Guide to Modding and Recommended Mods

Unleash the full potential of Monster Hunter: WORLD with this in-depth modding guide! Discover game-changing mods that'll elevate your gameplay experience. Even if you're just browsing, you never know what hidden gems you might find. Happy modding!

This guide contains:
- Extensive information and detailed comments about mods and modding (including troubleshooting)
- Multiple lists of recommended mods categorized accordingly (with links, obviously)
- Humor (it would be too dry otherwise)
- Some complaining and swearing (mostly for comedic effect)
- ʰᵃʳᵈ ᵗᵒ ʳᵉᵃᵈ ᵗᵉˣᵗ ⁽ᵇᵉᶜᵃᵘˢᵉ ᴵ ᵗʰᶦⁿᵏ ᴵ'ᵐ ˡᵒˢᶦⁿᵍ ᶦᵗ ᶠᵒʳ ʳᵉᵃˡ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵗᶦᵐᵉ⁾

Introduction and Preparation

WARNING: I am not liable for any damage to your save file or other negative consequences of using mods. It is your responsibility to back up your save file regularly and use mods responsibly in both online and offline settings. There is a small chance of your save getting corrupted if the game crashes. The crashes don't have to be caused by mods for this to happen. Your save file can still get corrupted randomly even if you DON'T use mods. So, back up your save regularly. It's not uncommon for Steam's cloud saves to fail for this game.

Cheating is endorsed as long as you don't bother anyone else in the process. Don't use obvious or subtle advantages in multiplayer settings, either, even if you are not bothering anyone else. Play fair if you're going to play with other people.

By continuing to read this guide, you acknowledge these terms. I'm also not responsible for the misuse of mods in multiplayer settings. Blame the hands that wield rather than the messenger or the tools.

With that out of the way, let us begin.

Firstly, our main source of mods, as you might have guessed, is Nexus[www.nexusmods.com]. Make sure you take a look around yourself. I'm pretty sure there will be at least one or two mods you will really like that I didn't find worthy enough to list in this guide.

Installing mods is a pretty plain and simple process. Unless you use a mod manager, you just have to extract the mod into the game directory. Mod authors usually put the mods in the relevant folders, so it's normally an "extract and forget" sort of deal. Sometimes they do a little trolling and don't pack the NativePC folder by itself, so you might have to take the mod out of an extra folder in some cases to properly install it.

I'll be upfront about some topics in advance. I won't answer you if you ask a question that already has an answer, either in this guide or on the relevant mod's page. I'll gladly answer any questions that aren't already covered, of course. If you happen to point out something I didn't already mention, I'll add the information to the relevant section as soon as I can.

The previous paragraph also applies to suggestions/objections/arguments regarding which mod belongs in which section. I won't argue with anyone about the categorization, and I'll only change which mod belongs to what section if someone (including myself) makes a really good point. All the mods are categorized correctly at the moment. There is always room for improvement, of course, and I do move mods around if I deem it necessary. The update log at the very bottom will reflect such changes. Along with additions, replacements, and removals.

There is basic anti-cheat in the game. Thankfully, the only thing it's capable of doing is disconnecting you from the session when it detects unusual changes in the memory. It won't stop anyone from cheating. Also, in case you are afraid of getting banned for modding or cheating, you have nothing to fear. There is no system in place that can prevent you from playing online with others. That means you can never get banned. On top of that, achievements are still obtainable even if you use mods.

Since there are no restrictions on online play, regardless of what mod, trainer, or Cheat Engine table you use, you have a realistic chance of encountering cheaters while playing online. Unfortunately, blocking them on Steam probably does nothing. I still recommend blocking them on Steam just in case. You might still be able to prevent them from joining your session/quest, even if blocking doesn't work. In the Options, under Game Settings, you need to set your Quest Join Settings from "Auto Accept" to "Manual Accept", and you'll have to ignore/decline them from joining your quest. Alternatively, if you are the host of the session, you can kick them from the session by using the Player List under the Communication tab. Unfortunately, they can return if there are open slots, but if you keep booting them, they might give up after a few tries.

I'm sure that was enough of my long-winded explanations. See below before you start anything to make sure you're prepared:

• Check if you have a folder called "NativePC" in the game directory, usually under \Steam\steamapps\common\Monster Hunter World. You don't need to create the NativePC folder yourself, as most mods are packed with the folder itself to be merged automatically when extracted. Needless to say, this folder is where the mod files will end up.
  
• Back up your save file! It's located under: "\Steam\userdata\[YOUR STEAM ID HERE]\582010\remote". Copy "SAVEDATA1000" to a safe location and possibly to an external drive to be even safer. Back up often! Mods won't and can't break your save file directly, but other related issues like crashing may cause save corruption in rare cases. Always have multiple backups, even if you don't intend to use mods! You can never be too safe!

Essentials

The mods, tools, and the only expansion DLC in this list are strongly recommended before getting and using anything else. Some of them are required for certain other mods to function.

ᵗʰᵉʸ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵗʰᵉᶦʳ ᵒʷⁿ ˢᵉᶜᵗᶦᵒⁿ ᶠᵒʳ ᵃ ᵍᵒᵒᵈ ʳᵉᵃˢᵒⁿ

Iceborne

"The game is basically doubled in size and content when you buy this thing. What else can you ask for? Screw the claw stagger, HZV changes, and the WEX nerf, though." - Mr. September

Now, you may ask, "Why the hell did you put the only relevant DLC for MHW in this list, Mr. September?" The reason is fairly simple. Mods are commonly made by editing what already exists in the game.When Iceborne was released, it wasn't just a simple addition to the base game. In layman's terms, Iceborne added more things that needed to be accounted for when modifying most files. As a result, file sizes and contents increased by varying amounts due to the new entries these files now contain.

Most mods that require Iceborne will likely do absolutely nothing (positively and negatively) if you use them without owning Iceborne. There's a chance they might cause issues like crashing, but it's unlikely. When in doubt, just try and see if it works or not. The mods that also change base game content and/or general mechanics should work, even if the author claims that Iceborne is a requirement.

In short, Iceborne is required to make proper use of many mods in this guide. You don't absolutely "have to" own Iceborne to use mods in general, however.

Stracker's Loader[www.nexusmods.com]

"This mod will allow all files to load from nativePC again. It also implements the previous Quest Loader's features."

This tool used to be essential for basically all mods before Capcom messed around with NativePC functionality again after trying to stop people from using mods. Most mods don't need this anymore, but it's still a good idea to install it alongside Performance Booster to achieve more stable and potentially better performance. It also comes packed with Quest Loader, which lets you load custom quests.

For some reason, the part about prerequisites was removed at some point from the mod page. You need the x86 and x64 C++ Redistributables for it to work properly. No clue why this information was removed. You can find and install them here[learn.microsoft.com]. Just scroll down a little and find the x86 and x64 links. They are hard to miss. Install both. Even if they are not required for Stracker's Loader anymore, you are still better off having the latest version.

In short, Stracker's Loader is still required by some mods, even though a lot of mods will still load without it. Also, Stracker's Loader is packed together with Quest Loader, which is required to load custom quests.

Performance Booster and Plugin Extender[www.nexusmods.com]

"Improves the game performance by removing swathes of extremely unoptimized code that is ultimately irrelevant to the game functioning. Also enables more advanced plugins to run properly."

This little thing is a requirement for plugin mods. It also increases performance by removing unnecessary CPU checks, alongside the anti-cheat (which is also a CPU-hog). No more 100% CPU usage!

SharpPluginLoader[github.com]

"A C# plugin loader for Monster Hunter World based on .NET 8.0."

As the description suggests, this tool is a requirement to load plugins that are written in C#. It also fixes black screen issues for some other plugins that may or may not be written in C#, according to some posts and reports.

Required for a handful of plugins. The game may straight up not launch without this prerequisite if the said plugin mods are installed without SPL.

MHW Mod Manager[www.nexusmods.com]

"A simple-to-use (hopefully) robust generic mod management tool for managing the files installed by mod archives."

This tool lets you streamline the modding process by allowing you to install and manage mods on a single interface. If you plan to use multiple mods, you will eventually start to lose track of what you installed. Unfortunately, this tool lags a bunch when working with large and/or many files, but it's still better than modding by hand or using Vortex.

You can also consider using Mod Organizer 2 if you don't want to deal with Vortex or MHW Mod Manager. It might take a little practice to set up and get used to, but at least it won't lag like crazy when dealing with large files or mods with a lot of files. You can find a section about how to install it further below.

Tic Rate Fix[www.nexusmods.com]

"Fixes a coding oversight where frame rates different from 60fps have issues with multi-hit attacks (such as pierce and attacks that can tick multiple times in one action) and cause a significant loss of DPS."

It's almost expected for console ports to have some sort of unconventional or otherwise asinine game design choice. Sometimes it's the 60 FPS lock, and sometimes it's tying certain game logic to FPS because...? This game happens to have the latter. Attacks that tick (as in hit) multiple times in one second are tied to your FPS, and not having multiples of 60 will change your DPS due to this. This tiny mod changes how damage calculation is handled for this mechanic, so you don't lose or gain damage anymore depending on your FPS.

You can find installation methods in the mod pages. Some mods or tools may require different methods, so make sure you read carefully. Some mods may also require other non-mod prerequisites to function, so double-check that you have everything necessary.

Mod List for New Hunters

As the title already suggests, this section will list mods I particularly recommend for a "first-ever" playthrough. Odds are, you will only have one character anyway and stay at the endgame for an extended amount of time.

The main purpose of this section is to make it easier for first-timers to pick their first batch of mods, especially since we have an overwhelming amount of mods listed in this guide, and the number only goes up over time. Surely, a "starter pack" of sorts will save new folks from getting cold feet after they see the sheer amount of mods we have in this guide and the paragraphs of text that accompany them.

To save my sanity, time, and space in this guide, this section will only include the mod names, so you will have to use CTRL + F to find them in the guide and read what the mods do. You’ve got to put in some effort as well, after all, my dear reader. The guide is already pretty damn long as it is, despite my efforts to keep it as concise as I could without sacrificing other aspects of it, like entertainment. I don't think we need another section that lists tens of mods with full-blown explanations. We have close to a dozen of them already.

Anyway, enough nonsense. Here comes the main dish:

Everything in Essentials is essentially a must-have. ʰᵉʰ. Figure out how to use the MHW Mod Manager OR Mod Organizer 2, and you will be fine for the most part when dealing with mods. Get the Starter Pack™ first. If you own Iceborne, get the Iceborne Pack™ mods as well. If you want to learn how to install and use MO2, it has its own section.

You can freely pick and choose, as usual. I just recommend these mods before others for a newcomer.

