Monster Hunter Wilds mounting explained - how to mount monsters

Riding your enemy is an excellent way to open wounds and deal huge damage, so here’s how to mount monsters in Monster Hunter Wilds.

How do you mount monsters in Monster Hunter Wilds? With MH Wilds’ new wound tech, it pays to keep targeting the same area of a monster as you’re battling it out. There isn’t a better way to do it than by jumping onto their back, where you can strike without the need to move. Mounting monsters is a great way to target specific areas, provided you can get up there in the first place.

Taking advantage of mounting in MH Wilds is key to defeating monsters, and the MH Wilds Insect Glaive is recommended as the best MH weapon to do so, but you can reach the height needed with every one of our MH Wilds builds. There are some important things you need to know before you start climbing on the backs of goliaths, so here’s Monster Hunter Wilds mounting explained.

How to mount in Monster Hunter Wilds

If you’re new to the series, it might not even occur to you that you can attach yourself to the back of monsters, but once you get the basics down, you’ll be riding the wildlife like it’s nothing. To mount a monster, you need to deal damage from above them – there are caveats, but that is the basic premise.

Dealing damage to a monster from above has a chance of initiating a mount, but prerequisites for this are obscured slightly. A monster is only mountable after a certain amount of damage has been dealt – think of it as a hidden status bar, you fill this hidden bar up and the next attack will see you grip the back of the monster, ready to strike.

You’ll get a feel for the damage threshold eventually, alternating between on-the-ground brutalizing and high-flying acrobatics when you feel a mount opportunity coming up. If all else fails, you can just keep trying airborne attacks constantly until something sticks.

Your weapon also plays a big part in this, as some of the heavier ones offer no aerial attacks whatsoever. This is where you need to get creative and use your surroundings. Jumping from ledges and cliffs is a great way to deal damage from above, and your Seikret allows for a jumping attack or a dismount attack, which also counts.

You’ll notice that your stamina bar is displayed exclusively when mounted, this is to show how much longer you can stay atop the beast. The monster will try its best to shake you off, often using nearby terrain to loosen your grip. If you sense a big hit is coming, hold RT (or R2) to brace for impact and lessen the strain on your stamina.

How to mount attack in Monster Hunter Wilds

Now that you’ve found yourself on the back of a monster, it’s time to attack. You have three options when attacking: light attack, heavy attack, and weapon attack. The light and heavy attacks utilize your dagger, and while they don’t deal huge amounts of damage, they are perfect for opening wounds quickly. Your weapon attack uses your main weapon; it also open wounds but is much slower and gives the monster a chance at shaking you off first.

When a wound appears, you can use your weapon attack to perform a finisher-type move that deals heavy damage, breaking the wound in the process. You’ll hop off the monster after this finisher.

If you feel like you have a lot of stamina left after opening a wound, it is sometimes best not to opt for a finisher, and instead hop to another part of the monster to open another wound. Some of the bigger monsters have several parts you can target while mounted, and having a wound on each of these parts can be very helpful later down the line, even if you can only break one while mounted.

Now that you know how to mount in MH Wilds, you can control a fight like never before. Also, you’ll look extremely cool to your MH Wilds crossplay buddies while you’re riding on the back of an armored dragon as it sprays plasma across the battlefield. If you’re after some more Monster Hunter tips, we have a MH Wilds skills guide here that will give you the information to tweak your build to its maximum.