Recommended Playing MHW Armor Guide Script

Introduction
Armor progression isn’t black and white in Monster Hunter World. A lot of it depends on what weapon you’re using, how willing you are to farm, and there is an element of building things that look cool.

As a general rule of thumb, you shouldn’t care too much about the actual defensive stats, and elemental resistances on a set: You should be looking at the armor skills. This means you may choose not to upgrade if you have a great skill. That being said, armor and resistances can save you, and the armor sets are tiered. As you progress through the game, the armors available to you will often gain additional defenses and resistances. If you’re finding yourself struggling, upgrading your armor with armor spheres, or building higher tiered gear will help you survive, even if you have to give up some favorable armor skills.

Certain weapons favor certain skills, while other’s are useful for the vast majority of weapon types, and others don’t provide an immediate combat advantage, and are more for utility.

As a rule of thumb, we only care about skills that give us a distinct combat advantage, so things like Honey Hunter, which lets you get more honey from beehives should be considered largely useless, unless your goal is simply to farm lots of honey instead of hunting giant monsters.

This guide is laid out to provide a baseline. Depending your weapon choices, and preferences, you may want to explore other equipment options that are not recommended by this guide. There will be a lot of “If you’re using this, pick up this”.

GENERAL ARMOR SKILLS:
Attack Up
Critical Eye - Affinity Boost = Critical Hit Rate
Weakness Exploit - Critical Eye to an extreme degree
Fortify - Easy to get, decent rewards for low investment (only need 1 point)
Agitator - "Challenger" get attack and affinity boost when monster enrages (has huge uptime)


WEAPON SPECIFIC:
Lance - Guard, Evade Extender (evade lance), constitution (for guarding)
Longsword, Dual Blades, Hammer, Greatsword - Focus
Dual Blades, Hammer - Marathon Runner
Greatsword - Critical Draw
Switch Axe - Evade Extender (side hops)
Hunting Horn - Horn Maestro (not great)
Gunlance/Charge Blade - Artillery
Insect Glaive - Mounting Master
Bow/Bowgun - Special Ammo Up (Dragon peircer)
Bow - Constitution

Marathon Runner/Constitution - Good for everything honestly, you sprint tons and dodge all the time regardless of weapon type.

Low Rank

Unfortunately, in Low Rank, the vast majority of skills are only at the first tier, which means you’re not going to get much benefit out of anything. There will be pretty easy progression that will apply to every weapon for the first few hunts, and a few weapon specific upgrades along the way.

The equipment here will sometimes go a long time without an upgrade, so you may want to lose a skill, for an upgrade to gain increased defenses and resistances against certain monsters. If you’re struggling, getting a skill like divine blessing can be extremely useful, it saved me more times than I care to admit in my first playthrough.

Right out the gate, gather from Bone Piles to get ancient bones, and monster bone S. You’ll want to build the bone helmet and bone chest, and possibly the gloves.

The Bone Helmet gives you health boost, which will give you more maximum HP on hunts. This will be useful early on, but as your canteen gets upgraded, and you start stockpiling crafting materials to make Nutrients and Mega Nutrients it becomes useless.  It’s a great starter skill though, and will be beneficial to make here.

The Bone Chest which provides Attack 1 will be useful for every single weapon type.
 Unfortunately, the damage bonus is fairly minimal, but it’s better than the nothing you start with. Make these two peices as soon as possible.

If you’re using a hammer or hunting horn, you can pick up the Bone Vambraces for slugger, which will give you more KO power against monsters. The Hunting horn will also benefit from the bone waist, with Horn Maestro.

The Kestodon Gloves are actually decent if you can consistently slide, which is surprisingly frequent in a lot of areas. You do need to slide for an extended period of time for the bonus to affinity, which is your critical hit rate, to actually kick in, and it wears off quickly, so it’s not a great skill. You’ll have to kill Kestodons as part of standard progression, and considering there isn’t much else this early, you may as well pick these up, even if you never get to use the ability. Don’t bother if you don’t get enough materials.

