Gameplay

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Gameplay

I will cover the general gist of using a Bow. For first time users, there are a lot of mental gymnastics involved in managing all of a Bow's mechanics. Many of these mechanics are not intuitive to people who have never used a Gunner weapon in Monster Hunter. The Bow requires more practice than other weapons to reach a desirable hunt completion time.

Gameplay: Control Schemes

It is important to learn the controls of the Bow and adapt to its control schemes. There are a few core controls unique to the Bow, namely a button to charge and fire arrows, a botton to access the aiming reticle (which is used to add greater precision when firing arrows) and a set of buttons to add Bow coatings to arrows.

MH4U offers two different control schemes:

  1. Type 1: This is the control scheme used in previous Monster Hunter games. For this scheme, you hold X to draw and charge an arrow and R to access the aiming reticle. You can unsheathe your weapon and start charging an arrow with X.
  2. Type 2: A new control scheme catered to the Nub-stick on the N3DS and a Control pad Pro. For this scheme, you hold R to draw and charge an arrow and X to toggle the aiming reticle. To unsheathe your Bow and start charging an arrow simultaneously, you hit R+X+A.

For both schemes, you can dodge roll with an arrow drawn by tapping Y or B and a direction on the Slide-Pad. Hitting B with no direction held will result in a backhop. Both the backhop and dodge rolls have the same invulnerability frames. X+A is used to load Bow coatings.

There are many ways to tweak these settings to your preferences in the Options menu of MH4U. I strongly suggest using the Caravan 1* Bow Tutorial quest to try out different control schemes and tweak the Bow settings to your preferences. One way to set up Type 2 controls is to follow /u/Arctruth's guide here.

Although each control scheme has its strengths and weaknesses, using either control scheme does not instantly make you a better Bow user. For example, Type 1 makes it very difficult to use the aiming reticle effectively while moving. However, I personally use Type 1 controls and I get along just fine. Repeated practice with a control scheme will enable you to exploit its strengths effectively and work around its weaknesses. Player skill is a larger determining factor to the effectiveness of either Type 1 or Type 2 controls than the control scheme itself.

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Gameplay: Using the Bow

I will concentrate on explaining my approach here. There are many ways to approach the Bow and I am not claiming that my approach is the best. This is mainly to give insight into how I approach the Bow and I hope this will be useful for people.

I will separate Bow usage into three components: (1) Charging shots, (2) Aiming shots, and (3) Positioning. These components happen concurrently during a hunt: As you are charging your shot, you will want to think about what you are going to hit and where you want to stand to hit it. It takes practice for these three components to become second nature.

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Charging Shots

Charging your shots is important with the Bow. As you hold down your main attack button (X for Type 1, R for Type 2), your nocked arrow charges. As it charges, the flahes on the bow get brighter. Each flash indicates that the Bow has reached a higher charge level. Higher charge levels convey larger raw and elemental multipliers to your shot. As a result, uncharged shots (ones where you just tap X/R and let go) deal very little damage.

Charging shots drain stamina at a constant rate. Stamina is important for many things, including sprinting, evade-rolling and dealing damage effectively with a Bow. You do not want to run out of stamina with a Bow. More importantly, you want to keep track of your stamina so you are not charging a shot as a monster is about to hit you and you lack enough stamina to evade roll the attack.

Stamina Management is a really important player skill to have when using the Bow. Managing your stamina improperly is detrimental to your effectiveness with the Bow. Some examples of poor stamina management are as follows:

  • Holding a shot for too long and running out of stamina (what I call overcharging a shot)
  • Excessively using Power Shots. Power Shots are a huge stamina drain so you need to make sure they connect cleanly

The best strategy to stamina management is timing your shots appropriately. Let us assume that it takes y seconds for your shot to charge up to the desired level. The best time to let your arrows loose is exactly at y seconds. If you charge your arrow for y + 20 seconds, you do not deal more damage than if you had only charged for y seconds. Getting this timing down takes a lot of practice. Effectively using these timings will increase your effectiveness in a hunt.

Since rate of stamina drain from charging shots is constant, decreasing the time needed to hit a desired charge level will also reduce overall stamina consumption. Focus is the armour skill for the Bow, because it reduces the time you spend charging to a desired shot level but does not increase the rate of stamina drain. For the same charge level, a shot with Focus will consume less stamina than a shot without Focus.

Using focus brings with it one caveat: Timing shots becomes much more important. Let us assume you take b seconds to reach the desired charge level with Focus. To get the most use out of Focus, you need to fire your shot after b seconds and before y seconds. This is because if you have Focus but still take y seconds to charge a shot, you lose the stamina reduction benefit that Focus confers.

An advanced strategy to take stamina management skills further is timing your shots to the moments when a monster is vulnerable to attack. If you take b seconds to charge a shot, the best time to start charging is b seconds before the monster becomes susceptible to attack. This takes a lot of practice and requires a lot skill. However, this playstyle is very rewarding.

The need for Stamina Management is removed with infinite stamina. Dash Juice, Mega Dash Juice, stamina songs from Hunting Horns and Mushroomancer can provide infinite stamina. However, I discourage learning the Bow with infinite stamina tools. Learning effective stamina management does not only teach you how to not consume stamina needlessly but it also teaches you good habits in the process, particularly in timing your shots effectively.

