Which weapon should you pick in Monster Hunter Wilds?

Within the first few minutes of hopping into Monster Hunter Wilds, the game presents you with a crucial task—selecting a weapon from the 14 options available.

Each of the 14 Hunter weapons offers unique attacks and handling—with some excelling at swift attacks and movement and others letting you counterattack and block incoming attacks.

While Alma recommends weapons based on the fighting style you want to rock, knowing each weapon’s advantages and disadvantages is necessary before you can equip one. With that in mind, here are all the weapons in Monster Hunter Wilds and the best ones you should pick.

All weapons in Monster Hunter Wilds

You can choose between 14 types of weapons in Monster Hunter Wilds:

• Great Sword: A versatile pick despite its slow swings and movement speed. It lets you evade incoming attacks, use sheath-and-run tactics, and perform special counter moves. You can also guard yourself using the Great Sword.
• Long Sword: This lets you move around quickly and perform combos on your targets. While you can’t guard yourself using this sword, it has a Spirit Gauge that allows you to pack more power in your attacks when it turns red.
• Sword & Shield: Ideal for constantly moving around your targets with a handy little shield for quick defense. As the name suggests, you can guard yourself using this weapon.
• Dual Blades: One of the coolest attack animations, purposely made for aggressive playstyle. You can continuously land powerful blows on your target using the Dual Blades. The weapon also offers a Demon Mode, which improves your damage output considerably at the cost of reducing your stamina faster.
• Hammer: Offers decent power for all your attacks without too much of a hit to your mobility. While you can’t guard yourself with the Hammer, you can land blows to the monsters’ heads to stun.
• Hunting Horn: Provides buffs through melodies and echo bubbles, but requires excellent maneuvering to be effective on the battlefield. Using the horn, you can increase your evasion, movement speed, and attack speed.
• Lance: A defense-heavy option with low mobility but offers quick counterattack abilities.
• Gunlance: Offers a bulky cannon fixed to a lance with impressive range and guarding abilities at the cost of low movement speed. 
• Switch Axe: Allows you to switch between a massive Axe and a Sword quickly. The Axe Mode provides better reach, and the Sword mode features faster attacks. Each mode has its gauge, and you can switch to the Sword mode upon maxing out the Axe gauge.
• Charge Blade: Lets you switch between the Sword mode, which is ideal for dodging incoming attacks, and the Axe mode to strike powerful blows to monsters. You can only guard yourself in the Sword mode.
• Insect Glaive: Allows you to jump and perform midair attacks on monsters. It also equips you with a large insect, called Kinsect, on your arm that lets you gather Extracts to provide different buffs.
• Light Bowgun: A fast-firing weapon that excels at mid-range and offers amazing mobility, ideal for evading monsters charging at you. You can switch to a Rapid Fire mode to fire several rounds of ammo quickly, with the option to also switch between the type of ammo you’re firing to Pierce, Poison, Spread, or Normal.
• Heavy Bowgun: The big brother of Light Bowgun, as all of its shots pack more power, albeit the mobility isn’t as impressive. The weapon also guards you automatically in several stances.
• Bow: Offers an array of arrow attacks and lets you move around a monster to reposition very quickly. While there’s no way to guard yourself using a Bow, you can sidestep to move away from charging monsters.

Which weapon should you pick first?

If you’re a beginner or diving into the Monster Hunter franchise for the first time, I recommend sticking to weapons like Sword & Shield, Bow, and Great Sword because they’re the easiest to use and provide a good balance of mobility, consistent damage output, and evasion.