Jolly cooperation and the Hunting Horn go hand in hand in a Monster Hunter title. This most musical of melee weapons is the very embodiment of support, encouraging the hunter to share their wealth in the form of songs that buff their team members. It’s these songs that truly define the weapon, one which otherwise gets relegated below the Hammer in terms of damage prowess. They come in many forms, each of which will change your style of play; perhaps you’ll be the healer, watching your team’s health bars like a hawk and adjusting your swings to suit, or maybe you’ll be the stamina battery, keeping your team swinging when they’d usually falter. Either way you’re likely to be deafened by the weapon choice in the early game, so we’ve done our best to remedy the situation with a few choices that we found most success with. Doot doot!
Hunting Horn #3: Blooming Horn
No doubt you’re familiar with the monster that supplies the loot for our first Horn recommendation. Yes that’s right, we’re going back to Pukei Pukei and crafting his version, the Blooming Horn. We’ll preface this by saying that slow and infrequent-hitting weapons like the Horn aren’t usually the best choice for status effects, of which this comes with the Poison type. You can of course apply these with any weapon type, however quicker weapons tend to be favoured due to their ease of application. Regardless, the Poison included here is just a bonus that comes with an otherwise excellent early Horn.
This Horn in particular comes with some good green sharpness, a medium level of raw damage and of course the added status effect. Let’s face it though, you came to the Horn for the songs and happily this one comes with some really useful tunes, albeit small in amount. It features two types of healing songs, Health Recovery Small and Medium, the latter of which is actually very powerful during the early World hunts. On top of this, you’ll also have access to an Earplugs song – again, a very powerful song in an early game that soon gets filled with roaring monsters.
In summary then, the Blooming Horn will turn your hunter into a healing and supporting battery for team mates. You’ll be able to restore their health when they mess up, protect their ears to ensure said mess ups are less frequent, and you’ll even be slowly dealing damage to the target whilst you do so thanks to the Poison status!
Early Features
- Two healing songs, one of which is very powerful in the early game.
- Very early Earplugs song, which is very helpful against upcoming monsters.
- Poison status will keep you doing damage to the target, even whilst you’re doot dooting to support your team.
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Hunting Horn #2: Blazing Horn
If you haven’t noticed by now, what we attempt to do with our three early weapon recommendations is to give you some kind of guide through the beginning stages of World. We want to give you a route forward as you move through Low Rank, making you very slightly more prepared for the upcoming challenges. In the case of the Horn, the previous recommendation is a fantastic way to push through the very early game, but as you move up into 3 and 4 star quests your requirements are likely to change along with your targets.
The Blazing Horn is the next step on that ladder. By now you’ll have noticed your targets are starting to use a variety of new effects to defeat you, and you’re likely to be looking for solutions. How about a song that completely negates Wind Pressure, nullifying those annoying wings on the myriad of flying targets you’re coming up against – this horn has you covered. Monsters starting to hit you and your team mates a bit too hard? How about the Defense Up song on this horn. And when things go wrong, because they almost certainly will, the Blazing Horn still comes with a healing song that even has an Antidote built in to cancel out those annoying Poison tail attacks!
Yes, this horn does come with some negative affinity, but it’s balanced by having a huge amount of raw damage and an excellent selection of songs. It’s even able to reduce stamina usage, which is tremendously useful when your team mates are learning some stamina heavy weapons, such as the Bow or Dual Blades.
Early Features
- High raw damage weighed against it’s negative affinity.
- Fantastic selection of songs, including Nullify Wind Pressure, Defense Up, Healing + Antidote and even Reduced Stamina Usage!
- Well balanced for taking on the early to mid game portion of Monster Hunter World.
- Upgraded versions continue to be useful thanks to the songs scaling with the difficulty level.
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Hunting Horn #1: Great Bagpipe
We’re fairly certain that this is the only time, in any of our early game weapon lists, that we’ll recommend one of the basic Ore or Bone lines of weapons. That being the case, it would have to take some pretty damn special to get us to do so. Enter the Ore line of the Hunting Horn, the upgraded version of which is called the Great Bagpipe. At first glance this may rally against our previous note about guiding you through the early to mid game – why are we recommending such a low level Horn as our last and most important? The key is in it’s upcoming upgrade.
We’re not going to go into a huge amount of detail about the weapon statistics – it’s an Ore weapon, so you likely know by now that you’re getting a medium raw damage and medium level of sharpness, as is always the case with these. What you may not know however, is the remarkable quality of it’s songs, or rather the soon to be quality of it’s songs. See, the base version comes with Attack Up (S), Health Boost (S), Defense Up (S) and Wind Pressure Negated. These are undeniably great songs for the early game, but you’ve probably moved past the ‘(S)’ version of songs by now, so why this Horn?
In short, it will soon upgrade into the Fortissimo Horn, which upgrades every one of these songs into their Large (L) versions. Yes that’s right, you’ll be able to give your entire team an Attack Up (L) buff, a Defense Up (L) buff and even Health Boost (L), meaning they can eat for buffs other than health before the hunt. This is an incredible selection of songs, all of which will come in tremendously useful as you push into High Rank. On top of this, if you keep your basic Ore Horn by your side, it will eventually upgrade into the Nergigante Horn, one of the absolute best Horns the base game has to offer!
Early Features
- Will soon upgrade into an absolutely epic mid game Horn, the Fortissimo.
- Has Attack Up (S), Health Boost (S) and Defense Up (S) – All of which will upgrade into (L) versions very soon!
- Can be upgraded into the Nergigante Horn at the end of High Rank, which is a fantastic Horn to take into Iceborne.
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Categories: Monster Hunter World, Top 5