Style Rank

To enable the new movesets, use any large box that allows you to change gear, such as the one in the

Blacksmith . Go to the section where you normally choose equipment and select the newly added final option.

This will bring up a new menu where you should select your weapon type, followed by the second option, and then your preferred style.

At HR5, you will have access to Heaven Style and Storm Style. For most weapons at this rank, Storm Style is the best, though there may be some variations. You can swap styles at any time and are not locked into any of the three initially available options.

For more specific information about all weapon styles, refer to the weapons category page.

Upon reaching G Rank, interact with the Guild Master again to unlock Extreme Style. This style significantly alters weapons compared to Storm or Heaven styles and is generally the best-in-slot for every weapon class at high-level play. You should switch all weapons to this style upon reaching G Rank and unlocking it.

To use any alternative movesets, your Book of Secrets must be equipped. If it is disabled, go to the SR menu and choose the first option, followed by the first option again, to toggle it back on.

Hardcore (HC) is a toggleable option for SR quests that transforms the large monsters into HC monsters. If a quest can be made hardcore, it is indicated by a flame icon in the quest list at the top right of its name.

You can toggle the HC option on the final screen after selecting a quest, where you confirm player numbers, passwords, etc.

Keep in mind that Newbie and Return worlds do not have the HC feature. If you do not see any red flame icons, first check if you have interacted with the Guild Master and then check your SR menu in your Equipment Box, you may have SR disabled.

If you spend a significant amount of time at HR5, you will likely need

Weapon Souls and Hardcore Carves for certain upgrades. These are obtained by fighting monsters within a specific rank band with the HC option enabled. Enabling HC transforms a monster into its Hardcore variant, which adds a new 5% carve item to the monster and provides a

Item

Weapon Soul based on the type of monster.

• Low Soul: HR1-2

• Mid Soul: HR3-4

• High Soul: HR5

• Top Soul: Gou HR5

Hardcore monsters are more powerful versions with new skills, abilities, and appearances. Many HC monsters have enhanced levels of Roars, Wind, or Quake, requiring

Super Earplugs ,

Armor Skill

Quake Res+2 , and

Armor Skill

Dragon Wind Breaker for protection.

Completing an HC quest grants SR

Weapon Souls (a ticket item), used for crafting specific weapons and armor. Using a weapon within the Rarity Limit stated in your Book of Secrets provides a multiplier for HRP (3x), SRP (4x), Zeny (1.5x), and GCP (1.5x), making HC quests an excellent way to gain ranks. As of

Game

G10 , most of these multipliers are less relevant and mainly affect your Partner's Rank and Weapon Rank.

The only difference in a quest set to Hardcore is the monsters themselves. If a quest has multiple large monsters, they will all become their Hardcore variants.

G Rank quests receive the same effects as normal Hunter Rank HC quests, with different multipliers applying to G Rank points and currency (GRP, GSRP, Gzeny).

Hardcore (HC) Carves are an additional type of carve available from HC monsters. Generally, each type of monster has one HC carve per tier (HR1-2, HR3-4, HR5-6, G Rank).

The standard way to obtain HC Carves is by killing and carving a monster. However, some event quests also reward them as normal rewards. The standard rate for an HC Carve is 5%, and for a GHC Carve, it is 2%.

HC Carves are commonly used across gear, serving a similar role to low-percentage carves like

Gems or

Item

Plates introduced since Hardcore Monsters were added.

When you carve an HC Carve, you will hear a special jingle distinct from the normal carving success sound. HC Carves can also be carved by your Partner and will appear in the rewards after a quest (without the jingle). While on Premium, the Legendary Pugi can also obtain them similarly to your Partner.

N Points and Festival Points can be spent on HC Carves, typically costing around 100 N Points or 500 Festival Points minimum. The

Diva Defense event occasionally allows you to buy carves with standard GCP if you have the relevant Prayer active. See the Events section for more details on

Event

Festival and

Event

Diva Defense .

HC Carves are unique because they are outside the normal carve pool. When you carve a monster, you first roll for the pool from which you get an item and then for the item itself.

