Monster Hunter / Tropes D to G

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• Damage-Increasing Debuff:
  • Defense Down is a debuff that lowers your Defense by roughly a quarter, and which persists for several minutes unless it's manually cured with any Defense buff, the quest bed, or the Prowlers' Emergency Retreat or Soothing Roll. Akantor can inflict a more potent version that cuts your Defense roughly in half.
  • Bnabharas can secrete a toxin that causes Elemental Res Down, reducing your elemental resistances. You can cure it with a Nulberry, the quest bed, or Prowler healing skills, otherwise the effect continues for minutes, similar to Defense Down.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • Lances and Gunlances, unlike other weapon classes, do not have rolls or forward evasion moves of any sort. This can lead to new users putting themselves in awkward positions at best and getting carted at worst if they try to roll towards the monster.
  • This is a common occurrence with the Hunting Styles in Generations, since each one removes certain moves to make up for its new abilities.
  • Part of the "fun" of item transport quests is that if you press B (e.g. with the intent to do a forward roll or to dash up a wall you're climbing), you will drop the item and break it. It can be easy to forget to not press the button especially with how long it takes to transport each item. This is averted in World, which allows you to roll without breaking objects.
  • Blademasters trying to be Gunners or vice versa can suffer from this trying to remind themselves of the different control schemes that rely on melee and ranged combat respectively.
  • This sometimes apply to the monsters as well, such as Gypceros continuing to try to flash you even though its crest is broken or monsters doing their breath attacks when exhausted.
• Dance Party Ending: The village questline in Generations ends with the Meowstress singing and dancing with a bunch of Felynes.
• David Versus Goliath: The premise of the whole franchise: average human beings versus colossal superpowered beasts.
• Day-Old Legend: The series abounds in this, possibly justified in that hunting is a business that has been going on for hundreds of years, and as long as you have sufficient materials you can make endless duplicates, thus implying that all the backstoried weapons you use are simply replicas of the versions that made the legends.
• Deadly Doctor: This is the theme of the Khezu equipment. The armors have a distinct hospital/lab coat feel to them and give skills like Rec Lvl+, which increases the potency of recovery items. The weapons resemble grotesque syringes and scalpels.
• Death from Above: Both hunters and monsters can pull this off; it's particularly egregious in the case of the monsters, many of which are classified as flying creatures. Some examples:
  • The Bows' Arc attacks. They fire a shot into the air, then rain back down some distance in front of you, with effects such as a concentrated rapid-fire Rain of Arrows or an explosive blast. Some bows in 4 substitute Arc shots for Power shots instead.
  • Beginning in 4U, Hunters can use aerial melee attacks which can topple monsters with enough hits, but the two weapons that fit this trope best are the Lance and Insect Glaive, both of which have built-in leap attacks as opposed to other melee weapons that require a ledge or wall to jump off of. The Battle Tonfas in Frontier also have leap attacks in its repertoire, albeit taken up to eleven since it can double-, triple-, or even quadruple-jump. Generations expands on this even further with the Aerial Hunting Style. Not only does it give Hunters an even larger repertoire of aerial attacks than in 4U, but it also gives Hunters the ability to jump freely in the vicinity of large monsters, using the monster itself as a platform to make jumps off of.
  • Many monsters love to do this, making it difficult to counter them since they're often in an unreachable spot. Flying monsters, such as Rathalos, Barioth, and the elder dragon Kushala Daora, prefer to hover in the air and spam projectiles or divebomb players; Khezu and his cousin Gigginox can cling to ceilings and employ Vertical Kidnapping or projectile spamming; and certain other monsters like Brachydios, Tigrex, Lavasioth, Congalala, and Rajang love to abuse their devastating leap attacks.
  • The Fatalis dragons and their cousin, the Dire Miralis, have several attacks that involve meteors or lightning coming from the sky to hit unsuspecting hunters; these attacks also tend to count as One Hit Kills. Dalamadur has a similar move involving burning metal meteors, and Gogmazios has a variant which involves unleashing a giant explosive tar blast on the ground after flying high into the air.
  • Bazelgeuse specializes in this tactic. It flies over the area and drops explosive scales all over, making the comparisons to a bomber plane very appropriate.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: In 4/4U's Expeditions, since you have unlimited time and can take unlimited retries, the worst that can happen when fainting is losing your Food buffs (unless you have Felyne Foodie) and the monster possibly fleeing the map entirely before you can get back to it (which can be very frustrating in and of itself, but won't fail the expedition). The only way to fail an Expedition is to abandon it yourself, which is still counted as "done"; you just won't get drops or Caravan Points. World improves on this by including a miniature Canteen at campsites, allowing you to re-buff if enough time has passed.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts:
  • Depending on quest rank and how strong your weapon is, you can be hacking and slashing away at a large monster for as little as 5 minutes or as many as 40 before it goes down. This is especially true for some Elder Dragon hunts, like Fatalis.
  • One Mission late in 4U is actually called this, that being Apex Form Seregios; the title is a reference to just what kind of monster you're hunting, and a reprise of "Dance of a Thousand Blades", your first quest to hunt one.
• Decon-Recon Switch: Tri has a quest called "Wyvern Preservation", where the client points out that the hobby of hunting monsters has dealt a huge blow to the wyvern population, thereby deconstructing the concept of the series. The client then reconstructs the concept by having you go on a quest to bring back wyvern eggs to help preserve the population.
• Degraded Boss: More like Degraded Game Mechanic, but applies in spirit: a second large monster showing up during a hunt was originally limited to High Rank and beyond, and was normally warned for by an unstable environment or the like. As of World, a single monster being around is the exception, and right from the start the player has to expect boss-level interruptions to their hunts.
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • The highest-ranked Nargacuga greatsword in Freedom Unite is called the Darkness Darkblade.
  • The Gigginox Light Bowgun's description. "An uncanny weapon made from uncanny parts. The click it makes when loaded is uncanny." Required materials: Uncanny Hide.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells:
  • All elemental weapons to an extent, but special mention goes to Dragon element weapons, which are made with Elder Dragon blood, the content of which has been baffling the Guild and scholars for some time; Unite seems to imply that the blood becomes toxic once it leaves the dragon's body and starts to decay. Dragon Shot ammunition, on the other hand, is made with Dragonfell Berries ^note AKA "Dragon Seeds" in Freedom 2/Unite which contain toxins that are apparently harmful to elder dragons.
  • Wystones are... "things" that you apply to your weapon like a Whetstone to gain anti-Frenzy/Apex buffs and the ability to temporarily negate Frenzy/Apex status. No one knows what it is or what it's made of — all anyone knows is that it's really awesome at fighting Frenzied/Apex monsters, and no one in the story questions it. Though the Wystones were made by Fantastic Science-practicing Wyverians.
• Description Porn: They manage to do this with some weapons and armors, despite the small text character limit. Just check the descriptions for the various Rathalos sets, for instance.
• Deserted Island: tri, Portable 3rd, 3 Ultimate, and Generations have a map called the Deserted Island. Subverted, in that it's supposed to be devoid of human life, but still has a spot of civilization, Moga Village, thriving on it. This is because during the events of tri and 3 Ultimate, the village received an order to evacuate the island due to a series of earthquakes threatening to level the village, but the village's inhabitants refuse to leave; instead, they send you, a seasoned hunter by the time the Guild's really nagging them to get out, to dispatch the source of the problem: Ceadeus, an Elder Dragon. The map remains named such in Generations despite taking place chronologically after 3 with several returning characters explicitly stating they're visiting from Moga, but the name was presumably kept for nostalgia purposes or because renaming it would cause clunkiness-related issues for Guild bureaucracy.
• Desperation Attack:
  • The Armor Skill "Potential" will give you a big Defense boost when your health is below 40% (and if you get 15 points in it, you'll get an Attack boost too). The Kitchen Skill "Felyne Heroics" doesn't kick in until your HP is down to 10 or less, but it gives you an even bigger Attack and Defense boost (though the Defense boost is rendered moot by how few Hit Points you have left). Some expert players use Heroics and deliberately injure themselves down to 10 HP for it to activate, allowing them to kill whatever they're hunting much faster but at the risk of getting downed with a single hit. This is particularly useful for bosses that'd kill you in a single hit anyways (all the Fatalis "brothers" in particular).
  • On the flip side, a lot of monsters will go into near-permanent rage when near death — they move faster and hit harder. Special mention to Shogun Ceanataur, who does go into literal perma-rage if you smash one of his claws.
