstone for each, along with some other materials. Rarity 7 weapons have 2 slots and require 2 Warrior Streamstones per slot. Rarity 8 weapons have only 1 slot that requires one Hero’s Streamstone.

Armour can also be augmented. However, augmenting armour allows for only one type of Augment, Upgrade Limit Removal. This removes the limit and allows further upgrading through the standard method to increase the pieces defence.

NEXT PAGE: ADVANCED TIPS