For anything that can cause you to reroll carves, such as Caravan Gem skills, you will also roll for the table on the second attempt. For example, if you initially carved a

Lavasioth Scale and got a reroll, you would have a 5% chance of the new carve being an HC item and a 95% chance of it being either a

Item

Shell (73%) or a

Item

Fang (27%).

Weapon

Souls are per-weapon ticket types rewarded for killing any HC monster. Each weapon has four different levels of

Item

Souls based on the rank of the monster fought. For example, fighting a

Monster

HC Lavasioth with

Weapon

Sword and Shield would grant a

Item

SnS Soul (Low) .

Weapon

Souls are used to craft and upgrade certain weapons and armors. A lot of gear during and most decent gear past HR5 will require at least one of these to be upgraded or crafted.

At GSR1, you gain access to

Ribbons , and at GR500, you gain access to

Item

Merits . These function nearly identically to the aforementioned

Item

Souls but are gained from GHC and normal G Rank quests respectively. Both are covered in depth in the Hiden section below.

After achieving Style Rank, you gain access to select a Style Rank Skill. These are permanently active buffs similar to armor skills but do not occupy any slots. The skills and instructions on how to equip them are detailed below.

You can equip your first skill by going into a weapon's Book of Secrets menu, selecting one of the Special effects options, and then choosing one of the skills. After reaching GSR100, you will be able to equip two skills; until then, you can equip one.

At HR5, you gain the basic Defense Skill. At HR6, you gain various Elemental Resistance skills and the first version of Sharpening Up. At HR7, you get access to Affinity Up and max Sharpening Up. All the Resistance and Defense skills progress naturally as you rank up in G Style Rank, with some requiring GSR999 in one or multiple weapons to be unlocked or maxed out.

At G Rank, we recommend using Affinity Up, which increases the affinity by +20% to +26%, similar to the

Expert+2 skill.

GSR in

Tonfa ,

Weapon

Switch Axe F , and

Weapon

Magnet Spike each add +2% affinity, reaching a maximum of +26%.

Ranking up in GSR unlocks the Conquest Attack and Conquest Defense skills.

Achieving GSR999 grants the Passive Master and Secret Technique skills.

Having 11 weapons at GSR999 unlocks the Soul Revival skill.

GSR100 in each weapon unlocks a second SR skill slot, allowing for two skills simultaneously.

The Book of Secrets status page shows everything related to Style Rank. It can be accessed through the Equipment Box. The most notable of these stats are the Attack Up and Attack Ceiling skills.

The Attack Ceiling does not directly buff your Attack but instead allows you to have higher values of attack without hitting a ceiling.

It is incredibly important that you raise the Attack Ceiling while you progress through G Rank, the default limit of 800 is incredibly easy to reach in recent updates.

Z1 especially adds a lot of skills that stack attack and considering Zenith Weapons have up to 580 base True Raw and that GSR1 already adds +50 True Raw and skills can instantly add +150 True Raw you will find yourself going past 800 easily.

Each weapon in Monster Hunter has its own internal multiplier that is applied to its True Raw value, you can divide the displayed attack on a weapon to see their True Raw but every weapon has the same limits based upon your Attack Ceiling level.

For example, if you had no Attack Ceiling levels while using a

Sword and Shield that was pushed to 3,080 Attack (2,200 True Raw) by your skills, you would only ever have 1,120 Attack or 800 True Raw. This is because it hits the default 800 True Raw cap causing you to lose 1,960 Attack or 1,400 True Raw.

If you had 22 levels your ceiling 2,352 Attack or 1,680 True Raw which means that in this case you would be actively losing 728 Attack or 520 True Raw.

Finally if you had 35 levels your ceiling would be 3,080 Attack or 2,200 True Raw, as this covers your 3,080 Attack perfectly you would get all of it. Of course if you then used a

Power Pill or were affected by a Demon Horn you would suddenly be over your ceiling and would again be losing some of your attack power.

