If you want to craft the perfect build in Monster Hunter Rise, then you can’t ignore Armor Skills. Armor Skills are skills that are equipped to individual pieces of armor, and if you don’t make the most of them, you end up making a huge mistake.
Sure, while playing through the main campaign and making your way towards High Rank you really don’t need to worry about Armor Skills too much, and you can instead just focus on your overall Defence stat and brute force your way through the early challenges the game has to offer. That all changes once you encounter the powerful Apex monsters, though.
If you want to destroy High Rank monsters more easily, or farm for rare materials quickly, then Armor Skills are going to be important to you, and that’s why we’re going to break them down in this guide, including what they are, how you find what skills armor has, and which skills are best for your purposes in MHR.
What Are Armor Skills In Monster Hunter Rise?
Armor Skills are, as it sounds, skills that come equipped to whatever piece of armor you have equipped. Armor Skills have levels, and with each piece of armor you equip that has that particular skill, it levels up.
For example, the Geologist skill allows you to occasionally mine from ore nodes more than once. Level that up to the max, level 3, and suddenly you can mine multiple times from pretty much every ore node. You can instantly see how the Armor Skills can be adapted for farming, but they’re just as important to fighting.
Many of the skills offer elemental defence, extra attack, or a variety of other stat buffs. If you use the Hunter’s Notes to research what monsters are weak against, you can eventually build and craft loadouts with specific skills in order to make the most of the skills attached, which may enhance your elemental damage, status afflictions, critical hit rate, and much more.
How Do I Find Which Skills Armor Has In Monster Hunter Rise?
If you are browsing the Blacksmith’s inventory then you can hover over the leftmost icon in the armor forging list, this will display all of the skills for that armor set on the right side of the screen. Once you see the skills you want, you can go through the armor pieces individually and use the ZL and ZR buttons to scroll through the various stats, skills, and effects of any given armor piece.
You can also do this with your equipped armor and your Item Box armor pieces, of course, by using the ZL and ZR buttons while at the Item Box and looking through your equipment.
Level 1 skills are still effective and useful, but to make the most of skills you really need to attempt to level them up to the max, using whatever armor pieces available to meet that goal.
Which Armor Skills Are Best In Monster Hunter Rise?
There are literally dozens of different skills, so it’s hard to narrow things down, but first and foremost you should look at the elemental resistance skills. These skills are perfect for crafting builds to take down certain monsters.
Next you should focus on skills that belong to your class, especially if you use a weapon that is fuelled by ammo. There are many skills to enhance the effects of guns, bows, and all kinds of ammo types, so you should again focus on using these to enhance your weapon build.
After that you can look at the basic attack enhancement skills, as those are always good for a general well-rounded build. Resentment is a useful skill that increase your damage after being freshly injured, and Peak Performance is similar, offering an attack boost while you’re at full health.