Choosing which characters to pull in Monster Hunter Outlanders can be a little tricky, especially if you’re playing as a free-to-play player. Featured Contracts are limited, and you won’t always have enough resources to get every character you want. That’s why making the right pulling decisions early can save you a lot of trouble later.
Not every SSR character is worth spending your hard-earned resources on. Some characters offer excellent personal damage but don’t bring much value when placed in a team, while others provide powerful abilities that can make difficult monster hunts considerably easier.
In this guide, we’ll rank the available standard and limited characters based on their overall pull value, damage potential, team utility, and usefulness for F2P players. The rankings are based on Closed Beta 3 performance, so keep in mind that some character abilities and balance changes may differ in the official release.
Monster Hunter Outlanders Best F2P Value Tier List
Before getting into individual character evaluations, here’s a quick overview of where each character stands.
| Tier | Characters | Pull Recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Must Pull | Freya | Excellent overall value and team utility |
| Great Pull | Luca, Midori, Pyro | Strong elemental DPS characters |
| Niche Pull | Archaea, Karis | Situational value depending on team composition |
| Main Only | Pepper | Worth considering if you enjoy playing her |
Important: This tier list focuses on characters that require pulling resources, including limited and standard SSR characters. Free SR characters and the main character are excluded because they are already accessible without spending Featured Contracts.
Must Pull Tier
Freya – The Best Overall Pull
Element: Fire
Role: Disruptor
Recommendation: Must Pull
Freya is easily one of the most valuable characters in Monster Hunter Outlanders. Unlike traditional DPS characters that mainly focus on dealing damage, she brings both excellent damage potential and powerful crowd-control abilities.
Her biggest advantage is her Ultimate, which can guarantee a monster topple. This is particularly valuable because her crowd control works even against Elder Dragons.
This makes her different from characters such as Raya, whose traps cannot affect Elder Dragons because those monsters are immune to traps. Freya doesn’t have the same limitation with her Ultimate.
Her damage potential is another major reason to consider pulling for her. Despite being a Disruptor rather than a dedicated DPS character, she can deal extremely high damage. In Closed Beta 3, her damage potential was even higher than Midori’s, making her one of the strongest Fire characters.
What makes Freya especially valuable is that she remains useful even when you aren’t controlling her directly. You can bring her into your party for her crowd control while still using another character as your main damage dealer.
Why Freya is a Must Pull:
- Her Ultimate guarantees a monster topple.
- Her crowd control also works against Elder Dragons.
- Offers excellent personal damage despite being a Disruptor.
- Provides useful team support even when you’re not controlling her.
- Combines damage and utility in a single character.
My Verdict: If you’re saving your Featured Contracts for one character with excellent overall value, Freya should be near the top of your priority list. Her combination of damage and crowd control makes her much more valuable than characters who only offer personal DPS.
Great Pull Tier
These characters are excellent choices if you want to strengthen your elemental damage. However, their overall value is more dependent on which character you enjoy playing and which elemental teams you want to build.
Luca – Excellent Thunder DPS
Element: Thunder
Role: DPS
Recommendation: Great Pull
Luca is one of the strongest DPS options available, especially if you’re looking to build a Thunder-focused team.
His main strength comes from his consistent damage output. Compared to Midori, Luca benefits from using a Bow, which gives him a ranged playstyle and makes it easier to maintain damage against monsters.
This is an important advantage because melee characters can sometimes struggle to maintain consistent damage. Monsters move around, attack frequently, and create situations where you have to spend time repositioning or avoiding attacks.
Luca doesn’t face the same problems to the same extent. His ranged attacks allow him to keep dealing damage from a safer distance, making his overall performance more consistent.
Against monsters weak to Thunder, Luca can even outperform the main character in terms of damage.
Why Luca is a Great Pull:
- Excellent Thunder elemental DPS.
- Bow provides a consistent ranged playstyle.
- Easier to maintain damage against moving monsters.
- Strong choice against Thunder-weak enemies.
- Excellent option if you enjoy ranged combat.
My Verdict: Luca is slightly ahead of Midori in my ranking because of his ranged weapon and more consistent damage output. If you enjoy using Bow weapons or want a strong Thunder DPS character, he’s definitely worth considering.
Midori – Strong Fire Element DPS
Element: Fire
Role: DPS
Recommendation: Great Pull
Midori was the first limited character available in Monster Hunter Outlanders, and she’s still a strong option for players who want a powerful Fire DPS.