A good starting number to aim at is around 50 levels, this will cover most skills before Hiden including being buffed by

Hunting Horns and having

Armor Skill

Adrenaline active. Later game you will want to push much higher and should grind it up to around 190 to cover most use cases with late game skill sets. The Damage Calculator

automatically calculates your required number of My Missions and Attack Ceiling level based on values and skills you might want to utilise if you want an exact number.

Increasing the value of the Attack Ceiling is done by completing My Missions, these are detailed in the next section below.

My Mission is a series of objectives that are unlocked after you hit HR6 and unlock Style Rank. There are two types of these missions, the first are the Medal Series that are purely optional and do not have any notable effects.

The second series is the Weapon Series which are used to enhance four different skills on all weapon types.

Medal Series

---

The Medal Series are the purely optional challenges that have an associated Hunter Navigation Task that gives 30x

Item

My Mission Tickets that allows you to skip the Weapon Series tasks. These tasks can be taken in your house in the

Location

SR Display Room which has a bullseye icon next to it, this unlocks at HR5.

Weapon Series

---

As mentioned the Weapon Series are global across all your weapons, you can view your active My Mission by looking at your Book of Secrets. This will display the task number you are on, the target and any progress towards the goal. This progess is saved even if you log out.

Both the standard Hunter Rank and G Rank quest NPCs have options dedicated towards these missions, selecting it will automatically search for relevant quests that meet the requirements. But you will still need to toggle HC manually if it is required by the mission you are on.

The number of My Missions you should realistically take varies massively depending on your level of progression, the following are some estimates to aim for that give you wiggle room and should cover most skill sets used at that point and most play styles:

Recommended Attack Ceilings

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Set	Value
Basic G Rank Set	25
Basic Hiden Set	70
Good Hiden Set	110
Determination Set	80
Determination Hiden Set	130

Using the Damage Calculator

will provide an accurate rating based on the entered skills. The previous broad estimates cover all possible scenarios to prevent losing raw damage.

Each mission given can be skipped using certain items. Specifically, you can use

Item

My Mission Tickets , which are fairly rare, or spend lottery coins.

Premium days will give you 40

Item

My Mission Tickets , and you can trade junk weapon tickets obtained from the lottery system for them with the combination NPC.

All weapons in the game have several associated Hiden Armors and Decorations. These provide points in their weapon's specific Weapon Tech Skill, which is tailored to each weapon type. This skill always grants

Super High-Grade Earplugs and an attack multiplier of at least 1.2x for Blademaster and 1.3x for Gunner.

Having one of these skills is commonly referred to as having 'Hiden' for that weapon. Achieving Hiden means equipping at least 5 decorations for that specific Hiden type. These decorations are made by converting maxed-out Hiden Armors into Decorations.

All weapon types have an associated Weapon Tech skill, which significantly buffs its corresponding weapon type. These skills are detailed below.

Hiden Armor granting these skills becomes available at HR6 but cannot be completed until GR500.

Hiden Decorations are per-weapon enhancements that grant a specific weapon type's associated Hiden Skill (e.g., Great Sword Tech). These decorations are refined from Hiden Armor in the same manner as other GX decorations.

Hiden Skills provide at least a 20% increase in flat Attack along with other weapon-specific buffs. Having Hiden is practically compulsory for tackling endgame content, such as

Berserk Raviente or solo runs of Z4 Zeniths. Dedicated players often have multiple sets of decorations for different scenarios.

To upgrade armor into Hiden Decorations, you can choose between White (which upgrades into either White or Black) or Red (which upgrades into either Red or Blue) pieces. All pieces convert into the same final decorations, so a full Black set or five maxed Black Helmets will result in identical decorations. The primary difference is the materials needed for upgrading each piece.

There are four colors of Hiden Decorations for each weapon:

White ,

Decoration

Black ,

Decoration

Red , and

Decoration

Blue . Each color grants different additional skill points and is refined from its corresponding armor type.

