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Monster Hunter Rise is played from two villages. Kamura is the base game, ranked in Hunter Rank, with the Wirebug, Rampages and Narwa the Allmother at the end of it. Elgado is Sunbreak, ranked in Master Rank, with the Citadel and the Jungle, Malzeno and Gaismagorm, and an endgame of afflicted monsters that never runs out. The two halves share weapons, controls and most of the maps, and almost nothing else.
Our coverage follows that split more than you might expect. Of the 74 pages sitting under this hub's four categories, 21 belong to Kamura, 39 belong to Elgado, and the 14 weapon pages belong to both. So this hub is organised by where you are standing. Find your village, and every page we have for it is a link away.
If you are standing in Kamura
Start with the beginners guide, which walks Kamura shop by shop: Yamogi's tea shop for Dangos, Kagero's stall for crafting materials, the Buddy Plaza for Palicoes and Palamutes, Hamon's smithy, and Minoto's quest counter with its split between Village quests you play alone and Hub quests you can share. It also carries the one piece of advice that saves the most time early, which is that the Special License Test at Hunter Rank 4 lifts your Hub rank without grinding Hub quests.
The move that makes Rise different from every game before it is the Wirebug, and its page lists every dash, the Wirefall recovery and the way ranged weapons add a button. The mechanics guide places it at the far end of a ladder of six systems sorted by how often you return to them, and it is the only one of the six that belongs to Kamura at all.
Seventeen of our 32 hunt pages are base-game monsters, from Arzuros and Tetranadon at the low end through Magnamalo, the flagship, to the elder dragons that unlock at Hunter Rank 30, 40, 50 and 100. The monsters guide ranks all 32 by how much a clean hit on their softest part is worth and counts which elements and ailments work on how many of them. The elder dragons list adds Chameleos, Ibushi and Thunder Serpent Narwa, which have no page of their own, and the endemic life list covers the Spiribirds, toads and Puppet Spider you pick up on the way to them.
Only three of our 22 item pages are base-game items, and two of them are Kamura's economy: Dangos, with all 47 recipes and their unlock ranks, and Kamura Tickets, the currency Fugen hands out and the two quests that farm them. The third is the Bismuth Prism that opens the Argosy's last submarine. The items guide puts those three at the top of a ladder sorted by the rank that first unlocks each material, and everything below them is Elgado's.
If you are standing at Elgado
Sunbreak begins with a Daimyo Hermitaur and a cutscene with Admiral Galleus that leaves you at Master Rank 1. From that point every gate in our folder is a Master Rank number. Rank 2 opens the Argosy, the Palamute Silkbinder quest and the first Royal Order weapons. Rank 4 opens the Citadel's Meowcenaries sites and the last Cohoot. Rank 10 arrives after the final boss and opens Anomaly Research, 31 afflicted hunts in four tiers whose rewards rise by exactly 3,600 zenny per tier, and with them the tokens for Master Rank layered armor.
Fifteen hunt pages are Sunbreak monsters. Five are new forms of Kamura monsters, and each one swaps its parent's elemental weakness, so Scorned Magnamalo, Pyre Rakna-Kadaki and Aurora Somnacanth want different weapons from the monsters they resemble. The other ten are new to Rise: Elgado's three lords, which are Lunagaron, Garangolm and Malzeno, both Magalas, both crabs, Seregios, Espinas, and Gaismagorm, which our elder dragons list calls the hardest fight in the game.
Nineteen item pages are Sunbreak materials, and the surprise in the items guide is who collects them. Thirteen you mine, carve or dig yourself on Master Rank expeditions, from Awegite and Goldlite Ore to the Barroth Crown. Six are brought home by your buddies on Argosy and Meowcenaries runs, and those six include the four that unlock armor sets from the secret armor sets page: Vaik X, Death Stench X, Five Element and Snowshear. The Royal Order weapons are the third route, nine weapons unlocked by follower quests and costing 282,000 zenny for the set.
The 14 weapons belong to both villages
Every weapon page carries its controls for Switch and PC, its Silkbind attacks, its Switch Skills, builds for 2-star, 4-star and endgame quests, and its weapon tree, and most of them were written in Kamura and revised at Elgado. The weapons guide sorts the 14 by how many meters each one asks you to watch, from the Sword and Shield with none to the Charge Blade with three, and lines up the builds to show that eleven pages recommend the same starter armor.
Three standalone pages sit beside it. The weapon tips page fits all 14 movesets on one screen with two or three signature combos each. The weapons tier list names the best endgame craft per type, with its zenny cost, and ranks the types from S to C. The builds overview gives five complete armor-and-weapon sets for early and late game. They disagree with each other about Dual Blades, and the weapons guide explains why that disagreement is informative rather than a mistake.
Playing on PC
Four pages are for the PC version. The best PC settings page lists the minimum and recommended specs and the three settings worth changing first: button hold to short, sheathing to manual, and shadow quality down for the biggest frame-rate gain. The best mods page picks five, including the DeviceStutterFix for the controller-polling stutter and a weakness icon that shows each monster's element over its head. If Sunbreak will not launch, the Sunbreak crash fix works through requirements, background tasks, drivers, Windows updates, security software, file verification and a clean boot in that order.
The fourth page is a piece of history. Our how to play on PC guide was written when Rise was a Switch exclusive and describes running it through the Ryujinx emulator, with that emulator's own system requirements. The native port has since shipped, so treat it as a record of that year rather than a recommendation.
Where to start
New to the series: the beginners guide, then the Wirebug page, then one weapon page chosen from the ladder in the weapons guide. Our beginners guide suggests the Long Sword and our Charge Blade page suggests anything but the Charge Blade. Returning for Sunbreak: the Master Rank page, then the items guide's ladder so you know which materials open at which rank, then Anomaly Research once the story is done. Stuck on a single monster: the monsters guide's first table gives its softest part, its best element and what it is immune to in one row, and the link in that row is the hunt page.