Monster Hunter Rise 3.0 brings the story of the Nintendo Switch title to a close, introducing a bunch of new monsters and Apex variants to the mix in the process. Many of these new challenges are locked behind high HR (or Hunter Rank) caps, however.
If you’re still working on the base game content, this won’t be a problem: You’ll unlock your HR when you’re through. For the veteran hunters, though, here’s how to raise your Hunter Rank to 100 fast, so that you can take on Elder Dragons like Teostra, the Allmother, and Crimson Glow Valtrex.
For the first big chunk of Monster Hunter Rise, how you increase your Hunter Rank differs from how you’ll do it later on. Until you reach HR 7, all you need to do is clear enough Key Quests (as indicated by the Hub and Village counters on the top right portion of the screen) of the same Hunter Rank as yourself.
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In doing so, you’ll hit the first soft cap, blocking you from increasing your rank any further. To unlock this first roadblock, all you need to do is complete the HR 7 Urgent Quest which, as of the first post-release update, will bump you to HR 8.
If you’ve already completed the final Hub quest of the base game, you’ll be elevated to HR 8 upon logging in after the update. This is where things change a little.
Rather than be a mad dash to complete a certain number of key quests, from HR 8 onward, quests completed will award Hunter Rank points and eventually level up your HR over time like a traditional RPG experience bar. Any hunts completed prior to unlocking your HR this way won’t retroactively apply, so even those who completed copious amounts of quests before the update won’t suddenly skyrocket to the next cap upon release.
How to skip to High Rank in Monster Hunter Rise
There’s often been an issue in Monster Hunter games where there’s a bit of a difficult disconnect between the single and multiplayer modes. Push through single-player and by the time you head into multiplayer, you’ll be forced to fight dozens of monsters that practically melt beneath your powerful weapons.
How to quickly raise your Hunter Rank in Monster Hunter Rise
As of the first major Monster Hunter Rise update, the HR cap has been lifted from HR 7 all the way to HR 20, 30, and 40, with franchise-favorite Elder Dragons Chameleos, Kushala Daora, and Teostra returning to greet you at each major step.
Grinding to HR 20 isn’t too long a process. Virtually any HR 7 quest will bump you up by around two whole HRs each run. The number of monsters in the quest doesn’t matter, it’s more a case of the minimum HR requirement of the quest itself. With that in mind, you’re only six quests away from hitting the first soft cap.
If completing six quests is too much for you, you can unlock three new quests from Master Utsushi. Though they show up in the HR 7 page of the Hub menu, each of these quests pits you against three powerful monsters at HR 8 difficulty. Complete them and you’ll go up four whole HRs with each clear, turning a six quest grind into three. You can easily complete this in an hour or so.
If you’re feeling brave, another way to go about this is hopping into multiplayer Rampage Quest runs. Though these typically take longer than standard quests to complete, they give around three HR upgrades per run.
As you reach each HR soft cap (20, 30, and 40) you’ll need to clear a new Urgent Quest against a returning Elder Dragon to continue the grind. You’ll immediately gain two HRs after completing each of these quests, meaning that, depending on which quest you choose, you only need to clear two or four more quests to unlock the next.
How to Unlock HR 20: Chameleos weaknesses, weak points, and best equipment
- Elements: None (poison)
- Weak to: Dragon, Fire, Thunder
- Weak points: Head, stomach, hind legs
Chameleons guards the way to HR 30, pinning you to HR 20 until you defeat it. How you go about this is entirely up to you; the methods outlined above don’t really change. Polish off four standard quests or two HR 8 ones if you’re after speeding things up. If you’ve fought it in a previous Monster Hunter title, throw away what you know. It’s a very different fight now; this lizard is angry.
The secret to defeating Chameleos lies in negating heavy poison in any which way you can; Hunting/Palico horns, antidotes, antidobra, whatever you can get your hands on. Learn to read when it’s about to send out gaseous clouds and whether or not it’ll push them around with its wings and you’ll only have its occasional powerful punches to watch out for.
How to unlock HR 30: Kushala Daora Weaknesses, Weak Points, and Best Equipment
- Elements: None (wind)
- Weak to: Thunder, Dragon
- Weak points: Head, forelegs, tail
At HR 30, Kushala Daora blocks your HR path. Grab the Urgent Request to put it down. Doing so unlocks the penultimate soft cap, paving the way for HR 40. But it’s easier said than done.
Kushala Daora commands the wind. On top of spitting out immense tornados that can quickly render large parts of the zone unusable, its wind aura will push back melee attackers, making for a particularly tricky fight.
How to unlock HR 40: Teostra Weaknesses, Weak Points, and Best Equipment
- Elements: Fire, Blast
- Weak to: Water, Ice
- Weak points: Head, wings, tail
Just like Kushala Daora, this deadly Elder Dragon uses an aura of its own to make attacking it innately tricky. Teostra uses both Fire and Blast elements, covering itself in the former when enraged to slowly roast nearby hunters, and relying on the latter to coat the zone with dust clouds that, when it snaps its teeth, explode for heavy area damage.
If you’re in the market for some new gear, however, the best equipment for defeating Teostra comes from Kushala Daora and its Kushala Blessing buff. This set increases Water and Ice damage dealt, nullifies the damage from Teostra’s Heat Aura, and even gives you natural health regeneration that can go beyond the usual red portion of the health bar, trivializing one of the hardest fights in the game thus far.
In this final hub quest of the main story, you’ll need to fight off Ibushi–the one you fought in an earlier Rampage quest–in the Coral Palace, which is where you fought Narwa at the end of the launch content. Just use the armaments like ballistae and cannons whenever they show up until you’ve dealt enough damage to see the beast crash through the floor.
A few times throughout the fight, Narwa will reset back to the center of the arena: This is your queue to prepare for its biggest attack. The creature will send numerous towers spinning out toward the outer edges of the arena while a large blast builds up underneath it. Wait for the blast to burst, then use wire bugs to sling yourself back to the boss.
How to unlock HR 100 and Crimson Glow Valstrax
With the Allmother defeated and the village safe from the rampage at last, there’s only one thing left to do: Grind to HR 100. Though it won’t really progress the story in any way, Monster Hunter has often hidden a brutal optional boss behind its triple-digit ranks. Generations (and others) had Fatalis, World had Ruiner Nergigante (and others), and Rise has Valstrax.
The problem is, getting to HR 100 isn’t easy. Despite a bunch of new quests arriving alongside it in Update 3.0, none of them will offer more than two or three HR increases per run. If you called it quits after completing the last boss of each monthly update, you’ll have a long road ahead of you.
New quests like Apex Diablos and Apex Zinogre might help, but the best approach is to find other reasons to play. Rather than think about raising your rank, think about hunting to refine your armor sets, grind decorations, and maybe help a few friends who’ve fallen behind. Any quest will get you closer to HR 100, so just find other reasons to encourage you to keep up the grind.