Creating Hiden Decorations lasts until late G Rank. You can start working on Hiden Armor from HR5 but cannot finish it until GR500. Hiden Armor requires multiple HC, GHC, and G1% carves, along with Weapon

Souls ,

Item

Ribbons and

Item

Merits . These function nearly identically to the aforementioned obtained from hunting HC, GHC, and standard G Rank monsters.

Each of the four colored sets converts into different gem types: White Tiger, Military Black, Crimson Bird, and Azure Dragon. There are two varieties of Hiden decorations: standard Hiden and True Hiden.

True Hiden gems are upgraded versions of the original Hiden Decorations, featuring G Rank Skill Points. Crafting a True Hiden gem requires one of each of the four colors of standard Hiden Decorations, making the process equivalent to creating four full sets of Hiden decorations.

Despite being superior to standard Hiden decorations, True Hiden gems should not be your primary focus. They are beneficial for optimizing a set, but it is recommended to have a complete Hiden set before grinding for True Hiden gems.

With the introduction of

Z1 , it is now possible to gain extra Skill Slots. This makes having relevant skills on your Hiden decorations more valuable, as a set of decorations can effectively provide two fixed skills for any set. If you use

Armor Skill

Solid Determination , consider these gems, as

Armor Skill

Solid Determination Decorations take up five slots, leaving only five slots for Hiden and

Armor Skill

Solid Determination sets.

To determine the best decoration for your weapon, check the gear of leaderboard runs and compare.

For most weapons, avoid Hiden Gems that grant a specific skill outright. Some skills may push out more desirable skills or overlap. For instance, multiple skills can grant Affinity or

Fencing+2 , so you don't want to accumulate enough points to trigger those alone. Certain weapons, like

Weapon

Hammer ,

Weapon

Great Sword ,

Weapon

Sword and Shield , or

Weapon

Bow , may always benefit from a single skill (

Armor Skill

Focus ,

Armor Skill

Elemental Attack ,

Armor Skill

Auto-Reload ), making True Hiden decorations less crucial for them.

Although

Elemental Attack is desirable for

Weapon

Sword and Shield , it is not essential, unlike

Armor Skill

Focus for a

Weapon

Great Sword . If crafting

Weapon

Sword and Shield decorations, consider making six instead of five to achieve optimal min-maxing.

If your weapon doesn't come with a specific skill and you're planning ahead, it is sensible to obtain at least one of each of the four colors. This allows you to create a True Hiden decoration when needed and avoids issues with fixed skills interfering with sets. Alternatively, committing to three and two or similar combinations can also help prevent unwanted skills.

When crafting True Hiden Decorations and considering

Determination , avoid including

Armor Skill

Issen or

Armor Skill

Sniping on True Hiden decorations.

Armor Skill

Sniping is acceptable since the auto-reload part still applies, but

Armor Skill

Issen is entirely negated by

Armor Skill

Determination and becomes useless.

Whenever you hunt an HC monster, you will gain a

Soul for the weapon used in that quest (e.g., LS on Gou HC grants a

Item

LS Soul (Top) . These are used to create the base Hiden sets.

To fully upgrade a Hiden set, you must reach G Rank to get

Ribbons and G Rank 500 to start getting

Item

Merits .

Hunter Rank:

• HR1-2 HC: Low Souls

• HR3-4 HC: Mid Souls

• HR5 HC: High Souls

• Gou HC: Top Souls

G Style Rank:

• 1-2 HC: Low Ribbons

• 3-4 HC: Mid Ribbons

• 5-8 HC: High Ribbons

G Rank 500:

• 1-2: Low Merits

• 3-4: Mid Merits

• 5-8: High Merits

Large numbers of

Souls ,

Item

Ribbons ,

Item

Merits , HC carves from monsters of all ranks, and 1% carves from G Rank monsters are required to completely finish a Hiden set.