Her main selling point is her personal damage. In Closed Beta 3, she was considered one of the strongest Fire damage dealers and could outperform the main character when using the same element.
However, there’s one thing you should understand before spending your Featured Contracts on her: most of her value comes from her personal damage.
Unlike Freya, Midori doesn’t provide the same level of team utility. She’s primarily a character you want to control yourself to get the most out of her damage potential.
Her melee playstyle can also make maintaining consistent damage a little more difficult compared to Luca’s ranged Bow attacks. Depending on the monster you’re fighting, you may have to deal with positioning and attack windows more frequently.
That doesn’t make her a bad character. She’s still an excellent choice if you enjoy her playstyle or want to improve your Fire elemental damage.
Why Midori is a Great Pull:
- One of the strongest Fire DPS characters in CBT3.
- Can outperform the main character in Fire damage.
- Excellent choice for Fire-focused teams.
- Good personal damage potential.
- Worth considering if you enjoy her melee combat.
My Verdict: Midori is a great pull, but I wouldn’t consider her a must pull. If you like playing her, she’s absolutely worth getting. However, if you’re only looking for a character who provides significant value to the entire team, there are better options to prioritize.
Pyro – Powerful Dragon DPS
Element: Dragon
Role: DPS
Recommendation: Great Pull
Pyro is another strong DPS character, but his main purpose is dealing Dragon elemental damage.
His overall value is similar to Luca and Midori because most of his strength comes from his personal damage output rather than providing additional team utility.
He’s a good option if you’re building a Dragon-focused team or frequently fight monsters that are weak to Dragon damage.
However, compared to Luca and Midori, Pyro’s damage output is less consistent. This makes him slightly less appealing as an overall pull, especially if you’re trying to get the most value from a limited number of Featured Contracts.
Still, you shouldn’t overlook him just because he’s ranked below the other two DPS characters. Different monsters have different elemental weaknesses, and having a strong Dragon DPS option can be useful.
Why Pyro is a Great Pull:
- Strong Dragon elemental damage.
- Good option against Dragon-weak monsters.
- Excellent personal DPS potential.
- Useful for building a dedicated Dragon team.
My Verdict: Pyro is a solid Great Pull, but I’d place him below Luca and Midori because of his less consistent damage output. If Dragon damage is something your team needs, he’s still a worthwhile investment.
Niche Pull Tier
These characters aren’t necessarily bad, but their value depends heavily on specific team compositions and investment. For most F2P players, there are better ways to spend limited pulling resources.
Archaea – A Support Who Needs a Duplicate
Element: Support-focused
Role: Support
Recommendation: Niche Pull
Archaea is an interesting character because his value comes primarily from the buffs he provides rather than his personal damage.
As a support character, you shouldn’t expect him to compete with dedicated DPS characters. Instead, his purpose is to improve the performance of your other party members.
His buffs are useful, but there’s an important problem: at his base copy, he doesn’t provide enough value to outperform the free-to-play support character Madeline.
This is where things get a little complicated.
Archaea becomes considerably more valuable after obtaining his first duplicate. In other words, you need two copies of him to unlock the stronger version of his support potential.
Once you have that first duplicate, his value increases significantly, and he can become a Must Pull-level support option.
However, spending resources to obtain two copies of a standard character isn’t something I’d recommend to most F2P players, especially when a free alternative already provides stronger buffs at the base level.
Why Archaea is a Niche Pull:
- Provides useful support buffs.
- His base version is weaker than free-to-play support Madeline in terms of buffs.
- Requires his first duplicate to reach his stronger support potential.
- Becomes considerably more valuable after obtaining a second copy.
- Not particularly attractive if you’re only looking for one copy.
My Verdict: I would personally avoid spending Featured Contracts specifically to get Archaea. If you obtain him naturally through standard pulls, that’s fine. However, if you really enjoy playing him and plan to get his first duplicate, his value improves dramatically.
For F2P players, investing in him twice is difficult to justify unless you specifically want to build around his support abilities.
Karis – A Situational Dragon Support
Element: Dragon
Role: Disruptor
Recommendation: Niche Pull
Karis is another character whose usefulness depends heavily on your team composition.
Her primary strength comes from applying debuffs that increase Dragon elemental damage. This can be particularly useful when fighting monsters that are weak to Dragon.
