Leveling up in Monster Hunter World isn't as straightforward as you would think. When completing the main story missions, you'll be essentially gaining one level per quest as you work towards the final cutscene. After completing all of those missions, you're left with a relatively low rank and a ton of extra missions that might be out of your reach. How do you go about increasing your rank to take on even better challenges?
There isn't a universal method that will up your rank in no time, but there are a few types of quests that will help you better than others. By using this guide, you'll be able to rank up to better tackle Iceborne, World's expansion, and grab yourself some powerful weapon and armor pieces. You can even outpace your friends and show off a bit.
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First off, you're better focusing on completing the main quest before worrying about your rank. As mentioned above, finishing story quests will basically correlate to a single hunter rank increase with each mission. It starts to slow down towards the end and if you only focus on main missions, you'll finish the campaign around HR 16. Still, these missions aren't that tough and they'll provide you with sidequests that break certain limits.
To get to 16, you'll need to complete story missions "Kushala Daora, Dragon of Steel," "Teostra the Infernal," "Hellish Fiend Vaal Hazak," and "Land of Convergence." To get to 30, you'll have to finish "Beyond the Blasting Scales." Finally, getting to 50 requires you to surmount "Thunderous Rumble in the Highlands." When you hit these soft caps, any missions you do before completing these specific ones will still count; you just won't see an increase until you've tackled the main missions.
Getting to 50 is really important since that unlocks the ability to augment your equipment. Through augmenting, you can do things like increase the defensive properties or your armor or add special buffs to your weapons. These will help considerably in getting to HR 99, which will unlock the mission "The Sapphire Star's Guidance." Completing that ascends you to 100 and then the cap is basically limitless.
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The journey from 30 to 49 and then 50 to 99 is where you'll struggle the most. Lower rank missions will basically dole out a pittance compared to higher rank quests. Conversely, higher rank quests will pit you against ridiculously strong monsters that can sometimes take 45 minutes to topple. It seems like a lose-lose situation where you're stuck between farming exceptionally boring low-rank stuff and bashing your head against the wall of a high-rank quest. There is one trick you can utilize.
Whenever event quests come around with multiple monsters, tackle those. They don't even need to be tempered or arch-tempered beasts. Anything with more than one monster will reward you with substantially more hunter rank in a shorter period than just doing an Elder Dragon. You'll eventually need to tackle multiple Elder Dragons at once, but that's where getting to HR 50 and augmenting your gear comes in.
When your hit HR 30, a great event quest to keep an eye out for is "Snow & Cherry Blossoms." In this one, you'll face off against a Legiana and Pink Rathian, which can be a deadly combo. If you have the right equipment or a solid team, it won't be too bad to make quick work of them. Better than the combo of two monsters is the fact that this mission gives out double hunter rank points. Before Iceborne, this was sworn by many as the fastest method of leveling up.
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Upon hitting 50, you should look out for Event Quests like "The Greatest Jagras" or "The Name's Lavasioth!" These both feature supped-up versions of World's weakest monsters. While you'll still go down in a few hits, the quests aren't too long and you're given ample opportunity to fall in battle without failing the quest.
If that is too much for you, you could also assist people in their struggles. One of the best features of Monster Hunter World is the SOS flare. When you're struggling on a story quest, you can shoot off an SOS and players can help you at random. By checking the job board -or with the handler-, you can search for any SOS flares shot by others and help them thwart troublesome monsters. It doesn't provide more hunter rank than doing quests solo, but it might let you tackle tougher monsters without failing so much.
Another solid way to gain hunter rank is by tackling the likes of Xeno'jiiva. The final boss of World's campaign, Xeno'jiiva's quest may take a little while, but his relatively easy pattern and massive hitboxes mean you probably won't fail unless you get unlucky. You can even use an SOS flare here, so that may help alleviate some of the difficulty. Zorah Magdaros, on the other hand, isn't really worth your time since he doesn't provide much of a hunter rank boost.
Using these methods, you'll have a clear path towards gaining hunter rank with relative ease. So go out and focus on upping your hunter rank before you even think of tackling the frozen wilds of the Hoarfrost Region in Iceborne.
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