The progression can be demonstrated below:

Having a Guuku allows you to convert extra HC or GHC carves into additional

Souls or

Item

Ribbons . This is particularly beneficial for Soul Grinding, as you'll frequently obtain HC carves while on premium due to the 10% drop rate and the additional 8 rolls provided by Rastas and Legendary Pugi carve slots. Carves can be converted into up to 5x Weapon

Item

Souls or up to 3x Weapon

Item

Ribbons . You can also convert Conquest Gems into

Item

Merits at a 1:1 rate, which is very expensive until late-game. With the rate of 8

Item

Merits per quest, this should be considered only if you have an excess of gems.

Even if you don't use the Guuku for your first Hiden set, you can still use it to quickly gather

Souls and

Item

Ribbons for your second set. If you've used Lottery Coins to obtain Hiden-related items, you may also have Raw Soul Stones, which can be converted into 5

Item

Souls of the corresponding rank.

Before starting the Hiden grind, it's important to note that there are daily quests for each weapon type that reward Weapon

Souls . These quests provide 5 Low, 10 Mid, 15 High, and 10 Top

Item

Souls . While this may not seem like a significant amount, it is equivalent to one piece every 19 days, which adds up over time.

Occasionally, there are also daily quests for

Ribbons and

Item

Merits . The Ribbon daily quest gives 6 Low, 10 Mid, and 10 High

Item

Ribbons , while the Merit daily quest gives 5 Low, 10 Mid, and 5 High

Item

Merits . The Ribbon daily quest is more beneficial than the Merit one, but both are equivalent to 3 quests while on premium.

Although the quests might not seem great, they still amount to one piece every 10 days. This makes them valuable during rare occasions when 5 dailies are given out each day.

Since

Z2.1 , you can convert

Item

Souls ,

Item

Ribbons , or

Item

Merits into cookable stones at the Combiner NPC. The conversion rate is 10:5, and the resulting items need to be Guuku Cooked in your house. As this is effectively a 2:1 ratio, you should only do this with materials you have in great excess for a single weapon class.

Hiden stones are premium items that provide a large number of

Item

Souls ,

Item

Ribbons , or

Item

Merits . There is a stone for each type, and they each give exactly one piece worth of their respective items.

To cash in these stones, you must either take a map delivery quest or deliver the stone itself. These quests are always solo and disable any benefits such as

Lucky Charms .

You can have up to three characters on an account in Frontier. Each character can get a daily quest, allowing you to do the

Dyuragaua daily quest, which gives 5 Low, 10 Mid, 15 High, and 10 Top

Item

Souls . Without additional characters, this daily quest is equivalent to one

Item

Hiden stone every 19 days if done daily. With two characters, it becomes every 10 days, and with three characters, it's every 7 days.

At 100 points per character, this option is naturally much cheaper than gambling with lottery coins or buying

Hiden stones with them, but it requires logging into multiple accounts daily to reap the benefits.

Since your character slots will never disappear, you can use these indefinitely for any relevant dailies. During rare events where 5 dailies are available each day, you can get 15 dailies per day, enough to complete the Soul grind for five pieces of any single weapon.

At the bottom of the Book of Secrets, there are four stats that do not level up naturally. These stats are leveled up by completing assigned targets from the My Mission system. To max out these stats, you need to complete a total of 180 missions: 110 levels in Attack Ceiling, 20 in Damage Reduction, 25 in Partial HP, and 25 in Status Recovery. These stats are upgraded per weapon, so you will need to complete 180 missions per weapon type to fully optimize them.

As of

G10 , these stats are no longer per weapon but are instead global across all weapons, making it a less daunting task.

• Damage Reduction: 20 levels. Reduces all damage taken by 10% at maximum level (0.5% per level).

• Attack Ceiling: It's easy to hit the maximum attack at G Rank, so raising this stat is crucial for all G Rank players. There are 180 levels, each raising the limit by 40 true raw. For example, completing 50 missions increases the base from 800 to 2800 true raw, allowing 3920 Attack with an

  Weapon
  Sword and Shield or
  Weapon
  Dual Swords (2800 * 1.4). Any factor that increases the attack value on the guild card counts towards this limit, such as the LS Spirit Bar, the Tonfa combo meters, DS Sharpens, Demon Drugs, Food Buffs, and SR Attack Increase levels. Critical Hits and Weapon Sharpness do not count as they do not modify the value on the guild card. You can verify which factors contribute to the Attack Ceiling on the Damage Calculator
  .

