Introduction

The Monster Hunter Collab is in full swing and many players have been happily farming the materials to evolve their new Male and Female Hunters.

Each Hunter has 5 distinct evolutions that attempt to provide diversity for your Monster Box. However, there are a few options that are far superior and should be pursued the vast majority of the time.

This article will outline the strengths, weaknesses, and applications for each Hunter to help you make a more informed decision.

This article will sometimes refer to each Hunter by their primary colour. For example, the Male Hunter with the Blue primary attribute () will often be called Blue (Male) Hunter.

Video commentary

–video coming soon–

Where to get Hunters

If you were fortunate enough to have been playing when the first inception of the Monster Hunter Collab came around, you would have already acquired one of each Hunter for free. Thankfully, new players are able to acquire their Hunters in the same fashion and older players will be able to acquire another one for free as well.

One Male Hunter will be given out to all players if they log in at any time during the event. On the other hand, one Female Hunter will be rewarded for clearing the 4-or-less challenge (you can still receive another one if you played during the first event). Thus, new players will have 1 of each and older players will have 2 of each Hunter.

Additional Hunters may also be purchased for 200,000 MP each but that may or may not be the best use of your Monster Points.

Evolutions are reversible

All Hunter Evolutions are reversible and it may be advantageous to acquire the materials for a variety of colours and switch over if your current choice feels lackluster.

This is mostly applicable to newer players finding more value in certain evolutions, but outgrowing them as they progress over time.

Assistable

All of the Hunters can be used as an assist through Skill Inheritance. This means you are able to utilize their active skill across a wide variety of teams since you can inherit them around. This is important if you are lacking a particular active skill that you need to progress through challenging content.

 Male Hunter 

The Male Hunter has the most straight-forward path to pursue: you should be making a Blue Hunter  99/100 times despite knowing nothing about your Monster Box.

It does not matter if you never play coop or combo leaders because you will one day and when you do, you will have one of the strongest leaders available. Blue Hunter provides amazing durability, damage, and team building options that is hard to replicate with other leaders.

As a result, you will be able to field a competent team comprising of cards to counter the dungeon mechanics as he has no colour or typing restrictions.

Once Blue Hunter has been made and you have either MP or another to spare, you can begin exploring other options.

 Rathalos/Red Male Hunter

Rathalos Hunter possesses an interesting active skill as you are able to reduce damage by 35% along with changing the second from the bottom row into fire orbs.

This orb generating active skill can be powerful if you use a fire farming leader who can trigger respectable damage via 6 connected orbs but can also help other colours achieve a higher combo count and damage.

If you were to use a Zeus Dios  to spawn a full board of wood orbs, you could use a Rathalos Hunter active afterwards. This will yield a board with 4 combos, but you are easily able to manipulate the orbs into position to grant 2 row matches. This can actually act as a damage boost if you have enough row awakenings.

Red is a somewhat contested colour for Dragon Killers  due to Tsubaki , but with the REM Renewal, Tsubaki’s availability may be lower. As such, you can utilize latent Dragon Killers on Rathalos to pseudo make a Tsubaki.

 Demon X Gear/Green Male Hunter

The Green Male Hunter failed to make a lasting impression during the first debut of Monster Hunter and is still awkward today. Their active skill acts like a Gemstone Princess as the damage boost increases with each Dragon Killer awakening on the team (+0.5x per awakening).

This is quite a large restriction overall and despite the fact that we have a greater access to Dragon Killer awakenings, you will need to build a fairly specific team to achieve higher damage. With a total of 4 Dragon Killers on the team, you will be achieving 3x damage which is only slightly better than an average burst. Thus, you will need to be hitting 6+ to truly make it worthwhile but even with cards like Kiri  available, it is going to be challenging.