Continue progressing, and take out the Great Jagras.

The Jagras Coil provides Fortify. This will be a useful skill if you find yourself carting a lot. You’ll get a 10% attack bonus, and 15% defense bonus with each cart. You can stack this twice to get 20% attack, and 30% defense for your third and final attempt at the monster. There’s not a lot else at this point, and most of the Great Jagras weapons aren’t great, so you can safely use your materials to make this waist armor. Even if you don’t end up carting, and actually utilizing Fortify that often, it’s still a decent skill to have for when it happens. Even the best of us will have an off hunt and cart once or twice. You can also do some next level strategies like double carting at the start of a hunt for that 20% attack boost.

After hunting Kulu Ya-Ku, build the Kulu Greaves. This provide critical eye, which will be a 3% affintiy boost. Affinity is basically your critical hit rate. Going from 0 to 3% will allow you to actually perform critical hits which will be a net damage gain. It’s not a huge amount, but will provide a damage boost, and it’s better than nothing.

Optionally, you can also build the Kulu Chest for Stamina Surge. Stamina Surge will be better than +3 attack from the Bone Chest, especially if you use a weapon type that consistently drains stamina, like Bow, Switch Axe, or Dual blades. You should probably pick this up over the bone chest for most weapon types, as you’ll be sprinting and dodging a lot during hunts, but the bone chest will be fine otherwise.

So your armor after beating Kulu Ya Ku should look something like this:
Bone Head, Kulu Chest, Kestodon Gloves, Great Jagras Waist,  and Kulu Boots.

So there’s a full set of general purpose armor finished, which will be good for getting you through until better gear shows up at a few intervals during Low Rank.

After Barroth, you’ll have some options, but it’s largely dependent on what weapon type you’re using.

The Barroth Head grants Guard. This will be useful for any weapon capable of guarding. Lance and Gunlance especially. If you’re not using a weapon with guarding, obviously skip it as it’s no use to you. The bonus is fairly minor until you’re at guard level 2, but it’s available, so you may as well take it.

The Barroth Gloves grant Marathon Runner. Marathon Runner reduces your stamina usage from constant stamina drain.

There are two types of stamina drain in monster hunter: Continuous and fixed stamina Drain.

Continuous drain is for things like sprinting, charging hammers, or using Demonize on Dual Swords. Fixed drain is from things like dodging attacks, and uncharged bow shots. Fixed drain benefits from Constitution, rather than Marathon runner.

Marathon Runner is over all much better than Affinity Sliding, since you’ll be sprinting a ton against most monsters, so you should pick these up regardless of your weapon type, but certain weapons will benefit much more from the upgrade, mostly hammers and dual swords.

For impact weapons, like Hunting Horn and Hammer, Barroth Chest can be a good upgrade for Stamina Thief. It will make it easier to exhaust monsters, which makes them spend more time just standing around winded, but also helps prevent them from going into rage mode. It’s arguable if it’s worth it vs. stamina surge from Kulu Chest, basically build it if you think it looks cool  AND you’re using a hammer or hunting horn, AND did not upgrade to Kulu Chest.

Now go beat up Jyuratodus as part of standard progression.

Jyuratodus’ greaves grant Focus. Focus at level 1 is only 5% decrease to charge time. For most weapons that benefit from focus, like hammer, Great sword, dualblades, longsword, etc, you should pick these up, stick with the Kulu Greaves otherwise. If you want to use Jyuratodus’ water based weapons, picking up the gloves with bonuses to water attack can be beneficial as well, but it’s optional.

Now go kill a Tobi-Kadachi as part of standard progression.

Kadachi head has constitution. Pick this up if you’re using a bow specifically. The Kadachi gloves give Evade Extender, which is difficult to quantify, but it can be useful for a general upgrade from Barroth Gloves, as not every weapon benefits from Marathon Runner. Lance and Switch Axe will want evade extender for back and side hops.

