Best solo weapon in Monster Hunter Wilds
Here are the best weapons for solo play in MHWilds
What is the best solo weapon in Monster Hunter Wilds? From the very beginning, Capcom has always intended for Monster Hunter to be a game you can play either alone or in a party of hunters. It's no surprise that Monster Hunter Wilds becomes considerably easier when you're hunting together with friends, but if you're one of the many hunters who prefers to play through the game solo, then one of the best things you can do is picking a weapon that lends itself to solo play.
In this guide, we'll offer our judgement on which are the very best solo weapons to use in Monster Hunter Wilds. We'll present four choices for you below, along with our thoughts on each one and what makes them so powerful specifically for solo hunting.
Best solo weapons in Monster Hunter Wilds
There's an argument to be made that any weapon can be used to great effect while playing solo - even the support-oriented Hunting Horn. But despite the good power balance between all 14 weapon types, a small handful of them really lend themselves to solo combat, and can help you cut through the entire ecosystem without once calling upon other hunters to aid you.
In our opinion, the best solo weapons in Monster Hunter Wilds are the Bow, Long Sword, Gunlance, and Great Sword. They all have different strengths, and not all of them are easy to learn by any means, but all four of them are absolutely fantastic at killing monsters without any outside assistance.
Below we'll explain a bit more about our choices and why these four particular top-tier weapons are so good in solo play.
1. Bow
The Bow is a magnificent weapon for solo play. It allows you to deal consistent damage from safety, and it doesn't weigh you down so much that you have no answer to fast-charging monsters. What's more, your attacks with the Bow run along quite an extreme range between fast and weak, and slow and strong. Which means: at any moment, you have a perfect attack type to use, no matter the situation.
The other great strength of the Bow is the ease with which you can both create and target wounds. This is useful in multiplayer too, of course, but it's phenomenal in solo because the frequency with which you can destroy wounds on a monster means you have a great amount of control over the pacing of the fight, and the monster is likely to spend a lot of its time stunned.
2. Long Sword
The Long Sword is an excellent solo weapon that can handle all monsters equally well. The reach allows you to easily target weak spots like the head and tail, and you maintain enough mobility to easily dodge out of the way of incoming attacks. Spirit Thrust takes some practice to use properly, but it's also great for distance-closing and sticking to your target like glue.
There are, of course, many options when it comes to melee solo play. But I'd argue that the Long Sword strikes a very comfortable balance between power, speed, and pretty much anything else you might need from a weapon. It's great at breaking parts and lopping off tails; it's fast enough to proc status effects; and once your Spirit Gauge is maxed, it deals truly massive damage that can end fights pretty quickly even on your own.
3. Gunlance
The Gunlance won't kill large monsters very quickly, but there's no denying it's a very powerful and safe option for solo players. It combines the wall-like defence of the Lance with part-agnostic explosive ranged attacks that can turn the potentially tricky process of whittling down a monster's health from afar into child's play.
There's just not too much a monster can do to you while you're guarding and charging with a Gunlance, and that alone is enough for it to be a fantastic solo weapon. You're very well protected, and while an argument can be made for the Heavy Bowgun to take its place on this list with a similar match of destructive power and defence, the Gunlance is also an adept melee weapon, and the added versatility of that tips it into the lead.
4. Great Sword
The Great Sword's slow timings are tough to master, but if you can handle the slow charge-ups, there is arguably no better option for killing a monster quickly. You have very low mobility with the Great Sword, but the block can keep you clear of trouble most of the time, and with a proper understanding of both your timings and the attacks of the monster you face, the fight is basically a foregone conclusion.
There's no complex reasoning behind this choice for solo play: the Great Sword's attacks are just too strong to ignore. Even if you don't have many opportunities to unleash a fully-charged strike, your regular uncharged attacks still deal an awful lot of damage.
That wraps up our guide on the best solo weapons in Monster Hunter Wilds. If you need more help, make sure you check out our Monster Hunter Wilds walkthrough and our primer on the best starting weapon for beginners. We've also got guides for the Monster Hunter Wilds main quests, as well as our pages on how to capture monsters and how to get layered armor.