MH dictionary

As the closest comparison given what we currently know about Dauntless, Monster Hunter forms the basis of very many threads and responses. While most of us were led to Dauntless through Monster Hunter, there are some who have never played the series and I expect more will show up as we move through PAX and the future. This thread is to give those people a reference to use when we throw jargon around.

##Games most likely to be mentioned
Monster Hunter - The very first game, released for the PS2
Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (FU) - 2nd generation game for the PSP, 2nd gen introduced several weapons, FU specifically introduced Felyne comrades
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3U) - 3rd generation game for the 3DS, 3rd gen is notable for the inclusion of underwater combat, a feature not found in any other generation. Also, switch axe.
Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (4U) - 4th generation game for the 3DS, 4th gen introduced mounting, charge blades, and insect glaives. 4U also places more of an emphasis on storyline than any other MH game.
Monster Hunter Generations (Gen, MHX) - Also known as Monster Hunter X (pronounced “cross”) in Japan, runs on the 4th gen engine. Gen introduces Hunting Styles, Hunter Arts, Prowler Mode, and Deviants. Currently the most recent entry.
Monster Hunter XX (MHXX) - Pronounced “Double Cross,” the upcoming “G” version of Generations. Has not been announced for the west, but localization is expected.
Monster Hunter Frontier - Monster Hunter MMO, Japan only.
Monster Hunter Online - Monster Hunter MMO, China only. Do note that the two MMOs are not the same game.

##Weapons
Sword and Shield (SnS) - Fast and mobile, can use items without sheathing
Dual Blades (DB) - Two short swords, attack super fast, can power up in exchange for stamina drain
Great Sword (GS) - Overcompensation sword, can charge up attacks for massive damage
Long Sword (LS) - Enormous katana, features flowing combos and makes you look like a weeaboo
Hammer - The man’s weapon, can charge up attacks, hitting a monster’s head enough can knock it out
Hunting Horn (HH) - The true man’s weapon, KO monsters while doot dooting buffs for you and your teammates
Lance - Big shield and a bigger pokey stick, has a Leeroy Jenkins charge attack
Gunlance (GL) - Like lance except instead of charging, can shoot explosions
Switch Axe (SA) - Giant axe that transforms into giant sword
Charge Blade (CB) - Sword and shield that transforms into a big axe
Insect Glaive (IG) - Spinny stick with beetle buddy, send out the bug to harvest buffs from monsters, pole vaults make mounting ezpz
Light Bowgun (LBG) - Looks like a gun, but is actually a crossbow, shoots bullets
Heavy Bowgun (HBG) - points at LBG What is this? A weapon for ants? It needs to be at least 3 times bigger!
Bow - Bow and arrow, can charge up attacks, coat arrows with special sauce for added fun
Prowler - Technically not a weapon, prowler mode lets you play as a cat.

Hunting Styles - Generations introduced a new concept called Hunting Styles, which are variant movesets that can be used to suit your playstyle. There are 4 Hunting Styles.
Guild Style - The standard moveset from the previous games. Can use 2 Hunter Arts
Striker Style - Uses a simplified moveset. Can use 3 Hunter Arts and they charge up faster.
Aerial Style - Gives up a couple moves to change the normal dodge roll(or backhop) into the aerial roll. If you aerial roll into a monster or player, the hunter will vault high into the air with special moves that can only be used from the air. Can use 1 Hunter Art.
Adept (Bushido) Style - Gives up a couple moves to change the normal dodge roll (or shield block) into the adept roll (or block). If timed correctly, performing a successful adept roll gives the player a short window to use a powerful new attack. Also known as “Git Gud Style.” Can use 1 Hunter Art.

Hunter Arts - Super moves, basically. Need to be charged up by attacking things. There are a number of general use Hunter Arts as well as arts specific to each weapon type (3 each).