If you’re using the Tobi-Kadachi weapons, you can also pick up the gear with bonuses to thunder attack, but that’s optional.

Now go murder an Anjanath as part of standard progression.

Anjanath stuff will be a big upgrade for a few weapon types, but will likely requiring farming.

The Chest requires a plate, but also provides Marathon Runner and good defenses. If you’re using the Barroth Gloves already, pick this up if you got a plate, but I wouldn’t waste your time attempting to farm Anjanath more than a few times. Marathon Runner at level 2 will severely reduce your stamina usage, and will be excellent for hammer and dual swords.

If you’re using a Bow or Bowgun, absolutely pick up the Anja Vambraces. This boosts bowgun special ammo by 10%, and the power of the bow’s dragon piercer by 10%. You’ll be sticking with these for all of low rank, so make sure to get them.

Final peice of Anja gear is for Gun lance and charge blade, every other weapon should ignore it. Pick up the Anjanath Boots for Artillery. This boosts the power of all your shells, and wyvern fire, and the phial attacks for Charge blade. It’s bread and butter stuff for those weapons.

Then take on Zorah Magdaros, and push forward into the Coral Highlands.

If you’re using a Gunlance or Charge Blade, also pick up the High Metal Coil for capacity boost. It will overall be better than Fortify from Jagras coil, as well as having higher base armor. You’ll need Dragonite ore, and you can mine it from Zorah Magdaros’ back, or once you reach the Coral Highlands.

Once there, you can optionally kill a Tzitzi Ya Ku.

The Tzitzi Ya Ku chest grants constitution. Stack it with the Kadachi head for any weapons that want constitution, like Bow for an additional bonus. Probably upgrade regardless if you didn’t build the Anja chest, since Bone and Kulu will be starting to feel pretty weak defensively at this point, and Constitution and Stamina Surge are quite similar.

Then hunt Paolumu.

Pick up the Paolumu gloves if you’re using a Gunlance or Charge Blade. As it will give you a second boost to Artillery. It’s a good thing.

The Paolumu chest can be good, especially if you’re using an insect glaive and can consistently mount monsters. Otherwise, it’s something you can skip, since the bonuses from Marathon Runner, Constitution, or Stamina Surge will be more consistent.

Now get down into the Rotten Vale and take out Radobaan.

Radobaan Coil will be a great pickup for Lance users and other guarding weapons. Gunlance will be arguable, as you’re giving up the High Metal Coil’s Capacity up for Guard. That’s your choice, capacity up is probably better overall.

Radobaan headpeice can be good for hammers, and hunting horn users, but you’ll likely only be able to pull off one or two KO’s per hunt regardless of the increased power. Constitution from the Kadachi head is probably just better over all for dodging.

Once you unlock the Tailrider Safari, you have a chance of being able to find Sinister Cloth. It’s fairly rare, and definitely not consistent. If you do get one or two, look at building the Death Stench gloves for Focus if you’re using a weapon that benefits from it, and the boots for Handicraft. Handicraft increases your weapons sharpness. It’s a great skill, but really needs a few points to excel. One point isn’t that noticable, and it’s hard to get more in low rank on anything but boots.

Legiana chest has evade window, which gives more i-Frames, probably not worth the investment required.

Keep progressing and you’ll have to fight Odogaron in the Rotten Vale.

Odogarons set will be useful for some skills like Speed Sharpening, Constitution and Critical Eye. It also is the first set with a decent set bonus. Punishing Draw’s mileage will vary depending on your weapon type, but it’s over all a reasonable set. Since you’ve kind of been looking like a dork at this point, a lot of you will probably want to build it since it looks cool, and you know what, more power to you.

It does require a plate though for the coil. I would recommend upgrading your Jagras coil to the Odogaron Coil 100% of the time, but with the plate it’s a hard sell. If you get a plate, consider it, otherwise, just move on.