• Determinator: Considering how extremely hard it is to kill a large monster, this is practically a requirement to make it far in the monster-hunting business. Also present among some of the monsters. Special mention goes to Tigrex; this wyvern is made out of the following things: 50% determination and 50% pure rage. He's so stubborn that, if you dodge his charge, he won't just finish it and then turn around to try again like other wyverns; oh no, he is going to change the direction mid-charge just to get you, and he'll do that up to four times. Combine this with him being a Lightning Bruiser and a creature whose Rage Mode is absolutely devastating, and you'll understand why he's considered the bane of many hunters.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • If you try to cook meat while standing near the edge of a cliff (or any other non-level terrain), the BBQ spit will reveal braces connecting it to solid ground.
  • If you get Fireblight (that is, set on fire), you can put it out by stopping, dropping, and dodge-rolling. And the rolling around caused by monsters throwing you across the field? That counts, too. You can also roll through water to put it out immediately.
  • Nargacuga's eyes glow red when in its rage mode and leave a short light trail when it moves. If you deal enough damage to its head that it "breaks," it will have a scar over its left eye. The left eye will no longer glow or leave a light trail while it's in rage mode.
  • The Gore Magala is immune to flash bombs due to it not having functional eyes. Once it sheds, however, its eyes becomes functional and it can be affected by flash bombs.
  • In 4U, activating multiplayer will cause every single NPC's dialogue to change to something related to hunting with friends or the Gathering Hall. This includes Caravan members, shopkeepers, miscellaneous service NPCs, and every single other NPC of insignificant importance.
  • In Generations, using fast travel to get to Bherna from another village usually takes you to the main entrance. However, if you use fast travel while in an area that can be reached in Bherna by foot, like the Hunter's Hub and the Palico Ranch, you instead show up at the entrance to that area in Bherna, as if you had walked there normally.
  • A few events in World feature the corpses of a recently deceased large monster, such as Great Jagras in Anjanath's quest and Barroth in Diablos's quest. If you get to them and carve them, you'll get generic bones instead of monster materials.
  • Also in World, if you happen to capture a giant monster (usually as part of an event quest), instead of showing up in hub, the smart biologist will remark that said monster was too large to bring over and he and the researchers decided to just study it on-site instead.
  • In World, Kushala Daora will never travel to the volcanic areas of the Elder's Recess unless you deliberately lure it there with the Challenger Mantle. If it creates a tornado over lava, the tornado may ignite, although it won't deal fire damage.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • The Greatsword class in general. They're slow, have a lot of ending lag, and maximizing damage involves standing still long enough for a full three charges. That said, they're generally considered the most powerful weapons in the game. For example, once you learn the timing and placement, a Great Sword will absolutely destroy a Tigrex with little effort.
  • The Gunlance. It has worse mobility than the Lance and eats through weapon Sharpness like popcorn, but has the same solid defense, more fluid combos, and unblockable attacks in the form of Shelling, Wyvern's Fire, and Shell Burst. With the correct technique and armor skills, a savvy Gunlancer can land dozens of point-blank flame gouts at monsters for unmitigated damage and even use the recoil to dodge attacks. It also has by far the best shield in the game. A combination of all of these traits makes the player practically invincible when utilizing this weapon properly. Little wonder why many Japanese gamers consider it the "Ultimate Roman(tic) Weapon".
  • The Hunting Horn is very difficult to get acclimated to, with its slow and awkward swings and the need for maintaining constant upkeep^note In addition to Horn buffs being temporary, Hunting Horn users need to keep their Self Improvement Buffs (white-white or purple-purple note combos) active, or they won't be as effective in a fight. However, it has as much damage and knockout power as a Hammer, and can stack multiple buffs on an entire hunting party at will with its note combinations, ranging from unlimited Stamina to protection from roars.
  • The Charge Blade is widely considered the most complex weapon in the game. Put simply, the Charge Blade has a ton of working parts to consider in its gameplay that few other weapons have to deal with, and is one of the only weapons that has to actively juggle resource management as a core component to its hunting style. Between its Phial system, alternating modes, and how the systems intertwine to create an actively evolving/devolving weapon that shifts with the player's mastery over the weapon and the flow of combat, the Charge Blade is one of the least beginner-friendly weapons out there. Yet, once the player has a grasp on all of these systems and how they work together, the Charge Blade becomes capable of literally astounding damage and flexibility, with the ability to neuter and negate monster attacks on the fly then seamlessly transition into attacks, charge into Super Modes to buff your weapon and open access to your most powerful moves, then let loose with massive KO potential and elemental/status damage.
  • The Lance playstyle known as "Evasion Lancing" mostly eschews blocking in favor of the ability to dodge three times in a row. Given how strict evasion windows are and how slow the Lance is, one can expect the level of skill necessary to use this method. However, since the Lance's backhops have much better recovery than tanking hits and thus provide more opportunities to counterattack, mastering this technique can turn a Lance user from a Mighty Glacier into a Lightning Bruiser.
  • The "Adrenaline" Armor Skill. Getting it to activate requires the health bar to be at a dangerously low level, enough for a monster to nudge you to death. Once it kicks in, however, your attack power goes through the roof, enabling you to continuously flinch monsters with ease. It is not uncommon to see Challenge Gamers use this skill to take down even G-Rank Elder Dragons in less than five minutes.
  • Gunner hunting can be seen as this, due to ranged weapons having low raw damage compared to most melee weapons, and Gunner armor having substantially weaker defense than Blademaster armor. However, since Gunners attack at range where they are less easily interrupted, this means that they can have a more consistent damage output than the average Blademaster, who has to stay close to monsters and therefore has a higher risk of getting mauled. With the right combination of damage-oriented armor skills, item buffs, and proper positioning / evasion techniques, a Gunner can turn into a potent Glass Cannon, moreso if they employ the aforementioned Adrenaline skill.
  • Also for Gunner hunting, Pierce Shots for Bowguns and Pierce Arrows for Bows require precise angles to the monster in order to fully utilize their penetration properties, but monsters will often be moving around and preventing this. Being able to pull it off gives Pierce projectiles exceptional damage-per-shot ratio. Gravios, Plesioth, Lavasioth, and Cephadrome are especially good targets for Pierce projectiles.
  • This is the entire point of Adept Style in Generations: Perfectly timing an evade or block lets you perform powerful "Insta-moves", which of course requires you to put yourself at the risk of losing a significant chunk of your Life Meter. Notably, however, what you block or evade need not be an actual attack; as long as it's from an enemy and can cause Knockback, it can be just-evaded. Brachydios's slime patches, for example, can be turned into free sources of Insta-Moves.
  • Valor Style in Generations Ultimate goes even further than Adept Style. Just explaining what the heck it does takes a paragraph or two, an in-depth explanation of all the mechanics and abilities requires several more, your moveset is restricted and awkward until the Valor Gauge is full, there's another attack button to deal with, the Valor Stance drains stamina very fast and is also Cast from Hit Points, sheathing is longer than usual, and the style overall requires in-depth knowledge of the monster you're fighting. Master it, however, and it's not hard to see why speedrunners love it with how ridiculously fast it takes down monsters.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: The monsters straddle the line between dinosaurs and dragons almost perfectly; most velociprey-variants are basically deionychous or oviraptors, while other critters fly and breathe fire.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: Often (but not exclusively) in the Updated Re-release that retrofits High Rank into single player:
  • In Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, it's the rank chapter (fifth) that was originally the last one in the Wii version (Monster Hunter Tri). After you defeat Ceadeus, originally the Final Boss of Tri and then the Disc-One Final Boss in Ultimate, you'll be presented the first of the high-rank new chapters.
  • In 4 Ultimate, it's slaying Shagaru Magala.
  • In Generations Ultimate, it's defeating the Fated Four.
  • In World, it's repelling Zorah Magdaros for the second time, though considering everything up until then was openly marked "Low Rank" it was pretty easy to see coming.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • Through smart trading with Veggie Elders, one can easily obtain rare materials or materials not normally accessible. Also, the optional Trenya's Boat allows one to get things such as Dragonwoods or Dragonmosses way before you're supposed to.
  • In Freedom 2, the Long Sword "Devil Slicer" has very good damage and high Thunder element and can be crafted with simple ores.
  • If you're a Hammer user, in MHF2 and MHFU, the Bull Tusk Hammer can be made without leaving Hunter Rank 1 and has 936 raw damage.
