Monster Hunter Rise Affinity: How To Improve It

What Is Affinity In Monster Hunter Rise?

Now, first of all, let’s establish exactly what Affinity is and how it works. While inspecting your Monster Hunter Rise weapons during some downtime, you might have seen this tiny little stat show up on your screen alongside some other attributes like Attack, Rarity, and Sharpness.

Key Highlights

Affinity is a stat in Monster Hunter Rise that affects a weapon’s ability to land critical hits.
Critical hits deal extra damage, and the amount of extra damage is 25% and are indicated by red particle effects.
Affinity can be positive or negative, with positive affinity increasing the chance to land critical hits and negative affinity decreasing the chance to land critical hits.
Weapons with higher affinity will land critical hits more frequently and deal more damage.
Critical hits don’t affect a weapon’s elemental bonuses, only pure physical damage is affected.
Skills such as Agitator, Critical Draw, Critical Eye, Foray, Latent Power, Maximum Might, and Weakness Exploit can improve Affinity.
To get the most out of Affinity, equip armor pieces with Decorations and Talismans that grant these skills
Players should start with a weapon that already has a high Affinity by default and then use armor and skills to increase it further.

But if you’re still in the early game, chances are that the value was actually 0%. Also, consider reading the Monster Hunter Rise Dereliction guide. It is obviously not great, but what exactly is the point of the whole thing, and why should players care about such an obscure stat?

After all, we’ve already established that you can finish the game without ever paying much attention to it, so why bother yourself at all? Well, to answer that question we first have a few questions to answer.

Simply put, Monster Hunter Rise Affinity is what many other games might refer to as ‘Critical Chance,’ as in, your weapon’s ability to inflict extra critical damage on some attacks with Critical Hits. At a base level, the odds of you landing a critical hit are more or less zero, but with Affinity, you can increase the number and frequency of these powerful attacks.

So let’s say that you have a Switch Axe that has 20% affinity. It means that each and every single one of your attacks with this weapon has a 20% chance of landing a Critical Hit and dealing bonus damage. So when the stat is actually high enough, you can deal additional damage much more quickly, and even bring down monsters within minutes.

But on the other hand, there are also some weapons that have negative Affinity. And as expected, this means they do less damage than usual on Critical Hits, but it is balanced out by them having a really high damage output overall, so the loss acts more as a balancer than a nerf. You don’t have to worry about negative Affinity too much when starting out.

But either way, that is basically what Monster Hunter Rise Affinity is. Pay attention to it, and your Support Palico will have a lot less to help you out with.

What Are Critical Hits

Now let’s also take a look at Critical Hits, how to identify them, and how much extra damage they do. First of all, it should be clarified that Critical Hits do not affect a weapon’s elemental bonuses. The only stat that benefits from it is pure physical damage, which is the majority of the output of most weapons anyway.

So to get the most out of Affinity, go with equipment that is primarily focused on raw physical attacks and maybe try out a Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak Builds that reflects that choice.

As to the question of how much extra damage a Critical Hit does, well that is set at a solid 25%. Unlike Monster Hunter Rise Affinity values, it does not change, and there are no items or boosts in the game that allow players to alter this bonus.

So if you’re using a Heavy Bowgun like the Guerrera Cannon I with an attack rating of 180, each Critical Hit with the weapon will then cause 180 x 1.25% = 225 total damage. Any elemental bonus it might have will only apply after this point.

In terms of how you identify a Critical Hit, simply look for the special particle effects. When these attacks land, the slashes, and blows you deal have a noticeable red glow to them, which can be seen right behind the numerical values of the attack. The more of these you land, the faster a monster goes down, and the quicker you can farm materials like the Thunder Sac.

How To Improve Affinity

Different armor sets in MHR Sunbreak grant the wearer a variety of different buffs that can help them in combat. A lot of these are really useful by themselves, but if you outfit these armor pieces with Decorations and Talismans, you can apply a variety of additional skills to them as well such as the Latent Power in MHR ability.

And wouldn’t you know it, a bunch of these skills also happen to increase your Monster Hunter Rise Affinity percentages. Let’s take a look at them in the table below.

Skill	Effect	Level
Affinity Sliding	You can increase the Affinity of your weapon by sliding.	N/A
Agitator	When you deal damage to, and Enrage, large monsters, this skill activates.	Level 1: +4 Attack and +3% Affinity while active. Level 2: +8 Attack and +5% Affinity while active. Level 3: +12 Attack and +7% Affinity while active. Level 4: +16 Attack and +10% Affinity while active. Level 5: +20 Attack and +15% Affinity while active.
Critical Draw	Increases Affinity briefly whenever you perform a draw attack. Silkbind attacks do not count.	Level 1: +10% Affinity. Level 2: +20% Affinity Level 3: +40% Affinity
Critical Eye	Simply increases Monster Hunter Rise Affinity without any requirements.	Level 1: +5% Affinity. Level 2: +10% Affinity. Level 3: +15% Affinity. Level 4: +20% Affinity. Level 5: +25% Affinity. Level 6: +30% Affinity. Level 7: +40% Affinity.
Foray	This skill activates when players attack a large monster affected by either Poison, Paralysis, or an Elemental blight status.	Level 1: +10 Attack while active. Level 2: +10 Attack and +10% Affinity while active. Level 3: 10 Attack and +10% Affinity while active.
Latent Power	You must spend 175 seconds in active combat with a monster for this skill to activate.	Level 1: Grants +10% Affinity and reduces stamina depletion by 30%. Level 2: Grants +20% Affinity and reduces stamina depletion by 30%. Level 3: Grants +30% Affinity and reduces stamina depletion by 50%. Level 4: Grants +40% Affinity and reduces stamina depletion by 50%. Level 5: Grants +50% Affinity and reduces stamina depletion by 50%.
Maximum Might	Keep your stamina at max for 3 seconds to activate this skill.	Level 1: Increases Affinity by +10% while active. Level 2: Increases Affinity by +20% while active. Level 3: Increases Affinity by +30% while active.
Weakness Exploit	Whenever you target the weak spots of a monster, this skill goes into effect and increases a weapon’s Monster Hunter Rise Affinity	Level 1: +15% Affinity for attacks that hit weak spots. Level 2: +30% Affinity for attacks that hit weak spots. Level 3: +50% Affinity for attacks that hit weak spots.

These skills can really help you increase your Critical Hit chances, but to get the utmost out of them, it is recommended to start with a weapon that already has a high Affinity by default. After that, it’s all up to you and what armor and skills you choose to use.

This has been our Monster Hunter Rise Affinity guide. While you’re here, why not check out some of our other articles:

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