Notable Monsters
Small Monsters
Bullfango - A boar, likes to charge at hunters and send them flying
Rheneplos - A triceratops/rhino thing, charges at hunters and sends them flying
Konchou - Big pill bug, curls up and charges at hunters. Noticing a pattern here?
Vespoid - Giant mosquito, has a paralyzing sting
Bnahbra - Vespoid, but looks kinda like a flying mushroom

Large Monsters
Rathalos - Flying, fire-breathing wyvern. Mascot monster for the entire series, it’s not a Monster Hunter game without good 'ole Rath.
Rathian - Female Rathalos, colored green instead of red.
Tigrex - What a T-Rex would be if it was a dragon: Orange and blue and about to show you the definition of pain
Nargacuga - Panther dragon with bladed wings. Gets cool glowy eye-trails when angry
Plesioth - Fish with legs, often brought up for it’s terribad hitboxes, notably hipcheck
Lagiacrus - Part crocodile, part electric eel, all badass
Zinogre - Thunder wolf, likes to breakdance
Deviljho - Hungry hungry pickle. Eats anything, breaths lasers at whatever tries to not get eaten
Brachydios - Pompadour sporting dinosaur. Punches things with exploding slime.
Gore Magala - Edgelord dragon, can infect others with edginess
Shagaru Magala - Adult Gore, outgrew its emo phase. Now white and gold and ready to wreck your ****
Seregios - Pinecone eagle, lots of sharp edges. Also known as Steve
Astalos - Bug dragon that happens to also be a bug zapper, how ironic
Gammoth - Wooly Mammoth, protects herself with snow socks
Mizutsune - Bubble bath fox, slip 'n slide all day long
Glavenus - T-Rex with a sword for a tail, 'nuff said
Kirin - Unicorn that summons lightning, its buttocks are notoriously made of diamonds
Blangonga - Snow monkey, super jumpy and a real pain in the behind
Rajang - Giant monkey, goes super saiyan when angry
Yian Garuga - Purple chicken from hell, knows half a million ways to make you rage quit. It’s diet consists of the bitter tears of triple carters and quest abandoners.
Akantor - Volcano dinosaur, it’s weapons are known for having high damage but horrendous sharpness.