  • As your very first action in 3 Ultimate, you can choose to go to Tanzia to hunt a Rathian. If you can handle it, you now have the materials to craft Rank 3 weapons before even having started the game's tutorial. They are either poison or fire element to boot, both of which are very effective against most of the monsters in Low Rank.
  • The Insecticutter Dual Swords in 3 Ultimate qualify, if only for their element. While most Dragon weapons require either late game bosses or a very lucky random Rustshard drop, the Insecticutters can be easily forged from Low-Rank insect parts and various ores and bones; a savvy hunter can easily nab all of the required materials long before they reach High-Rank. Since most monsters have, at best, neutral Dragon resistance (and most of the ones that don't are found very early in the game), this Dual Sword set can allow a hunter to waltz through a decent portion of the game without bothering with any other weapon.
  • In network mode for 3 Ultimate, as long as you're high rank, you can take on ANY high rank mission. If you have a good team, you can get drops to make HR 5 gear when you're still HR 3.
  • As far as your Palico goes in 4 Ultimate, anyway. By downloading a free day one patch, you can acquire a stash of six Super Mushrooms. You can then use them to craft Rare 4 gear for your Palico at the start of the game. This equipment will last straight through the entire main scenario, even after you acquire the ability to craft new Palico gear.
  • In 4 Ultimate, upon unlocking Expeditions, Guild Quests, and the Rust Abolisher (as early as after the first quest of the second village), Expeditions and Guild Quests can be run repeatedly for Rusted Weapons and Abrasives (to polish said weapons). Since these weapons can have random stats and elements (including Dragon), with some luck a hunter can end up with a weapon twice as good as what they're supposed to have at the moment, possibly up to High Rank.
  • In 4 Ultimate, once players unlock the first set of High Rank caravan quests, they can apply for a quest that pits them against multiple Nerscylla one after the other, each at only a fraction of its usual health. Farming this quest will allow players to quickly build the full Nerscylla S armor set, which can be gemmed for a total of 4 skills, including two that makes setting traps/bombs and capturing monsters easier. Assuming players haven't done the Gathering Hall yet, this set is strong and versatile enough to last all the way up to Rank 7. The weapons you can make out of the same Nerscylla parts also happen to have white sharpness, making them strong in early and mid game.
  • Also in 4 Ultimate, the free DLC Patissier armor set speeds up the eating animation, allows you to eat raw meat, causes overcooked meat to stop you from losing stamina, lets you eat various mushrooms for special effects, such as using Mopeshrooms like Mega Dash Juice, or eating somewhat-rare-but-easily-farmable Dragon toadstools to recover all of your health. You can carry ten of them.
  • Want Dah'ren Mohran materials in 4 Ultimate, but don't have the HR 3→4 Urgent Quest available yet or know someone who does? The Event Quest "Sand Blasted" pits you against a Dah'ren Mohran under the same conditions, and can be initiated or joined with no Hunter Rank restrictions.
  • Generations has the "BujaBujaBu" armor set, which consists of a mix of Bullfango and Jaggi armor pieces and a few Attack jewels and provides the "Attack Up (L)" skill, providing a good Attack boost for starting players. It can be made with materials farmed from a Harvest Tour quest that is available upon starting a new file, before you even hunt your first large monster.
  • Teaming with someone for (literally) a couple of Arena quests can let a Generations player start out with a 120 power weapon with substantial green sharpness and 2 decoration slots. If your partner has the Arena quests unlocked, you can do this before doing a single other quest in either singleplay or online.
  • Palico/Prowler equipment in Generations is painfully easy to get compared to Hunter equipment. First, you don't need specific drops from a monster; you can take that monster's drops and turn them into Scraps, regardless of what those carves are. Second, it takes only 6-10 Scraps to make the necessary gear, and one hunt of the monster is enough to get that much Scrap. As such, you can have a friend or three take you into a quest at the end of your rank tier and then have a Prowler equipped to pull their weight for a while. Palicoes/Prowlers also have the advantage of requiring much less effort to craft Deviant equipment for; instead of having to use tickets to repeatedly upgrade your gear 10 times in Generations or 15 in Generations Ultimate, you only need to hunt the monster two or three times.
• Disney Creatures of the Farce: One of the Guildmarm's lines in 4 is a play at this.
  Guildmarm: I wish I could unsee what I just saw. A bunch of birds of all different colors just made a delivery to the Wycoon, and I think they broke into a musical number!
• Divergent Character Evolution: Some interesting variations exist.
  • In the original game and its Updated Re-release, the Great Sword class included katanas and scythes. Beginning with the second game, these two were given their own unique "Longsword" classification, with a more combo-oriented moveset. The Greatsword in turn became more focused on high-powered Charged Attacks.
  • The Palette Swapped monsters (e.g. Silver Rathalos, Golden Rathian, etc.) were once merely stronger variations of their main species, but beginning in Portable 3rd, the subspecies were given unique attacks and behavioral patterns to set them apart, such as Golden Rathian's triple ground blast and Silver Rathalos' exploding aerial shots.
• Do Not Drop Your Weapon: No matter how hard of a hit you take, no matter how much you're knocked back, you're always holding onto your weapon, if you already have it out.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Khezu looks suspiciously phallic, to say the least. This is not helped by the fact that it can grow hair on its belly and reproduces by ambushing other creatures and injecting them with its whelps. The Pokke Elder lampshades this in Generations.
  Pokke Elder: Khezu are horrible wyverns with Thunder attacks, and they look like... Oh, don't make me say it!
• Double Entendre: In Astera a box carrying npc named Timid Fiver says that he loves to spend his free time "lazing around, polishing his weapon."
• Downloadable Content: The games offer monthly DLC free of charge. The catch? The only immediate benefits you get are title phrases, poses, and wallpapers for your Guild Card, a set of starter items only available immediately after the release of 4 Ultimate, and bonus Palicoes; the rest of the DLC is Event Quests and Challenge Quests, some of which offer drops for special equipment as rewards, with the drops not being available in any other quest. In other words, the game is happy to provide you with DLC content to keep the game fresh at no monetary cost, but if you want, for example, the Varia Suit or the Taiko no Tatsujin Hunting Horn, you'll have to work for it.
• The Dreaded: Most of the monsters have intimidating Red Baron status, but there are a handful of monsters that are even met in-universe with fear. Namely the flagship monsters and the Final Boss, which can go so far as describing them as gods, demons, and bringers of the end. The Deviants are considered such dangerous threats that Hunters need Guild permission to even try hunting one. The Guildmarm in 4U even lampshades the Tigrex being the "bane of hunters".
• Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer: This is a major feature of World; by using an SOS Flare in the middle of a Quest, you can enable other players to hop into the Quest you're playing to assist you even if you've already started, which could not be done in previous games.
• Drop Pod: In Generations Ultimate, after completing a certain High Rank Village quest, you can request a single drop package for your next quest, and the requested items will drop in at a given time, or when you are out of that item.
• Dual Wielding: Dual swords, with which you can belt out a continuous barrage of attacks, but you can't block.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: Both the third and fourth generations feature Updated Rereleases of their respective main games with G rank quests added on. These games are Monster Hunter 3G and 4G in Japan, but the international releases changed the subtitle to Ultimate while still calling it the G rank.
• Dung Fu:
  • Flinging "Dung Bombs" at boss monsters is an effective way to show who's the real boss here. They simply flee in terror (or disgust). This attack must be executed stealthily to be effective, though. Alternatively, you can chuck one at a monster that's pinning you to get it off.
  • Congalalas and Emerald Congalalas lob their fresh excrements at you as ranged attacks. The resulting status effect renders hunters too disgusting to even consume anything (wears off with time or with deodorant).
  • The Stink Mask in 3 Ultimate allows the hunter's AI partners to throw Dung Bombs as well, making it incredibly invaluable in situations where a hunter can expect to fight two or more monsters at once, which is most of the time in High-Rank and G-Rank. As a small bonus, the Shakalaka wearing it makes plenty of scatological jokes.
  • World allows players to shoot "Dung Pods" from their arm mounted slingers, instead of having to use Dung Bombs. This makes it easier to run and shoot dung in the middle of a fight, should another large monster try to join in.
• Dynamic Difficulty: Unlike previous games, which cleanly split up offline (single-player, easier Quests) and online (Quests designed to be played by four players) Quests, World employs this in all Quests due to Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer; taking on a Quest solo will use single-player difficulty, while adding more players causes the Quest difficulty to shift to multiplayer difficulty in real-time.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The PS2 games used the right analog stick to make attacks, rather than the face buttons like in the portable games.