• Partial HP on Hit: 25 levels. Increases the amount of red HP left after taking a hit, with each level providing an extra 1% health.

• Status Recovery: 25 levels. Reduces the duration of status effects by up to 1 second, with each level reducing time by 1.5 frames (up to 30 frames at 30fps).

My Mission tasks provide passive buffs and increase the maximum attack ceiling beyond the default limit of 800 True Raw. With G Rank weapons capable of reaching True Raw values of over 600 without any skills or additions, these missions become essential. For example, the G Rank Akantor

Great Sword has 2548 Raw without any skills. Adding

Armor Skill

Adrenaline+2 pushes it over 3840 Raw. Therefore, aiming for at least 20 levels in the Attack Ceiling is recommended after starting G Rank, and eventually pushing for around 80 to 100 total levels. See Attack Ceiling table for more details.

Viewing Missions

---

You can view your active My Mission by checking your Book of Secrets, which displays the task number, target, and progress towards the goal. Both standard HR1-999 and G Rank quest NPCs have options dedicated to these missions, automatically searching for relevant quests that meet the requirements. You will need to manually toggle HC if required.

Level Recommendations

---

For endgame play, these challenges are essential. The game constantly adds new skills that raise attack, making the original 800 True Raw limit increasingly irrelevant in G Rank play. To determine your specific level requirements, use the Damage Calculator

. Enter your skills and weapon values in the left column to get an accurate calculation. For estimates, enter around 500-600 as base true raw for typical late to endgame numbers.

Vanity Challenges

---

Upon reaching HR5 and starting Style Rank, you gain access to the SR Self Challenge Room, which displays all the weapons you have SR in and the Hiden Sets you have crafted.

There are two NPCs in this room, R and S:

• R: Gives challenges that grant medals for completion. These are mostly vanity quests, but completing them all grants 30

  Item
  My Mission Tickets to skip S's stat quests.

• S: Gives challenges similar to R's and quests that improve the stats on your Book of Secrets. These quests will appear on the main Quest Giver NPCs when relevant, so you won't need to visit this room just for stats.

NPC Menus

---

Talking to either S or R produces a menu with the following options:

• Select Challenge: Choose one of ten challenges from your current set.

• Change Challenge Set: Swap challenges with another set. Each set has its own decorative disc, which gets decorations added as you complete the challenges.

• SR Stat Mission: Missions to complete to rank up the bottom four stats on your Book of Secrets. Available with S and standard Quest NPCs.

• Manual: Opens the online manual in your browser.

Missions and Challenges

---

Both Missions and Challenges have a menu listing a target to kill a certain number of. After taking an SR Stat mission from S, you will be asked if you want to skip it using items, accessible through the Guild Master in the main town square. You will be prompted to use tickets or Lottery G coins, followed by confirming your choice. Quests are persistent across sessions and automatically marked as completed once their goal is achieved.

From the

ZZ Update 1 , new cuffs have been introduced that grant Hiden points and prevent your Hiden from using a skill slot. These cuffs are separate from normal skill cuffs and do not take up any actual slots in an outfit. You can equip a single Hiden cuff alongside any other cuff.

Item

Hiden Cuffs come in three levels: Basic, G, and True.

• Basic Cuffs: Provide +6 points in a Hiden and prevent Hiden from using a skill slot.

• G Cuffs: Provide +12 points in a Hiden and prevent Hiden from using a skill slot.

• True Cuffs: Provide +12 points in a Hiden, +2 points in a Meta Skill, and prevent Hiden from using a skill slot. Text colored cyan in menus.

The first two levels of these cuffs use standard Hiden materials, and you cannot exchange HL Hiden tickets to obtain them. The True Cuff requires a single True Hiden decoration. There are 8 versions of these cuffs for each weapon type, and any True Hiden decoration can be used to create any of the cuffs.

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