Monster Hunter Rise: Affinity Explained

Affinity is one of the most important stats in Monster Hunter Rise, with many players opting to build entire equipment sets around boosting the stat. As players begin to craft weapon and equipment in Monster Hunter Rise, they may notice that each weapon has an Affinity percentage. A weapon's Affinity relates to a weapon's chances of scoring a critical hit. Therefore, a weapon with a 10% affinity will have a 1 in 10 chance of doing an extra 25% damage whenever they land a blow. Some weapons also have a negative affinity, which means that there's a chance that a weapon's attack will do 25% less damage on a hit. Weapons with a negative affinity often have a high default damage stat, so the negative affinity provides a slight nerf to regulate the damage it can do.

The game's Default weapons have an Affinity of 0%, but players will quickly discover entire weapon tiers with high Affinity percentages. Players can also boost their default Affinity through the use of different skills that are attached to armor, talismans, and decorations. If you're looking to build a high Affinity armor build, you'll want to equip armor with the following skills:

• Critical Eye: Provides an increase in base Affinity.
• Latent Power: Activates a temporary boost in Affinity when certain conditions in battle are met. Latent Power activates after 175 seconds have passed in battle, but players can decrease that timer by scoring hits on monsters.
• Affinity Sliding: Increases Affinity after sliding for a short time.
• Agitator: Increases Affinity when large monsters become enraged.
• Critical Draw: Increases affinity for a short time after making a draw attack.
• Maximum Might: Increases Affinity if stamina is kept full for a period of time.
• Weakness Exploit: Increases the affinity of attacks that exploit a monster's weak spot.

There are numerous armor, talisman, and decoration combinations that allow a player to maximize one or more of these skills. If you're trying to boost your affinity, focus on maxing out your Critical Eye skill first, then Weakness Exploit, and then Latent Power.

Monster Hunter Rise is available on the Nintendo Switch now.