  • The music in the first generation games (Monster Hunter, G and Freedom) sound a lot less like an epic fight and have a more mysterious/eerie tone, highlights include the Old Swamp and Old Volcano themes which have mostly unnerving tones.
  • The first-generation games lack the Ice element and a snowy area (2 made their debut a top priority). The very first game also lacks sub- and rare species as well as variants (all introduced in G), its flagship monster Rathalos lack a special Battle Theme Music (this also applies to Azure Rathalos in G, as well as Rathalos again in Freedom), and all games prior to Freedom 2 lack Harvest Tours that allow unwinding exploration of the hunting areas for item gathering.
  • The various King Mook dinosaur bosses from the first few games are very different from every other boss in the game - they have no breakable body parts and run away when near death, rather than start limping. From Tri onwards, they are brought in line with the rest of the bosses, as players can now break their crests and they limp when injured. Tri also adds a special Mini-Boss battle music for them, as in prior games they simply used the standard area theme.
  • The first three portable games (Freedom, Freedom 2, Freedom Unite) do not have online multiplayer, as they are intended to be played on the go and so that you can meet fellow players in person, something that Capcom did not seem to realize is much more difficult to do outside of Japan. Portable 3rd and 3 Ultimate were like this at first too, but their respective home console ports for PS3 and Wii U allow cross-play with them so online play becomes possible from the handheld copies (as additional requirements, Portable 3rd needs an updated Ad-Hoc Party provided by Sony, while 3 Ultimate needs a cost-free software app available on the Nintendo eShop). From Monster Hunter 4 onwards, both local and online multiplayer are supported in handhelds from the get-go, without needing any extra setting.
  • Conversely, the first four home console games (1, G, 2 and 3) only allowed you to access multiplayer quests, including High Rank, by connecting online to the game servers (which are now shut down, meaning that the pertaining quests cannot be accessed anymore). Starting with the the PS3 version of Portable 3rd, multiplayer hubs are available even if your console is offline, which is retained in all future Monster Hunter games released for home systems.
  • For those who began with 4 or later, the earlier games' maps can feel extremely flat and bland, since they don't have mounting, let alone terrain designed to accomodate it. Generations, which features a lot of returning maps, can feel like a trip to play as a result, although this is mitigated somewhat by the old maps featuring some new ledges to jump off of.
• Earn Your Fun: One particularly harsh aspect of the series is that it almost never hands you anything on a silver platter; you have to work for what you want by completing quests. For example, if you want the crossover Palico costumes in 4 Ultimate, the game will be happy to provide you with free DLC... but said DLC is the quests that reward these items. And often, your reward for completing some challenging storyline task like saving a village isn't always some fancy piece of equipment, but instead things like access to High Rank story quests and super-hard quests that put you and multiple monsters in a one-area map, with some of the best rewards only available by farming those quests for tickets and other exclusive drops. In short, the term "instant gratification" does not exist in the Monster Hunter vocabulary.
• Easter Egg: In some games, if you turn the camera up to the sky, you may occasionally see a hot-air balloon flying in the distance. If you use the Wave Gesture while it's onscreen, it will flash a signal and show you all of the large monsters on the map for several seconds. However, It Only Works Once per quest. In 4U, the hot-air balloon is given a backstory as Dundorma's Elder Dragon-spotting balloon, the Dragonseer, which keeps an eye out for impending Elder Dragon attacks.
• Easy Level Trick:
  • The Tigrex is incredibly fast and attacks low to the ground with annoying accuracy. This makes it very difficult with every weapon except the Insect Glaive, which lets you easily jump over the majority of its attacks. Charge Blade is also highly effective against it because its charges are easy to counter with a well-timed Guard Point.
  • The general difficulty of Egg Quests in World can be neutered by bringing the Ghillie Mantle, which makes you effectivey invisible to monsters. You can walk past a Rathian's face holding a Wyvern Egg and the most she'll do is hover around you in confusion.
  • In Generations and Generations Ultimate, you can eliminate the main challenge of "capture this monster using on-site items only" Deviant monster quests simply by going in as a Prowler with a Purr-ison skill, effectively making it just another capture quest. After all, you can't worry about having to start with an empty item pouch if you can't use anything in the pouch to begin with.^note This does mean you can't bring in the Charm or Talon items that boost your Attack and Defense, but they're not strictly necessary for a good hunt.
• Eldritch Abomination: An entire class of them, called Elder Dragons. Sitting at the top of the food chain and often the final foes unlocked in each game, Elder Dragons are exceptionally dangerous monsters that not only pose a threat to local wildlife, but entire continents. Their size and range vary dramatically, and each has borderline supernatual abilities that elevate it above most other monsters, which are essentially overgrown lizards and mammals. Kushala Daora's can summon tornadoes to control, Alateron's have pitch black scales that seem to absorb all light and can affect the weather just by being present, and the Fatalis series of monsters are traditional European dragons with supernatural powers on top of that. Not all Elder Dragons are explicitly evil either, but they must be respected and monitored or else they could cause untold destruction.
• Eldritch Location: The Everwood, the setting of 4/4U's Expeditions, changes every time you enter. While it would appear that it could be explained by the player simply entering a different area of the Everwood each time, once you hit the postgame, you unlock new locales in the Everwood that fully cement this trope. One moment you could be walking through the forest as usual, the next you're walking through a cave or some ruins, or vice-versa.
• Elemental Dragon: The first two species of the Fatalis trio (standard and Crimson) are classic fire-breathing dragons, but the third one (White) employs electricity in its attacks instead. The bolts are strong enough to cause a One-Hit Kill to hunters with a very low defense.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Fire, Water, Lightning, and Dragon, later Ice.
  • The Manga features a protagonist that Dual Wields Wind-element Blades, something unobtainable in-game. This fact is outright stated in the manga itself: the protagonist's partner has never even heard of a Wind element.
  • There is one monster claimed to possess "Wind" element: Kushala Daora. This isn't really an element so much as it is an extra ability given to it to make it on par with other dragons, though. Same with the Sand Barioth in the third generation games.
• Elemental Crafting: Basically the whole purpose of the game.
• Elite Tweak: Mixing and matching armors and gems can result in some potent skill combinations. Add to this that there are several weapons available, each with different playing styles and there are plenty of skills for each weapon.
• Enemy Mine: In ‘’World’’, the Gajalakas will usually attack you, but if you happen to be fighting a monster at the time, they’ll attack the monster instead. They inflict helpful status ailments more often than not, too. A player who’s not aware of this might wonder why the monster is suddenly poisoned or why it’s randomly falling asleep.
• Enemy Summoner:
  • ALL of the small bird wyvern alphas (Velocidrome, Great Jaggi, etc.) are this, able to summon lesser members of their pack with their cry.
  • The Blangonga can also summon other Blangos from its pack.
  • Qurupeco as well, since it can mimic the cries of other creatures. This doesn't always end well for the 'Peco, though.
  • Seltas Queen has the ability to summon Seltas drones to help her fight you, though only one at a time.
• Equipment-Based Progression: Your power is based completely on the equipment you own.
• Equipment Upgrade: Weapon upgrades become available once you've unlocked the relevant tier and own at least one required material.
• Escort Mission:
  • Downplayed in Monster Hunter 4. While there is a mission in which you are escorting 2 badly-injured members of the Ace Hunters, monsters focus on you, and even if a monster should catch them in the arc of an attack, they're immune to damage.
  • World has a Quest called "The Best Kind of Quest", which involves protecting The Handler and a group of scholars as they try to push a cart to a piece of slag that's of significant interest to them. It's also downplayed; while you do have to "escort" them, in the traditional sense, you never come across any monsters who are inherently hostile to you... unless you want to piss off that Rathian you walk past. Once you get to the slag, the Quest turns into a straightforward hunt afterwards.
• Escape Rope: Farcasters, upon use, return the user to camp where they can sleep on the bed to heal completely, access the supply chest, deliver items, etc. There is, however, a short delay between when the Farcaster is deployed and when the user is teleported, meaning that you can use one, only to get knocked away from it and end up wasting it, or worse, faint from a monster attack.
