Monster Hunter Wilds: How to Mount Monsters

How do you mount monsters in Monster Hunter Wilds? Mounting is a gameplay mechanic that lets you temporarily ride atop a large monster — and in Wilds specifically, it's a great way to both manage a monster's aggressiveness and deal some extra damage.

In this Monster Hunter Wilds guide, we're going to detail how mounting actually works.

How Do You Mount Monsters in Monster Hunt Wilds?

Mounting isn't fully explained in Monster Hunter Wilds, which frequently leads to misunderstandings regarding the actual process.

First of all, the key thing to remember about mounting is that it can only occur when a large monster is hit with an aerial attack. Aerial attacks are any attacks that hit while your character is airborne.

Depending on the type of weapon you're using, aerial attacks may already come naturally to you. For example, the Insect Glaive has a number of jumping attacks that count as aerial blows. Likewise, the Lance's charge can lead to an aerial attack if you jump while charging.

With this in mind, you'll obviously need to work out whether your weapon of choice is capable of airborne moves before you start looking for mounts during a fight.

However, there are universal ways to mount a monster — regardless of your weapon.

These aerial techniques work with any weapon:

• While riding your Seikret, jump from it with the jump button and hit an attack button while you're in the air. Strike a monster with this attack and it counts towards a mount.
• If there's a ledge nearby, hold the sprint button to run and jump off the edge of it. Attack while in the air, and if you hit a monster, it counts towards a mount.

Now, this is the important part: mounts become more and more difficult to trigger after each time you successfully mount a monster.

Mounts trigger based on how much aerial attack damage you have dealt to the monster. Your first mount in a fight happens quite easily — it should only take several airborne attacks to activate.

However, your second mount requires more aerial damage than the first. And your third mount requires even more damage than the second. As such, triggering more than a couple of mounts per fight is very difficult — so it's best to try and activate them at opportune times.

More specifically, it's a good idea to try and mount a monster when they're enraged. This lets you take a breather from the most intense part of fight.

When you're on top of a monster, the goal is to open up a wound and then destroy it with a weapon-specific finisher.

You can open wounds with quick knife attacks — performed with either regular attack button. However, the monster will try to shake you off while you're mounted, and so you need to jump to a different body part when the screen starts growing dark — or you'll lose a lot of stamina. You can jump between body parts with your normal movement input.

Once a wound is open, hit the special weapon attack button and you'll perform a powerful, cinematic strike. This does big damage and knocks the monster down.

It should be noted that you can't stay mounted on a monster forever. If you deal too much damage with your knife or weapon without destroying a wound, the monster will simply fall to the ground and you'll jump off.

Did you find this guide on how to mount monsters in Monster Hunter Wilds useful? Check out our Monster Hunter Wilds guide for more help with the game, and then practice your aerial attacks in the comments section below.