Dual Swords
Low Rank

The default Dual Swords will be acceptable for the first few quests, but the Bone Path is our target. The Bone Path starts off with lower sharpness, but higher base damage.

There are really only 2 reasonable weapons paths for Dual Swords that stay reasonable from Low rank to High Rank. Jyuratodus’ Water Swords, and Tobi-Kadachi’s Thunder Swords. The Jyuratodus path is easier to upgrade, but has a few lulls. The Tobi-Kadachi path is arguably more useful in low rank, but it’s harder to upgrade in high rank.

The short answer is: Make the Jyuratodus or Tobi-Kadachi Dual Swords, and upgrade them as soon as possible and you’ll steamroll the entire game.

Now for the long answer:

As soon as possible, you’ll  want to make or buy Bone Hatchets. Afterwards, upgrade them to Bone Hatchets 2 using 2 Monster Bone S. These can be gathered from Bone Piles around the Ancient Forest, and as quest rewards.

There is an optional upgrade here. If you got 2 Monster Bone M while fighting the Pukei-Pukei, and then found an Ancient Bone, from the bone piles in the Ancient Forest, you can upgrade your Bone Hatchets 2 to Bone Hatchets 3. This path is a dead end, and you’ll have to build another set of Bone Hatchet 2’s for the following upgrade. It will make the next fights easier, but Bone Hatchet 2 will be adequate.

After that optional upgrade, you’ll want to complete your mandatory assignments of hunting a barroth, and then “Sinister Shadows of the Swamp” to hunt a Jyuratodus.

The Jyuratodus Path is going to be our main weapon, which makes Dual Blade progression incredibly simple. They have higher raw damage than most comparables, and have high water element, which a deceptive number of monsters are weak to.

After defeating a single Jyuratodus, hopefully, you get enough materials to upgrade your Bone Hatchet 2 to Madness Pangas 1, which requires 1 Jyuratodus Fin, 1 Jyuratodus Shell, 3 Jyuratodus Scales, and 1 Aqua Sac. All of these materials are farmed from Jyuratodus. Aqua sacs will most likely be the limiting factor here, they’re only available as rewards. Again, try and capture it if you can. Also, while you’re fighting Jyuratodus, make sure to kill and carve the Gajau, which are the catfish looking monsters around the area. You’ll need their parts for the second, and third upgrades to the Madness Pangas.

Madness Pangas are everything we want in a starter weapon: high damage, added elemental damage, and green sharpness. From here, it’s just increasing damage as we upgrade it.

After beating Jyuratodus, you’ll have to fight a Tobi Kodachi. Conveniently, Tobi is weak against water elemental damage. Use your new weapons to take out Tobi.

Now this is another optional sidegrade, but will make a few fights easier if you go through with it. Make a second set of Bone Hatchets, and upgrade them to Bone Hatchet 2’s using 2 Monster Bone S.

From there, upgrade them to Pulsar Hatchets, using 1 Tobi-Kadachi Claw, 3 Tobi-Kadachi Scales, and 2 Tobi-Kadachi Pelts. Right now, these aren’t necessarily better than the Madness Pangas, but they are extremely comparable. Our next hunts are Anjanath, and Zorah Magdaros, both of which are weak to water, but it’s your preference to make these or not. Really it’s a question of whether you prefer farming Tobi-Kadachi, or Jyuratodus for the entirety of this upgrade tier. You can farm both if you want.

Now, conveniently, Tobi is weak to water, and Jyuratodus is weak to lightning when the mud is not hardened. If you ever need to farm parts from either monster, just swap your weapons. Use Madness Pangas on Tobi, and Pulsar Hatchets on Jyuratodus.

After defeating Zorah Magdoros, don’t worry, it’s a setpeice, and you can’t really lose, you’ll gain access to the Coral Highlands. You’ll be forced into an expedition to explore. Use this time to gather materials to upgrade your Pulsar Hatchets.

Here, by mining in the Coral Highlands, you can get Coral Crystal. Use 2 Tobi-Kadachi Elecrtrodes, 3 Tobi-Kadachi Claws, 2 Electro Sacs, and 3 Coral Crystals to upgrade your Pulsar Hatchet 1, to Pulsar Hatchets 2.

I’m going to recommend you pick these up for the following fights in the Coral Highlands. It will have higher damage output from the Madness Pangas against Paolumu as he’s resistant to water, and Legania as it’s weak to thunder.

After you’ve defeated Paolumu, you’ll descend into the Rotten Vale. Here use the Pulstar Hatchets 2 if you have them, to take out Rabogaan otherwise the Madness Pangas 1 will be fine.

Afterwards, make sure to hunt a Great Girros in the Rotten Vale. Use the Madness Pangas as Great Girros is weak to water.

Now, upgrade your Madness Pangas to Madness Pangas 2. The upgrade requires 2 Great Girros hides, and an additional 3 Jyuratodus Fins, 3 Jyuratodus Shells, 3 Gajau skins, which are the fish that swim around the Jyuratodus in Wildspire Wastes, and 2 Great Girros hides from the Rotten Vale.

Shelf your new Madness Pangas 2, and equip the Pulsar Hatchets 2 when you tackle Legania. Legania is weak to Thunder, and should have higher damage output than Madness Pangas , but again will be fairly comparable if you didn’t build the Pulsar Hatchets.

If you’re lucky, you’ll get two Monster Bone+ from Legania. Otherwise, you’ll have to farm any 5 star monster to get them. These include Legania, Odogaron, Rathalos, and Diablos.

Finally, the last upgrade in Low Rank is to get Madness Pangas 3. This upgrade requires 2 Monster Bone+, 4 Jyratodus Fangs, 3 Jyuratodus Shells, and 3 Gajau Whiskers.

