Hammer
Low Rank

Hammer is in a bit of a rough spot, the recommended path is harder to make than the previous weapons. They generally have low sharpness, and don’t benefit that much from elemental damage, instead favoring massive raw damage. Unfortunately, the huge raw damage is usually offset by negative affinity.

The short answer for this guide is: Make the Barroth, or Anjanath Hammer, and with it’s insane raw damage, you’ll crush most of the game.

Now for the long answer:

The Iron Hammer 1 you start with will be acceptable for the first missions, but your goal is to get a Bone Bludgeon 1 and upgrade it to a Bone Bludgeon 2 as soon as possible. This will require a total of 3 Monster Bone S, which can be found from bone piles in the Ancient Forest, carved from Monsters, and as quest rewards. The game hands these out to you like candy so it shouldn’t be long before you get them.

You will use this for the first set of large monsters, including Great Jagras, and the Kulu Ya-Ku.

If you’re lucky, after your first hunt with the Kulu Ya-Ku you’ll have the required 1 Kulu-Ya Ku Beak, 2 Kulu Ya-Ku Hides, and 3 Kulu-Ya Ku Scales to upgrade your Bone Bludgeon 2, into a Kulu Beak 1. This is optional, as it is a dead end path, but will be a good bridge to to the Anjanath Hammer.

If you don’t want to fight Kulu Ya-Ku until you get enough materials to upgrade, the Bone Bludgeon 2 will be acceptable to take out your next target, the Pukei-Pukei but the Kulu Beak 1 will be significantly easier.

After the Pukei-Pukei, you’ll want to complete your mandatory assignments of hunting a Barroth in Wild Spire Wastes.

After beating Barroth, you’ll want to make another Bone Bludgeon 1, and upgrade it to Bone Bludgeon 2. If you’re lucky after a single hunt you’ll have the required materials to upgrade it to a Carapace Sledge 1 by using 1 barroth claw, 3 barroth shells, and 2 barroth ridges. Damage wise, this is pretty similar to the Kulu Beak 1, but does provide a defense bonus if you’re struggling. You’ll have to make this, even if you don’t use it immediately, because it builds into the Anjanath Hammer, and it can be upgraded further through low and high rank.

Then complete “Sinister Shadows of the Swamp” to hunt a Jyuratodus.

After beating Jyuratodus, you’ll have to fight a Tobi Kodachi.

Our next hunt is Anjanath, which is the first really threatening monster you’ve come across. The Carapace Sledge 1, and Kulu Beak 1 will be fairly equal damage wise, but again, the Defense bonus from the Carapace Sledge could be beneficial to you here, especially if you’re new.

This is a where things kind of blur for the hammer progression, but it’s your choice what to do here: The Barroth Tree, and Anjanath Tree are extremely similar. They both have roughly equivalent raw, but the Anjanath has bonus fire damage. The Anjanath hammer has -20%, where as Barroth has -10%. I’m going to go with the Anjanath Hammer as the superior path over all, but the Barroth path will be easier over all to farm.

After defeating a single Anjanath, hopefully you have the required materials to upgrade your Carapace Sledge 1, into a Blazing Hammer 1 by using 2 Anjanath Fangs, 3 Anjanath Scales, and 1 Flame Sac. The Anjanath Fangs are likely to be the limiting factor here. They must be carved, or as a reward from breaking Anjanath’s face. At the start I told you to capture where you can, but Anjanath is probably the exception to that. Fangs are rare from my experience.  If you’re really lucky here you’ll also get a Plate. You will need this for an upgrade in the future, so you should consider hanging onto it instead of using it to build the Anjanath Chest Armor, even though it’s tempting.

The Anjanath Hammer is by far the strongest per hit hammer you can have at this point, and that’s what we want. The Negative affinity will cause some hits to do less damage, but overall the damage is extremely high. Since these weapons have Negative affinity, boosting affinity to 0, or positive will provide massive damage output gains. Getting skills like Critical Eye, and especially Weakness Exploit will provide huge dividends in damage output. The fire elemental damage will help against some of the monsters, but overall, by the end of Low Rank most of the Monsters you fight are immune to it. The desire sensor was in full swing for me here and I just couldn’t get any fangs after 7 hunts, so for the remaining parts of this guide I will be using the Barroth path, but I generally believe the Anjanath set is superior, and will be recommending that.

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.

In the Coral Highlands, you can mine to get Dragonite Ore. Mine 3 as soon as possible, if you prefer the Barroth Path. Then you should upgrade your Carapace Sledge 1, into a Carapace Sledge 2 by using 3 Dragonite Ore, 2 Barroth Claw, 1 Barroth Tail, and 3 Kestodon Shells. The Barroth tail will be difficult, as you can’t cut tails with a hammer. You can get them as carving rewards however.

Continue progressing, until you’ve defeated Paolumu, which you should make short work of is he’s weak to fire, and the absurd raw damage of the Anjanath Hammer.

Then you’ll descend into the Rotten Vale, take out Radobaan.

Continue progressing, and you’ll have to take out a Legania. Legania is also moderately weak to fire, so that’s a bonus of using the Anjanath Hammer.

You’ll have to take out a Rathalos, and a Diablos as standard progression, and they gate keep the final upgrade tiers for both the Barroth and Anjanath hammers in Low Rank.

If you’re using Anjanath, kill Rathalos first for the Rathalos Marrow. Then upgrade your Blazing Hammer 1, into a Blazing Hammer 2 by using 1 Rathalos Marrow, 4 Anjanath Fangs, 1 Anjanath Nosebone, and 1 Anjanath Tail. Obviously you can’t cut tails with a hammer, but you should be able to carve them or get them as rewards. If you’re not having luck, try hunting Anjanath Online, or building another weapon path (like the longsword shameless plug) to cut them.