To summarise, charging your shots is really important becuase higher charged shots have higher raw and elemental damage multipliers. Charging your shots consumes stamina. Managing your stamina well is necessary to be successful with the Bow.

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Aiming Shots

There are two halves to dealing effective damage. The first half is charging your shots and the second is aiming them to connect on the right hitzones. All monsters are split into different hitzones, some of which are more susceptible to damage than others. Knowing what these hitzones are and focusing on these hitzones is very important to successful Bow usage. Good hunting practice involves knowing how to use the weapon and also knowing enough of the monster to succeed.

For example, when hunting Shagaru Magala, his head is a 60 shot hitzone, and his neck and back legs are 45 shot hitzones[13]. You want to prioritise shooting its head if using Raw-Rapid shots; if the head is unavailable or troublesome because Shagaru is not facing you, consider hitting his back leg.

Weak hitzones are not always heads. Teostra's weakest shot hitzone is its tail, at 60 [14]. It is important to research the hitzones of the monster you are fighting. Resources like Kiranico are very useful for this.

It is important to hit weak hitzones and therefore seems obvious that the aiming reticle would be useful for this. Practically, you do not need the aiming reticle to precisely hit many monsters' weak hitzones on flat ground. Monsters like Gore Magala, Rathian and Shagaru Magala have heads that can be easily hit without using the aiming reticle at all. It is important to have a good feel for how arrows travel without any aiming reticle adjustment.

Unfortunate, there are monsters that require aiming reticle use. Zinogre, for example, has a 70 shot hitzone that you really want to aim up to hit.

When elevation comes into play, the Bow becomes much harder. Shots do not behave very predictably and I have not found a reliable way to describe how they travel when you stand on an incline. In these situations, you will have to use the aiming reticle to aim every shot. It is easier to do this with Type 2; Type 1 requires a lot more effort. You can consider positioning yourself on flatter ground or throwing a dungbomb to chase a monster away into a flatter area. Knowing a monster's attacks very well will enable you to adapt to the inclines much better. Fortunately, most end-game content in the form of guild quest areas are on flat ground.

Accurately aiming and hitting weak hitzones takes practice and experience. Being patient with your shots is important and make them count. A clean shot on a weak hitzone will deal a lot more damage overall than a clean shot on a non-weak hitzone.

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Positioning

The final component to effect Bow usage is in positioning. Good positioning enables you to stand in the safe zones of a monstter's different attacks and retaliate quickly when the attack misses. Knowing the monster you are hunting is very important to succeeding. On top of knowing hitzones, it is important to know their attacks, tells and behaviour.

Let me illustrate this with Shagaru Magala's frontal blasts. Shagaru fires two blasts, one of which explodes horizontally and perpendicular to Shagaru's face. The second blast that follows is "T-shaped," and extends vertically past Shagaru's face. If you face Shagaru, you can position yourself to stand away from the horizontal blast and fire a shot. You can start charging your second shot and side step to avoid the vertical blast to get your second shot in.

Good positioning is about knowing a monster's attacks and using those attack patterns to aggressively retaliate in damage. It is about knowing the right places to stand to avoid damage and using those positions to hit weak hitzones. Familiarity with a monster is critical for success.

Effectove positioning requires standing in critical distance. Critical distance provides a 1.5x raw multiplier (no elemental bonus) to your shots. You want as many of your shots as possible land in critical distance. This is indicated by a screen shake when the arrows connect. Critical distance adds complexity to the Bow because you cannot stand either too close or too far from a monster. You need to make sure you are far enough back to avoid damage and hit weak hitzones, and be close enough to benefit from critical distance.

Pierce, Rapid and Spread shots have different critical distances. Knowing these distances and adapting to them is important. In general, Spread shots have the closest critical distance, followed by Rapid, then Pierce.

Positioning keeps you alive when using the Bow and enables you to deal damage. This is important in the end-game content of MH4U, where many things will effectively one-shot Gunners. Good positioning is the most effective way to avoid damage.

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Summary version

  • Manage your stamina well
    • Do not hold a shot for too long; roll out shots if your opening to land one has disappeared
    • Do not use Power/Arc shots excessively; watch your stamina usage! The backswing animation can kill you
    • Assume it takes z seconds to charge your shot. The best time to charge your shot is about z seconds before your opening appears
  • Hit weak hitzones. Know what these are and pew pew pew!
  • Elevation sucks. Dung Bombs to chase monsters into flatter areas, fight in flatter areas, or adjust and be quick with using the aiming reticle
  • Critical Distance. Stay in Critical Distance. 1.5x raw multiplier
  • Use coatings! Power Coatings are a 1.5x raw multipler! Use them, and bring combines for more (Nitroshroom + Empty Phial)
  • Know the monster well. Figure out where to stand. Know how to avoid their attacks and use their attack animations against them

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Guide Contents


Guide Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Gameplay
  3. Bow Mechanics
  4. Bow Relics
  5. Armour Skills
  6. Damage Calculation and Motion Values
  7. Sources

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