Next hunts are Rathalos, and Diablos, which again, have some reasonable skills and set bonuses. After this point, we’re so close to High Rank that it may be better to skip these upgrades, and just move on, but its your decision.

Rathalos Helm has attack up, but the big boy is the Chest which gives weakness exploit.

Weakness Exploit is one of the best skills in the game, and this is your first opportunity to get it. It gives a huge affinity bonus while you hit monsters weakpoints, which honestly, you should be doing regardless so it’s just a huge net damage increase.

Unfortunately, it requires a plate, which won’t be an easy feat. If you get it from your mandatory hunt, build this and don’t think twice about it. If you manage to get a Rathalos chest, consider going for 3 piece rathalos set as it provides Critical Element which ups the elemental damage from critical hits. Obviously if you’re using a raw based weapon, and not using an elemental weapon, skip the bonus, and just take the chest if you got a plate.

The Diablos Helm provides Critical Draw, which is especially useful for Greatsword. It adds 30% affinity to Draw Attacks, which is great if you’re not adept at chaining charge attacks together, and instead are relying more on hit and run tactics with draw attacks.

The Diablos waist provides Marathon Runner, and should be picked up if you’re using an armor set that benefits, or are still using the Jagras coil.

Diablos 3 peice set is actually pretty reasonable, as it ups your attack power as your weapons sharpness degrades. Might be a good pickup if you’re using a weapon that benefits from at least 3 peices of it’s armor set, but the third peice won’t be particularly useful, with things like Heroics and Tremor Resistance  being only really good for cheesing monsters.

Now, finish off Zorah Magdaros for real, hunt a deceptively strong Pukei-Pukei, and enter High Rank.

High Rank

Once you hit High Rank, you will be wanting to build high rank sets as they provide more powerful armor skills, have more defense, and are just genuinely better than the low rank sets.

There is also another stipulation, of Alpha and Beta armor. Beta has less skills, but comes with decoration slots. For the purposes of this guide, I’ll assume you have no useful decorations, since a lot of the great skills are on the Alpha sets, but not the Beta sets. You’ll have to make assertions on if its worthwhile for you to go for an alpha or beta peice based on your decorations. Some of the gear it’s much better to take a slot, even if you don’t have a great decoration to put in it yet, since the secondary skill is something you won’t benefit much from. This mostly applies to the end game gear

If you’re using high tier, low rank sets, like Odogaron, Rathalos and Diablos, you’ll be able to hang onto them for awhile. If you’re still using equipment from easy Monsters like Jyuratodus, or Barroth, you should upgrade them immediately. I went through the entirety of the High Rank using low rank diablos and odogaron armor the first time through, but I don’t recommend it.

The easy answer here is the same stuff you made in low rank will work in high rank. Some equipment gains great skills, but a lot of peices of gear also require rare materials.

Right out the gate of high rank, you have a lot of upgrade options. You’re not gated from Monster’s nearly as much as you were in Low Rank. There is one stand out peice of gear you should go for immediately though.

Kulu Headpeice Alpha grants weakness exploit. It’s awesome. It should be your first priority.

Kulu Ya Ku is a super easy hunt, and will help acclimate you to the damage increases in high rank. This will be your first access to weakness exploit if you didn’t farm a Rathalos plate. You’ll also get Fire Resistance as a bonus, which should help against anjanath and rathalos.

The Kulu Mail Alpha is also a nice pickup, with critical eye, and stamina surge, two great skills for general purpose hunting. You can also pickup the Kulu Greaves Alpha or Beta. This will give you Critical Eye, and Item Prolonger or a Slot.

At the start of this guide I said you want strictly combat upgrades but High Rank has multiple points where you have to gather a huge amount of monster tracks and building the Hunter’s Headpeice Alpha will give you a skill called “Scholar”. This will speed up the process of finding the Pink Rathian tracks, and later the Nergigante, Teostra, Kushala Daora, and Vaal Hazak tracks.