If you’re using Barroth, kill Diablos first for the Diablos Shells. Then upgrade your Carapace Sledge 2, to a Carapace Sledge 3 by using 3 Diablos Shells, 4 Barroth Claws, 2 Barroth Scalps, and 3 Monster Bone+. Monster Bone+ are available as rewards from any 5 star monster, including Legania, Odogaron, Rathalos, and Diablos. You’ll likely have enough by the time you beat Diablos.

Take out the remaining monsters in Low Rank, until you can take on Zora Magdaros.

After beating the Zora 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. Which unfortunately won’t happen for awhile.

Since both these weapons have negative affinity, you should look into getting a Kulu Headpeice Alpha, as it provides weakness exploit. This is an extremely easy high rank armor upgrade, and will largely offset the amount of feeble hits, granting a huge net damage increase.

At the start of High Rank, you’ll be able to free-hunt both Anjanath and Barroth, in the Ancient Forest, and Wildspire Wastes respectively. The Barroth hammer actually has higher raw than the Anjanath Hammer for a very brief period here, as well as being easier to upgrade with more common materials.

Upgrade your Carapace Sledge 3 into a Barroth Breaker 1, by using 2 Barroth Claw+, 3 Barroth Carapace, 2 Barroth Ridge+, and 5 Kestodon Carapace.

Ideally, you can use this to hunt Anjanath for the required upgrade materials, otherwise, your Blazing Hammer 2 will be adequate.

Upgrade your Blazing Hammer 2, into a Anja Striker 1 by using 4 Anjanath Fang+, 5 Anjanath Scale+, 3 Inferno Sac, and 1 Anjanath Plate. The plate makes this difficult. They’re quite rare, and may require many hunts.

These weapons will have to tide you over until you reach the Elders Recess, as each path will require upgrade materials from there. The barroth path requires Gastodon carapaces, these are found on Gastodons, which are the local herbivores for teh Elder’s Recess. The Anjanath path requires a fire cell stone found while mining in the Elder’s Recess. You’ll also need to hunt a Diablos for the Barroth Path, and a Rathalos for the Anjanath Path, so pick your poison.

Upgrade your Barroth Breaker 1, into a Barroth Breaker 2 by using 3 Diablos Carapace, 4 Barroth Claw+, 3 Barroth Carapace, and 5 Gastodon Carapace.

The Anjanath Path will gain a sliver of blue sharpness which will be a bonus in the following hunts.

Upgrade from your Anja Striker 1, to an Anja Striker 2 by using 2 Rathalos Medulla, 5 Anjanath Fang+, 4 Anjanath Pelt+, and 1 Firecell stone.

Finally, there’s a third option: It’s signifiantly weaker damage wise, but actually has some reasonable blue sharpness which the other two options suffer from. Again, you’ll need to get to the Elder’s Recess here, because you need to mine Fucium Ore. To get here you’ll need to go through the Ore path, which is Iron Hammer 1, into Iron Hammer 2, into Iron Hammer 3, into Iron Demon 1, into Iron Demon 2, into Iron Demon 3, and finally, the Iron Archdemon 1. This will lead into arguably the best hammer in the game, so don’t worry about “wasting” materials. It only uses ores, and monster bones, whcih you should have in spades at this point if you’ve been diligent about hitting every mining node you come across.

Upgrading here will tide you over until you finally face off against Nergigante. It really sucks not having a lot of Blue Sharpness here if you’re using the Anjanath Hammer, and none if you’re using Barroth, but the extreme raw damage should let you overcome that weakness.

Normally I’d be telling you to upgrade your weapon here if you got lucky with materials after killing Nergigante. There is an optional upgrade if you’re using the Barroth Breaker 2, where you can upgrade it to a Barroth Breaker 3 by using 1 Nergigante Horn+, 5 Barroth Claw+, 5 Barroth Ridge+ and 1 Wyvern Gem, which you can find from hunting large monsters like Barroth, Radobaan, Jyuratodus, etc.

However, what you want to do is farm Nergigante until you can build his weapon: The Nergal Crusher. It’s just miles ahead of the final tier Barroth, OR Anjanath Hammers, and that’s before it get’s upgraded to the final tier of the Obliterations Footfall. Mostly because it actually has an acceptable amount of Blue Sharpness, high raw damage, neutral affinity, a bit of dragon element, and elderseal. Say goodbye to the weapons that carried you through to this point, they’ve served their purpose.

Go through the Ore Path from Iron Hammer 1, to Iron Archdemon 1, and upgrade it into a Nergal Crusher by using 3 Nergigante Talons, 4 Nergigante Regrwoth Plates, 2 Nergigante Tail, and 2 Nergigante Carapace.

Congratulations, you now have a weapon that’s completely capable of getting you through the rest of the game, and arguably the second best hammer. Proceed through with hunting the remaining elder dragons.

After taking out Xeno’jiva, you can upgrade the Nergal Crusher one more time into a Obliterations Footfall by using 2 Xeno’Jiva horns, 5 Nergigante Horn+, 5 Nergigante Talons, and 1 Nergigante Gem. The gem will take a lot of time, unless you’re lucky, but regardless of the final upgrade, this will be one of the hardest hitting hammers in the game.

End Game Weapons
You should be looking for the Diablos Hammer asap after getting Nergal Crusher. You'll need to farm Diablos and Black Diablos, which will be it's own kind of suffering. You'll also want to get your hands on a non-elemental damage up gem or set bonus (from diablos armor) to give you insane damage output.