Starter Pack™:

1. Reduce or Remove Bloom
2. Monster Weakness Icon Indicator for Iceborne (Hi-Res)
3. Descriptive Food Skills (Iceborne)
4. Better Input Detection
5. Bow Sticky Aim Removal

6. Dropped Items EFX
7. Permanent Shiny Drops
8. Concise Hunting Horn Effect Names (Iceborne)
9. Disable Profanity Filter
10. No Fog When Elders Spawn in Ancient Forest/Wildspire Waste/Coral Highlands/Elder Recess/Hoarfrost Reach AND No Fog in the Rotten Valley 2.0

11. Better Palico AI
12. Easier to See Slinger Ammo Gathering Spots
13. Better Skill Descriptions (English)
14. Remove Monster Roar Blur
15. Bow Spread Pattern Fix

16. HQ Assets Project
17. Map-wide Flashbang Effect Removal
18. Subtler Smokebomb EFX
19. Remove Felyne Puns (Updated)
20. Cuter Handler Face Model (Post-Iceborne) aka Make Handler Cuter Again

21. Static NPC Dialogue Face Portraits
22. Critical Effect Intensity Reduced
23. Visually Friendly Scoutflies (Iceborne)
24. Muted IG Triple Up Attack SFX
25. My Name Isn't Pard (Updated)
26. Instant Equipment Box and Smithy UI

Iceborne Pack™:

1. No Blur Special Scope
2. Don't Change FOV When Using Special Scope
3. Glowing Guiding Lands Gathering Spots
4. Snow Layering Removal
5. No Fog when Elders Spawn in the Guiding Lands 3.0

6. RegionSet
7. Seliana Smooth Smithy
8. Guiding Lands Streamlined Bone and Coal Gathering Animations
9. No Rain Castle Schrade

Honorable Mentions

In this section, and the following sections that continue from this one, I’ll be listing the most useful mods I’ve tested and personally approved. In fact, I'm still using most of them myself. The descriptions in italic text are taken directly from the mod pages.

The mods in this section are chosen primarily for Quality of Life and performance. They are not listed in any particular order, unless I rearrange them to group similar mods together for easier access. The latest additions can be found at the bottom of the newest section.

Reduce or Remove Bloom[www.nexusmods.com]

"This mod allows you to reduce or remove the bloom effect from the game entirely."

For some strange reason, Capcom did not add a way to turn off or even reduce the bloom in the game. I'm pretty positive no one likes blinding amounts of bloom. This effect uses more resources, so disabling or reducing it makes the game run slightly better. The main reason I recommend this mod is that it improves visibility and clarity, however.

Certain things may look strange when bloom is completely disabled. Such as glowing face paint.

Monster Weakness Icon Indicator for Iceborne (Hi-Res)[www.nexusmods.com]

"A mod that indicates the monster's property weakness."

This mod is useful for pretty much everyone, regardless of experience. The best part? This mod's icons are of much higher quality than the default ones. They couldn't even redraw or AI upscale the icons before porting it to PC. Sheesh.

Descriptive Food Skills (Iceborne)[www.nexusmods.com]

"The usual meal skill names won't help you much unless you memorize them. This mod changes meal skill titles to their effects to reduce confusion. You can see what a buff does at a glance now! Includes 8 languages."

One of the good mods. I remade this mod myself for Iceborne after the original creator abandoned it. I really liked it since it explains meal effects instead of their names, and it was fairly easy to make text-replacing mods, so here we are. It is highly recommended not because I made it, but because meal buffs are all variants of "Felyne [Something]," which doesn't help much unless you memorize them ⁽ᵃˢ ᴵ ˢᵃᶦᵈ ᶦⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ᵈᵉˢᶜʳᶦᵖᵗᶦᵒⁿ⁾.

Better Input Detection[www.nexusmods.com]

"This mod ensures that holding a button is detected as an input in the first legal frame. This makes inputs feel more responsive during play, especially noticeable with item consumption.

Examples of big differences that you will notice during gameplay:
-Can hold pick-up key while running over items/drops
-Can hold use item key to sheathe+use item with only 1 key press.
-Can hold attack buttons to continue combo chains
-Can hold attack button to machine gun fire with bowguns."

Not much to explain here. This mod saves your wrists by letting you hold buttons instead of mashing them. However, due to how MHW works, this mod practically spams held buttons. This may cause issues with toggleable inputs, like "Toggle Aim." You can only solve this issue by using "Hold" inputs, like "Hold to Aim," instead.

It will feel a little weird at first when you start using this mod, but once you get used to it, you won't be going back.

Some moves and mechanics still require rapid input, however. Such as Zero Sum Discharge of Switch Axe. You can still attack consecutively by holding one input for most moves, however.

No Blur Special Scope[www.nexusmods.com]

"Un-immersive unblurry special scope. For those that don't like the visual distortion of the special scope. FOV was left untouched."

This mod is marvelous because special scope blur can induce a headache. HBG's special scope adds around 30% damage, so you will most likely end up using it.

For maximum comfort, use this one together with the next mod.

Don't Change FOV When Using Special Scope[www.nexusmods.com]

"Only change POV when using special scope, not changing FOV. No FOV change when zoom in and out when using scope too."

This, coupled with the previous mod, makes the Special Scope easier on the eyes.. ʸᵃʸ ⁿᵒ ᵐᵒʳᵉ ʰᵉᵃᵈᵃᶜʰᵉˢ

Bow Sticky Aim Removal[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes Bow's Sticky Aim. This is the very annoying mechanic where the aim will auto track the last place your arrows hit whenever you dash without touching your aim (and most of the time miss as whatever was there moved)."

This should help with the "moonshots" too. The arrows will go where you want them to go, at least. "Most of the time" instead of "sometimes", now.

Glowing Guiding Lands Gathering Spots[www.nexusmods.com]

"- Makes
* Mining nodes glow Light Blue
* Bone nodes glow Bright Yellow"

You get to see the unmarked nodes better with this mod. I wonder what sort of genius came up with the idea of making them almost perfectly camouflaged.

Dropped Items EFX[www.nexusmods.com]

"Adds icons above monster, bandit mantle, and slinger ammo drops."

Despite Capcom adding more visibility in Iceborne, the crystals that drop are just a little shinier at best. You actually need pillars of light or floating icons to see them properly. This mod adds pillars of light and icons according to drop type. You also get to pick which style and size you want to use, which is neat.

Permanent Shiny Drops[www.nexusmods.com]

"Makes shinies remain in the ground forever. This includes the guiding lands where you can realistically have them remain... FOREVER."

This mod is particularly exceptional, considering material drops have a limited lifespan (likely for performance reasons). At least you can just focus on the hunt without having to constantly worry about the drops disappearing on you now.

Snow Layering Removal[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes the snow effect when you roll/walk in Seliana and the Hoarfrost Reach"

With this mod, you can admire your superior taste in fashion without getting permanent snow on your clothes! It also lets you see your character more easily since snow can hinder the visibility of your character to some extent.

Honorable Mentions (Cont. Pt. 1)

Concise Hunting Horn Effect Names (Iceborne)[www.nexusmods.com]

"A mod to shorten buff/effect names for Hunting Horn melodies. The mod also affects the small pop-ups when someone uses a Horn melody too, making those shorter like the song names. Useful for anyone as long as at least one person is using the HH in your team."

Because seeing "Deflected Attack Prevention" or "Self-Improvement" covering half of your screen is too mainstream. ʷʰʸ ᵗʰᵉ ʰᵉˡˡ ᵈᶦᵈ ᵗʰᵉʸ ᵐᵃᵏᵉ ᵗʰᶦⁿᵍˢ ˢᵒ ˡᵒⁿᵍ ᵇʸ ᵈᵉᶠᵃᵘˡᵗ ᵃⁿʸʷᵃʸ ᵗʰᵉʸ ᵗᵃᵏᵉ ˢᵒ ᵐᵘᶜʰ ˢᵖᵃᶜᵉ ᶦᵗ'ˢ ᵃᵇˢᵘʳᵈ

Health Notes[www.nexusmods.com]

"Ingame monster health notifications. This mod will show ingame notification messages when monsters reach health thresholds. The thresholds and messages are configurable, but by default they show up at around 50, 25, and 10% health."

This one is recommended if you don't want to use an overlay. It will let you get a grasp of how injured a monster is. This plugin still has the delays that the overlay has, so using both an overlay and this mod together is a bit excessive.

Elder's Recess Area 15 Nergi's Nest Ceiling Falling Spikes Removal[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes the falling spikes/rocks in area 15 on Elder's Recess"

Who designed waves of perpetually falling spikes anyway!? It doesn't even add any challenge; it only adds frustration! Get the Tundra one as well (it's on the same mod page). The Guiding Lands are unbearable enough with or without falling spikes. You might as well reduce the amount of suffering since you'll spend a lot of time in there.

Decoration Drop Rate Overhaul[www.nexusmods.com]

"A complete redesign of decoration drop rates. It changes the underlying philosophy of how the tables work and compeltely reweights [sic] every single gem and gemstone rates" - by AsteriskAmpersand

Half of the decoration loot table is basically garbage after the release of Iceborne due to the sheer amount of useless dual decorations that dilute the loot pool. This mod won't give you a big advantage, but it should still cut down on the frustration to some extent when grinding for decorations.

It works alongside the next mod.

Modern Decoration System Iceborne Edition[www.nexusmods.com]

"Even though Monster Hunter World is one of my favorite games of all time, it most definitely is not perfect by any means. The whole decorations system is way too anti-player, even for Monster Hunter."

This mod balances the drop tables of melding tickets, adds them to various reward tables so they aren't stupidly rare, and alters bounty rewards so they give other things than fistfuls of Armor Spheres. I think it synergizes well with the previous mod, so I recommend using them together.

It works alongside the previous mod.

Camera Distance Change for Iceborne[www.nexusmods.com]

"Updated Camera Distance for MHW IB

This mod replaces the Close value to be something far away."

Even the farthest option is too close for comfort, so this should help with the camera distance. Remember to pick "Close" when using the mod to apply it.

True Weapon Damage Values[www.nexusmods.com]

"Show unbloated weapon damage in game menus"

This mod reveals the lies behind Capcom's spaghetti code by un-bloating the Attack and Elemental Attack values. The true values are much lower and condensed, so they will appear significantly lower than the game initially tells you. ᵀʰᵉⁿ ʸᵒᵘ ʷᶦˡˡ ᵏⁿᵒʷ ᵗʰᵉ ᵗʳᵘᵗʰ, ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ᵗʳᵘᵗʰ ʷᶦˡˡ ˢᵉᵗ ʸᵒᵘ ᶠʳᵉᵉ.