You can also upgrade to Pulsar Hatchets 3, which requires 2 Monster Bone+, 2 Tobi Kadachi Electrodes, 2 Tobi-Kadachi Membranes, and 2 Warped Bones. The Warp bones can be gathered from bone piles in the Rotten Vale.

The 5 star monsters are a mix. Odogaron is weaker to thunder then to water, but madness pangas 3 have more raw damage, where as pulsar hatchets 3 have lower damage, but 10% affinity, and thunder. It’s a toss up which is better. The same goes for Rathalos.

Diablos is weaker to water, so use Madness Pangas.

After beating the Zohr Magara setpeice, and killing a deceptively strong Pukei-Pukei, you’ll gain access to High Rank quests. Congratulations, the baby gloves are coming off.

High Rank

Our immediate goal in High Rank is a weapon upgrade to compensate for the increased health of monsters, with a long term goal of bringing our sharpness to the next level.

We continue the trend of upgrading the Jyuratodus swords and optionally the Tobi Kadachi swords. It’s an identical trend of exactly what we did in Low Rank.

At the start of High Rank, you’ll be able to free-hunt Jyuratoda in the Wildspire Wastes. This is recommended as the first set of upgrades only require parts from him. I found I could only get High Rank Tobi from Investigation quests, so check there if you want to do the Tobi Path.

Farm Jyuratodus until you get the required parts, 2 Jyuratodus Fin+, 2 Jyuratodus Carapace, 3 Jyuratodus Scale+, and 5 Gajau Scale. Upgrade your Madness Pangas 3 to Jyura Hatchets 1.


If you want to use the Tobi-Kadachi weapons instead, you’ll need 3 Tobi-Kadachi Claw+, 4 Tobi-Kadachi Scale+, 3 Tobi-Kadachi Pelt+, and 3 Dragonvein Crystals. Dragonvein can be found in Wildspire Wastes, and Coral Highlands in High Rank. Look for red mining nodes, and you’ll get them from there. Upgrade your Pulsar Hatchets 3, to Kadachi Claws.

Unf ortunately, you won’t be able to upgrade either sword path further until you fight the Pink Rathian. This is probably the hardest monster you’ve fought up until this point because Green sharpness just doesn’t cut it against it. Your blades will bounce constantly, and it’s moveset is really annoying. After beating it, hopefully you get the 3 Monster Hardbones that you need, and immediately upgrade your swords to that sweet, sweet Blue sharpness. If not, you’ll have to farm more Pink Rathians until you get the 3 Monster Hardbones to upgrade.

If you want to upgrade the Kadachi Claws, you’ll need 2 majestic horns from Diablos instead of the Monster Hard bones from Pink Rathian, which makes it a bit more annoying to farm.

Upgrade your Jyura Hatchets 1 to Jyura Hatchets 2 by using 3 Monster Hardbones, 4 Jyuratodus Fin+, 3 Torrent sac, and 3 Grand Gajau Whiskers.

If you want to hunt diablos for Majestic horns, be my guest. Upgrade your Kadachi Claws 1 to Kadachi Claws 2 by using 2 Majestic Horns, 2 Tobi Katdachi Electrode+, 4 Tobi Kadachi Claw+, and 3 Thunder Sac.

Either of these will tide you over until you finally face off against Nergigante.

Nergigante is the big boy we’ve been buiilding up to for pretty much the whole game. After your hunt, if you’re lucky you’ll have gotten 2 Elder Dragon Bones to upgrade the Jyuratorus Hatchets. If you’re using the Kadachi Claws, you need 2 Nergigante Claws. If not, you’ll have to repeat the hunt, or continue progressing, you will be fighting more Elder Dragons.

After Nergigante, you’ll be required to do quests in the Ancient Forest, Wildspire Wastes, and Rotten Vale until you get enough research points to get the next set of Elder Dragons. I would recommend farming Barroth in Wildspire Wastes, and Radogaan in Rotten Vale until you complete the research. Both of these monsters are easy to kill, and will help progress the research level when you complete a hunt. Radogaan can be killed in about 7 minutes with the weapons you’re using, and has a pretty reasonable drop rate of Wyvern Gems. I got two in the time it took for me to complete the Rotten Vale research. Otherwise, you can farm Odogaron since it has some reasonable gear for Dual Blades.

After you get the Wyvern Gem, 2 Elder Dragon Bones, and the 6 Jyuratodus Fin+’s, and 5 Jyuratodus Fang+, upgrade your Jyura Hatchets 2 to Jyura Hatchets 3.

The Kadachi claws require 2 Nergigante Talon, 4 Tobi-Kadachi Electrode+, 6 Tobi-Kadachi Claw+, and 1 Wyvern Gem.

Now, you have an end game weapon, that’s more than capable of beating the game.

I didn’t bother with the Tobi-Kadachi weapons past Low-Rank, as I found Jyuratodus to be easier to farm, and never struggled with a monster.

End Game Weapons
The big stand outs in my opinion, are the Nergigante Path, and the Xeno’Jiva path.The Nergigante Dual Swords mostly just look cool, but they have High Elderseal, which is useful when you’re fighting against Kirin as it will knock it out of it’s enraged state pretty easily.

The Xeno’Jiva path is just really easy to farm because Xeno’Jiva is just a big old punching bag. They have natural white sharpness, but do suffer from lower raw and elemental damage as a result. They have low Elderseal, which is a nice bonus but it’s not nearly as effective as high. They have the added benefit of 2 sockets for decorations which is nice.

You can also look into Fire and Ice for combination Blast and Ice elemental damage.

End Card Spiel
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