Items

A mining outcrop in Monster Hunter World always gives you three ore. A Jyuratodus carve gives you an Aqua Sac 18 percent of the time. Both are described as "farming" and they are nothing alike, and confusing the two is why people spend an evening hunting for something they could have picked up off the ground.

So this page ranks material sources by how much control you actually have over the yield, from ones that pay a fixed amount every lap down to ones you can only nudge the odds on. Work from the top and only drop a tier when the thing you need forces you to.

Tier 1: nodes that pay a fixed amount every lap

Two rules cover this whole tier and they are worth stating once rather than per material. Every mining outcrop yields three ore and every bone pile yields three bones, and a bone pile can be searched three times in a row before it is exhausted. Nodes respawn when you leave and re-enter the zone, so the loop is gather, fast travel out, come back, and never abandon the quest.

The mining routes worth memorising

Dragonite Ore comes from the blue-black outcrops, densest in the Rotten Vale from area 10 onwards, with sectors 8 and 15 of the Coral Highlands as the second leg of the loop. It goes into almost every weapon, from 2 apiece for a Steel Knife up to 10 for the Chrome series, and into armor and augmentation jewels as well. Earth Crystal is the level 2 upgrade material for most weapons and comes out of the Wildspire Waste, with area 6 the densest spot and a second cluster at area 13 in the top right. Full routes are on our Dragonite Ore and Earth Crystal guides.

In Iceborne the outcrops split into red and blue on Master Rank and they carry different materials, which matters because the Guiding Lands only has blue outcrops. Anything that appears solely on a red outcrop cannot be farmed there at all, so revisiting the base-game maps at Master Rank is not optional if you need those. Ore also converts to Steamworks fuel in Seliana. The per-region breakdown is on our Iceborne ore guide.

One exclusive bone per region

Bones are the tidiest system in the game because each Master Rank region has exactly one bone you cannot get anywhere else, which turns "where do I farm bones" into "which bone do I need".

Thick Bone and Dragonbone Artifact turn up in most of them, so a single Hoarfrost or Wildspire run usually covers your general bone needs as well as the exclusive. Our Iceborne bones guide has the exact pile counts per zone.

Plant colonies

The one gathering route worth writing down is the Gourmet Shroomcap run for Fungal Flexin' in the Ancient Forest, which wants 20 of them and pays 750z. Fast travel to the Northeast Camp, drop down, take the narrow cave left of the waterfall, climb the tendril, and the first three colonies sit within a few steps of each other inside. Two more branch off toward the bone structure and back past the third colony, and the last is by the cave exit on the right. Our Gourmet Shroomcaps guide has the full route.

Tier 2: drops you can force out of a monster

This is the tier most players skip, and it is the one that turns a hunt from a dice roll into something closer to a node route. The technique is the same for every rare Guiding Lands material: latch onto the monster's face with the Clutch Claw, have Slinger ammo loaded, steer it into a wall or a boulder and fire so it hits. Each slam shakes off drops. You get three while the monster is calm, and the third enrages it, at which point you wait rather than push.

Two skills multiply the same loop. Partbreaker and Slugger make part breaks and tail cuts land more reliably, and severed tails can themselves be carved into a Great Spiritvein Gem. Geologist is the odd one: its description only mentions bonepiles, but a single level of it doubles shiny drops in the field, which three of our own farming pages independently record.

The other half of this tier is baiting. Raise a Guiding Lands region to level 7, get the right bait from breaking other monsters' parts, and take it to the Handler, and the tempered monster you want appears on demand. Check Hunter's Notes for which region spawns tempered monsters at which level, because if your region level meets the requirement the baited monster is guaranteed to be tempered rather than a roll.

The Great Spiritvein Gem row hides the single most useful piece of advice in this bucket. Tempered Elder Dragons, Tempered Rajang and Savage Deviljho all sit at roughly the same low drop rate, and Rajang and Deviljho are much easier fights, so there is no reason to farm Elder Dragons for it. If you are going to, take Kirin or Namielle, because those arenas are small and carry no negative environmental effects. Dying during a hunt lowers the drop chance, which is another argument for the easier target.

Tier 3: rolled drops

Here the game decides, and all you control is the size of the roll. Two things move it. Investigating environmental clues on the way to a fight raises your reward grade from silver toward gold, which raises the gem odds directly, so the walk in is not wasted time. And carving the body at the end is not optional.

The Aqua Sac is the honest example of what a rolled drop looks like: Jyuratodus in the Wildspire Waste, and the chance never exceeds 18 percent. Bring fire, because Jyuratodus is very weak to it and strongly resists water, and expect to repeat. Wyvern Gems are the more forgiving version, at up to 16 percent from any of seven high-rank monsters: Tobi-Kadachi, Jyuratodus, Paolumu, Lavasioth, Radobaan, Barroth and Diablos. The 3 percent roll on the Fiery Convergence quest is not worth running for it.

Quest rewards are where picking correctly triples your odds, and the numbers are worth knowing rather than guessing.

Tier 4: sources that ignore the maps

Melding is the escape hatch when a roll refuses to land: 300 Research Points and 100 Meld Points converts directly into a Wyvern Gem, which is often faster than a fifth Diablos. Feystones, the jewels that become Decorations, are best farmed as quest rewards from the Lavasioth event quest. Decorations run levels 1 to 3 and rarity 5 to 8, and the level tells you which slot it fits, since a level 2 jewel needs a slot showing two empty triangles. Our decorations guide covers the system.

Tailrider Safari is the only source in the game that runs while you are not playing that part of the game. It is off by default: talk to the Housekeeper in your Astera living quarters, pick a Palico and a route, and they come back with materials. This is the sole route to Sinister Cloth, and only routes with a Rank 4 or higher leg can return it. Five of them forge the Death Stench Set at 160 defense.

Iceborne treasures and Lynian research

Two Iceborne collections work on a completely different currency: Grimalkyne reputation. Each region hides 10 treasures, and you cannot hunt them until you reach unity level 6 with that region's faction and unlock their Palico gadget, which then lets you summon them to help. The Bugtrappers cover the Ancient Forest, the Protectors the Wildspire Waste, and the Troupers the Coral Highlands. Clearing all of them works toward the Collector trophy.

The Lynian Researcher at the entrance to the Round Table Room in Seliana hands you a camera and 20 photo requests spread across every region, which earn the Fledgling Observer and Outstanding Observer achievements. Several of them need a specific time of day, specific weather, or a high faction level, so they are the one collection you genuinely cannot rush. Our Lynian research guide has all 20 with their conditions.

The item that is not a material

Mantles sit in this bucket but behave nothing like the rest of it, because you unlock them once and then they are a per-hunt decision rather than a stockpile. There are 17, plus three Boosters you drop on the ground to buff anyone standing in the smoke. Most of the elemental ones run 180 seconds on a 210-second cooldown, which is close enough to permanent uptime that bringing the right one usually beats crafting a specialised armor set for a single hunt. Our mantles guide lists every duration, cooldown and unlock quest.

What to do with all of it

The materials only matter at the point they become gear, and the advice there is narrower than the size of this bucket suggests: pick two or three pieces and drive them deep rather than spreading a hundred materials across a wardrobe. Our upgrades guide covers how the Smithy signals what you can build now, our crafting guide covers the system, and our builds overview covers what is worth building at all.