The mod page doesn't list these, so I'll mention how bloated the values actually are. I simply divided the shown value by the real value to get these multipliers.

| Greatsword: 4.8x | Sword and Shield: 1.4x | Dual Blades: 1.4x | Longsword: 3.3x | Hammer: 5.2x | Hunting Horn: 4.2x | Lance: 2.3x | Gunlance: 2.3x | Switch Axe: 3.5x | Charge Blade: 3.6x | Insect Glaive: 3.1x | Bow: 1.2x | Heavy Bowgun: 1.5x | Light Bowgun: 1.3x | Elemental Value: 10x |

Disable Profanity Filter[www.nexusmods.com]

"Simply disable the game's profanity filter. Works for any language."

An ancient but still functional mod I used to use myself. It only removes the filter for yourself, and if other people don't use it, their censored stuff is censored on your end too. However, it's still worth getting if you play with the same people and want to swear/talk without restraints.

I saw the list of censored words myself, and bloody hell, Capcom didn't only cover a lot of words; they also included a lot of irrelevant stuff in the list that aren't profanity. Some of the stuff they censored is so damn obscure that not even the bad guys from WW2 would know about it!

These sorts of filters never work out anyway.

Endemic Quality (Iceborne Edition)[www.nexusmods.com]

"100% spawn rate for Rare Endemic Creatures. Restriction on conditions still apply i.e. Rain, Sunny, etc."

I get why rare critters spawn under certain conditions, but it doesn't make sense when they added another layer of RNG just to make them "rare." You see, the rare critters may still not spawn even under the right conditions ᶠᵒʳ ˢᵒᵐᵉ ᵘⁿᵍᵒᵈˡʸ ʳᵉᵃˢᵒⁿ. This mod makes them spawn as long as the conditions are met.

No Fog When Elders Spawn in Ancient Forest/Wildspire Waste/Coral Highlands/Elder Recess/Hoarfrost Reach[www.nexusmods.com]

No Fog in the Rotten Valley 2.0[www.nexusmods.com]

No Fog when Elders Spawn in the Guiding Lands 3.0[www.nexusmods.com]

Get all of them. The fog butchers performance and is headache-inducing because of the way it affects your screen. Seriously, who thought that it was a good idea to give your screen a flashing gray or blue overlay every few seconds for as long as an Elder is on the map you are on? How did they come up with such an obnoxious idea in the first place?

Due to an unknown issue that will probably never get fixed, one or more of the "Remove FOG" mods cause issues with certain Kushala Daora quests (like "The Storm Brings the Unexpected" and "Portent of Disaster"). If you get crash right after you depart for a specific quest, remove the mods and do the quest without them.

Skippable Cutscenes[www.nexusmods.com]

"Allows skipping cutscenes through button press." - By AsteriskAmpersand

Yet another mod from my favorite modder, AsteriskAmpersand! This time, he bestows upon us an absolute treasure: the ability to skip cutscenes! It was a matter of time until someone solved one of the larger issues of the game. Now you can skip any cutscene for any reason!

Honestly, the most offending part is how they don't let you skip them after you've already played through the entire thing on another save.

Longsword Spirit Gauge Indicator[www.nexusmods.com]

"A mod adding an indicator to the Spirit Gauge that shows when it's possible to perform the Spirit Roundslash or an entire Spirit combo."

You won't really need this if you always max out your gauge, but it will still help if you think that you miss a combo often due to the gauge decay.

Honorable Mentions (Cont. Pt. 2)

No Grind Guiding Lands[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes the more egregious grinding factors from the guiding land gathering and mining tables. Massively lowers the rate of Coal and Research Point Items while raising the number [of] items mined from the giant nodes."

This mod balances the entire Grinding Lands loot system for the gathering spots and makes it an overall better experience by giving you more of the other items than Steamworks fuel and Research Point items.

The mod considerably reduces the chances of Coal and Research Point items, so keep that part in mind while using it.

Only Kjarr from Incandescent[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes "Taroth" weapons from the Incandescent drop chance so that they only drop "Kjarr" weapons."

Very useful since Kjarr weapons are the go-to if you plan on making high-end elemental builds. Keep in mind that some Taroth weapons can still be considered useful for certain situations, like Sleep and Paralysis builds.

This mod makes Incandescent Weapons drop only Kjarr weapons. Triggering the Fury mode of Kulve Taroth rewards you with Incandescent loot, so Kjarr Alchemy isn't the only way to get what you want (though it's arguably faster and more consistent).

Due to the removal of Taroth weapons from the pool, the chances of getting a Kjarr weapon have roughly tripled (37% vs 100%). Keep in mind that you might still not get what you want, but at least it will take significantly fewer attempts. You can also use Melding to get the weapons.

RegionSet[www.nexusmods.com]

"Adjust guiding lands level back up"

This mod lets you set the region levels to the highest you have achieved before by simply raising them in the game.

Keep in mind that you can't lower your region levels to 1 with this mod because it grays out the ability to increase them again. That means the lowest you can go is 2 with this mod.

Decorations Save Exporter[www.nexusmods.com]

"Exports your decorations from your save file to two formats:

1. Honey Hunter
2. MHW Wiki DB"

If you use any set builders like Honey Hunter or MHW Wiki DB, they provide an option to enter your owned decorations, allowing you to build sets using only the decorations you currently have.

A very handy tool, especially after Honey Hunter's build maker disappeared without a trace from its site. It should still help if you use the other option.

Seliana Smooth Smithy[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes the Pause / Teleport when going to the smithy from the Gathering Hub in Seliana"

This mod lets you sprint right to the Smithy. It's probably not faster on average, but it DOES feel faster since you are the one in control. Now you can go down the stairs yourself.

You know it's a shoddy port when they didn't even remove the "loading screen disguised as a transition." They could have loaded the entire Seliana region on PC without any issues if they wanted.

Forever Festival Redux[www.nexusmods.com]

"When you don't want to wait 2 weeks for your favorite festival, or want a festival back to back, or want to alternate every week. Look no further!!!"

Because waiting several weeks for a festival to arrive is getting way too mainstream. Unfortunately, it only works when you are connected to the internet due to the game having to check the time online in order to determine which festival it should load.

The main reason I recommend this mod is a bit more... personal, however. There's an option to disable all festivals, and I'll surely be using that permanently. ᴵ ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ᵗʰᶦⁿᵏ ᴵ'ˡˡ ᵐᶦˢˢ ᵗʰᵉ ᶠᵉˢᵗᶦᵛᵃˡ ᵐᵘˢᶦᶜ

Guiding Lands Streamlined Bone and Coal Gathering Animations[www.nexusmods.com]

"Changes the special/rare gathering animation of some bones/coal in the guiding lands to the normal animation."

Because we really don't need to endure the entire "Ooooh, rare item! Nice!" animation half a dozen times in a row per gathering spot for what is essentially the common items of the Guiding Lands. This mod will save you some time and sanity by shortening the gathering animation to the default one.

Gunner Defense Rework[www.nexusmods.com]

"Redefines the gunner defense penalty curving so that it handles extreme values better"

"The gunner defense penalty was first introduced in base game. The way it operates and how the curve is related to the blademaster damage curve for similar values made sense for values within the parameters defined there. With Iceborne there was no revision of the system but values got more extreme. Finally with the Fatalis updates, there's a considerable departure between values involved in the formula, to the point it's not functioning within it's intended range. A problem of scaling difficulty just by inflating numbers in both attack and defense but not paying attention to the structure of the underlying formula.

This mod aims to correct this by applying a curve modifier to the gunner defense penalty so it's dependent on monster attack values and scales accordingly to avoid the extreme value distortions that occur on post-game content." - AsteriskAmpersand

In case Asterisk's explanation was too hard to decipher, my dear reader, let me explain. When using a ranged weapon, you take more damage from physical attacks and less damage from elemental attacks. It's the opposite when using a melee weapon. While the game doesn't particularly name them, they are commonly known as "Gunner" and "Blademaster" archetypes due to how armor used to work in older titles.

However, there is a massive oversight in this system. All attacks mainly consist of physical damage, even if some of them are supposed to be mostly elemental. That means even a fireball deals more physical damage than elemental damage. Now, how is that related to this mod and the curve? In Iceborne, the amount of damage you can take per attack was drastically increased while the "Gunner defense penalty curve" wasn't adjusted to handle the extremely high damage values. Simply put: Some attacks that delete your entire health bar are not meant to do that.

TL;DR: Gunner defense penalty now works as originally intended. ᴾˡᵃʸᶦⁿᵍ ʳᵃⁿᵍᵉᵈ ᵃᵍᵃᶦⁿˢᵗ ᶠᵃᵗᵃˡᶦˢ ᶦˢ ˢˡᶦᵍʰᵗˡʸ ˡᵉˢˢ ˢᵘᶦᶜᶦᵈᵃˡ ⁿᵒʷ.

Honorable Mentions (Cont. Pt. 3)

Reduced WSB Blast and Smoke Effects[www.nexusmods.com]

"Reduces the size of the smoke, blast, and some of the particle effects coming from the Wyrmstake Blast with the aim to improve graphical performance especially in a multiplayer gunlance party."

Highly recommended, because having your FPS dip by a relatively high two-digit number is not cool. We seriously need proper options for some stuff like effects, but Capcom moved on already, so I guess we got mods to fix what they never implemented instead. This mod adjusts the intensity of certain effects (like explosions, explosions, and explosions) of Gunlances. ᴰᶦᵈ ᴵ ᵐᵉⁿᵗᶦᵒⁿ ᶦᵗ ᵃˡˢᵒ ᵈᵉᶜʳᵉᵃˢᵉˢ ᵗʰᵉ ᶦⁿᵗᵉⁿˢᶦᵗʸ ᵒᶠ ᵉˣᵖˡᵒˢᶦᵒⁿˢ ᵃˢ ʷᵉˡˡ.

If you ever played in a party where everyone was using the angry explode-y stick, you probably know the pain.

Better Palico AI[www.nexusmods.com]

"Smart and less disturbing Cats. Help you more and do no harm."

Simply put, this mod makes your Palico save your ass more often. Twice as often, in fact. Your cat will try to help you 100% of the time now instead of half the time, even if it fails in the process.

ᴹʳ. ᶜʰᵃʳᶜᵒᵃˡ ᶠᶦⁿᵃˡˡʸ ˡᵒᵛᵉˢ ᵐᵉ ᵐᵒʳᵉ ᵗʰᵃⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ᴴᵃⁿᵈˡᵉʳ. ᴵ ᶜᵃⁿ'ᵗ ᵇᵉ ʰᵃᵖᵖᶦᵉʳ...

Easier to See Slinger Ammo Gathering Spots[www.nexusmods.com]

"Makes Slinger AMMO gathering spots glow green (Scatternuts, Crystal Burst, Stones, Torch Pods)"

This mod marks all slinger ammo sources by changing their textures to be tinted by a rich uranium green. They do sometimes blend in with the environment way better than they probably should. It will even let you find out about slinger ammo spots that you never knew about since it highlights all of them at the same time, no matter where they are.