It may very well be worth it to wear this while farming the resource points to progress in High Rank, even thought you lose Weakness Exploit from the Kulu Headpeice.

From here, hunt Great Jagras if you’re still using the coil, and didn’t grab the diablos upgrade. You’ll maintain fortify, but also gain speed eating as a nice little bonus on top of high rank defenses. You can also pick up a Leather Belt Alpha for Stamina Surge, or a Chainmail belt alpha for quick sheathe as alternatives.

If you’re using a Lance, picking up the Barroth Head Alpha, and Waist Alpha will be great. For extra guard.

The Barroth Greaves, and Barroth Arms are also nice pickups, as they provide Marathon Runner, stun resistance, and stamina thief or a slot. Barroth Arms require gems, so it may be awhile before you get a hold of one.

Anything that benefits from Focus should get the Jyuratodus boots alpha as soon as possible for Focus 2. Unfortuantely, these also require a gem, but you can get them reliably from Barroth Jyuratodus, and Radobaan.

If you’re gunlancing, take out an Anjanath for the boots Alpha for Artillery 2. There will be a lot of artillery gear coming up, and it maxes out at 3. You’re going to want to assert what skills are more useful on what parts and go from there.

If you’re using a bow or bowgun, you finally have a chance to upgrade your gloves. Build the Anja Gloves Beta for Special Ammo Up and a slot. The Anja Mail will also be a nice upgrade here, but it requires an Anjanath gem. Taking Anja Mail Alpha will give you Marathon Runner and Special Ammo Up to upgrade the damage of special shots on bow guns and the dragon piercer on bow.

Build your choices, and you should have a full high rank set that’s capable of getting you through the rest of high rank. There will be more upgrades along the way, but this will be adequate.

Once you get the research points, you can fight Pink Rathian.

The Pink rathian doesn’t have much good, but the Rath Heart Coil Beta gives Handicraft and a slot, and is probably better than what you’re using. Then you’ll have to do more researching, hurray.

Odogaron's set will be good for Dual Blade and Sword and Shield specifically with it's 4 piece bonus of protective polish. This means you won't lose sharpness for a short period immediately after sharpening. This will give you more bang for your buck. The set is reasonable otherwise, and good target for intermediate high rank if you're willing to farm.

Once you unlock the Elder’s recess you have a new set of monsters available to you: Dodogama, Uragaan, and Laviasoth.

If you’re gunning or bowgunning, prioritize getting the Laviasoth Boots Beta. This will give you Spread/Power Shot. This upgrades the damage on your power coatings on bows, and will be extremely good when tied wtih the Anjanath gear for upgraded Dragon Piercing.

Uragaan has a good set if you’re using a lance or gunlance, with a nice 3 Peice Bonus. You’ll be able to get Guard Up, which lets you block previously unblockable attacks.  You’ll want the Vambraces Beta, and Greaves Alpha for Guard. If you’re going for this, you’ll need to sub in a third peice, and the skills available aren’t great, but Guard Up should make it worthwhile overall.

Now for targets to get you situated for end game.

You’ll have Rathalos and Diablos available to you from the start, but it’s advisable to get some armor upgrades first, as they’re pretty deadly.

Diablos still has skills like Critical Draw, but the set requires Majestic Horns. Those are usually better spent on weapon upgrades at this point. However, you can get the extremely valuable Non-Element Damage Up skill from the 4 Peice set.

This will mostly be useful for Greatsword, but building the Diablos Helm Beta for Critical Draw, the Coil Alpha for Marathon Runner and Critical Draw, the Diablos Nero Braces Alpha, and then either the Diablos Nero Chest, or Diablos Greaves will give you the 4 peice bonus. This will make certain weapons extremely powerful, but if you have any status or element on your weapon you won’t get the bonus.