• Event Flag: The series has what are known as "key quests", specific quests that must be completed to trigger the story-progressing and HR-raising Urgent Quests. Other quests can help you gain materials for new equipment and to make village upgrades (such as better canteen ingredients), but they will not bring you closer to the next Urgent. It wasn't until Rise that key quests became explicitly marked on the quest lists, in addition to a a HUD element in the hub area letting you know how many key quests left until the next Urgent.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep":
  • Not a single human character in the game besides you seems to have an actual name(although some have names All in the Manual). And even in your case, everyone usually just calls you "Hunter" anyway. A few examples of civilization-dwelling characters that do have names include the two Shakalakas, Cha-Cha and Kayamba. This is even lampshaded in 4U by The Man:
    The Man: "The Caravaneer rarely addresses people by their first names. As a result, I fear I have forgotten yours...what was it again?"
  • The Pub Manager in Generations Ultimate averts this when talking to you. She is one of the very, very few characters in the series to actually address the player Hunter by name.
  • This can cause a character to change names between games — 4 Ultimate's Ace Cadet and World's Excitable A-Lister are the same person. This leads to an ultimate subversion when the end of the Fatalis quest in Iceborne finally gives his name: Aiden.
• Everything Is Better With Explosions:
  • Bombs deal a set amount of damage regardless of the monster's defense, which is particularly useful against species whose carapaces seem like they're made of granite.
  • The Brachydios, a Brute Wyvern whose main feature is an explosive slime that coats its fists. Anything hit by this will explode after a few seconds, and the weapons forged from it provide a similar effect for the Hunter.
  • Teostra and Lunastra, a pair of elder dragons that use the Fire element exclusively, can release volatile powders into their surroundings which they can proceed to detonate at will. In 4 Ultimate, weapons made of Teostra parts even have the Blastblight status effect, which is similar to Brachydios' slime.
  • The Gunlance, Switch Axe, and Charge Blade all have explosion-based attacks as their special moves.
  • Bazelgeuse, a cross between a wyvern and a B-52 bomber that literally carpet-bombs you with explosive scales.
• Everything Trying to Kill You:
  • Played straight in that smaller monsters will attack you even if there is a larger, more threatening monster in the area. For example, Agnaktor will feed on Rhenoplos to regain stamina. Instead of fleeing the area or ganging up on the Agnaktor, they will keep attacking you with their charge attack.
  • Subverted in some instances. It's possible for a group of Jaggi to gang up on a sleeping Arzuros and to attack it multiple times to wake it up. Also, some monsters will attack each other in some occasions, though they will focus on the hunter most of the time.
  • Also mitigated to some extent in newer versions. Jaggi and the like will now quickly clear out to a corner of the zone to watch hunters and large creatures fight rather then suicidally charging into the crossfire. Herbivores, however, will still charge you.
  • More or less averted in World thanks to increased large monster capacity and refined monster behavior. For the most part, large monsters you come across will not antagonize you, and are perfectly willing to pass you by unless you provoke them in some way. Some, such as Tzitzi-Ya-Ku, are more likely to attack other large monsters than Hunters.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: In this game, you hunt monsters. In fact, initially Monster Hunter was only a Working Title, but the developers liked the simplicity so much they just kept it.
• Excalibur in the Rust:
  • Played straight in the case of Rusted and Worn weapons, which can be randomly acquired by mining Rustshards or Ancient Shards. Initially they appear to be weapons in a state of much disuse and decay, but reforging them via the use of Elder Dragon materials can turn them into some of the strongest elemental weapons in the game.
  • Played with regarding the random weapon drops from Expeditions and Guild Quests in 4U. These specialized weapons are unusable at first and need to be cleaned up by the Troverian Abolisher in Harth, but tend to have randomized stats ranging from laughably weak to incredibly powerful. Unlike the regular crafted weapons, however, Expedition weapons can be strengthened using Armor Spheres, which can result in certain weapons found early on becoming Disc One Nukes.
• Excuse Plot: What plot? You're the new hunter in the village, go kill small fry monsters until The Dreaded Elder Dragon shows up, then kill it. The second gen games onward started implementing something of an actual story for each title, with 4/4U actually having a real storyline.
• Eyepatch of Power: Some of the head armors take the form of eyepatches. Most of them play the trope straight since they're both hard to get (meaning that the user was badass enough to earn them) and they grant some pretty good bonuses as well.
• Fake Longevity:
  • Thanks to the Randomly Drops mechanic, a player may feel the need to "pause" their progress in order to make a good set of gear, this leads to a lot of repeated boss battles.
  • Some item transport village quests, particularly the "Egg-straction" series of quests in 4 and 4 Ultimate, add boundary-blocking boulders with each successive quest item you pick up, forcing you to take a longer path to the base camp each time.
• Fantastic Drug: Felvine is basically the MH equivalent of catnip, and Felynes and Melynxes go crazy over it. If you have some in your inventory when a Melynx uses their stealing swipe on you, they will always steal it instead of anything else. Some games let you make and use a Felvine Bomb, which inflicts a scent that attracts Felynes and Melynxes to whoever gets it, and causes them to enter a Mushroom Samba if they get hit with the bomb.
• Fantastic Racism: Brought up in Stories. People from around the world think that the Riders of Hakum Village and other places (if they even believe Riders are more than myth), who practice the art of forming Kinships with monsters, are aberrant. As a result, they are feared and distrusted by the populace at large.
• Fantastic Science: The entire game practically runs on this trope as more and more new monsters are constantly being researched by human and Wyvernian biologists, with their produce and body parts appropriated for domestic, military, and technological use. Not to mention the series is inspired partly by National Geographic articles and features on wildlife, among other things.
• Fartillery: Congas and the Congalala are able to release a cloud of noxious fumes from their behinds, and this is actually one of the most insidious attacks in the game, as when you are "soiled," you cannot eat or drink any healing items. Returns in 3 Ultimate with Volvidon (biologically most like a skunk spray) and Steel Uragaan, as well as Congalala returning in 4.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Gunner armor is often (but not always) asymmetrically designed.
• Fastball Special: If you consider the Kinsect to be an Equippable Ally, then the Insect Glaive's Extract Hunter Hunter Art is this. Upon activation, the Hunter twirls around the Insect Glaive as the Kinsect mounts its tip, then swings forward to launch the Kinsect at a monster at blistering speed. If the Kinsect makes contact, it will deal damage, and its Extract icon will flash rainbow. If you run over to the Kinsect and pick it up while it's flashing rainbow, you will instantly gain the "Triple Extract" Super Mode. Also applies to your online teammates if you have a Greatsword, Hunting Horn, or Hammer.
• Final Boss: Despite being an Endless Game as mentioned above, every entry in the series has some sort of final monster whose first defeat generally triggers the credits to roll.
  • In Monster Hunter Freedom 2, this was Akantor, in Freedom Unite, his older cousin Ukanlos took that spot (beating Akantor in the village quests still shows the ending sequence).
  • Ceadeus fills this role in Tri, while a different Elder Dragon takes over for him in online: Alatreon, who's basically every Elder Dragon from MHFU combined into one. Portable 3rd has the Amatsumagatsuchi, with a moveset similar to Lagiacrus due to the underwater hunt feature being absent. 3 Ultimate demotes Ceadeus to a Disc-One Final Boss, while Ivory Lagiacrus serves as the story's final boss and whose defeat rolls the credits in Single Player, and Alatreon becomes the True Final Boss available only after every single offline quest is done. The multiplayer mode (also playable offline) has Dire Miralis.
  • In 4 Ultimate, successfully killing the Shagaru Magala rolls a "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue. The actual staff roll appears when you and the Ace Hunters manage to repel the Rusted Kushala Daora terrorizing Dundorma City. The multiplayer quests have Dalamadur for High Rank and Gogmazios for G Rank.
  • In Generations, defeating Glavenus rolls the credits in single player, while defeating Nakarkos in multiplayer removes the Hunter Rank cap and unlocks the super-tough Elder Dragons. Generations Ultimate has Valstrax for single player and Ahtal-Ka for multiplayer.
  • World has Xeno'jiiva as its final boss. In Iceborne, the final boss is Shara Ishvalda.
• Fission Mailed: In 4 Ultimate, there is a mission where you have to capture a Rathian; but towards the end, a Seregios shows up and chases away the Rathian. This in turn leads to a Quest Failed message under the context that the Seregios is ridiculously dangerous and that you should pull back to safety. You are then given a new mission to hunt the Seregios instead.
• Fixed Damage Attack: The Crag S and Clust S bullets for bowguns do exactly this. Gunlance shells and Wyvern's Fire also count. And while not strictly an attack per se, all bombs play this trope as well. Impact-type Phials for Charge Blades use this oddly, since it adds fixed damage to your attack.
