Starting your adventure in Monster Hunter Outlanders can feel a little overwhelming. There are several progression systems to unlock, different currencies to manage, adventurers to upgrade, and plenty of activities competing for your attention. If you don’t know what to prioritize early on, it’s easy to waste valuable resources that you’ll need later.
The good news is that you don’t have to rush through every progression system or spend your resources trying to upgrade everything at once. A few smart decisions during the early game can make a huge difference to your account in the long run.
Whether you’re completely new to the game or already familiar with its mechanics, there are certain things you should prioritize before investing heavily in characters and equipment.
Monster Hunter Outlanders Beginner Guide – 5 Things to Do
In this guide, we’ll go through five important things you should do first in Monster Hunter Outlanders, including completing daily activities, saving your upgrade materials, improving your Glider, building your free adventurers, and joining a Guild.
1. Complete Your Daily Activities to Progress Faster
One of the first things you should focus on after starting Monster Hunter Outlanders is completing your daily activities.
This might sound like basic advice if you’ve played other gacha games, but daily progression is particularly important here because your account has two separate progression systems:
- Adventurer Rank: Determines your overall account progression and unlocks additional game modes and activities.
- Proof of Mastery: Allows you to access stronger equipment, tougher monsters, and higher farming tiers for upgrade materials.
Both are important, but they progress in different ways.
You can earn Proof of Mastery EXP through various activities in the game. However, if you want to increase your Adventurer Rank efficiently, you’ll need to focus on quests and daily objectives.
Complete Daily Investigations
One of the easiest ways to collect useful resources is through the Adventurer’s Board.
Here, you’ll find three daily Investigation hunts that you can complete in the open world. These investigations reward you with different materials, including a special currency that can be spent in the shop.
Completing all three daily Investigation hunts gives you 360 tokens.
This currency is particularly useful because you can exchange it for character upgrade materials, Proof of Mastery EXP materials, and other progression resources.
Don’t overlook these investigations just because they seem like ordinary hunts. They’re an important source of materials that will help you strengthen your account.
Complete Your Journal Requests
Apart from Investigations, you should also check your Journal Requests.
These daily objectives include several different activities, ranging from simple tasks such as liking other adventurers on the leaderboard to more involved activities like completing Co-op hunts and Investigation missions.
Each completed activity rewards you with 60 tokens, and there are six activities available per day.
You can also earn additional rewards through the daily activity progression track.
| Daily Progress | Rewards |
|---|---|
| Complete daily activities | 60 tokens per activity |
| Complete all six activities | 360 additional activity tokens |
| Reach the final daily milestone | 50 Rutacoins |
Make sure you complete all six activities whenever possible. The additional 50 Rutacoins are particularly valuable because you can use them toward character recruitment.
Spend Your Tokens in the Trade Guild Exchange
Once you’ve collected enough tokens, head to the Shop and open the Trade Guild Exchange.
There are two sections worth checking regularly:
- Weekly Picks: Offers useful resources and upgrade materials.
- Feline Secret Treasure: Provides additional progression items and other valuable rewards.
These exchanges can help you obtain recruitment-related resources and materials for strengthening both your adventurers and your account.
My Tip: Make daily investigations and Journal Requests part of your regular routine. They’re relatively easy to complete, and the rewards help you progress toward higher Adventurer Ranks without wasting your valuable resources.
2. Save Your Resources for Legendary Illustrations
This is probably one of the most important things to understand before you start spending your upgrade materials.
Monster Hunter Outlanders has a special equipment system called Illustrations. These function somewhat like armor pieces, but they offer additional customization through randomized stats, set bonuses, and unique passive abilities.
You’ll obtain Illustrations by hunting monsters, and they can make a substantial difference to your overall damage output.
However, there’s one important reason why you shouldn’t rush to upgrade every Illustration you obtain.
Legendary Illustrations are significantly more valuable than lower-rarity versions.
How Illustrations Work
Illustrations come with different stats and bonuses that contribute to your adventurer’s overall build.
Depending on the Illustration, you can obtain:
- Randomized bonus stats.
- Two-piece set bonuses.
- Four-piece set bonuses.
- Special passive abilities from boss monster Illustrations.
Some boss monster Illustrations also come with unique passive effects that can be equipped in the Core slot.
This creates plenty of opportunities to experiment with different builds depending on your preferred weapon, element, and combat style.
