Monster Weakness, Ailments, Hitzones Guide - road to Expert Hunter - Monster Hunter Rise (MH Rise) | MHR

In this guide, I plan to go into details on how you should use Hunter Notes, databases like Kiranico, and other sources to fully understand monster and how to approach it. This will help you to attack correct monster parts and use proper ailments and elemental statuses to maximise your damage output.

The guide is quite extensive so jump to relevant content by clicking on one of the sections below.

Hitzone values

This is a mechanic that allows monsters to have a different level of robustness on each of their parts: tail, head, back, etc. You can check them in Hunter Notes:

Generally: the higher value – the weaker the part is. This is true for both elemental and physical hitzones.

Physical damage

Physical damage is separated into categories:

• Cut (sever) – Greatsword swings, lance pokes, insect glaive attacks, etc.
• Blunt – hammer, hunting horn, charge blade phials, shield bashes etc.
• Ammo – Bow arrows, light bowgun and heavy bowgun shots

You should aim to attack parts that have a value of 45 or higher with respective weapon. This is when Weakness Exploit skill will activate for that part. Let’s take an example of Tobi-Kadachi:

If we are using Longsword our aim is to attack these parts in the priority when the monster is open for the attack:

• Tail - 65
• Head - 48
• Neck – 48
• Torso - 45
• Back - 45

These parts have the highest hitzone values. Moreover, if you have a Weakness Exploit skill when attacking it will also activate.

I would recommend utilizing these chances when the monster is knocked down. He is then unusually open to attack any of its parts. However, to hit it consistently during its attacks, that requires a lot of practice.

Elemental

If you are using a weapon with an elemental effect you should also check which parts of the monster are weakest to it. Generally, everything that is equal to 20 and above should be attacked with that element weapon

Again if we take Tobi-Kadachi, we see that it is weakest to water in these parts: Head, Neck, Hind Leg and Tail. So if you are using a weapon like Mud Twister dual daggers, you should attack the mentioned parts.

Ailments vulnerabilities

I would like to separate ailments and blights into two parts as it will be easier to explain and also to discern them. The reason being is that blights cannot be created by hunter directly. So I will be talking about this part of the table in Hunter's Notes:

You can see Stars near each ailment. It is an approximate indication of how much monster is resistant to this ailment. The more Stars the easier it is for the player

Ailments only activate once the buildup threshold is reached through the successful buildup of status effects. Each monster has different values. Once the threshold is reached the relevant status effect would activate. However, once it ends the build up goes to 0. It also increases the threshold, so you will need more effective attacks to activate the ailment again.

We can take as an example Sleep ailment(we will go on its effects on the monster in the next section).

Generally weapons have a chance (or also named proc) to activate the buildup. The amount of buildup is listed in the weapon details:

We can check Kiranico database for the precise total build up number that is needed to activate the ailment. So for example a monster has a 100 buildup threshold for Sleep:

If I am using Baggi Gunlance II (with Sleep value of 22) and the monster has a threshold of 100, I will need 5 procced attacks for the sleep ailment effect to activate. It works the same for other ailments, except Exhaust which is explained later.

Of course, you also have similar data, but not so detailed in Hunter's Notes:

Generally, the more bars are filled the more these stats are favourable to the hunter. Now we can go into more details on each ailment

Sleep

Sleep allows the monster to be put to sleep. The first attack that deals damage to the monster wakes him up and deals double damage. So you want the first hit to be the strongest as possible with your weapon.

General rule of thumb, if you are in a group and one of its members is Greatsword user, leave the first hit to him or her. Moreover, it is also a good time to place Large or Mega Barrel bombs for additional damage.

So how you activate sleep? When attacking with a weapon that has sleep status on it, your weapon has a chance to proc the effect, you will see it by a small blue cloud:

As explained previously once you reach the buildup threshold Sleep will activate.

Paralysis

Paralysis immobilizes a monster. From the testing that I did in Training Grounds and against Low Rank monsters it seems that they do not receive increased damage during the effect. However, they are fully open to attacks in any place.

It is similar to Sleep as it will activate after certain buildup threshold is met. You will need a weapon that deals Paralysis status damage for it to buildup:

The proc effect can be clearly seen by the yellow cloud that appears:

Blast

Blast has a chance to proc each hit adding up to the buildup. The proc is a small smoke that appears around your weapon after the hit:

It does not matter what part of the monster you are attacking the proc has the same chance of activating. Moreover, the buildup is also the same doesn’t matter what hitzone value the part you are attacking has.