Terminology
Abandon Quest - Rage quit a mission. Important to note is that when you abandon quest, your character is reset to how he/she was before you started the quest, effectively saving your wasted items.
Affinity - Crit chance, surprisingly not as important as one might think due to critical hits only dealing 25% more damage. Negative affinity is a thing, giving a chance for damage to be reduced by 25% instead.
Apex/Hyper/Deviant Monsters - Souped up versions of monsters. Each has a different way of supercharging monsters, but the general idea is about the same.
Armor Skill - Special bonuses granted by armor. In MH, each armor piece gives some number of points in a couple armor skills. However, armor skills have no effect until you get enough points for that particular skill. Generally, building a complete armor set from the same monster will activate all the skills the individual pieces give.
Attack Up Large (AuL) - Commonly used armor skill, does what it says on the tin
Barrel Bomb - Explosive barrel. Comes in several varieties, though the most commonly used is Large Barrel Bomb+ (LBB+). LBB+ does a significant amount of fixed damage, though it has no fuse and must be set off manually.
Break/Wound - Dealing enough damage to a specific part on a monster’s body will cause it to visibly become damaged, known as breaking that part. Some parts can be broken several times. Tails can be broken, but this is different than severing.
Capturing - Alternate way to complete a hunt, instead of killing the monster. Involves luring a low health monster into a trap then throwing tranquilizers in its face. Capturing monsters offers a different reward table at the end of the quest.
Carting - When the player’s health becomes 0, the hunter faints and a bunch of cats throw the body on a wheelbarrow and dump him/her back in base camp.
Carving - The act of harvesting materials from a dead monster. Most large monsters allow you to carve 3-4 times, tails usually only once.
Dunking - Causing a charging monster to flinch, stopping the attack. Sometimes used to refer to knocking a flying monster out of the sky.
Earplugs - Commonly used armor skill, prevents the hunter from being affected by roars. Some monsters have particularly loud roars, and require the upgraded version, High Grade (HG) Earplugs.
Elemental - Some weapons have elemental damage in addition to physical damage. Something to note is that elemental damage is not affected by motion values, meaning fast weapons make much better use of elemental than slow weapons.
Evasion +2/Evade Extender - Commonly used armor skills, they improve dodge rolls.
Exhaust - When monsters get tired, they tend to trip over themselves, fail to use certain moves, and generally sit still and drool. Monsters will try to end the exhausted state quickly by eating.
Fashion Hunter - Term for the practice of choosing equipment based on looks rather than functionality. Jokingly called “the endgame” by many.
Felyne - Cats that can talk and have opposable thumbs. Make great chefs. Also, cat puns. Lots and lots of cat puns.
Food Skills - Before going on a quest, the player can order and eat a delicious meal cooked by the finest felyne chefs. In addition to some nice stat boosts (50% extra health? yes please!), these meals can grant some special buffs. Generally food skills are referred to as "eating for [food skill]
Guild/Hub - The multiplayer area. Guild has its own set of quests, including more difficult versions of single player quests as well as quests featuring monsters not found in the single player mode. Although guild quests are designed for multiple players, all of them are reasonably doable solo.
Hipcheck - An attack used by many bipedal monsters. This involves the monster turning sideways and attempting to slam into the hunter with its hip.
KO - Hitting monsters in the head enough with certain weapons can knock them out for a few seconds. Nothing screams badass more than smacking a dragon in the face so hard it falls unconscious.
Low/High/G Rank - Think of these as difficulty levels. The player starts off doing low rank quests, then later gains access to high rank then G rank quests. Most equipment have versions for eacch rank, though ones that build out of monsters only found in higher ranks don’t have lower rank equivalents.
Mind’s Eye - Commonly mentioned armor skill, prevents you from bouncing. A few weapon types have ways to get this for free.
Mixed Set - An armor set composed of non-matching parts to activate a desired combination of armor skills.
Melynx - Black Felynes, have a reputation for stealing things [insert racism joke here]
Motion Values (MV) - Hidden multipliers associated with all attacks used to determine damage. Stronger attacks have higher Motion Values, etc.
Mounting - When you do enough damage to a monster from the air (generally achieved by jumping off cliffs and ledges or using Aerial Style), your character will jump onto the monster’s back and start a little minigame involving hacking at the monster with your carving knife while it tries to throw you off. Successful completion of the minigame deals a large amount of fixed damage and knocks the monster over.
Panic/Superman Dive - Emergency maneuver used when running away from a monster with your weapon sheathed. The hunter dives onto the ground face first, full invulnerability frames until the hunter starts to get up.
Palico - White Felynes, also used to refer to the felyne helpers you can hire in Generations
Raw - The physical damage stat on weapons.
Roar - Most large monsters have very loud voices. When they roar, the hunter cringes and covers his/her ears.
Sever - When you cut a monster’s tail off. This is different from breaking it (generally, tails that can break must be broken before they can be severed). Severed tails can be carved separately from the body and have different drop pools.
Sharpness - A stat on melee weapons, if the weapon is not sharp enough to pierce through a monster’s hide/scales/what have you, it bounces off and puts the hunter off balance. Attacks deplete sharpness, requiring the player to sharpen their weapon from time to time (yes, even hammers). There are 5 levels of sharpness. In order from worst to best, they are red, yellow, green, blue, white. In games that have G rank, purple sharpness is added, being stronger than white.
Shiny - An item dropped by a monster, represented by a shining glint on the ground. Different monsters have different conditions for dropping shinies including, but not limited to, surprising it, breaking parts, and letting it relax and dig one up.
Stamina - Resource bar used when performing defensive maneuvers such as dashing, rolling, blocking, etc. Stamina is not normally used for attacking, though a few weapon types have some sort of special move that uses stamina.
Status - Some weapons have status damage in addition to physical damage. Much like elemental, status is fixed and therefore more effective on faster weapons like SnS. Monster Hunter deals with status in an interesting way; each monster has a certain resistance to each status. Status weapons have a chance (30%, IIRC) of applying status damage in addition to physical damage. When the accumulated status damage exceeds the monster’s resistance, the satus takes effect, status damage is cleared, and the monster’s resistance increases.
Subspecies/Variant Species - Monsters that have evolved small adaptations to better suit their environment, equates to stronger palette swaps of existing monsters
Tripping - Term used for when players get knocked over by another player’s attacks. Do note that hitting teammates does no damage. Long swords have a bad reputation for doing this due to their long reach and frequent horizontal swings.
Triple Carting - Quests fail the third time you cart, this is a combined count in multiplayer. Thusly, failing a quest by getting beaten up is known as triple carting. The term can also be used when referring to a person who faints 3 times in a multiplayer quest.
Ultimate/G Version - So this is how Monster Hunter games come out: A MH game is released, it has low and high rank. Later, a second version is released that includes bug and balance fixes, new monsters and equipment, and most importantly, G rank.
Village - The single player part of the game. Depending on the game, you get 1-2 Felynes to help you out.