When is High Rank in Monster Hunter Wilds?
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Starting High Rank in Monster Hunter Wilds is when the “real” game begins and many of the juiciest features unlock — and as such, players will be itching to get there as soon as possible.
As with previous entries, there is a neat split between Low Rank and High Rank, and this guide explains the difference between the two, how to start High Rank in Monster Hunter Wilds, as well as a list of hunter rank (HR) soft caps.
What is High Rank in Monster Hunter Wilds?
Low Rank is essentially the tutorial introducing you to Monster Hunter Wilds. It teaches you the different monster types and how they interact with each other, and more importantly, how you should approach killing each one. This is easily the most approachable game in this franchise, but that’s not to say that everything in Low Rank is easy. That all depends on your weapons, armor, and — frankly — skill.
When you get to High Rank, any semblance of “training wheels” is completely gone. The most immediate difference is, as with all other Monster Hunter games, the very best end-game Low Rank armor is matched by the worst High Rank armor, with new gear very quickly outclassing your finest threads.
This is why you’re often better waiting until you reach High Rank to put serious time and effort into grinding and unlocking armor sets.
As you would expect, unlocking High Rank armor and weapons involves finding High Rank bones and ores, as well as killing High Rank monsters to drop their fancy new monster parts. You will need to farm all of these – and occasionally some Low Rank monsters — for High Rank gear.
It also continues the (excellent) main story, introduces monster species and sub-species, and gives you access to layered armor.
When is High Rank in Monster Hunter Wilds, and how do you unlock?
High Rank in Monster Hunter Wilds starts when you Chapter 3 and let the end credits roll. When you return, to Chapter 4, you will see the cap on your hunter rank (known as HR) lift from its current rank of HR7.
There are a few things that change now that you have unlocked High Rank.
- Your previous 1–3 star missions are now known as Low Rank missions. Similarly, all armor unlocked before the credits is listed under a Low Rank section of Gemma’s Smithy.
- From here on out, you will see High Rank armor in its own separate shop pane.
- High Rank missions will also be available, however unlike previous games, these aren’t in their own section. Instead, to simplify the UI, Wilds places these all in a single, contiguous list. To make things easy, High Rank missions (4 stars and above) are color-coded. As you can see, Low Rank missions have a blue star, while High Rank missions have an orange star:
Another thing to be aware of is that the progression through the game changes. As you play, you will sometimes notice that your HR isn’t going up after completing a hunt. That’s a sign that you have hit a new soft cap. Our dedicated guide to “‘Investigate the regions and raise your HR” explains how to progress through this vague goal.
HR soft caps list in Monster Hunter Wilds
Here are some of the High Rank milestones, and the caps they unlock:
- End credits: HR7 cap lifted
- Chapter 4-1: HR8 cap lifted
- Chapter 4-2: HR15 cap lifted
- Chapter 4-3: HR20 cap lifted
- Chapter 6-1: HR40 cap lifted
We don’t currently know the HR hard cap in Monster Hunter Wilds, at the time of writing, but if this game is like Monster Hunter World (the spiritual predecessor), we expect that there will be story missions and soft caps up to HR 100, after which the hard cap of HR999 will come into play. However, this will likely form part of Wilds’ long-term road map.
Our Monster Hunter Wilds guides can outline your progress with our main story walkthrough and monster list, help you settle on an armament with our weapons list and best weapons explainers, uand ncover ores, bones, and monster tails.