For other weapons, the Diablos 2 peice set is easy to make, and a lot of weapons are favorable to Focus and Marathon Runner. Building the Diablos Nero Braces Alpha, and Diablos Coil Beta for a Marathon Runner 2 and a slot (or Alpha if you want critical draw) will be a good starting point to pick up Bludgeoner with minimal investment.

The Rathalos Mail is extremely good, but it requires a ruby. You’ll be able to get Weakness Exploit 2 with it, but you’ll need to hunt Rathalos a huge amount of times to get that ruby.  It also has a really good 2 and 4 peice set bonus, but the rest of the rathalos set isn’t great. It may be advised to skip this, since there are much easier way to get Weakness Exploit 2, it just comes significantly later.

Conveniently though, the set bonus is actually shared with Azure Rathalos’ armor set, which has some great skills. You can build the Rath Soul Helm Beta, for Critical Boost, then the Rath Soul Beta Boots and Gloves for Focus and decoration slots. This will be a really good target set pre-elder dragons, but you’ll need two ruby’s to take advantage of it. You’ll need to farm a lot of Rathalos and Azure Rathalos for this, but it will be excellent gear for taking out the remaining monsters in the game if you’re struggling.

Bazelgeuse Gloves Beta will give you  2 critical draw, if you’re using a Greatswordand and skipped the Diablos gear, it’s definitely worth picking up. The rest of the set has Earplugs in spades, so if you’re really sick of getting stunned from roars, you can look into building it.

Now, everything after this point is either the Elder Dragon sets, or requires Elder Dragon materials like Elder Dragon Blood, or Elder Dragon bones, which means you have to defeat at least Nergigante.

Once you’ve cleared him, you can focus on building his full set, as it’s an excellent baseline armor. Full Nergigante set will give you Agitator, a huge attack bonus, and tons of stamina surge. It’s a great general purpose set for most weapons. The helmet does require a Nergigante Gem, so it’s lowest priority, as you’d prefer to use it on Nergigante Weapons for the most part.

The 3 peice bonus is not the best set bonus, but the skills and defenses on the set are overall nice.

Since the head requires a gem, you’ll probably want to instead build the Dragon King Eye Patch. This gives weakness exploit at level 2 and a slot for a decoration. It’s easily one of the best head gears in the game, and easy to build.

Going for 3 or 4 peice Nergigante, with Dragon King Eye Patch will be an extremely good starting setup for end game gear, before you start getting into really specific armor and decoration setups at end game, which will require a lot of farming for rare parts, and decorations.

Once you get the next set of Elder Dragons, and again, you can use the Hunter Head Alpha to get Scholar to speed up this process, you can take on Teostra, Kushala Daora, and Vaal Hazak. Then take on Xeno’jiva.

There are some stand outs here. Teostra has a few good peices, and Xeno’jiva has gloves that grant Critical Boost.

But once you’re past Nergigante, you’re going to want to experiment, and figure out what skills you like on your desired weapon types, and progress through there.

BONUS SECTION PALLICO GEAR:

Your pallico’s gear progression is pretty simple.

The higher tier armors are usually straight upgrades to attack, and defense. You won’t want to build every set, but getting a few upgrades at various points will be a benefit. Getting a reasonable armor set like Jyuratodus will be helpful early on, and you can grab another late low rank set, then do the same with the high rank gears.

The weapons are something you should look out for though. As a general rule, status effects on your weapons aren’t great as you’ll likely only get a one or two applications per hunt, but they are actually quite good on your pallico. Your pallico doens’t deal a ton of damage, but they’ll be able to apply status effects fairly consistently, and about the same number of times you can.

You should look out for the Poison and Paralysis weapons specifically.  The Pukei-Pukei bow early on gives you access to poison, and then you can upgrade it to the Rathian sword. Once you get a great hornfly from your ancient tree bug harvests, you can also pick up the lampflower which does paralysis.

You can upgrade straight damage with things like the Uragaan Hammer, but I’ve used the poison and paralysis weapons for most of my hunting time, and find them extremely good, especially early on when things are more of a struggle.

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