Better Skill Descriptions (English)[www.nexusmods.com]

"This mod aims to improve the descriptions of skills."

A brilliant mod I would have made myself a while ago if I wasn't so damn lazy after the success of Descriptive Meal Skills (Iceborne). Now, jokes aside, this mod obliterates the vagueness of the game in one swift move by making every single skill list its full effects, including percentages, durations, bonuses, maluses, and activation conditions.

Honestly, any mod that makes the experience less obscure for this game is an instant winner in my eyes. This one increases clarity vastly by making one of the core mechanics of the game actually tell you what it does in great detail. What else can we even ask for at this point?

This mod should be compatible with other text-altering mods unless they use the same files. I don't recall any other mods that were using skill-related text files (that I listed in this guide), but I suspect my "Remove Felyne Puns (Updated)" might be using one of them to remove some puns. Just overwrite the files if that's the case (while prioritizing this mod's files, obviously), and you are good to go.

Remove Monster Roar Blur[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes most monster's roar (weak and strong) blur distortion effect."

I guess I never noticed roar blur somehow, but this should save you a headache or two from monsters that might bug out and spam roars back to back. It's never nice to have your entire screen assaulted by an overlay, after all.

Bow Spread Pattern Fix[www.nexusmods.com]

"Fixes the bow's spread 2 and spread 3 patterns, making them centered and symmetric."

Turns out the arrows you shoot weren't centered for some reason. This fixes that by making lower grades symmetrical. OCD enjoyers can rest easy now.

HQ Assets Project[www.nexusmods.com]

"Improves the models, textures, and various other things while aiming to retain the original art style of the game."

A pretty neat mod that changes the textures and models of some environmental objects to make them less low-res and low-poly. There isn't a list of changes at the moment, but it mostly seems to be ambient objects made of wood, bone, and metal. Probably ropes, chains, and the like as well.

I recommend checking out the video on the mod page. The comparison between the High Resolution Texture Pack and this mod is staggering, somehow. It really makes me wonder how Capcom managed to do a worse job than a single modder when upscaling textures and making proper models.

Useful Event Quest Descriptions[www.nexusmods.com]

"Event quest texts are no longer ambiguous about their rewards and bonuses and now have more context! "

We have enough vague descriptions and straight-up no information about how some stuff works. This mod lets you see the rewards and EXP you are going to get by editing the Event Quest files.

It's unlikely to clash with any other mods, since this mod only contains edited Event Quest files themselves. Mods that add extra quests usually use different quest IDs to avoid replacing already existing quests.

Healthnotes With Crown[www.nexusmods.com]

"Show monster HP info and crown info."

This mod is a modified version of the Health Notes above. It shows some extra information like crown size and whether a monster can be captured or not. It is highly useful for crown hunting.

Multiplayer Damage Numbers (currently not working)[www.nexusmods.com]

"A mod to display the damage numbers of other people in multiplayer."

This little plugin mod lets you see your party mates' damage numbers on your own screen, just like your own damage numbers. However, due to how damage calculation is handled by the game, you can only see others' damage values when you are the host of the quest.

The damage numbers are color-coded as a bonus, letting you see who is doing what. Player 2 is designated gloomy blue; Player 3's is piss yellow, and finally, Player 4's is grass green. Whoever joined first is designated Player 2, the second being Player 3, and the third being Player 4. You are always in the Player 1 slot if you are hosting the quest.

This mod should give you a general grasp of how your mates are performing. As usual, don't go after anyone if they are not dealing enough damage to carry their own weight in a hunt. Give them some advice on how to improve their playstyle, armor, or weapons instead. That sounds much cooler than just harassing them, you know. Just be reasonable, and we are cool.

Remove NPC Quest Dialogue[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes nearly all NPC quest dialogues for a selection of quests with them."

Includes all Event and Special Assignment Quests that have those annoying NPC lines. You no longer have to suffer through them when helping out others anymore.

The novelty wears off extremely quickly, anyway. It gets genuinely grating after hearing them suggest the exact same thing for the nth time. Yes, Handler. I know what element to use. Yes, I also know what Dragonblight does. I also don't need a dozen notifications every time Alatreon stares funnily towards my general direction. I'm good. Thanks.

Honorable Mentions (Cont. Pt. 4)

Map-wide Flashbang Effect Removal[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes the map-wide flash effect of flash pods or bugs while retaining some of the local flash effect."

More accessibility? Yes, please. I'd like to keep my eyes.

Also removes the obnoxious screen-wide flashing that lingers for two to three seconds for some custom quests that feature an unusually dark environment. I assume it's the unused placeholder (or whatever) ambient lighting option that doesn't agree with sudden lighting changes. It's as bad as it sounds, by the way. I admit, it's indeed quite the experience to flash yourself in real life when you use a flash pod against a monster in certain custom quests.

Come to think of it, why isn't this an option by default? World has no "photosensitivity mode," as far as I'm aware... Well, it's not like that's the first graphical or QoL option they "forgot" about. It probably won't be the last, either.

Subtler Smokebomb EFX[www.nexusmods.com]

"Changes the opacity of smokebomb and poison smokebomb EFXs."

Does what it says on the tin, so you can see through player-made smoke easier now. Recommended if you use smoke bombs or play with people who use them often and can't see well when they are deployed.

Deploying smoke in Fatalis hunts won't blind you alongside the monster anymore.

Reduced Velkhana Effects[www.nexusmods.com]

"Greatly reduces and simplifies most of Velkhana's moveset and other effects."

More visibility in one of the most effect-intensive fights? Yes, please. Even though Velkhana is one of my favorite fights, the amount of visual diarrhea is extreme. This mod should help with that.

Better Matchmaking[www.nexusmods.com]

"A plugin for SharpPluginLoader. Disables Steam Region Lock, increases Max Search Result Count, provides Improved Search Filters."

After all these years, we finally have a way to see more than a handful of sessions when looking for them! Your Steam Download Region will no longer restrict you to playing with only your region and nearby regions. You can see the sessions from all over the world with this plugin if you want to do that.

Make sure to install it correctly, though. On top of Stracker's Loader[www.nexusmods.com], this plugin requires .NET 8.0.x Desktop Runtime[dotnet.microsoft.com] (get both x64 and x86) and SharpPluginLoader[github.com]. You might want to update your GPU driver as well since SPL can cause a black screen at launch if your driver is outdated. Remember to update SPL too if the mod gets updated.

If you did everything right when installing, you can press F9 to open the SPL menu and change settings related to Better Matchmaking in the menu that appears. You can change a wide variety of things in there. I recommend setting the distance to "Far" instead of "Worldwide," though, for a better experience. Everything else is fine as is, but feel free to change the settings to suit your own preferences.

Recommended to be installed manually instead of using a mod manager.

Make Critical Hit Icons Easier to See[www.nexusmods.com]

"Make critical hit icons easier to see."

This little mod changes the teeny-tiny 4-pointed star that is shown under critical hit damage numbers into a 5-pointed star, which lets you see if a hit was critical or not more easily. It's also slightly larger than the default one. No more doubts when landing hits now.

Behemoth Damage Numbers will override the changes made by this mod since it makes the game show the damage in an entirely different style. The two mods won't clash directly, though.

Instant Equipment Box and Smithy UI[www.nexusmods.com]

"Makes the equipment box and other generic UIs appear instantly instead of animating each option."

Removes transition animations (like sliding in) for the UI. It does not make some things faster or instant, like the quest counter zoom-in, though. You still have to hold certain keys to make them faster. Still, it saves some time since menus are instantly available now.

Fertilization Reminder[www.nexusmods.com]

"This mod will remind you to fertilize when there is no fertilizer applied or when the remaining uses of the fertilizer are less than 5, helping you avoid frequently forgetting to fertilize."

A small plugin mod that prints fertilization status into the chat depending on the amount of active fertilizer. It's good for reminding yourself to fertilize so you don't run out while spamming quests.

Quest Unlocker - Replay Special and Main Quests[www.nexusmods.com]

"This mod will allow you to replay special and main story quests, for example, you can replay the special quest "The Black Dragon" with faint 5 times."

Another plugin mod. This time, it lets you play one-time quests as many times as you want. You can host quests that can only be done once for other people if you want to do that. You can even repeat "advantageous" quests like the one mentioned in the description.

Unlimited Chat Message - No Chat Mute[www.nexusmods.com]

"Remove in-game multiplayer chat frequency limit. Please note: Sending chat messages too frequently may disturb others, so please use it moderately."

Good for annoying friends, but don't use it for annoying everyone in the session. People who tend to talk a lot will probably love this mod. Try to annoy only your friends, though.

On another note, this mod will let you swap your "favorite" stickers by letting you spam them without the system banning you from chat. I still don't get why the spam protection is active even if you are by yourself in a session. Why can't we set our favorite stickers manually, anyway...

Near Lift[www.nexusmods.com]

"This mod will let you use the lift from the entrance of the tradeyard."

Running around is too mainstream these days, so now you have an extra magical lift to get you out of the Tradeyard instantly. You can even (optionally) add baskets to where the lift interaction point is.

It's not necessary if you practically live in Seliana or its Gathering Hub, but it will be useful when progressing at the start or if you prefer to land in Astera.

Honorable Mentions (Cont. Pt. 5)

Better Daily Canteen Skills[www.nexusmods.com]

"Improves the Canteen system by making Daily Skills more accessible and customizable. No need to start quests to refresh Daily Skills - now you can refresh, save, and choose them freely."

If you ever cared about the daily meal skills, you can now reroll them without having to depart on a quest and returning. ᴵ'ˡˡ ˢᵗᶦˡˡ ᵉᵃᵗ ᵗʰᵉ ˢᵃᵐᵉ ʳᵉᶜᶦᵖᵉˢ, ᵗʰᵒᵘᵍʰ

No Forced Hub Change After Quests - Return to Original Location[www.nexusmods.com]

"Certain quests in the game force you to return to specific locations after completion.This mod removes these forced teleports, allowing you to return to your original departure location."

Even if you set your return destination to the departing one, certain quests will still put you back to specific locations. This mod prevents that. Departed from Seliana Gathering Hub? You'll be back there no matter which quest you complete.

Makes it a less of a pain in the ass to help others with certain quests. You won't end up in Seliana or Astera after departing from one of the Gathering Hubs.

Permanent Special Arena Quest[www.nexusmods.com]

"This is a simple yet effective mod that makes special arena quests permanent."

This plugin prevents the said quests from disappearing after completion. In case you wanted to redo the Special Arena quests (under Optional Quests tab) for whatever reason, you can now permanently have them without adding them back as custom quests. That means, you can host them for others without having to wait for them to reappear.

