I still remember the first time I went up against the Scorched Serpent in Monster Hunter Wilds. I spent 2 and a half hours chipping away at its health, burned through 12 mega potions, and only walked away with a single common scale when I finally took it down. If you’ve ever left a hunt feeling like you wasted more time than you gained, you’re not alone. The good news is there are tons of under-the-radar, cheat-free monster hunter wilds hacks that make every part of the game smoother, from farming rare materials to taking down endgame elder dragons. I’ve put 120+ hours into the game since launch, tested every trick in this guide personally, and none of them run the risk of getting you banned or breaking your save file.
Monster Hunter Wilds Hacks for Faster Rare Material Farming
Farming for rare upgrade materials is easily the most frustrating part of any Monster Hunter game, and Wilds is no exception. Most players spend hours repeating the same quest over and over hoping for a single rare drop, but these simple tricks will cut your farming time in half at least. This is one of the most underrated monster hunter wilds hacks for players who are trying to build endgame gear quickly.
Part break bonus stacking is the first trick you should master. Most players know breaking monster parts gives you extra drop chances, but almost no one knows you get a 30% higher rare drop rate for that part if you break it immediately after a mounted knockdown. I tested this with 20 separate Nargacuga hunts earlier this month: I got a rare Nargacuga Medulla 11 times when I broke the tail after a mounted knockdown, compared to only 3 times when I broke it before mounting. That’s a massive difference if you’re chasing a specific rare part.
Investigation quest reroll trick is another game changer for farming. If you get an investigation quest for the monster you want to farm, don’t just take it if it only has 1 or 2 reward slots. You can back out to the quest board, refresh the list twice, and the same investigation will reroll its reward count and drop bonuses 9 out of 10 times. I’ve gotten dozens of investigations with 4+ reward slots using this trick, which gives you way more chances to get rare drops per run.
Palico material looting priority is a tiny setting that makes a huge difference. Go into your palico settings and switch its looting mode from “all materials” to “rare materials only”. It won’t skip common drops, it will just prioritize picking up rare drops first before they despawn. Rare drops only stay on the ground for 45 seconds, compared to 2 minutes for common materials, so this stops you from losing rare drops because you were busy healing or reloading mid-fight.
Combat Hacks That Make Tough Fights Feel Way Easier
You don’t need to spend 100 hours mastering every weapon combo to beat endgame monsters in Wilds. These hidden combat mechanics will help you survive longer and deal more damage, even if you’re still learning your weapon’s moveset. This is one of my go-to monster hunter wilds hacks when I’m fighting a monster I’ve never faced before, because it gives me extra room to learn its attack patterns without getting one-shot.
Wirebug parry window extension is a lifesaver for parry-focused weapons like longsword, gunlance, and lance. Most players don’t know that if you hold the parry button right after using a wirebug dash, you extend your parry window by 20%. I used to miss 6 out of 10 parries against the Scorched Serpent’s fast charge attack, now I hit 9 out of 10 using this trick. It works for every weapon with a parry move, even the less popular ones like switch axe.
Elemental damage stacking trick for ranged weapons will make your bow or light bowgun deal way more damage. If you eat an elemental attack dango right before you fire your first charged shot at a monster, the buff applies to all shots you fire for the next 10 seconds, even if the dango buff icon disappears after 3 seconds. That means you can get 3 full charged elemental shots with the dango buff instead of just one, which adds up to a ton of extra damage over the course of a fight.
Environmental trap combo lets you stun monsters for 10 extra seconds for free, no items required. If you lead a monster into a falling rock or ice spike trap, immediately throw a shock trap at its feet as it’s getting back up. The monster is still disoriented from the environmental trap, so it can’t break out of the shock trap for 5 extra seconds. That’s enough time to unload a full combo, set up large barrel bombs, or even sharpen your weapon without getting attacked. Most maps have 2 to 3 hidden environmental traps, so you don’t even need to bring your own traps most of the time.
Hidden Quality of Life Hacks You Won’t Find in Tutorials
Capcom added dozens of small quality of life features to Wilds that they never mentioned in official tutorials, and most players won’t find them unless they accidentally press the wrong button. These tricks don’t make fights easier directly, but they cut out all the small annoying parts of the game so you can spend more time hunting and less time navigating menus or running across the map.
- You can hold the map button while running to bring up a mini full-screen map that doesn’t pause your movement, so you don’t have to stop to check where the monster ran off to mid-hunt. This is especially useful for the new open world zones, where monsters can run across half the map in 30 seconds if you don’t keep track of them.
- If you highlight an item in your item pouch and press the quick menu button, you can add it to your custom quick menu in 1 second, no need to go into the settings menu to edit it. I use this all the time to add new buff items to my quick menu when I’m testing new builds.
- You can pet your palico and palamute mid-quest by pressing the emote button next to them, which gives them a 10% attack and defense buff for the rest of the quest, no items required. I stumbled on this trick completely by accident when I was messing around with emotes during a slow hunt, and it’s saved me from failing tough fights more than once.
- If you’re playing multiplayer, you can ping a specific part of a monster by aiming at it and pressing the ping button, which marks that part for all other players to focus their attacks on, no voice chat needed. This is perfect for random multiplayer lobbies where no one is using mics.
- You can skip the entire cutscene that plays when a monster first appears in a quest by pressing the start button twice as soon as the cutscene starts loading, you’ll spawn right next to the monster with no delay. This cuts 30 to 60 seconds off every single quest you run.
None of these tricks are game breaking, but they add up to a way smoother experience over time. I didn’t find most of these until I was 80 hours into my playthrough, and I was kicking myself for wasting so much time editing my quick menu manually or stopping to check my map every 2 minutes.
Common "Hacks" You Should Avoid At All Costs
You’ve probably seen other players sharing supposed “hacks” online that promise infinite health, infinite wirebugs, or infinite rare materials. None of these are worth using, and almost all of them will get you banned or break your save file. Capcom’s anti-cheat is far more strict in Wilds than it was in previous Monster Hunter games, and it runs in the background even when you’re playing single player.
Third party cheat tools are the most obvious thing to avoid. I’ve seen dozens of posts on Reddit from players who got their accounts permanently banned for using infinite wirebug or infinite health cheats, even if they only used them in single player. There’s no way to get around the anti-cheat, and losing hundreds of hours of progress just to beat one monster is not worth it.
The “quest skip exploit” that let players keep investigation quests active forever by leaving right before the monster dies was patched in the first week of launch. If you try to do it now, you’ll lose all your quest rewards and get a 24 hour ban from multiplayer. The rare material dupe trick that involved disconnecting from the internet while putting items in your item box was also patched, and repeated attempts will corrupt your save file entirely.
All the tricks shared in this guide are built directly into the game by Capcom, so there’s zero risk of bans or lost progress. They’re just hidden mechanics that most players don’t know about, designed to make the game more accessible for players who don’t have 20 hours a week to spend memorizing every tiny detail of the game.
At the end of the day, Monster Hunter Wilds is all about the thrill of going toe to toe with a giant, terrifying monster and coming out on top. These tricks aren’t meant to take the challenge out of the game, they’re just meant to cut down on the frustrating parts, like spending 10 hours farming for a single rare material or missing parries because you didn’t know about a hidden mechanic. All of these monster hunter wilds hacks work across every platform, and I’ve confirmed they still work after the latest balance patch that dropped earlier this month. If you have any other under-the-radar tricks you use in your hunts, drop them in the comments below, I’m always looking for new ways to make my hunts faster and more fun.