Best starter Bow build in Monster Hunter Wilds

If you’re looking for the best Bow build in Monster Hunter Wilds, two things are probably true. One, you’re interested in dealing damage without putting yourself directly in disemboweling range. And two, you probably looked at bowguns and thought “This might be a lot” when you saw the ammo screens. Welcome to the Bow, aka the ranged weapon that is Just The Right Amount.

(It’s still a lot.)

The Bow is a mid-range powerhouse in Monster Hunter, dealing in steady, repeated damage while special attacks like the Dragon Piercer provide occasional high-power bursts. It’s also a very mobile weapon—often, optimal Bow play involves more deliberate dodging to power up your arrows than it does charging them by holding down a button.

Below, I’ll run you through the basics of Bow attacks and playstyle in Monster Hunter Wilds before setting you up with a slate of armor and weapon suggestions to make your path through Low Rank a pleasant one.

How to play Bow in Monster Hunter Wilds

The first and most important thing to understand about the Bow is effective range. Like the Bowguns, the Bow’s most effective when you’re not too far from or too close to the monster you’re shooting at. You’ll know you’re within your Bow’s effective range when your targeting reticle turns orange while aiming with LT on a controller, like this:

You’ll want to ensure you’re shooting from effective range as often as possible. Otherwise, you’re doing far less damage than you could be.

Now, let’s talk about basic mechanics and controls.

Basic Bow attacks and comboing

On a controller, aim your bow with LT. This will pull up your targeting reticle, and it’ll also highlight monster wounds for destroying with Focus Strikes. Charge your shots by holding RT and release to shoot. There are three charge levels, indicated by dots that appear to either side of your reticle as you charge. The higher your charge level, the more damage your shot will do.

However, dodging while charging a shot or immediately after a shot will perform a Charging Sidestep, raising your charge level. As a result, instead of manually charging every shot, you’ll do more damage by continually dodging and shooting at max level instead.

• Successfully dodging a monster’s attack with a Charging Sidestep will perform a Discerning Dodge, which restores your stamina and fills some of your Trick Arrow Gauge. More on that below.
• Press B during a shot combo to perform a Power Shot, immediately firing a spread of arrows at your current charge level. Immediately press B again for a Power Volley, firing another spread. This is a good way to finish off a sequence of shots once you’re running low on stamina.

Press B+Y when you’re not charging a shot to perform a Dragon Piercer—a powerful special attack that punches through the monster and damages it continually as it does so. Performing a Dragon Piercer during a combo will greatly speed up its animation. If the monster topples while you’re shooting it, it’s a great time for a Dragon Piercer.

The Trick Arrow Gauge, Tracer Arrows, and Coatings

New to Bow in Monster Hunter Wilds is the Trick Arrow Gauge. This is the bar on the right side of your screen above your consumable items. It refills as you land shots, and you can spend the gauge on Coatings and Tracer Arrows.

• Press X while charging a shot to spend Trick Arrow Gauge by readying a Tracer Arrow. The Tracer Arrow will embed itself where it hits a monster, and every shot you fire while it’s active will home in on the tracer arrow. Eventually, the Tracer Arrow will detonate, dealing additional damage.
• Press B while charging a shot to start aiming an Arc Shot. This will place a reticle on the ground, and firing the shot will rain arrows from the sky. Some of those arrows will be Fuse Arrows, which embed themselves and eventually detonate like Tracer Arrows.
• Holding LB will let you select a Coating by pushing A and Y. Press Y without holding LB or charging a shot to apply a Coating. I’ll run through the Coating types below.

While charging a shot, press B+Y to perform Thousand Dragons. This is a wide spread of arrows with a short range by default, but when you have a Tracer Arrow or Fuse Arrow active, those shots gain range and will immediately detonate the Tracer. Dragon Piercer will also detonate Fuse Arrows and Tracers.

Hold RB while aiming with LT to prepare Focus Fire, the Bow’s Focus Strike. This will activate a larger aiming reticle, letting you lock onto both monster wounds and active Tracer arrows. The longer you aim at wounds or Tracers, the more arrows you’ll fire.

Coating Types

Each Bow allows the use of a limited selection of Coating Types, but you can enable other Coatings for that bow with Decorations. Power Coating increases arrow damage. Close-Range Coating reduces your effective arrow range, but increases damage. Piercing Coating causes arrows to pierce through a monster and deal multiple instances of damage, like small versions of the Dragon Piercer.

Poison, Paralysis, Sleep, Blast, and Exhaust coatings all apply their respective statuses.

