Monster Hunter Wilds, like most games in the series, starts you off in Low Rank. This is where you spend the entirety of the game’s campaign, discover most of its monsters, fight the flagship, and learn the majority of mechanics.
This is effectively Monster Hunter’s version of a very extended tutorial. The training wheels come off, however, once you reach High Rank – which is great and everything, except when it’s not.
Where to find Low Rank Monsters after unlocking High Rank
What we’re talking about here, of course, is that you sometimes have a need for certain monster materials, which have a much higher chance of dropping when you fight the weaker, Low Rank version of said monster.
Unfortunately, the moment you get into High Rank, the majority of the monsters you come across in the field will be High Rank. The quests you get offered will, too, almost exclusively task you with taking on High Rank monsters. Which brings us to the thrust of this guide: how do you actually find Low Rank monsters once you reach High Rank?
The answer is a little more complicated than you might like. Unfortunately, there is no way to switch difficulty universally in Monster Hunter Wilds. In other words, you cannot toggle between High and Low Rank at will. Once you’re in HR, that’s where you’re going to remain. But there are a few things you can do:
- Survey the map for Low Rank Monsters.
- Join other players’ in-progress Low Rank Hunts.
- Replay early game story missions.
So, with that said, the first way to fight Low Rank monsters is to simply survey the map and check whether their rank matches what you’re looking for. You’ll often see several versions of the same monsters roaming the locale, and some of them will be LR.
You may simply attack the one you want in the field, and it will automatically turn into a quest – known as a Field Survey. Or, you can spend some Guild Points and turn it into an Investigation, and save it for later.
A quick way of checking whether the monster you’re looking at is HR or LR is to hit Details (A/Cross) when your cursor is over a given monster. In the Rewards page, it will show all possible materials you could get from that hunt. If you see a bunch of + (pluses) next to their names, you’ll know you’re looking at the HR version.
Another way of guaranteeing that you fight a LR monster is to help other players out by responding to their SOS Quests, i.e., finding lobbies with players hunting in Low Rank. Simply go to your handler Alma, and pick Post/Join Quests. From there, you’ll be able to refine your search to the monster you want, and the difficulty you want. Hit search and join any of the ones that show up.
Do note, however, that some of those quests will have been going on for several minutes before you found them, which means the target monster is likely already defeated, considering how much less HP LR monsters tend to have. A good strategy here is to only join the ones that began two or three minutes earlier.
Obviously, this will be much easier to do when the game is at the height of its popularity, so keep that in mind if you’re struggling to find the exact monster you want. You can always keep searching, of course.
Finally, you can speak to Alma and check the Optional Quests menu when you go to Post/Join Quests. The list of quests there can be repeated, and you’re going to recognise many of the older/introductory quests you played hours ago. Those will have Low Rank monsters, and you can repeat them and fight the monster again for its materials. You’ll know it’s LR when it has a blue star on the top right of the card, rather than orange.
Not every single monster is going to have a Low Rank quest you previously played, of course, so don’t fret if you can’t find the one you want. When that happens, you can repeat either of the two methods we discussed in this guide.