• Flavor Text: Every single item and piece of equipment that exists in the games has a short paragraph describing it. Some of the descriptions describe their in-game uses, while others play this trope straight. Each quest has a short blurb from the client providing the background for the quest, although in some cases, it will also tell you if you will get any rewards other than the usual post-quest money and item rewards such as new Canteen ingredients or new materials to trade at the Wyporium.
• Floating Continent: Subverted with the village of Cathar in 4, and its corresponding hunting grounds, the Heaven's Mount; they don't actually defy gravity per se, but are instead sections of crumbling mountain precariously supported by tough mineral veins, hard bedrock, and tree roots.
• Follow the Leader: After the series' breakout title Freedom Unite, several companies have attempted to emulate Monster Hunter's mechanics or even directly compete against the game, with varying results. The more well-known examples are Toukiden, Ragnarok Odyssey, Freedom Wars, Soul Sacrifice and especially the God Eater franchise. Even mobile platforms join the fun with Dragon Project. As some topping on the cake, the West makes their own monster-hunting game in the form of Dauntless.
• Food Porn: World goes all the way with rendering food in crisp, mouth-watering high-definition graphics.
• Foregone Victory: When you go to repel the Gore Magala in Everwood in 4, you can't actually fail. Since this is treated as an Expedition, you have no time or defeat limits. Even though you're escorting the Ace Hunters, they can't die, as attacks will simply go right through them. All you really have to do is do enough damage to Gore Magala to repel it each time it appears.
• Foreshadowing: 4 Ultimate, being a more plot-oriented game, has loads of these.
  • In order to fully resist the Frenzy Virus, players must attack monsters relentlessly until the effect wears off, earning them an increase in attack power and temporary immunity to said virus. This is the same reasoning behind Apex monsters: they successfully fought off the virus themselves, and have become Lightning Bruisers as a result.
  • The Ace Commander being a stiff-necked Papa Wolf Sergeant Rock who looks down on reckless behavior may seem rather bland at first, until the game reveals that his mentor had to pull a Heroic Sacrifice to save him from a monster when he got too reckless himself, which mentally scarred him for life. Later in the game, however, he ends up doing the same thing for the Ace Cadet, earning him a measure of redemption.
  • Wounding the Gore Magala's black hide reveals inexplicably shiny golden scales underneath. It's because Gore is the juvenile form of the golden-scaled Shagaru Magala, and later on molts its black skin to reveal the gold underneath.
  • Two of the maps have this as Meaningful Background Events. Certain sections of the Primal Forest are wreathed in the skeleton of a massive snakelike creature, who appears to have lived on the nearby mountain. Later on, the Heaven's Mount area has rocks falling all over the place, rumored to be from the burrowing of a giant creature. The final clue is the Guildmaster's story of a great serpent somewhere in the world, which set him off on his business as a Caravan owner in search of the legend. You eventually confront said legend in the form of the massive Elder Dragon Dalamadur, a mile-long giant serpent who tunnels through rocks and lives at the top of a mountain.
  • As you complete G-Rank quests, you are given story tidbits about shacks of gunpowder being raided and stolen, a tar-like substance found in the crime scenes, and the disappearance of the first Dragonator, all of which lead up to the revelation of Gogzmazios, a huge tar dragon with a powerful heat ray, and having the first Dragonator on its back, which explains all of those events.
• Forest of Perpetual Autumn: The Ancestral Steppe is the first hunting area in the fourth generation. It's a temperate region whose flora ranges between yellow in the frontier zones to red in the inner ones (best appreciated in Area 4 when you look at the upper background), though some green folly is still present to an extent. It also includes a climbable rocky plateau in the northernmost territory. It is even called "Autumn Steppe" in the Spanish version, while its Battle Theme Music is called "Golden Reminiscence".
• For Science!:
  • Guildmarm in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is more than happy to seize any opportunity to gather more data on monsters. That includes asking you to show her your bite marks, for science of course.
  • This seems to be what the entire plot of World is rooted in. Why is everyone journeying to the New World, expending so many resources to monitor Zorah Magdaros' movements, and trying to unravel the mystery of the Elder Crossing? For science, of course!
• Fragile Speedster:
  • The Aerial Style in Generations is all about this, allowing the player to leap off of monsters in order to take maximum advantage of the Mounting mechanic (the Insect Glaive, which could already do this, instead gets a second leap that's lower but travels further). However, they also trade the invincibility frames of their evades to the middle of their dodge animations, so it's more likely they'll take damage.
  • Theropod Bird Wyverns as a whole have high movement speed and poor defenses.
• Friendly Fireproof:
  • Playing this game multiplayer would be much more difficult if this wasn't the case. When everyone's swinging weapons the sizes of small cars around one area, this is a necessity — other players may get knocked around by some weapons, but they won't take actual damage. Note, however, that Barrel Bombs can damage other players, though usually not by much more than a typical hit from a large monster (though 2 Large Barrel Bombs+ exploding at once may be fatal). And fortunately, this trope does not apply for the monsters — large monsters rarely attack each other intentionally, but they can hit other large monsters (or clear out small monsters) while they're trying to hit you.
  • Most gunners do not use recovery ammo because if you hit the monster, you'll heal it; Recovery Ammo is intended for use on fellow hunters.
• Full-Frontal Assault:
  • In a meta sense, some Challenge Gamers choose to initiate hunts without any armor on.
  • The Chakra Armor set is a weaponized version of Diamonds in the Buff, being a full set of jewelry; your character is still shown in their undies if you choose to equip this set. It also doesn't have any Armor Skills to go with it, though it does come with an absurd number of gem slots.
  • Played with in 4/4U. From a gameplay standpoint, you get to defend Val Habar from a Dah'ren Mohran while wearing no equipment whatsoever. From a story standpoint, everyone just knows you as "the Hunter who fought off the Dah'ren Mohran in only his/her underwear" (even if they don't know it's actually you).
  • Several quests require hunters to fight monsters with no armor. 3 Ultimate has a quest called "Deviljho in the Buff," where hunters are forced to fight a Deviljho with no armor on. 4/4U has a quest called "Naked and Afraid" where hunters are forced to hunt two Deviljhos at once with no armor on. A 4U Event Quest has hunters fight an Apex Rajang also with no armor. A Generations Event Quest has hunters take on a Hyper Gammoth with no armor.
• Fun Size: In contrast to the Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever examples above, some quests have you fighting miniature versions of a monster. For example, the "A Lost Civilization" High Rank Event Quest in 4U has you fighting a half-size Tetsucabra, while the "Fan Club: Desert Training" G-rank Event Quest pits you against a Cephadrome the size of a Cephalos. Don't associate "smaller" with "weak", though, as these smaller monsters hit just as hard as their standard-sized ones.
• Funny Afro: One of the unlockable Poogie costumes is called the "Afro Nest", a huge afro with toy birds for decorations.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • In 3 Ultimate, nothing is stopping you from leaving Moga Village and joining the online mode right from the start of the game. It is very much possible to earn yourself G-rank status and craft G-rank armor and weapons. If you haven't done anything in Moga Village, everyone there will still treat you as a hunter in training. This is especially bad if you are facing the single-player Lagiacrus for the first time. Even if you are wearing a full Lagia armor, the game will still treat it as a Hopeless Boss Fight.
  • Also in 3 Ultimate, at max Chum-Chum level, Cha-Cha and Kayamba have reached optimum friendship and will not bicker amongst themselves while you're out hunting with them anymore. Despite this, they'll continue to smack-talk about each other when you talk to them in Moga Village or Tanzia Port, as if they're still bitter rivals.
  • The monster introductory cutscenes in 4/4U play with this. Some of them, like when the Daimyo Hermitaur and Tigrex send the hunter flying with a direct hit, play it straight as the character otherwise receives no damage. Others subvert it; the cutscenes for the Basarios and Great Jaggi have the hunter performing a successful mount on said monsters, whereupon the game transitions to the actual mounting "minigame", and a couple others lead straight into Press X to Not Take Damage moments, such as the Rajang preparing to toss a chunk of rock at you as soon as the cutscene ends.
  • Some story characters are hunters that retired due to serious hunting-related injuries, such as the Retired Hunter in Unite, the Village Chief in 3 Ultimate, and the Master of Defense in 4 Ultimate. Despite this, you can get the daylights beaten out of you hundreds of times through One Hit Kills from Elder Dragons and the worst that will happen is that you lose money from failing quests.