While this mod would qualify to be under Custom Quests section, it forces the game to always make the Special Arena quests available without adding them as custom quests, so it ends up here instead.

Quest Unlocker - Replay Special and Main Quests[www.nexusmods.com]

"This mod will allow you to replay special and main story quests."

Similar to the previous mod, this is a plugin that forcefully enables the availability of Assignment Quests and Special Assignment Quests. If you wanted to replay the Fatalis quest that gives you five faints, you are in luck.

Visual and Sound Mods

This section, along with the subsequent ones sharing the same name, includes visual mods as well as sound effect swapping and enhancing mods that I’ve personally tested and mostly use. While these mods aren’t essential, I still recommend them. I’ve selected visual mods that offer more functional benefits than simply looking good, so you won’t find purely cosmetic mods here, unless they also serve a practical purpose, such as making objects or players easier to see or hear.

MHW Costume Armor (Transmog)[www.nexusmods.com]

"Swap the visuals of your armor to any other you like while keeping the stats
Changes can be seen by others online"

This tool was priceless when I really wanted that cool Sealed Dragon Cloth α+ as a layered set before they added it to the list. Aw, man. That was forever ago... Nowadays, all functional armor sets can be made into layered counterparts. You can still swap it out with this tool without having to craft them. That includes ones that are unobtainable, such as the pre-order or deluxe edition sets.

Cuter Handler Face Model (Post-Iceborne) aka Make Handler Cuter Again[www.nexusmods.com]

"Cuter Handler face and hair models. Optional textures. For post-Iceborne. Supports all current costumes."

You might tolerate her obnoxious and unprofessional behaviour a little better when she's easier on the eyes.

Handler Portrait Replacement (Pretty Handler)[www.nexusmods.com]

"This mod replaces the handler's portrait with another image."

She looks pretty unflattering in the small "talking" portrait near the text she spouts. This fixes that by swapping it to a still version. The only downside is it's not animated, but it's prettier and less distracting, so it's still an improvement.

Static NPC Dialogue Face Portraits[www.nexusmods.com]

"Keeps the portraits of the talking NPCs during missions static."

Because they indeed do get distracting after you see them 10+ times mid-hunt. There is no lip-sync either, so it ruins immersion as well.

This mod has optional files from the previous mod that got some adjustments, so you don't have to merge them by hand.

Foot Bath NPC Swap[www.nexusmods.com]

"Swap the foot bath NPC to the couple(?) NPC on the back."

A useful mod, in case you don't like the (relatively) unattractive woman using the foot bath right in front of the quest counter and would like to see a prettier alternative.

Blood EFX[www.nexusmods.com]

"Blood efx pack with optional elemental and critical efx
The weakspots are soft and juicy while the non-weakspots are hard and crunchy"

Because realism. Also affects how critical hits sound, so that's a plus as well.

Bloody Broken Parts[www.nexusmods.com]

"The color after destroy [sic] the parts was made like blood."

Because realism, again.

Louder 'Quest Posted' Sound[www.nexusmods.com]

"Replaces the 'posted a quest' sound with a classic MH sound, making it easier to hear."

The default sound cue blends in too well with background noise. This mod helps with that by replacing it with a more distinct sound cue from an older title.

Bowgun Sound Overhaul[www.nexusmods.com]

"Change the firing sound of the Heavy Bowgun and Light Bowgun."

A mod that makes LBG and HBG sound more realistic. They actually sound like actual firearms instead of toy guns now.

Behemoth Damage Numbers[www.nexusmods.com]

"Ever wanted other monsters to have the same damage font and style as the one you get in Behemoth's event quest?"

I always thought it'd be interesting to have the Behemoth style damage numbers in all hunts, but Capcom probably never thought about adding an option like that. This mod does exactly that by adding skill names and damage fonts for all damage in all hunts.

Remove Felyne Puns (Updated)[www.nexusmods.com]

"Update of an older mod. Normalizes puns to make it less physically painful. Compatible with Iceborne."

Yet another mod from yours truly. This time, my dear reader, I made things easier to understand by normalizing the Palico puns. This is an update of an older mod, because a lot of text for content released after Shara Ishvalda was missing in the original version. Some puns make things harder to understand, especially if your English isn't great.

It also reduces the cringe factor slightly, so there's also that.

Classic Monster Hunter SFX Pack[www.nexusmods.com]

"Sound effects mod that replaces many sounds to their existing classic Monster Hunter equivalents. Menus, items, weapons, monsters, cooking & Poogie themes, hit sounds, and many other misc sounds!"

Recommended if you want to have some nostalgia with the older sound effects. Might clash with other sound and music replacing mods.

Invisible Slingers Complete Edition[www.nexusmods.com]

"Files to make all Slingers/Clutch claws invisible for ALL armors! Optional files available for invisible ammo too."

Recommended in case you hate the Clutch Claw and/or slinger ammo more than everyone else.

Polite Hunter[www.nexusmods.com]

"Makes the Hunter polite by replacing "Yes" with "Yes Please" and "No" with "No Thanks". Works for all prompts. Comes in 9 languages."

Does what it says by editing like 2 lines of text. ᵈᵃᵐⁿ ᴵ ˡᵒᵛᵉ ᵐᵃᵏᶦⁿᵍ ᵐᵒᵈˢ ˡᶦᵏᵉ ᵗʰᵉˢᵉ ˡᵒˡ

May increase clarity in UI if you tend to misclick on prompts.

No More Fest Music in Seliana Gathering Hub (Remove Festival Music)[www.nexusmods.com]

"Replaces Seliana Gathering Hub Fest music with absolute silence so you don't have to listen to them way too many times. Only works for Seliana Gathering Hub as you might guess. Naturally, owning Iceborne is required."

After losing part of my sanity, I finally snapped and learned audio modding to finally mute ONLY the Seliana Fest themes. The fests rotate every 2 weeks, with 2 weeks of no festivals between each other. This means that you will listen to the same fest musics for 2 weeks straight if you play regularly and like to stick around in the gathering hub.

Somewhat redundant if you use "Forever Festival Redux" to just remove the festivals altogether. I still recommend this mod if you want to keep the festivals rotate by themselves, but still want to silence the music.

EFX Nuke (may cause issues)[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes most distracting/flashy EFX from the game but leaves ones that are useful to gameplay such as scoutflies, monster attacks, and item procs intact."

Improves performance to an extent. May clash with other effect mods if they alter the same files.

Critical Effect Intensity Reduced[www.nexusmods.com]

"Reduces how bright the critical effect is by percentage. Reduced to 50% or to 25% of the original Intensity."

This is better than "EFX Nuke" because you can target the most taxing effect, and keep the rest of the effects. Crit effects are known to decrease FPS when in large numbers, so this might help if you have issues but don't want to remove the effect altogether.

Visual and Sound Mods (Cont. Pt. 1)

Switch Capcom Logo to Wallpaper of Your Choice[www.nexusmods.com]

"This mod changes the startup Capcom logo when the game launches to a wallpaper of your choice. Currently has 25 different options including the joke one. All used images are 1920x1080."

Seeing another mod which did the same thing inspired me, so I started to learn some texture editing. The fruit of my suffering is this mod. It switches the startup Capcom logo into a wallpaper of your choice. You can make your own stuff as well. There are instructions in the forum post in the mod page.

The startup logo only appears for a second or so, but it's still better than seeing "C A P C O M ®" for the thousandth time.

Hunter Voice Volume Increase[www.nexusmods.com]

"Simply increases the volume of hunter voices."

Oddly enough, character voices blend too well into the background. This mod fixes that by making them 6 dB louder. While that number may seem small, it's actually a pretty noticeable increase.

Active Skill Popup Removal[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes the annoying skill (de-)activation chat popup messages.
You're welcome, gunners and peak users."

In case you are extra-annoyed with the spammy pop-up messages, this should help you by removing them. It even increases performance, since you don't have to load in several hundred status messages every time you look at the monster in a funny way.

Invisible Buff Aura Effect for Items and Skills[www.nexusmods.com]

"Makes the consumption flash and the uptime buff light aura/blur on item buffs and most skills invisible."

Does exactly what it says on the tin. It removes effects that are from buffs or persistent aura effects. A few of them are excluded (blights and Safi's armor set effects), but it's still better than seeing all the distracting effects mid-combat. Probably slightly increases performance as well, since it makes some effects invisible.

No Rain Castle Schrade and Stage Aesthetics[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes almost all rainy effects and wet look of the map on the castle arena. Multiplayer safe. Optional files included."

This mod lets you remove the rain and even change the weather (by swapping the skybox) for the Castle Schrade map. The weather not alternating in some quests is straight up criminal behaviour on Capcom's end. Especially considering how the game expects you to repeat some of them often to get the gear.

No Carving Knife (Knives and Decorative Weapons)[www.nexusmods.com]

"Because there is no reason to keep it around if it's just going to clip into everything."

It's not like you will ever get to use the decorative stuff anyway. Optionally removes the carving knife.

Modded UI and Icon Overhaul[www.nexusmods.com]

"This mod aims to improve or overhaul a ton of in-game icons.
status icons are now more understandable and monster icons have elemental weakness as well as support for the most popular unique monster mods."

This one is a good alternative for "Monster Weakness Icon Indicator for Iceborne (Hi-Res)". It also changes various icons that belong to buffs and make them much easier to decipher. If you want to use the weakness icons mod and this one together, read the first comment under Posts. The author explained that you only need two files for the status/misc icons.

Waggish Korean Art Style Monster Icons[www.nexusmods.com]

"This is a humorous Korean folk painting style monster icon drawn by me. Download it when you're bored!"

Another alternative to "Monster Weakness Icon Indicator for Iceborne (Hi-Res)". The icons are hand-drawn and the default version shows elemental weaknesses in the corner as well, so you don't have to sacrifice anything in terms of quality.

Naturally, it's incompatible with "Monster Weakness Icon Indicator for Iceborne (Hi-Res)" mod since they use the exact same files to change the icons. Who would have guessed?

MHO Monster Weapon Ports[github.com]

"Ports the MHO weapons of several monsters present in World and Iceborne. Many of these weapons might be familiar to longtime MH fans."

I don't really know a whole lot about older titles' weapon designs, but I do know that this game's weapon designs suck because they made 2 or 3 people work on the entire thing. This mod gets rid of the awful copy and pasted weapon designs that is originally in the game and fixes Capcom's bad design choices at the same time. I mean, come on. Surely, they could have just used older designs. Most monsters aren't even new! Sigh.

There is a side-effect, however. Kulve weapons become invisible while using this mod.

No More Quest Alert Music[www.nexusmods.com]

"No more FF14, Xeno, Zoral, Shara's anoying music playing in Astera, Gathering Hub and Seliana."

The themes get old after listening to them half a dozen times. May clash with other sound and/or music mods.