Let’s look at Great Izuchi. From Kiranico database: https://mhrise.kiranico.com/data/monsters/1681174536 we see that he has 70 buildup value. So if I am using Sinister Gunlance II with 29 Blast value it should take me 3 proc hits to create a blast. After that the buildup value is 100, meaning I will need 4 proc hits to activate the second Blast.

Of course, you also need to use a weapon with the Blast status effect:

Blast damage is based on Monster, and generally harder monsters have the bigger value.

Exhaust

Exhaustion is an effect when the monster will become slower, tire out and have drooling animation.

Monsters have an internal stamina gauge that is depleted by the attacks that they do. Once that reaches 0 they will enter exhausted state (similar to enraged state but, but opposite as they become less aggressive).

However, here comes the Exhaust mechanic into play. You can deplete the monster stamina faster if you deal Exhaust damage. This is done by:

• Hammer
• Hunting Horn
• Charge Blade Impact Phials
• Shield bashes
• Exhaust phials on Switch axe
• Exhaust ammo
• Blast explosions

You will need to hit anywhere except Head for this damage to build up.

Once the threshold is reached the monster will flinch, depleting its internal stamina by a large chunk.

Do this a number of times and the monster will enter Exhausted state much faster than normal.

Stun

Stun mechanic is when the monster gets KO, drops on the ground and you see spinning star animation on his head.

Each monster has a different level of buildup that they need. To buildup stun damage you need to hit the monster head with blunt damage:

• Hammer
• Hunting Horn
• Charge Blade Impact Phials
• Shield bashes
• Exhaust phials on Switch axe
• Exhaust ammo
• Blast explosions

So it is similar to Exhaust, however, more rewarding as it is harder to achieve due to the need to hit a monster head.

Blight vulnerabilities

In Monster Hunter Rise monsters are also able to receive blight effects. This sounds great, however, the big drawback is that the hunter is not able to do that directly. But there are other options.

How blights can be activated

There are three main ways.

Use Hunting Helpers that you find on the hunt

During the hunt, you will encounter endemic life also called Hunting Helpers. They set Blight on the monster.

Helper	Effect
Mudbeetle	Sets Waterblight on monster
Firebeetle	Sets Fireblight on monster
Thunderbeetle	Sets Thunderblight on monster
Snowbeetle	Sets Iceblight on monster

Once you pick them up they will appear in your item pouch and can be thrown at the large Monster.

Monsters attacking each other and Turf war

Another way to activate Blight on a monster is to make him get attacked by another Monster. However, it needs to use elemental attack, like Rathian fireball or Mizutsune hydro blast.

Wyvern Riding

If you get a chance to ride a monster try using both light and strong attacks. One of them may be element attack allowing to activate relevant blight. For example in this hunt, I used Basarios to activate Fireblight on Khezu:

Waterblight

When a monster is active with this blight his body hitzone values will decrease. Meaning you will do a higher amount of damage overall

Fireblight

Works similar to poison and deal damage of timer. Moreover, the monster is more prone to flinching which should result in faster exhaustion.

Thunderblight

Once the monster is affected by Thunderblight this is a chance for you to stun him more easily (or other way called KO). This means that Stun value builds up not only when hitting with blunt weapon to head but also any part with any weapon type. But for the stun to be activated you will still need to do the final hit on the head.

Iceblight

The monster becomes slower. While this does not have a strong direct effect as other blights it can still be helpful. It will allow you to predict monster attacks and react to them much easier. Indirectly providing more opportunities to punish the monster with larger openings.

Breakable parts

Each large monster has parts that can be broken. If we take Mizutsune as an example she can have her head broken two times, each foreleg one time, Tail and Fin. How is this important?

Each broken parts has a chance to give additional materials. Moreover, it weakens the monster. For example: if you break its head/horns the attacks that use this body part will become much weaker. If you cut off the monster tail its tail attack range will be shorter and also it will deal less damage.

You can see the broken parts by the scars that appear on the body or its fin or horn being broken off:

Conclusion

I hope this guide will help you have a better and deeper understanding of monster mechanics. I especially recommend reading it for beginner players, so that you would be much more effective when preparing for a hunt.

If you see any incorrect information or would like to add something, feel free to leave a comment.