  • The Master of Defense in 4U saved the Ace Commander during a Rathian hunt that went bad because a Kushala Daora intruded on the quest. However, pre-World games don't allow Elder Dragons to appear in hunts for non-Elder monsters and vice versa.
  • The monster introductory scenes in 4/4U are shown in the first story-related quest involving the monster in question, but not in their Gathering Hall/multiplayer equivalent, even if you end up doing the latter first. If you start doing the quests as soon as they're available, it's entirely possible to, for example, farm the Great Jaggi via its Gathering Hall quest, make a full Jaggi armor set, then "get introduced" to the Great Jaggi in story mode while wearing it.
  • Cutscenes in World involve the player hunter evading attacks by grappling a wedge beetle from a swamp, using slinger ammo to drop boulders on a monster's head, and sliding down a long, narrow passageway to evade a cranky Rathalos, among other things. These are stylized, but completely accurate depictions of gameplay.
  • The Dragon element is supposedly more effective the more intelligent a monster is, and while it's generally true for wyverns and Elder Dragons barring special exceptions like Stygian Zinogre, this isn't the case with other groups of monsters. It's understandable that monsters based on arthropods (Neopterons, Carapaceons, and Temnocerans) would be less intelligent than others, but even the smarter ones like Ahtal-Ka are unaffected by the Dragon element. The Fanged Beasts are also unaffected by the Dragon element, despite being based on mammals, meaning they should be more intelligent than most animals. The only other monsters that take any damage from the Dragon element are the Amphibians, albeit minimal damage. It would be more accurate to say the Dragon element only works on wyverns and Elder Dragons, with intelligence determining how vulnerable they are to it.
  • As far as the characters and story in the games are concerned, you typically only do a given quest a single time. However, to actually craft full armor and weapon sets often requires you to slay or capture a given monster on a quest many times. The end result is that the player will be killing or capturing far more monsters than their character actually does in the game's story, leading some people to the impression that hunters in the games are more destructive than they actually are.
• Game-Breaking Bug: An infamous one plagues Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, both on Wii U and 3DS. When you create a character, the game will determine which charms you can find by choosing between different charm tables. The problem is, some charm tables are "cursed": instead of offering a variety of about 20000 charms, those tables only offer 200 to 800 different charms (and not the good ones: none of the cursed tables offer any charms with 3 gem slots). This doesn't stop here: some of these cursed charm tables prevent you from finding rustshards, which mean you won't be able to find or craft some weapons and armors at all. You can find more info on the "cursed charms" issue on this page (including ways to determine which table you got).^note The tables first came about with Tri, which actually only had one table that everyone shared. And then Portable 3rd had multiple, but they were chosen upon starting the game up and not on character creation, so they cycled every time you stared a new session.
• Game Mod:
  • Some players will make novelty quests such as fighting super-sized monsters or reduced-size Apex monsters that cannot be fought in official quests, as well as multiplayer quests for Monoblos, who cannot be encountered online.
  • Griefers will use custom quests to instantly boost themselves to HR 999, as well as other players doing the quest with them, and if those players make the mistake of saving after the HR-boosting quest, they'll be permanently stuck with a hacked Hunter Rank. While the games besides Frontier and Online lack any proper MMO infrastructure and therefore banning players from online play outright is impossible, players who see these tricked HR 999 players will assume the HR 999 players are the ones cheating or hacking and kick them on sight.
• Gang Up on the Human: You ARE the most dangerous thing in Monster Hunter's ecosystem, after all. But only because, for some reason, you never die even when taking a full bite from a set of jaws that's larger than your entire body. At worst, you just "faint" and once you've fainted, the monster leaves you alone instead of finishing you off.^note Though according to some easily-missed dialogue in Unite, this may be justified with the Felyne emergency team rushing in to cart you back to base before anything worse happens. This is averted in World - certain monsters, should they meet up when attacking the player, they will fight each other.
• Gateless Ghetto: The introduction cutscene in 4/4U shows Val Habar to be quite a big town. All you get to visit of it is a small street that just happens to hold everything you need and to be right next to the Gathering Hall.
• Gatling Good: Heavy Bowguns' "Gatling Fire" Special Ammo in World, which lets them load an ammunition cartridge that enables the Heavy Bowgun to rapidly pump out shells into a desired target. Unlike Siege Mode, this is completely separate from your existing ammunition types and has effectively unlimited ammo, but must recharge between uses.
• Genki Girl: The Guild Sweetheart in Tri/3 Ultimate.
• Geo Effects: Some later maps in the series from 4th Gen onward started toying with these. The most notable examples both come from Rathalos.
  • In 4, the Rath nest in Heaven's Mount can tilt into a slope if Rathalos spits a fireball at the ground, which can cause you to slide right off if you don't hold on for dear life.
  • Most of the maps in World have at least one or two environmental hazards that you can use to your advantage, like a dam at the Rathalos nest in the Ancient Forest that can be exploited to heavily damage and stun Rathalos/Rathian if it breaks, or a quicksand trap in the Wildspire Wastes that can be detonated to drop monsters through it to similar effect.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man:
  • Your Felyne will do this if you start cowering in fear of a monster, get put to sleep, dizzied, frozen, or otherwise incapacitated. Considering that any time your movement gets hindered, there's a fair chance whatever wyvern you're fighting right now is going to use that opportunity to turn you into toast, this is a very useful feature. It's possible to return the favour if your palico starts panicking or afflicted by the snowman status.
  • Cha-Cha does the same thing in Tri. He even has dialog boxes that have some variation of the phrase. Kayamba does the same in 3 Ultimate.
  • Players can do this to each other. The weak kick attack is designed for this, although a strike from one of your weapons works all the same. Because of this, a common auto-message for being incapacitated is some variation of "Hit me!"
• Giant Enemy Crab: Seven versions if you count the color-variations in Unite as separate types.
  • Shen Gaoren is by far the biggest. Fittingly, it seems to be somewhat based on the Japanese Spider Crab, which is among the biggest (if not THE biggest) crab in the world.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere:
  • Ceadeus in Tri. A gigantic serpent-whale-dragon thing that was the real cause behind the Moga earthquakes and isn't introduced or even confirmed to exist until the final tier of quests, unlike Lagiacrus. Though if it's any consolation, the village elder eventually tells you that he had a suspicion all along that Ceadeus was the cause, because he had faced it himself when he was younger.
  • Quite a few monsters in the series have little or no background information — particularly those introduced in the Updated Rereleases and Frontier's patches — because what little storyline there is is usually not modified to account for them. Ceadeus is only exceptional because he's a storyline boss in a main game.
• Gimmick:
  • The Seregios weapons have unique gimmicks to them that set them apart from other weapons of their kind.
    • For Blademasters, the weapons have a maximized Sharpness rating that can't be improved with Sharpness +1, but in exchange, dodging five times with your weapon drawn automatically restores five points of Sharpness, mitigating the need to sharpen your own weapon with Whetstones.
    • For Bowgun wielders, dodging with your weapon drawn automatically reloads a single bullet of the selected ammunition, mitigating the need for manual reloading.
    • For Bow wielders, applying C. Range Coating automatically gives you the same damage boost as a Power Coating.
  • The Chaos Gore Magala weapons are the only set of weapons in the game to both have negative affinity and positive affinity, which means it has the chance to do both feeble hits and a separate chance to do critical hits. Overcoming the Frenzy Virus will cause the weapons' negative affinity to disappear and be added to the positive affinity for the duration of the buff.
  • The Valstrax Blademaster weapons don't have the same sharpness levels as other weapons, with only a long amount of white followed immediately by a long amount of red.
• Glass Cannon:
  • Can be invoked by equipping an endgame-class weapon and removing all of your armor and talismans. In fact, some quests can only be accepted if you're "naked", thus enforcing this trope.
  • Using a Gunner weapon allows you to attack monsters for massive damage from a distance, however Gunner armor has less defense than Blademaster armor of the same class as a tradeoff. Non-elemental attacks that would leave a Blademaster with half their HP remaining will likely take a Gunner back to camp.
• Global Currency: As befits a Capcom game, Zenny is the universal currency.
• Global Currency Exception: Despite the existence and ubiquity of Zenny, there are several other means of trade and commerce in the Monster Hunter world:
  • Points trading, which varies from game to game; e.g. Pokke Points in Unite, Resources in Tri / 3U, Caravan Points in 4, Wycademy Points in Generations, and Research Points in World. Points can be received by doing things like obtaining rare Account Items, Resource Gathering (in Tri), going on Expeditions (4), or finding monster traces (World) and is the key to purchasing some of the rarer goods like exotic consumables, reagents, and utility upgrades.