Just Silent Scoutflies[www.nexusmods.com]

"Silences scoutflies, nothing else."

In case the sound annoys you more than it is capable of.

Visually Friendly Scoutflies (Iceborne)[www.nexusmods.com]

"This mod reduces the density of the hunter's scoutflies and makes them less distracting. Works with Iceborne"

The scoutflies are overwhelmingly shiny and crowded, so this should help if you want to cull their numbers to reduce visual clutter.

Recommended to be used in tandem with Reduce or Remove Bloom.

Immersive Scoutflies[www.nexusmods.com]

"Stops the scoutflies from making things like gathering nodes glow while still maintaining tracking capabilities."

Honestly, I never was fond of the glowing gathering nodes signaling "Pick me up!" whenever I got near them. This mod removes the glowing effects on nodes while not affecting the scoutflies pointing at them.

It's compatible with "Just Silent Scoutflies" but NOT with "Visually Friendly Scoutflies (Iceborne)" unless you manually adjust it.

Hidden Weapons When Sheathed (Invisible on Back)[www.nexusmods.com]

"All weapons, quivers, etc, are invisible when sheathed."

Does what it says by displacing your sheathed weapon models a mile [sic] below you so you can no longer see them. Recommended if you are bothered by your gigantic weapon covering your entire screen.

Band Practice is Cancelled[www.nexusmods.com]

"No more dooting at the Seliana Quest Board (or in your room)"

Because it can drive you crazy over time if you hear your Palico practicing too much.

Easy-to-hear QUEST ACCEPT Sound[www.nexusmods.com]

"Louder Quest Accept SFX. In case you miss it in multiplayer."

An alternative to "Louder 'Quest Posted' Sound" above. This one simply makes the default sound louder instead of swapping it to a sound effect from an older title.

Visual and Sound Mods (Cont. Pt. 2)

Optimized Bow Charge Effect Color for Beginners RGB[www.nexusmods.com]

"Bow charge levels distinguished by colors (RGB) to help beginners tell which charge level they are at."

This will come in handy if you're not used to distinguishing the bow charge levels during intense combat. The colors will give you a better visual cue than the usual white flashing. Chances are, the average player won't need this, but it can still be helpful.

ⁿᵒʷ ʸᵒᵘ ᶜᵃⁿ ˢʰᵒʷ ʸᵒᵘʳ ᵗʳᵘᵉ ᵍᵃᵐᵉʳ ˢᶦᵈᵉ ʷᶦᵗʰ ʸᵒᵘʳ ᵈᵒᵖᵉ⁻ᵃˢˢ ᴿᴳᴮ ᵇᵒʷ

No Waist Lights[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes the lights attached to the waist armors. Recommended to use with No Player Light mod."

This one removes the lanterns from all waist armor. Recommended if you don't like the dangly lanterns on your waist armor.

Alternatively, you can also remove decorative knives, carving knives and the lanterns all at the same time by using the mod below.

No Waist Lights and No Knives[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes the lights and knives attached to the waist armors. Recommended to use with No Player Light mod. Optional files included."

Removes the carving knife, chest armor decorative swords/knives and waist piece decorative swords/knives. The author even adjusted some of the models so that they don't look out of place when these elements are removed! Pretty nifty stuff. You can finally remove ALL junk from ALL armor now.

The ultimate clean look for your armor. What else can we ask?

No Player Light[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes the fake light that emanates from the player's waist area."

This one removes the cone-shaped light effect that comes out of nowhere. Recommended to be used alongside one of the mods that removes the lantern models.

Critical EFX Colors[www.nexusmods.com]

"Critical efx colors"

Lets you add color to your critical effects. Now you can dip your FPS in style! Some options even have multiple colors flashing consecutively.

Realistic LUT - Not Need ReShade[www.nexusmods.com]

"Won't affect HUD. Stronger light and dark contrasts. Darker nights, cleaner colouring. All in native game. It wont affect HUD."

In case ReShade is causing you issues and/or you don't want to figure out how to make it work, you can just use this mod instead to change how the game looks from the ground up! Makes the game look less washed-out and bland, since most of the overlays that serve nothing but mess up the graphics seem to be toned down greatly.

However, it makes the game darker pretty significantly.

Muted IG Triple Up Attack SFX[www.nexusmods.com]

"Mutes the sound effect that plays everytime you attack with the insect glaive when you have the triple extract buff up."

Does what it says on the tin. Mutes the triple buff attack effect.

Mod author didn't pack the mod in NativePC directly, so make sure you extract this one into NativePC instead. He did a little trolling.

No More Fest Music in Astera Gathering Hub (Remove Festival Music)[www.nexusmods.com]

"Replaces Astera Gathering Hub Fest music with absolute silence so you don't have to listen to them way too many times. Only works for Astera Gathering Hub as the title suggests. Shouldn't require Iceborne. Will most likely NOT clash with mods that change Final Fantasy or Shara Ishvalda themes."

Yet another mod from yours truly. This time, it wasn't my sanity, but rather, it was a request of a stranger. Since it takes almost no skill and time to replace a music track with silence, I decided to stop being lazy for once and made this mod. In case you like sticking around in Astera Gathering Hub a little too much, this mod should save your sanity.

You can even pick and choose which fest theme you want to mute, since I packed all of them individually. It should be compatible with pretty much any other music/sound mods. The odds of another mod using the same files are low due to how these are packed. Some are even packed alone, for some reason. In case there are any conflicts, prioritize the mod you want to use more.

Replace Zinogre's Death Sound[www.nexusmods.com]

"Replaces Zinogre's death roar to Rise's."

I didn't even realize Zinogre was using the same sound as Nergigante when killed. This mod changes it to Rise's version.

Remove CAPCOM ALL RIGHT RESERVED Watermark[www.nexusmods.com]

"Remove Photo Mode Watermark. And also the one in Main Title Screen, because they are from the same text string."

Very useful, if you prefer to take screenshots in the game instead of using an external program.

We already know who owns the bloody game, Capcom. No need to shove it down our throats every single time.

Invisible Capture Net[www.nexusmods.com]

Invisible Gunlance Shields[www.nexusmods.com]

Invisible SnS Shields[www.nexusmods.com]

Invisible Lance Shields[www.nexusmods.com]

Invisible Longsword Sheathes[www.nexusmods.com]

Invisible Quivers[www.nexusmods.com]

Trimmed HBGs[www.nexusmods.com]

Trimmed LBGs[www.nexusmods.com]

Trimmed Bows[www.nexusmods.com]

Not much to explain here. These mods do what they say on the tin. Get'em if you are bothered by any of the mentioned stuff.

Less Annoying Player Voices[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes certain effects that are shared between voices like smelling, eating, and panting."

Pretty handy for people who are particularly disturbed by the said sounds. If you dislike them for any reason, you can remove them via this mod.

No More Slurping[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes annoying slurping sounds."

Similar to the previous mod, this mod removes sounds that can be particularly annoying for some people. Misophonia enjoyers can rest easy now.

Element of Silence[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes SFX from Elemental and Ailment weapons"

Elemental weapons will no longer make element-specific sounds when landing hits. Pretty nifty.

My Name Isn't Pard (Updated)[www.nexusmods.com]

"Update of an older mod. Handler will no longer call you "Pard" or "Partner" anymore when addressing you directly."

Yet another text mod from yours truly. This time, I updated the "My Name Isn't Pard" mod to remove all the "pards" and "partners" in Handler's lines. Recommended not because I made it, but because the Handler calls you one of the two mentioned words to an excessive degree; to the point of making the player jaded. Now, she will either not directly address you or just call you "Hunter" instead, depending on context and sentence structure.

Shares a file and is compatible with my other mod, "Remove Felyne Puns (Updated)". You can safely overwrite the common file. They are identical, so you can install them in either order and still remove both the puns and the "pard"s.

Visual and Sound Mods (Cont. Pt. 3)

Subtler Tenderize Textures[www.nexusmods.com]

"Lowers the opacity of tenderizing textures."

This mod does exactly what it says on the tin. If the default wound texture overlay bothers you or if you want to change it for any reason, you can now make it more transparent.

Enhanced Camera - Close and Far[www.nexusmods.com]

"Adjusted Close & Far camera Angle & Height, providing Full Outfit View along with a better world view experience."

Somewhat similar to "Camera Distance Change for Iceborne". You can change the camera angle slightly to see your entire character with this mod.

Cheaty Mods

In this section, I listed mods that can give you an unfair advantage and/or alter the way you play significantly.

The mods in this section may objectively be useful, but due to their nature of altering the mechanics or gameplay in ways the developers never intended, they end up under here. They may also affect other people's experiences if misused, so use them responsibly. Don't go out of your way and bother anyone else if you are going to use anything questionable, and we're cool.

If a mod gives you an advantage but doesn't harm anyone else in the process, I still don't recommend playing with others unless it's a friend group and everyone is using or otherwise has access to the same advantages. Even if you don't bother anyone else, at least try to play fair by playing alone if you cheat. If anyone else can tell if you have advantages, you are probably doing it wrong.

Automatic Steam Works v15.21[www.nexusmods.com]

"An app that can allow for 100% success on the steamworks minigame. Has option for random input."

While the main reason I recommend this is because the minigame is too boring and repetitive to play manually, it lets you do 100% accurate runs and waste no fuel, time or physical energy. It still counts as textbook cheating, since it circumvents player input and error. Still recommended if you dislike the Steamworks "minigame".

Infinite Or Longer Reach Clutch Claw[www.nexusmods.com]

"Clutch claw now has infinite range. Optional file for only 2x range."

The default range is somewhat questionable. You can use this mod to double its range or even make it infinite. Infinite would be overdoing it, but I won't judge you if you decide to use it.

While testing this mod, I was told by my observant veteran friends that they could tell my range was doubled. According to that feedback, it's safe to say that other people can tell what's up if they are paying attention.

Infinite or Longer Tenderize[www.nexusmods.com]

"This mod changes the time tenderizes from 180* seconds to infinite seconds. There is a 2x time tenderize meaning that the normal 180* seconds is doubled to 360* seconds, or 6* minutes."

Not exactly cheaty if you ask me, but it will somewhat affect your DPS. You have to open wounds less frequently which gives you more time to attack, so this mod ends up in this section. Still highly recommended, though. I'm sure this mod was priceless when wound time was 90 seconds.

As odd as it sounds, it's lore-friendly to an extent. Elder Dragons (apart from a few exceptions like Nergigante) regenerate very slowly because of their immense power as far as I'm aware. [ᶜᶦᵗᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿ ⁿᵉᵉᵈᵉᵈ]

*Mod author forgot to change the numbers in the description, so I fixed them.

Remove Hitlag for All Weapons[www.nexusmods.com]

"Update of an outdated mod, removes hitlag for all weapons with instructions on how to only affect certain weapons."

