Understanding Affinity in Monster Hunter Wilds: Tips to Optimize Its Use

Understanding Affinity in Monster Hunter Wilds is essential for optimizing your combat effectiveness—yet, it often remains unclear for many players. Affinity is a key statistic found on all weapons, and mastering its percentage can significantly enhance your weapon’s overall potency, even before considering Elemental damage.

When examining a weapon’s stats, you will typically notice three primary indicators: Attack, Affinity, and Element. The Attack stat indicates the raw power of a weapon, while the Element stat represents any additional Elemental damage it may deliver. Different weapons possess various elemental types, and while there is no universally superior option, targeting the Element that aligns with the weaknesses of your chosen monster is advisable.

Now, let’s dive deeper into understanding Affinity.

Unraveling Affinity in Monster Hunter Wilds

You can think of Affinity as your weapon’s chance for critical hits. In the context of Monster Hunter Wilds, Affinity represents the percentage likelihood that your attacks will inflict additional damage beyond the weapon’s base output.

Affinity can fall into three categories: neutral (0%), positive (>0%), and negative (<0%).Positive Affinity is most desirable, as it increases the occurrences of critical hits. Neutral Affinity is acceptable, while negative Affinity should ideally be avoided, as it decreases your critical hit opportunities and lowers critical damage potential. It’s crucial to remember that Monster Hunter employs critical damage percentages in a +/- format.

For instance, if a critical hit yields a 25% damage boost, a weapon with -10% Affinity would cause 10% of your hits to inflict 25% less damage, whereas a -50% Affinity would mean half of your hits deliver half the critical damage. This nuance plays a critical role in your overall damage output.

You can easily identify which hits are influenced by Affinity.Attacks with an orange diamond indicate crits that benefit from positive Affinity, while hits marked by a blue diamond suffer from negative Affinity.

-5% isn’t too bad.| Image credit: Capcom

Having negative Affinity does not inherently categorize a weapon as ineffective. For example, a weapon with negative Affinity may include Decoration slots that help offset this drawback. Additionally, if you opt to allocate those Decoration slots differently, various Skills can mitigate low or negative Affinity.

In specific scenarios, a weapon may still excel despite negative Affinity if it features substantial Elemental damage. Ultimately, your choices while building your character in Monster Hunter Wilds should align with your target monster or monster family, as various creatures have differing responses to Elemental damage versus Affinity-related impacts.

To quickly check your weapon’s Affinity, access the pause menu and select Equipment Info from the initial page (Items & Equipment).

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