Skip to main content

Weapons and Combat

Combat in Monster Hunter Rise revolves around deliberate attacks, careful positioning, and understanding your weapon's unique mechanics. You cannot spam attacks and expect to win against High Rank monsters. This guide breaks down the core combat systems and the 14 available weapon types.

Weapon Sharpness​

If you use a melee weapon, you must manage its Sharpness. The Sharpness meter (the sword icon below your health bar) dictates how much damage you deal and whether your attacks bounce off tough monster parts.

Sharpness levels follow this color progression, from worst to best: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, White. Purple sharpness is exclusively available in the Sunbreak Master Rank expansion.

  • Damage Multipliers: Sharpness acts as a direct, multiplicative modifier to both Raw and Elemental damage. For example, White sharpness yields a massive 1.32x Raw multiplier, making the pursuit of White sharpness mathematically superior to stacking flat raw attack-boosting armor skills.
  • Bouncing (Deflection): Attacking with low sharpness (Yellow or below) triggers an automatic, highly punishing deflection animation if the monster's localized armor rating (Hitzone Value) exceeds the weapon's sharpness modifier. This interrupts your combo and leaves you highly vulnerable.
  • Low Sharpness Penalty: Dropping to Yellow sharpness applies a punitive, hidden modifier that reduces damage heavily depending on the timing of the weapon strike within the animation frame.
  • Maintenance: Use a Whetstone from your radial menu to restore sharpness when it drops. Do this safely, usually when the monster is distracted.

The 14 Weapon Types​

Rise features 14 distinct weapons, each playing like a completely different game class. They fall into three loose categories:

Light Melee Weapons​

Fast, mobile, and excellent at applying elemental damage or status effects.

  • Sword & Shield: Highly versatile. Allows you to use items while your weapon is drawn. Great for consistent, aggressive pressure.
  • Dual Blades: The fastest weapons in the game. Enters Demon Mode for rapid, high-damage flurries at the cost of stamina drain.
  • Long Sword: Focuses on counters and building a Spirit Gauge to unleash devastating, wide-sweeping attacks.
  • Insect Glaive: Offers unmatched aerial mobility. Uses a Kinsect to extract buffs from monsters before launching aerial combos.

Heavy Melee Weapons​

Slow, deliberate, and capable of massive burst damage.

  • Great Sword: The ultimate hit-and-run weapon. Relies on predicting monster movements to land fully charged, catastrophic blows.
  • Hammer: Blunt weapon designed to smash monster heads. Deals high exhaust and stun damage, frequently knocking monsters out.
  • Hunting Horn: A blunt weapon that provides powerful buffs to the entire team while dealing heavy impact damage.
  • Lance: The ultimate defensive weapon. Features a massive shield and allows for relentless, pinpoint thrusts while absorbing attacks.
  • Gunlance: Combines a sturdy shield with a cannon. Fires explosive shells that deal fixed damage regardless of hitzones.
  • Switch Axe: Morphs between a highly mobile axe mode and a high-damage, phial-discharging sword mode.
  • Charge Blade: A complex technical weapon. Stores energy in sword-and-shield mode to unleash explosive phial attacks in a massive axe mode.

Ranged Weapons​

Focus on positioning, ammunition management, and hitting weak points from a distance.

  • Light Bowgun (LBG): Highly mobile ranged weapon. Excels at applying status effects and rapid-firing specific ammo types.
  • Heavy Bowgun (HBG): Slow and cumbersome but deals devastating damage. Can equip a shield to absorb hits while firing heavy ordnance.
  • Bow: A highly mobile ranged weapon that relies on stamina management. Shoots charged arrows and excels at sustained elemental damage.

Combat Fundamentals​

  • Hitzones: Monsters take different amounts of damage depending on where you hit them. Hitting a Rathian's head deals significantly more damage than hitting its armored legs. Learn the weak points.
  • Switch Skills: As you progress, you unlock Switch Skills that allow you to swap out specific moves. Unlocking them follows a strict sequence: Set 1 unlocks at Village 3-Star/Hub 2-Star. Set 2 unlocks by crafting or upgrading eight unique weapons of that specific weapon type. Set 3 unlocks by completing specific High Rank Hub Quests assigned by Master Utsushi.
  • Switch Skill Swap: Introduced in the Sunbreak expansion, this mechanic allows you to save two distinct loadouts of five Switch Skills (Red and Blue Swap Scrolls) and swap between them instantaneously during combat, triggering an evasion animation with invincibility frames.