Players have many potential strategies to choose from when preparing for quests in Monster Hunter Rise. Hunters who understand all the benefits that their weapons and armor can offer will be at an advantage. But some gear stats, such as the mysterious Affinity stat, are not clearly defined to players. This guide will briefly explain Affinity in Monster Hunter Rise and go in-depth on how to max out this attribute for an efficient hunt.
Affinity in the Monster Hunter series can basically be considered a critical hit chance. When a critical hit occurs, it increases the damage of an attack by %25 of the raw (non-elemental) damage of the equipped weapon. A critical hit is also accompanied by a flashy red "slash" effect when it strikes a monster. Furthermore, critical hit damage can be bolstered beyond the original +25% amount by using the "Critical Boost" armor skill. Suffice it to say, hunters who want to crank out the most damage will be looking for ways to increase their Affinity for lots of critical hits. It's even possible to reach 100% Affinity and get all critical hits, all the time.
The best first step toward reaching maximum Affinity is to start with a weapon that has a high base Affinity of its own. Nargacuga weapons are very popular, as they come with at least 30% Affinity built-in by the time they are fully upgraded. Add on top of that, a white-level sharpness that can further multiply damage by over 1.3x, and it becomes evident that Nargacuga weapons have the potential to be real powerhouses. By making clever use of Affinity-boosting armor skills, players can easily reach 100% Affinity with a Nargacuga weapon.
The most notable skills for increasing Affinity are Critical Eye and Weakness Exploit. Critical Eye can be implemented with certain pieces of Barioth, Nargacuga, or Aelucanth armor or with level 2 Expert Jewels. Each point of Critical Eye adds +5% Affinity to the build, up to a maximum of 40% if Critical Eye Lv 7 can be attained.
Weakness Exploit greatly increases Affinity on attacks that strike a monster's weak point, which hunters should often strive to do regardless. This skill can be implemented with certain pieces of Zinogre armor, or with the Skalda Elytra waist armor. If 3 points of Weakness Exploit can be incorporated, Affinity will be boosted by 50% on weak-point attacks.
Hunters who aren't making use of Nargacuga or other high-Affinity weapons may need to lean on some other armor skills as well to reach 100% Affinity. Each point allocated to the Latent Power skill will boost Affinity by 10% for two minutes, up to a maximum of 50%, under certain conditions - those conditions being 5 minutes of elapsed time during a quest, or a certain threshold of damage being taken from monsters.
Critical Draw can boost Affinity by up to 40% for a very short period of time after a draw attack is performed, making it useful for weapons such as the Long Sword which hunters will sheathe and unsheathe very often.
To summarize, 100% Affinity can be easily reached by combining a high-Affinity Nargacuga weapon with armor skills from Zinogre or Barioth sets. Players who still struggle to reach 100% Affinity, or who choose to use weapons with less base Affinity, can supplement their critical hit rate with other skills from different armor or decorations. It should be noted that even though it can be fun to inflict constant critical hits, there are many other fun and efficient ways to hunt monsters.
Monster Hunter Rise is now available for the Nintendo Switch. A PC release is slated for 2022.
