Monster Hunter: World guide: Investigations

As you play Monster Hunter: World, you’re never short of things to do. There are people to meet, monsters to hunt, mushrooms to collect and the New World to explore. These activities are associated with activities like investigations, bounties, expeditions and assigned quests. Keeping track of everything being asked of you — and learning what you can ignore — takes practice.

This guide will focus on the investigation quests that you accept from the Resource Center in Astera.

What are investigation quests?

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Any time you’re out in the world, you’ll find things like footprints, mucus, skidmarks or feathers. Examining these things as you pass will do two things: earn you research points and unlock new investigation quests. (Research points are a kind of in-game currency. You’ll use it to pay for things like palico armor and meals. We’ll get into the specifics of research points in another guide.)

Investigation quests are a sort of themed mini-quest. You unlock them when you encounter monsters in the wild and examine their various traces during any of the other activities that have you out in the world — even during other investigation quests. Investigation quests have a specific, monster-related goal like “hunt one of these,” “capture one of those” or “slay 10 of that.” Those three categories — hunting, slaying and capture — are part of Monster Hunter: World’s strange vocabulary, so let’s talk about each.

• Hunting investigations. A hunt investigation means that you have to track down and kill a large monster (or several large monsters for great hunting investigations).
• Slaying investigations. A slaying investigation means you have to kill multiple small monsters.
• Capture investigations. Taking on a capture investigation means you have to attack a large monster until it’s limping, then trap and subdue it.

A quick note on terminology: The difference between small and large monsters is not quite as simple as size. It’s more about hit points — fighting a large monster is an event, but fighting small monsters is a nuisance. For example, a jagras is a small monster, whereas a great jagras is a large monster. (A better way to check is to look in your hunter’s notes or on the map.)

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Investigation quests have time constraints and conditions for success. In the example above, you have 50 minutes to slay 20 vespoids. You’ll fail if you faint three times or the time runs out. In a capture investigation, you’ll fail if you run out of time, faint too often or accidentally kill the monster.

In addition to anything you pick up or carve off of monsters over the course of your investigation quest, you’ll get additional — usually rare, useful or valuable — items as a reward. How many items you get and their rarity is indicated by the bronze, silver and gold boxes on the right side of the list.

Managing and posting investigation quests

You’ll unlock new investigation quests pretty much constantly while you play Monster Hunter: World. There’s a notification that periodically pops up on the right side of the screen after you examine some trace of a monster. Those investigation quests aren’t available to you yet, though.

Go to the main city, Astera, then head to the Resource Center on the first floor — it’s in the tradeyard area next to the provisions stockpile. The second option on the menu when you approach is manage investigations. There, you can register investigations to your quest list or remove them. Once you have your list picked out, head to the quest board or the handler to start (post) it.

After you get a feel for the purpose of investigations and how you use them (see the next section), the Resource Center is also where you’ll go to delete investigations. This keeps your list manageable (we speak from experience that the list will rapidly balloon to 100 entries if you’re not paying attention) and lets you focus on what’s important.

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Another good habit to develop is to check at the workshop before deciding which investigation quests to put in your list. Sure, it’s fun to kill monsters without any real purpose in mind, but it’s a lot more rewarding when you get to use the stuff you collect to make better gear. Check the required materials for what you want to make and what you need for it, then pick out investigation quests that involve the monsters that drop those parts.

When to do investigation quests

Investigation quests are part of Monster Hunter: World’s unspoken loop. They’re a great way to collect monster parts from a specific type of monster when you’re making new armor or weapons. You’re guaranteed to encounter the monster you’re looking for rather than having to hope you bump into it during an expedition.

Pick out a piece of armor or weapon upgrade you want from the workshop, check out what you need to craft it, then arrange your investigation list to focus on just those monsters. Being intentional about your investigations like this makes them useful rather than distracting.