 Male Hunter, Brachy X Gear (New)

Brachy X Gear has some cool artwork but unfortunately has a lackluster kit. Despite the fact that he possess triple TPA  and Coop Boost , it will probably not be utilized well. This is because the current meta heavily favours 7 Combo  awakenings. Furthermore, combo play styles often does not wish to incorporate TPAs as it can break up matching patterns along with potentially losing a combo. Furthermore, all members benefit from an extra combo while only those with a TPA can capitalize on the bonus damage.

In addition to this, Brachy X Gear has an unreliable active skill. They are able to deal 20x ATK to a single enemy (reduced by defense) and heals for 50% of the damage dealt. This is tiny and will completely whiff against high defense spawns. There is a 35% damage reduction component but that tends to be too small for most attacks. Finally, there is a potential for 81x damage if running a team of only Monster Hunter cards but it is still lackluster overall.

 Male Hunter, Nergigante α Gear (New)

Nergiagante Hunter offers an interesting active skill as they are able to deal 40x of your entire team’s Wood and Dark ATK to all enemies along with changing the whole board into Fire, Water, Wood, and Dark orbs.. This has the potential to deal a massive amount of damage, but suffers from a few drawbacks.

Firstly, Nergiagante has a lengthy 20 turn cooldown which can make it challenging to charge up along with forcing you to use Dark and Wood cards. Granted there is no HP condition like Grimmjow , the damage can be less consistent as you require all of your cards to contribute. In addition, the board changer component can force you to use a subsequent active to “fix” the newly spawned board.

Overall, it will probably not help you farm more content, but has the potential to be faster than a Grimmjow set up due to no HP-reset required and if you are able to field a full team of Coop Boosting Wood and Dark cards, you can unlock more button damage.

On the other hand, Nergiagante offers an interesting leader skill as they are a no Skyfall leader who wants you to match Dark crosses and leave 8 or less orbs on the board afterwards. This can spike to 1,350.56x ATK but you will have no defensive multipliers and a mostly wasted active since you will not be button farming with that kind of set up.

Female Hunters

The Female Hunter also offers 5 distinct evolutions and while each has their own strengths/niches, some are stronger than others. However, none are as dominating as the Blue Male Hunter.

 Glavenus Hunter

In most scenarios, you would wish to make the Glavenus Hunter as your first choice for the Female branch as it offers both a powerful active and leader skill.

Glavenus Hunter is able to provide 2 turns of delay along with 10% Gravity on a reasonable 11 turn cooldown. Furthermore, this skill can be inherited to provide an interesting layer of added utility.

However, it is her Leader Skill that will help you with efficient farming. Glavneus Hunter is able to provide 2.25x HP / 144x ATK for Dragon and Attacker types when matching 8 connected orbs. Despite having a type restriction, non-Dragon and Attacker types will still enjoy 64x damage.

Depending on your team composition and number of Fire Row  awakenings, you should be able to produce sufficient damage to sweep most content due to the availability of powerful Fire cards.

Despite the fact that Liu Bei/Pixel Brachy/Zeus Dios teams exist, the Red Female Hunter is able to produce stronger teams for specific dungeons.

 Kirin X Gear

Kirin or the Yellow Female Hunter is like your Grandmother’s heirloom tea set: pretty to look at but has no real purpose as it would never be used under normal circumstances.

The +1 Combo count for 3 turns is an interesting mechanic but is generally lackluster. Furthermore, you tend to only want a boost in combos for a particular floor and would be better off with an active that provides +2.

As a leader, Kirin has a reasonable multiplier on paper, but the subs being restricted to Monster Hunter cards is limiting along with being outclassed by top tier options.

 Narga X Gear

The Purple Female Hunter has two main purposes: an inheritable Laser/True Damage and a gentle introduction to 5 orbs 1 enhance (5o1e) teams. Having True Damage is less valuable now compared to the first inception of Monster Hunter along with her Leader Skill not keeping abreast with current trends. However, she can still work wonders for a newer account/less developed box.

Narga X Gear has no typing restriction for team building and is able to produce 2.25x HP / 81x ATK / 2.25x RCV in coop when matching 5o1e. This is more than enough damage for early game content and even Arena 1. Thus, it can open many doors for many players and is worth pursuing if she can greatly accelerate your progression.