However, the stats on Illustrations are randomized, and you’ll need to spend upgrade materials to unlock and improve their full potential.
The higher the rarity, the stronger the available stat bonuses can become.
Don’t Waste Materials on Low-Rarity Illustrations
During the early game, you’ll naturally obtain several lower-rarity Illustrations.
It’s tempting to upgrade them immediately because they provide a quick increase in combat power. However, this can become a problem later.
Illustration upgrade materials aren’t particularly cheap, and farming enough of them takes time.
If you spend most of your materials upgrading lower-rarity equipment, you’ll have fewer resources available when you finally obtain Legendary Illustrations.
Instead, I recommend following the main story, completing side quests, and increasing your Proof of Mastery until you unlock higher-level hunts.
Based on the CBT3 progression, Legendary Illustrations become available through 11-star hunts.
Once you reach this stage, you’ll have access to much stronger equipment options that are worth investing in for long-term progression.
Understand Illustration Set Bonuses
Another important mechanic is how Illustration set bonuses work.
You need unique Illustrations to activate set bonuses. Simply equipping multiple copies of the same monster’s Illustration won’t count as multiple unique pieces.
For example:
- Equipping four Rathalos Illustrations only counts as one unique Illustration toward the set bonus.
- Equipping two Rathalos Illustrations and one Rathian Illustration counts as two unique Illustrations, assuming they share the relevant set bonus.
This is important when planning your build because collecting multiple copies of the same Illustration won’t necessarily help you activate additional set bonuses.
Manage Your Core Passive Cost
Some Illustrations come with special Core Passives, and their costs can vary depending on how powerful the passive is.
Every adventurer has a maximum Illustration cost limit of 12.
This means you can’t simply equip every powerful passive you find. You’ll need to choose the combination that provides the best overall value for your build.
My Tip: Save your valuable Illustration upgrade materials until you start obtaining Legendary Illustrations from higher-level hunts. A small early-game power increase isn’t worth wasting resources that could make your endgame build considerably stronger.
3. Gather as Much Wood as Possible and Upgrade Your Glider
If there’s one resource I’d recommend collecting early, it’s Wood.
You might not think much of it when you first start exploring, but Wood becomes incredibly useful as you unlock more exploration and research features.
It isn’t just another crafting material. Having a good supply allows you to build useful structures in the open world and improve your Glider.
Collect Wood During Exploration
Wood is used to construct different structures that make exploring the world easier.
Some of the useful structures include:
- Wind Plates.
- Ballistas.
- Camps.
These structures provide additional exploration options and can make travelling through different areas more convenient.
Instead of collecting Wood only when you need to craft something, try gathering it whenever you encounter it during exploration.
You’ll thank yourself later when you unlock more upgrades.
Unlock the Glider Ascend Ability
One of the best early upgrades to prioritize in the Research system is the Glider’s Ascend feature.
This ability allows you to create an updraft and launch yourself onto your Glider from your current position.
Think of it as an additional jump that helps you reach higher locations without needing to find a convenient starting point.
It’s extremely useful when exploring areas with cliffs, elevated platforms, and difficult terrain.
Once you unlock it, travelling around the open world becomes much more convenient.
Unlock the Glider Dash
Another important upgrade is the Glider Dash.
As the name suggests, this ability allows you to move faster while gliding, making it easier to cover large distances during exploration.
You’ll need Research Points for certain Glider upgrades, including improvements to dash speed and energy consumption.
However, there’s another upgrade you should prioritize that doesn’t require Research Points.
Maximize Your Glider Energy Capacity
Your Glider has an energy capacity that determines how long you can use its movement abilities.
You can increase this capacity through 20 upgrade levels, with each level requiring 100 Wood.
That means you’ll need 2,000 Wood in total to fully upgrade its energy capacity.
<text weight=”semibold” color=”success”>Early-game priority: Glider Energy Capacity</text>
Why is this upgrade so useful?
Because having more energy allows you to dash around the map for longer without constantly worrying about running out of energy.
This makes exploration significantly faster and more enjoyable, especially when travelling between distant locations.
If you’re someone who enjoys exploring every corner of the map, this upgrade is absolutely worth working toward.
My Tip: Start collecting Wood from the beginning instead of waiting until you unlock the Glider upgrades. Aim to increase your energy capacity whenever possible, and prioritize Ascend and Dash for a smoother exploration experience.