  • In 3U, the Argosy Captain offers to trade rare consumables, crafting items, tools for the Fishing Fleet, home decor, Shakalaka dance manuals, and other miscellany if you provide him with Exotic Goods, which are obtainable at gathering spots and via hunting monsters in the Moga Woods. Some rare items can only be procured in this manner.
  • In 4U, the Wycoon's extensive network of merchants allows you to trade for monster materials that cannot be found in your part of the world, by trading in mats from monsters you hunt in return. This makes it possible for the player to craft equipment made of materials from past games (e.g. Lao-Shan Lung and Shen Gaoren, both of which appeared in the 1st and 2nd gen games respectively, but are absent in 4U), which would otherwise be unobtainable.
  • Generations Ultimate introduces Horns Coins, which are obtained as rewards from G Rank quests. Horns Coins can be exchanged for items by talking to the Mewstress in the Hunters Pub.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All:
  • In-universe, Guildmarm in 4U wants to record every monster in her notebook and send it in so it can become an official guide to monsters of sorts. However, by the time she wants to send it in, the representative on the other end repeatedly sends it back on the basis of "not enough information", which leads her to believe that she's missing data on a bunch of monster subspecies. Naturally, you get to hunt them for her. She seems to not understand the fact that her entire notebook consisting completely of doodles might be part of the problem...
  • While entirely optional, crafting every possible armor set in the game is this: each monster has its own unique armor, and obtaining all of them is a way to get 100% Completion. The fact that they often look impossibly cool certainly helps.
• Gotta Kill Them All: Barring the few quests where you have to gather materials or capture a monster alive, killing every monster you meet is the goal of the game.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language:
  • Dependent on the game. Wyverians are inexplicably Japanese. Felynes are where it gets more diverse with Japanese, French, and Mandarin Chinese in particular.
  • Weapons made of Gore Magala parts have Gratuitous German in the names, such as "Kummerklang", "Eiferschild", "Fäulnisschleuder", etc. Once the weapon begins requiring high-rank Shagaru Magala parts to upgrade, the names suddenly switch to Gratuitous French. By comparison, said weapons had Gratuitous English names in the original Japanese version. This was explained as a form of Japanese wordplay designed to make the weapons feel strangely "off" compared to the rest.
    • The German and French weapon names return in World, though seemingly at random and no correlation with the signifigance of the monster the parts came from. e.g. Anjanath weapons, but only certain ones, become the German word for "Flame [weapon]", and the Blooming Hammer tree (only this tree and only on this weapon) shifts into French at the highest rarities.
  • The Argosy Captain and Neko (Means "Cat") love to pepper their already Engrish-laden sentences with Gratuitous Japanese, which they proceed to translate.
• The Great Serpent: In a game full of giant monsters there are a few big snakes to go around.
  • In the first game, a monster known as the Crypt Hydra, a mummified two-headed snake, was meant to be the final boss but was ultimately cut out.
  • Monster Hunter Frontier introduces the Laviente and its variants (Violent Laviente and Starving Laviente), who are the second largest monsters fought in the franchise and resemble giant snakes with tusks and fins, though they're not classified as snakes proper, they do resemble the part.
  • Monster Hunter 4/4 Ultimate: One of the mid-game monsters is Najarala, a Snake Wyvern who measures to a maximum of 35 meters long and fight by constricting opponents, they also have fangs and forked togues inside their beaks. Also introduced in the same game is Dalamadur, a colossal Elder Dragon that resembles a snake with fangs and a forked tongue and constricts around the arena where it is fought.
• Green Hill Zone: The Forests and Hills that appear the 1st and 2nd generation games. In the 3rd generation, the Deserted Island (Moga Woods) takes this role instead. In the 4th generation, the Ancestral Steppe and Jurassic Frontier are this.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Since your weapons are made of monster parts, you may find yourself wacking stuff with a Rathalos or a Plesioth head for a hammer.
• The Grim Reaper: The Death Stench armor set has you looking like a heavily-armored version. There's also its armor pieces' descriptions. You can even forge an accompanying scythe as well, even one that bisects the more miniscule creatures in the game with one stroke.
• Guest-Star Party Member: During the fight against the Rusted Kushala Daora in 4U, you get the Ace Hunters as NPC allies, with the Ace Commander manning the Track Cannon, the Ace Lancer manning ballistas, the Ace Gunner distracting the monster with Heavy Bowgun fire, and the Ace Cadet providing periodic healing with an infinite supply of Lifepowders.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Focusing on improving one weapon type at the expense of others can make material gathering a nightmare, as certain materials can only be gathered if a certain part of a monster is destroyed, and many of these parts can only be destroyed by a very specific weapon type. This leads to a game of trial and error as you try to figure out which weapon breaks which part of which monster.
  • Trying to figure out what element each monster is weakest to, as well as what parts of it can be broken at all. Some monsters have parts that break in two stages, and you're probably not going to bother targeting a body part that's been broken already if you don't know that it can break again.
  • The issue of weaknesses is reduced a little once you know that armor made from a monster tends to share the weaknesses of that monster, so as soon as you have one part of them, you can get a good read from the armory. Physical weaknesses tend to be a bit obvious, like hitting the face, and you'll know them when your attack has a brief animation lag to simulate your weapon digging deeper... that said, both of these are in themselves Guide Dang It!.
  • Gunner weapons. Even the most basic (and vital) mechanics like "critical distance" are never fully explained in-game, not even the tutorial missions are that much of a help. Reading guides and walkthroughs is almost a necessity for players new to the Long-Range Fighter playstyle.
  • Nowhere is it hinted in games prior to Generations that the on-screen attack rating of your weapon is actually a "true attack" value (which is used in damage calculations) multiplied by a weapon-specific multiplier (which has no functional purpose), i.e. a "1000"-attack weapon will not necessarily do way more damage than a "300"-attack weapon of the same rarity and different type. Generations fixes this by simply showing those true attack values, and while World goes back to the "hidden value times hidden multiplier" system, at least it outright shows damage numbers when you hit enemies so you know how powerful your weapon really is. Rise goes back to using true attack.
  • There is one particular move in which your hunter runs at full speed, dives like they are flying (hence the nickname "Superman dive"), and lands flat on their face. However, it has a lot of invincibility frames making it a very good way to dodge certain attacks provided you have enough time to execute it, but nowhere (Even in World) are you told that you can do this, plus it's never at all required until Dalamadur. In fact, players most likely discovered it by mistake and then assumed that it wasn't even useful for anything except falling on your face and leaving them vulnerable, and as such went out of their way not to use it.
  • How do you avoid sweeping lasers? Why, a good way to ensure that you will become invulnerable is run towards them and execute this move. Very few stages even allow this.
• Guilt-Based Gaming: In Monster Hunter 4 and 4 Ultimate the sequence for dismissing a palico really went out of its way to make the player feel like a jerk for firing their loyal felyne companions. First, the palico jumps with surprise as spotlights center in on them, before adopting a sad, "everyone's against me" look. Then they walk pitifully to their escape vehicle, a wood rocket ship. They then give you a single courteous bow before turning around and instantly bursting into tears. They finally beg one last time for you to let them stay, right before blasting off into space. But lest you think Capcom will at least let you get away on a humorous note, it quickly goes into the rare Double Mood Whiplash as you return to the palico list to the sound of one last, mournful cry far off in the distance. You can avert this by hiring a Palico when at max Palico capacity, which will force you to dismiss a Palico but doesn't play the farewell ceremony.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot:
  • Played straight with the Ace Hunters in 4. The Ace Commander, Ace Lancer, and Ace Cadet are all male and Blademasters, while the Ace Gunner is female and a Gunner.
  • Averted with the player characters, where gender is cosmetic and has no bearing on ability or preference in weapons use.
  • Inverted for the Rathalos and Rathian, the sexually dimorphic Rath Wyverns that were the flagship monsters of the first game — the male Rathalos focuses much more on flying and fireballs, even having a unique-to-him move that involves gaining lots of altitude and lobbing a series of fireballs at hunters before swooping back down to within swords' reach, while the female Rathian tends to rush around, using bites, ground-based fireballs, and tail swings, only occasionally taking flight — mainly to use a backflip tailswipe — and never staying in the air for long.

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