Compared to Glavenus Hunter, a newer player will find more value in Narga X Gear as your goal is not to speed farming everything as you are still trying to clear older content.

With that being said, you also need to try to guesstimate your own personal progression and whether or not Narga X Gear is too short term of an investment. Remember, Monster Hunter may not return for a prolonged time. Thus, if you foresee yourself progressing swiftly, you may be best with farming the parts for both Narga and Glavenus Hunter and switching over when the time is right.

 Legiana α Gear (New)

Legiana is one of the two new Female Hunters and possesses an interesting active skill. She is able to reduce incoming damage by 75% along with dealing 100,000 True Damage to a single enemy three times. This amounts to a total of 300,000 damage (not reduced by defense) and is more able to slide under absorption shields.

For example, Sopdet will absorb any hit of 200,000 or more and by having Legiana’s damage split into three parts ensures you still deal the damage. However, this amount is far from enough to kill Sopdet and something like Fujin  tends to be easier. Regardless, it is still a True Damage button that combines the benefit of a shield on a 12 turn cooldown.

As a leader, they combine a heart cross and wood or water 6+ match to deal 81x ATK which is far from amazing in this day and age. Furthermore, you have to match both the heart cross and 6+ connected orbs to trigger the full multiplier. This lowers her overall consistency along with having their damage mitigation component subject to having 5 hearts on the board and RCV for 6+ water/wood orbs.

 Barioth X Gear (New)

Barioth is an interesting Hunter as she has favourable damage awakenings along with a situational active skill and a respectable leader skill.

Barioth is able to recover 30% of your maximum HP along with 1 turn of delay. This naturally has wonderful applications on HP-sensitive teams as you can both heal and gain an extra turn to tidy up your board. However, the main appeal is her Leader Skill.

Dual Barioth teams are able to provide 2.25x HP / 144x ATK when matching all elements (5 colours + hearts) when used in multiplayer. Sadly, Blue Hunter eclipses Barioth in terms of consistency, maximum damage, and defensive multipliers.

Being able to provide 2.25x HP is meaningful for surviving large attacks, but one may struggle to heal back up to full health and relying on the active skill is not a feasibly solution. Furthermore, Barioth’s maximum multiplier only triggers when you have all 6 elements on the board (will scale accordingly with each missing element). Comparing this to Blue Hunter, this is less consistent as it is not uncommon for a given board to be missing an element or two.

As a result, Barioth may feel like a lesser Blue Hunter but is still a viable option to make if you have no intentions of fire row farming or using 5o1e teams.

Should I buy more Hunters?

We do not know how long it will take for the Monster Hunter Collab to return to Puzzle and Dragons. Thus, some players may be wanting to “stock up” on the Hunters as they are only available for a limited amount of time.

While their price of 200,000 is lower than other MP options (Princess Soprano is a meme), having more may or may not actually help your box.

You need to ask yourself what you plan on doing with each new Hunter and whether or not that will be advancing your own level of progression. Furthermore, we should be receiving a new set of Hunters the next time the Collab comes back. As a result, will the 200,000 MP you spend now help you more than Odin  or Ragnarok  Dragon?

Some players enjoy having more box diversity or even having an extra set of a key Hunter to enable new latents/inheritance set ups but that borders on luxury.

Taking all of this into consideration, the average player will probably not need an extra Hunter in most scenarios.

Conclusion

The Monster Hunter Collab is an exciting event as it offers powerful cards to pursue; however, it is the return of the Hunters that may have many players most excited about. Gaining access to powerful leaders that can transform your end game experience is meaningful along with being able to acquire them for free.

While the decision as to which evolution to pursue is dependant on your own Monster Box, it is almost essential to make at least 1 Male Hunter into Blue form  as he will catapult your end game potential more than anyone else.

Let me know which Hunters you plan to make in the comments below along with your own through process behind it.

Happy Puzzling!

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