However, the problem is that her debuffs are specifically focused on Dragon damage. This means her usefulness decreases significantly when you’re using characters from other elements.
There’s also another limitation: despite being a Disruptor, Karis doesn’t provide the same level of crowd control you’d expect from other characters in this role.
For example, free-to-play options such as Raya can provide useful crowd control through traps, while other free characters can offer additional disruption and control abilities.
Karis focuses more on increasing Dragon damage rather than controlling monsters directly.
Her damage buff can be significant, but it’s difficult to justify pulling for her when her benefits are restricted to a specific elemental team.
Why Karis is a Niche Pull:
- Provides a useful Dragon damage debuff.
- Can improve the damage output of Dragon-focused teams.
- Works best against monsters weak to Dragon.
- Doesn’t offer the same crowd-control utility as other Disruptors.
- Has limited usefulness outside Dragon compositions.
My Verdict: Karis is worth considering if you already have a strong Dragon DPS character and want to maximize that team’s damage. Otherwise, I’d recommend saving your resources for characters with more general usefulness.
Main Only Tier
Pepper – Only Pull If She’s Your Main
Element: Not specified in this ranking
Role: Disruptor
Recommendation: Main Only
Pepper is probably the hardest character to recommend from a pull-value perspective.
She isn’t completely useless, and you can still clear content while playing her. However, compared to other characters, her overall performance is quite underwhelming.
Her biggest weakness is her personal damage. In Closed Beta 3, her damage output wasn’t particularly impressive and could even fall behind the main character.
She does have some utility through paralysis, which can help disrupt monsters during combat. However, the problem is that several free-to-play characters already provide useful crowd-control abilities.
This makes Pepper less valuable because you’re spending limited resources to obtain a character whose main utility can already be covered by free alternatives.
When it comes to damage, there are simply better options. When it comes to utility, free characters can also perform the job reasonably well.
That’s why I wouldn’t recommend pulling for her unless you genuinely enjoy her gameplay.
Why Pepper is Main Only:
- Relatively low personal damage.
- Doesn’t outperform the main character in damage.
- Provides paralysis as her main utility.
- Free-to-play characters can already cover similar crowd-control needs.
- Offers limited additional value to most team compositions.
My Verdict: Pepper isn’t someone I’d recommend investing in if you’re focused on account progression. However, if she’s your favourite character and you enjoy playing her, there’s nothing wrong with pulling for her. Just understand that you’re choosing her mainly for personal enjoyment rather than account value.
Best Characters to Pull as an F2P Player
If you’re playing Monster Hunter Outlanders without spending money, you need to be careful about where you use your Featured Contracts.
You won’t have unlimited opportunities to obtain limited characters, so prioritizing characters with multiple useful abilities is generally a better strategy than chasing every new DPS character.
Here’s how I’d approach the available characters:
| Priority | Character | Why You Should Pull |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Freya | Best overall combination of damage and crowd control |
| 2 | Luca | Consistent ranged Thunder DPS |
| 3 | Midori | Excellent Fire elemental damage |
| 4 | Pyro | Strong Dragon elemental damage |
| 5 | Archaea | Valuable after obtaining his first duplicate |
| 6 | Karis | Useful for Dragon-focused teams |
| 7 | Pepper | Mainly worth pulling for personal enjoyment |
Should F2P Players Pull for Midori?
Midori is a Great Pull, but I wouldn’t recommend spending every available Featured Contract just to obtain her.
She’s a strong Fire DPS, but her value is mainly tied to her personal damage. If you don’t particularly enjoy her melee playstyle, you can save your resources for another character.
Monster Hunter Outlanders has several strong characters, but not all of them deserve your limited pulling resources.
If I had to recommend just one character based on overall value, Freya would be my first choice. She offers an excellent combination of damage and crowd control, making her useful both as your active character and as a member of your party.
Luca, Midori, and Pyro are also excellent pulls if you’re looking to improve your elemental DPS. However, their value depends more heavily on personal gameplay and the elemental weaknesses of the monsters you’re fighting.
On the other hand, Archaea and Karis are more specialized options, while Pepper is mainly worth considering if you genuinely enjoy playing her.
One final thing to remember: these rankings are based on Closed Beta 3 performance. Official release balance changes, character adjustments, and future updates could change how valuable certain characters become.
For now, don’t feel pressured to pull every SSR character. Save your Featured Contracts, build a team around the elements you need, and prioritize characters who offer the most value for your account.