All melee weapons have a slight delay when an attack connects with a target, which is called "hitlag". This delay is added to make the player feel like they hit something resistant. This mod removes that hitlag, so you cut through monsters like butter now. Removing hitlag lets you have more control in general because you aren't delayed a few hundred milliseconds for all attacks. Indirectly increases your DPS due to having more control in moment-to-moment combat.

Farmable Useful Item[www.nexusmods.com]

"Replace some of the objects in the botanical garden with more useful objects, like Arena's coins, Melding Tickets, Golden Egg..."

You can now cultivate truly useful items instead of trash now. Botanical Research's garden gets arguably outdated at endgame, unless you are inhaling the potions.

It even lets you farm Pure Dracolites which are normally unobtainable (but functional) by normal means. ʷʰʸ ᶦˢ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ ⁿᵒ ᴬᵀ ˢᵃᶠᶦ ᵃⁿʸʷᵃʸ

Dual Blades Longer Buff Durations[www.nexusmods.com]

Long Sword Longer Buff Durations[www.nexusmods.com]

Switch Axe Longer Buff Durations[www.nexusmods.com]

Charge Blade Longer Buff Durations[www.nexusmods.com]

Insect Glaive Longer Buff Durations[www.nexusmods.com]

My own duration mods here. Strangely, some were never made by other people despite it being a simple value edit, so I went and made them by changing a bunch of numbers. Since I made like 2, I went and completed the set by altering other weapons, because why not?

(Almost) Tradable Everything to Other Players[www.nexusmods.com]

"Makes (almost) all items tradable to other players in the gathering hub by making the item rarity 1."

This is a very interesting one. It works even if the receiver doesn't use the mod. It's a bit awkward to use because of how MHW works, but it's still very useful if your friend needs one (or more) extra Mantle or Ticket while it's unavailable/hard to get. Sadly, you can't trade Decorations because the bag can't hold Decorations.

This mod naturally ends up in this section because the devs never intended the player to trade higher rarity materials with other players for whatever reason.

Best used alongside the mod below, so you can actually put materials in your pouch to hand them over to someone else. You can't withdraw or add materials to your pouch otherwise.

MHW Shop List Editor[www.nexusmods.com]

"Tool for creating custom shop list files for use in Monster Hunter World"

I don't really need to explain this one, but here we go. This mod lets you create your own custom shop lists and just make the game load whatever items you put on the list. By itself, it's probably only useful for buying stuff you require a few (or more) extra more of, but it really shines when used alongside the mod above.

Personally speaking, I used this one a few times to restock my already-overflowing consumable stash. I have too much Zenny anyway, so I guess I have use for money now. ʷʰᵃᵗ ᵍᵒᵒᵈ ᶦˢ ᵐᵒⁿᵉʸ ᶦᶠ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ ᶦˢ ⁿᵒᵗʰᶦⁿᵍ ᵗᵒ ˢᵖᵉⁿᵈ ᶦᵗ ᵒⁿ ᵃⁿʸʷᵃʸ

Crafting Material Reduce v15.11.01 Compatible[www.nexusmods.com]

"This MOD reduce materials needed in crafting armor/jewel/weapon, highly recommended for those who feel grind to collect materials but don‘t want to cheat too much."

This mod slightly reduces the amount of materials required so it's easier to craft armor sets, weapons and decorations. It's only slightly cheaty, but you know the drill.

Asterisk x10 and x5 Research Points Cheat[www.nexusmods.com]

"Multiplies your research points gain by 5 or by 10."

You can use this mod to make it a little easier to stack some points for later usage. It's not like it'd break the game just because you got more Research Points, since you still need Zenny and materials.

Cheaty Mods (Cont. Pt. 1)

Unlock All Layered Armors[www.nexusmods.com]

"Unlock all layered armors as soon as you unlock the layered armor feature."

Now, I'll be honest. I love unlocking layered armor sets and collecting them myself, but the game does not even list all available layered stuff until you get the "core" material required to unlock the bloody recipe. What this mod exactly does is: It makes the whole layered armor list visible and gives you three options (just reveal, no material crafting or completely free crafting). I'll probably use the "just reveal the bloody list" version to see and collect what I missed, but hey, I won't judge you if you use other versions ᵃˢ ᵘˢᵘᵃˡ.

Interestingly, it even lets you see and craft uncraftable layered armor sets like Samurai or Yukumo. They don't end up in your inventory, but you can equip them directly if you craft them, which in turn lets you save them as a layered armor preset, which then can be used to wear the set despite not owning it by equipping the said set. You can then mix and match freely. ᴵ ʳᵉᵃˡˡʸ ʷᵒⁿᵈᵉʳ ʷʰᵃᵗ ᶜᵃᵖᶜᵒᵐ ʷᵒᵘˡᵈ ˢᵃʸ ᶦᶠ ᵗʰᵉʸ ˡᵉᵃʳⁿᵉᵈ ᵃᵇᵒᵘᵗ ᵗʰᶦˢ ˢʰᶦᵗ ˡᵒˡ

This mod would have been under some Honorable Mentions section above if it didn't include optional free crafting versions in the same page.

All Palico Armors Treated Equally[www.nexusmods.com]

"Do you feel like you really love the outlook of a certain set of armor for your little partner but with low defense, so you have to choose another ugly set for better surviving? Now with this mod, defense and element resistance of all palico armors are set as the same, you can finally feel free to choose the one you like."

It's only cheating if you use it before you get top-tier armor for your Palico. It still ends up in this section because of its potential to be used as a cheat. ᵉⁿᵈᵍᵃᵐᵉ ᶦˢ ᶠᵃˢʰᶦᵒⁿ ᵃⁿᵈ ᶜᵃᵖᶜᵒᵐ ᶠᵒʳᵍᵒᵗ ᵗᵒ ᵍᶦᵛᵉ ᵘˢ ˡᵃʸᵉʳᵉᵈ ᵖᵃˡᶦᶜᵒ ᵍᵉᵃʳ

Palico MR Weapons Treated Equally[www.nexusmods.com]

"MR Palico weapons will all use similar stats so you can give your palico whichever weapons you like more."

Finally, layered Palico weapons! Somewhat. Now you can hand any weapon to your Palico and look cool while it loses no tactical advantage.

Cheaty because of the same reasons as the previous mod.

Remove Claw Stagger and Restore Weakness Exploit[www.nexusmods.com]

"Pure vanilla MHWorld experience (for the most part).
Remove claw stagger. And Weakness Exploit now no longer require tenderizing to get 15%/30%/50% affinity bonus."

In case you want to have pre-Iceborne Weakness Exploit (WEX), this mod is for you. It does what "Remove Clagger Nothing Else" does but also has a file that makes WEX work the way it used to in base game.

Cheaty for obvious reasons, but priceless if you want the authentic base game experience.

One important note: You can't finish the "Learning the Clutch" quest if you have this mod, since your attacks can't "claw stagger" a monster. Use this mod after you finish that specific quest.

Craftable Throwing Knifes[www.nexusmods.com]

"Sleep, poison, para and tranq knifes can be crafted, stored and used as regular items."

This one ends up here only because devs never wanted us ᵗᵒ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵍᵒᵒᵈ ᵗʰᶦⁿᵍˢ -AHEM- I mean, it was never intended for us to carry throwing knives for some reason. This mod lets you use them by making them craftable. According to my tests so far, they are not taken back after you finish a quest.

You can finally use tranq without getting flinched.

Free Everything[www.nexusmods.com]

"Combined all my free mods & some unreleased free mods of mine. Includes free armor, layered armor, charms, augments, custom augments, deliveries, layered weapons, palico armor, palico weapons, pendants, weapons, melder, shop, and Safi upgrades. Zenny/RP no longer required. Optional files for the seperate [sic] mods."

Especially useful if you are coming over from the console version. Should help greatly when you need to restore lost progress.

Increased Trap Capacity[www.nexusmods.com]

"Increases the max capacity of Shock and Pitfall Traps and reduces the amount of Trap Tools in exchange."

Recommended in case you like capturing everything and hate restocking. Might prove particularly useful for Grinding Lands sessions where capturing gives more Region and Rank EXP.

Will clash with any other mods that change item effects and/or carry limits.

Craftable Kulve Taroth (R6-R8) Weapons (Kulve Taroth Crafting)[www.nexusmods.com]

"Craftable Kulve Taroth Weapons. Doesn't remove or prevent crafting anything else."

Now, that's nostalgic. I remember using this mod way before Iceborne was even announced, so I could get the last few "usable" weapons from Kulve Taroth. Good ol' days.

This mod lets you craft Kulve Taroth gear in the Smithy for a very low cost, which is a single Kulve Taroth Golden Shell per weapon. Recommended if you want or need a shortcut when obtaining KT loot.

If the mod causes any issues (like the inability to upgrade KT weapons), remove the mod and try whatever you are trying to do without the mod.

Charms Unlocked and Free[www.nexusmods.com]

"All charms unlocked right away and free, contains optional files for only free charms or cheaper charms, and also contains patches for my Layered Armor Unlocked and Free mod. Enjoy!"

This mod lets you reveal the entire list for charms and craft them for either a very low or no cost. I kind of wish it also had a "reveal all charms" option without the cheaty stuff, but it's still a good mod if you just want to craft/ugprade a charm and didn't get the material for it due to questionable RNG.

All Monster Drops Increased[www.nexusmods.com]

"Increases the drops of all large monsters"

This mod makes carved loot reward you significantly more items per carve than usual. Should cut the grind down a little if that's what you're looking for. Mind that you still have to deal with the RNG, but the grinding will still be shorter than the "intended" amount if you use this mod. Still have to get lucky with the rarer stuff, though.

Apparently, it affects other material sources like Plunderblade loot and Bandit Mantle's shinies as well. Nifty stuff, I admit. However, it doesn't affect capture rewards. Which means it only applies to carving loot and part-break shiny drops.

Current rates (for default version) are:
|| Commons: 5x || Uncommons: 3x || Rares: 2x || All Guiding Lands Drops: 5x ||

It only affects amounts, not drop rates, so it's not too cheaty if you ask me. It still ends up in this section, of course.

Cheaty Mods (Cont. Pt. 2)

More Wedge Beetles (Iceborne Edition)[www.nexusmods.com]

"Adds Wedge Beetles in locations they should have been for easy of travel."

Some spots really should have had one of those. Shortens travel time, at the cost of making you look like you are teleporting on other people's screens.

Better used when playing alone or with friends who also have the mod, so you don't teleport up ledges on other people's screens and cause people to question you.

QoL Fast Travel[www.nexusmods.com]

"Adds wingdrake posts to strategic locations"

Recommended because running from one end of the map to the other is too mainstream. Honestly, this mod would be under Honorable Mentions if I wasn't trying to be objective here. I wish we had unlockable wingdrake posts by default. That would be more fun than just warping to camps with them from anywhere.