Putting it all together

Dealing the most damage with Bow involves using Charging Sidestep to dodge up to maximum charge level and then alternating shots and dodges to continue pumping out max level arrows while you have stamina, eventually finishing your combo with a couple Power Shots or a Dragon Piercer.

• If you land Tracer Arrows and Fuse arrows before your combo, you can add an extra layer of damage by eventually triggering their detonations with a Dragon Piercer or Thousand Dragons.

Best Bow build in Low Rank

The Bow is one of the most stamina-reliant weapons in Monster Hunter. Unfortunately, the best stamina management skills—Constitution and Stamina Surge—aren’t easily accessible until later in Low Rank. Until then, we’ll be focusing on armor skills that make our general gameplay as smooth as possible.

• First weapon: Wild Power Bow I

Throughout this build guide I’m going to be suggesting bows that, like the The Wild Power Bow I, allow the use of the Power Coating, which provides extra arrow damage when active. The Wild Power Bow also offers a few status coatings as a nice bonus, so you can dabble with those and feel out your own preferences for later bow builds if you’d like.

It could be worth doing some mining to make a Dragon Perforator I, however. It allows the use of the Pierce Coating, which makes each of your arrows punch through the monster and deal damage as it passes through every damageable part along the way. If you end up preferring how that feels over the Power Coating, I’d recommend making a Rey Perkonis I when that tier of the Smithy unlocks, and using that for the duration of Low Rank.

• First armor set: Bone Helm, Bone Mail, Balahara Vambraces, Balahara Coil, Balahara Greaves

Our best stamina management skills aren’t available until later on in Low Rank, so we’ll have to take what we can get. The Bone pieces provide Marathon Runner, which decreases stamina usage for actions that steadily drain stamina, like charging arrow shots. Ideally, we’ll want to be dodging and shooting as much as possible, but it’s not really feasible at this point. Marathon Runner will help us get more shots out until our armor supports it.

Speaking of dodging, Balahara gear gives Evade Extender, increasing our dodge distance. It’s almost always worth grabbing for general comfort if you’ve got the gear or decoration space.

• Second weapon: Windbrace Bow I

We continue our survey of Power Coating bows with the Windbrace Bow, a Hirabami Bow that adds some ice damage, though it’ll cost us our other coatings. It also has a few innate points in Focus, which speeds up attack charging. Since we can’t make the most out of the dodge-and-shoot playstyle quite yet, we might as well speed up our charging so we’re spending less stamina doing it.

• Second armor set: Hirabami Headdress, Hirabami Mail, Balahara Vambraces, Balahara Coil, Balahara Greaves, Fitness Charm I

You’d be perfectly fine keeping the first armor set and dropping in a few armor spheres for some extra defense, but if you’re interested in a change, you could pick up some Hirabami pieces while building your Windbrace Bow. They’ll give you a couple points in the Evade Window skill, increasing the invincibility frames of your dodge. In turn, it’ll be easier to perform the Discerning Dodge, which refills your stamina whenever you successfully dodge a monster attack.

More important, however, is making our first talisman: Fitness Charm I. It’ll provide us with our first Constitution skill point, providing a flat deduction on every dodge and arrow shot, making the bow’s shoot-and-scoot playstyle much more manageable.

• Third weapon: Albirath Bow I

We’re swapping ice for fire. The Albirath Bow gives us more physical damage, more elemental damage, a higher crit chance, and Blast Coating. It also gives a point in Ballistics, slightly increasing the maximum effective range of our arrows. It’ll also synergize well with a couple armor pieces from our third armor set.

• Third armor set: G. Rathalos Helm, Rey Sandmail, G. Rathalos Vambraces, Xu Wu Coil, Xu Wu Greaves, Fitness Charm I

Lots of changes here—and for the better. We’ve finally hit the point where stamina skills are more accessible. We’ll continue pumping our Constitution skill with the Rey Sandmail chest armor, and we’ll also get Xu Wu waist and leg armor, giving us two points in Stamina Surge to increase our stamina regen rate.

With the G. Rathalos Helm and G. Rathalos Vambraces, we get a little bit of offense from our armor thanks two two points in the Weakness Exploit skill, adding extra damage when we hit monster weak spots and land Focus Strikes on wounds (which we do a lot of with the Bow). With those two pieces, we also get the Scorcher I set bonus, giving our attacks a chance to do an extra chip of fire damage—a nice complement to our Albirath Bow.

We’ll continue building on this guide for High Rank and endgame builds in the future, so stay tuned.