4. Upgrade Madelyn and Your Fated Adventurer
Even if you manage to obtain a powerful SSR adventurer early on, there are two characters I strongly recommend investing in regardless of which character you choose as your main.
Those two characters are Madelyn and the Fated Adventurer.
Both are available without relying on limited character recruitment, and they provide important benefits that can support your account throughout the game.
Madelyn – Your Most Important Free Support
Madelyn is one of the most useful free characters because of her healing and support abilities.
Her Ultimate restores HP for the entire party, making her particularly valuable during difficult hunts.
She also provides additional damage-over-time effects, and with the appropriate Insight upgrades, her Ultimate can grant an Attack boost to your team.
This combination makes her useful in almost every type of encounter.
Another advantage is her ranged playstyle.
Since adventurers are often controlled by AI when they’re not your active character, positioning can sometimes be a problem. However, Madelyn’s ranged weapon gives her more flexibility to contribute without constantly needing to approach the monster.
Her healing is also extremely helpful during the early game when you don’t have many resources to spare.
Instead of relying entirely on consumables or spending time recovering from every encounter, Madelyn can help keep your party healthy.
Why You Should Build Madelyn:
- Heals the entire party through her Ultimate.
- Provides additional damage support through her abilities.
- Can gain an Attack boost through Insight upgrades.
- Her ranged weapon makes her useful as an AI-controlled teammate.
- Helps reduce your reliance on healing resources during hunts.
If you’re unsure which free character to prioritize, Madelyn is an excellent starting point.
Fated Adventurer – Your Most Versatile Character
The Fated Adventurer is another character you should keep upgraded throughout your progression.
The biggest reason is versatility.
Unlike other adventurers, the Fated Adventurer can use every weapon type and every elemental specialization.
This gives you a lot more flexibility when building different teams.
For example, if you obtain an adventurer who specializes in a particular element, you can adjust your Fated Adventurer to help activate the required team specialization.
This makes the character especially useful when experimenting with different party compositions.
Why Fated Adventurer Is Worth Investing In
Another major advantage is how easily you can obtain their Insights.
Most adventurers rely on recruitment duplicates to unlock additional Insights. However, the Fated Adventurer has a different progression system.
You can obtain their Insights through:
- Main Story progression.
- Trial Expeditions.
- Other available progression rewards.
This means you can strengthen the character without relying on gacha pulls.
Trial Expeditions are particularly important because you receive three Expedition Permits daily. Make sure you use them regularly to collect the available rewards.
Once your Adventurer Rank is sufficiently higher than the required Trial level, you can also automatically complete eligible Trials and collect their rewards.
These rewards include a Standard Contract and Fated Adventurer Insight.
My Tip: Don’t neglect Madelyn and the Fated Adventurer just because you eventually obtain SSR characters. Madelyn provides valuable healing and support, while the Fated Adventurer gives you the flexibility to adapt to different weapons, elements, and team compositions.
5. Join a Guild as Early as Possible
The final thing you should do after getting started in Monster Hunter Outlanders is join a Guild.
You might think Guilds are mainly useful for players who enjoy multiplayer activities, but they can also provide additional progression benefits that are worth having even if you prefer playing solo.
Get Additional Rewards Through Guild Activities
Guilds provide access to different activities and rewards that can help you strengthen your account.
You can participate in Guild-related events, collect Guild Emblems, and exchange them for useful items through the Guild Shop.
These rewards can include progression materials and other resources that would otherwise require additional farming.
Guild participation is also particularly valuable during the early stages of the game because launch events often include objectives connected to Guild activities.
Joining early means you won’t miss out on opportunities to collect these rewards.
Find an Active Group Early
Another reason to join a Guild as soon as possible is the player community.
The first few months after a game’s launch are usually the most active period.
A lot of players are progressing at a similar pace, learning monster mechanics, building their adventurers, and experimenting with different team compositions.
This makes it a great opportunity to find a group of players you can regularly hunt with.
Having consistent teammates can make multiplayer hunts more enjoyable and help you learn different strategies.
You might even find a group that you continue playing with for months.
What If You Prefer Playing Solo?
That’s completely fine too.
You don’t necessarily need to be active in Guild chat or participate in every multiplayer activity to benefit from joining one.
Even if you’re not particularly interested in socializing, you can still take advantage of the available Guild progression and rewards.
My Tip: Find a reasonably active Guild as early as possible. You don’t need to join a competitive group, but having access to Guild activities and rewards is useful for almost every type of player.
