Monster Hunter: World high rank beginner’s guide (2024)

If you’ve made your way to high rank in Monster Hunter: World, you might’ve noticed how the difficulty spikes almost immediately. Welcome to the real game! While the immediate bump in difficulty might scare some players off, we’re here to show you a few things that will make high rank less daunting.

If you invest some time into key items right when you start high rank, your experience will feel so much better. To help you get there, we’ve put together a quick guide. But before you get started, you’re going to need money. Lots of it.

How to make zenny fast

Bigger and badder enemies aren’t the only thing you’ll find in high rank. The moment you try shopping for anything in the high rank section of the Workshop, you’ll notice some big price tags. Unfortunately, money is essential in high rank as you’ll need it to buy stronger weapons and armor. We recommend three methods of zenny farming: Cultivating Might Seeds, easy Investigations and the Bandit Mantle.

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Used in tandem, you’ll be able to fill your pockets quickly, allowing you to buy anything you’d like. Once you’re swimming in zenny, we have a few recommendations for what to put on your shopping list first.

Your first high rank armor set: Zorah Magdaros

Monsters are going to hit a lot harder than you’ve come to expect in high rank. To make sure you get started on the right foot, we suggest making your first armor set the Zorah Magdaros armor.

Now, if you’ve made your way through Monster Hunter: World, you know that you only encounter this creature twice. With that in mind, it’s likely you didn’t get enough materials from the massive elder dragon to create a full armor set. So how is this possible?

Once you beat the “A Colossal Task” quest, you’ll enter the high rank portion of the game. From there, you won’t be able to face off against the large beast normally. A quest that will let you fight Zorah can randomly reappear as a selectable quest on your board, but if you’re looking to get this armor fast, you can’t rely on that. Thankfully, you can always join other hunters who are fighting Zorah.

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To jump into another player’s hunt against the dragon, do the following:

1. Hop into an online session.
2. Go to your quest board and select Join a Quest.
3. Choose Respond to SOS.
4. When you search, select No Preference under Quest type.
5. Set your Target as Zorah Magdaros.
6. There’s a chance nothing will show up, but if an Optional quest becomes available, you’ll see the “Left Quite an Impression” quest.

If you see that quest, join it right away so you can farm the monster as much as you can. You’ll have to repeat this process several times to get enough pieces to craft the full armor set, but after a few runs you’ll hit enough mining outcrops on the dragon and damage enough cores to get what you need.

It’s helpful to use your mission vouchers here to increase the odds of getting more items, too. Keep in mind that the full set will cost a ton, so if you’re searching for the quest and come up empty, take time to farm some scales with the Bandit Mantle in the meantime as we detail in our zenny farming guide.

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This armor set is great to start with since each piece’s base defense is likely much higher than what you currently have at the end of low rank. The beta version of this armor set also has slots for gems, something you may not even had the chance to experiment with using low rank armor.

While this armor alone will beef up your defense considerably, there are two other items you should save up zenny for. These items, by just being in your pouch, will boost your attack and defense.

Two essential charms

A really simple way to give yourself a buff without much effort is to buy two very important items from the Provisions shop: the Powercharm and Armorcharm. Each item, if sitting in your pouch, will give a 5 percent boost to your attack and defense, respectively.

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However, these items are not cheap. The Powercharm costs 36,000 zenny and the Armorcharm costs 24,000 zenny. Thankfully, you can use our zenny farming guide to rack up the cash needed to get these essential items. They are worthwhile investments because they’re strong buffs that will always persist and will be beneficial the stronger you get. Outside of the price, there is no reason to not have them.

If you’re feeling very ambitious, you can also upgrade both of these items to the Powertalon and Armortalon, provided you’ve taken down Bazelgeuse and have two Bazelgeuse Talons in your inventory. The talons give you a 10 percent increase to their respective stats, so they can be incredibly beneficial if you’re willing to tussle with that monster. If you’re looking to maximize your stats, you can actually go back to the Provisions shop and repurchase the Powercharm and Armorcharm to get a 15 percent increase when paired with the two talons.