Only use this one when playing with friends or when alone, since just like More Wedge Beetles, this mod makes you look like you are teleporting around on the map. That's just how the multiplayer syncs player movement, as far as I can tell. It's not surprising to think that your sudden change in coordinates can only be interpreted as teleportation by the game.

Item Pouch Plus Plus[www.nexusmods.com]

"Contains options for increasing your item carry limit, decreasing your item carry limit for a more hardcore experience, or allowing you to have infinite item limits."

Fairly self-explanatory. It increases (or even decreases) the item carry limits. Some versions also come with longer buff durations. I think I like the "Infinite Item Carry Limit" one the most. It's right up your alley, if you just want to go on to gathering expeditions and pick the entire map clean without having to dump the items you got.

Bowgun Deviation Begone[www.nexusmods.com]

"Very Simple Mod that gives every single Bowgun in the game no Deviation without modifiying anything else."

When you REALLY don't want to fight against the deviation on top of the recoil and the monsters, you can get this mod to remove deviation off of all LBG and HBGs.

Might clash with mods that change damage and ammo values for the mentioned weapons.

All Deliveries are Free (Iceborne Compatible)[www.nexusmods.com]

"This eliminates any requirements for the deliveries."

I bet you really don't want to pay for the unlocks on your 46th playthrough. This mod will save you from that by making the deliveries for the Resource Center cost nothing.

Yomi Utils Cheat Menu[www.nexusmods.com]

"A plugin for SharpPluginLoader, has some cheaty features, some QOL ones."

As the author's quote suggests, this SPL plugin has quite a lot of useful functions. Most of them are cheating, but hey, we don't judge here. A select few like unlocking one-time quests for replay and skipping the quest ending countdown are QoL additions, but since they are on the same mod page, this mod ends up here. You can see the full list of functions on the mod page, as usual.

Requires SharpPluginLoader to work.

No Spread Bow[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removed bow spread."

Removes all spread from bows, which makes all arrows land exactly where you are aiming towards.

Increase Bow Range[www.nexusmods.com]

"Increase bow range by x10, x5, x2"

Does what it says on the tin by increasing the range of arrows. Also increases arrow velocity depending on the option.

10x Bowgun Range[www.nexusmods.com]

"Increases the range and max critical range of every bowgun ammo to 10x vanilla values."

In case you forgot the part about how ranged weapons are actually melee weapons in disguise, this mod should help.

Crown Size Mods

These mods get their own section because of their importance in my eyes. Personally, I hate grinding for an achievement, especially if the achievement in question does not offer a challenge in any form. Achievements should offer a challenge, and RNG achievements are literal dice rolls that you might get in 10 hours or not get in a 1000. The effort you need to put in to obtain them varies wildly, simply because the developers decided to design them that way.

These mods can be considered cheating by some. However, that's ultimately irrelevant. Crowns, or rather, the achievements related introduce a pointless and unfun grind in my opinion, and I'd rather be done with achievements like these as fast as possible regardless of the methods used. Achievements that don't require any skill are not valid, in my perspective. They could have given us quests that had better odds, so the mod below wouldn't have been practically a necessity when grinding for the crowns. They didn't do that, so here we are.

Have a look-see if you are interested:

Guaranteed Crowns for Iceborne - Fatalis Brute Zinogre Edition[www.nexusmods.com]

"Guarantees gold (small and big) crowns on places it could appear before." - AsteriskAmpersand

While the core idea is the same as the previous crown mod that was removed, this one has a few more options to choose from, offering a little more variety and control.

Currently, this mod has these options:

Cheat Big/Small: Forces all quests to be a Big or Small crown even if it normally isn't possible.

Legal Big/Binary/Small: Forces the quest to produce the Biggest/Either Biggest or Smallest/Smallest size it could under normal circumstances. All monster sizes are legit. This means you can only get gold crowns on quests or expeditions where you could normally get a gold crown (just with very low chances).

Event Chances: Makes every quest have the size chances that the size event quests do.

Normalized: Makes every legal size on a quest equally likely. This significantly improves the chances of crowns on quests which could normally produce crowns (more than event chances even).

Note: You have to host the quest yourself for this mod to work since monster spawn sizes are determined by the host. Other people who join your quest will also be able to see the same size as you, and get the crown that way.

(Sort of) Guaranteed Crowns for Endemic Life[www.nexusmods.com]

"(Sort of) Guarantees gold (small and big) crowns for Endemic Life on places it could appear before."

While Endemic life doesn't really matter much, there are still two achievements for Master Rank that involves critter crowns. They both require a Tiny and a Huge crown to unlock, so it's much easier and faster than the Large Monster crowns. Chances are, you already got those achievements before finding out about this mod, to begin with.

Mind that critters are entirely client-side. That means this mod will work only for you and will work in any case. Other people won't be seeing or capturing the critters you can see on your end.

Overlay Tools

Warning: Do NOT bully other people just because they are doing less damage than you. Don't be an elitist and ruin other people's experiences by telling that their damage sucks. The tool in this section is meant to show you many statistics that are not meant to be seen by the player by default. Be reasonable and only use this tool to measure how your personal performance is.

Do NOT post DPS stats in chat unless you are playing with friends or asked others if they are ok with it. Not everyone wants to see the DPS stats ingame.

The following tools are overlays that show you various invisible parameters and statistics about your surroundings, view buff durations and provide weapon-related aid during combat. The overlay aspect only works with Borderless Fullscreen if you are using Directx 11, but otherwise works without issues for Fullscreen if you are using Directx 12 instead. You can still post damage numbers and monster HP without using the overlay aspect, if you want to do so (by pressing F5).

HunterPie - Overlay and Rich Presence[www.nexusmods.com]

"HunterPie is an overlay for Monster Hunter: World with Discord rich presence support."

A pretty decent overlay that shows a plethora of different things you don't usually have access to. I can write half a dozen paragraphs about the functions this thing has, but I'll save you and myself the trouble, my dear reader.

The only "downside" I can ever think of about HunterPie is that you have to configure and place most widgets yourself. Then again, I think that this ultimately does more good than bad, considering the sheer amount of customizability. You also get to pick and choose what you want to use without having to manually edit some obscure config file, so it isn't a chore to deal with.

This tool is perfect for finding out if there are cheaters in your party, since dealing a stupid amount of damage really stands out if you look at the relevant widget. Even if you are not going to use most stuff it comes with, it's still worth using the DPS meter just to check the performance of your party. Including yourself. No one will know unless you tell them (or accidentally press F5), after all.

Version 1 is no longer being updated, but it works and is still perfectly usable. If you already have an adjusted setup for it, you don't "have to" switch to v2. There won't be future updates to v1, however, so I don't think we will have it operational forever. If Capcom decides to update the game for no reason again, v1 might break. At least it works, at the time of me typing this.

HunterPie v2 - Overlay and Rich Presence[www.nexusmods.com]

"HunterPie is a modern, robust and clean Overlay with Discord Rich Presence integration for Monster Hunter games."

Basically the same as v1, but with a few more bells and whistles. A cleaner look, as well.

Version 2 features a slightly different aesthetic compared to V1, but the main catch is that it has some neat extra features like the ability to create an account and automatically back your save up. V2 works for Rise and World at the same time, as well, so you don't have to worry about having to download, configure and use different versions if you own and play both games. That's probably the reason why it's on Rise's Nexus instead. At least it works for both games. Nifty stuff, I admit.

Custom Quests

I got you covered in case you are looking for even more challenge. The mods in this section are well-made custom quests (or quest packs) which will make you suffer the right way. What good is all the vanilla content if they can't offer a challenge after a few thousand hours?

Mod pages got all the information covered, so I won't be commenting a lot on these mods. For good reasons, I'm only going to list high quality custom quest mods here.

Custom quest mods require ALL players to have them, if you want to play with a group of people. The host having it isn't enough.

-MHG- Custom Quest Pack[www.nexusmods.com]

"432 Custom Quests, all balanced around the Fatalis endgame armor."

I personally recommend this one the most due to the sheer amount of variety and the frequent updates (which fix and/or add quests). You will surely find some real challenge in this pack which will make the game fun again for you.

Make sure you check it often for updates, especially if you play with the same people who also has this mod. Everyone should have the same version when playing together to not cause desync and other weird things.

Resurgence - Returning Monster - White Fatalis[www.nexusmods.com]

"Adds White Fatalis into the game without replacing or affecting any other monster, it also adds Old World Inspired items for fashion into the game."

Resurgence - Returning Monster - Crimson Fatalis[www.nexusmods.com]

"Adds Crimson Fatalis into the game without replacing or affecting any other monster, it also adds Old World Inspired items for fashion into the game."

Devil Gene Nergigante - Custom Subspecies[www.nexusmods.com]

"Adds a new Nergigante subspecies, the Devil Gene Nergigante to the game without replacing regular Nergigante or Ruiner."

AT's Return - Unique HR Monsters with MR Stats - Includes Extreme Behemoth and Arch Tempered Monsters[www.nexusmods.com]

"Adds stand-alone custom quests with unique HR monsters scaled for MR equipment. Includes all MHW AT (Nergi,Vaal,Zora,Xeno...) and Deviljho, Extreme Behemoth."

Gotta suffer AT Nergigante's dive in MR as well because the game just isn't the same without getting one-shotted by that.

Challenge Mods

In case custom quests weren't enough either, we also have a few mods that can change certain mechanics to make the game even harder (or frustrating, depending on perspective). The mods in this section are basically cheating, but in reverse. They actively hinder you rather than giving you an advantage. Some people just love the suffering, I guess. So do I, my dear reader. So do I.

Remove Clagger and Nothing Else AKA Claw Stagger or Drool[www.nexusmods.com]

"Removes clagger, doesn't do anything else."

Using this mod will let you have the pre-IB combat experience. You have to be the host of the quest for it to work, but that's still better than nothing. Bonus points if you use it in base game, since clagger was added retroactively for parity reasons. Since the game's combat flow isn't interrupted all the time, the monsters will be more dangerous and unpredictable. Just like the old days. You have to actually work for the openings now.

One important note: You can't finish the "Learning the Clutch" quest if you have this mod, since your attacks can't "claw stagger" a monster. You will have to uninstall the mod temporarily before doing that quest.

Master Rank (MR) Monsters enrage faster[www.nexusmods.com]

"Makes all Master Rank monsters enrage faster, to a similar speed as Low and High Rank "

This mod makes all MR monsters enrage 3 to 5 times faster. For some, it's even faster! Safi'jiiva and Kulve Taroth will enrage almost 10 times faster. Since you can't wall-slam monsters when they are enraged, this mod will hinder your ability to use wall slams. However, it will let you have a better upkeep of Agitator. High risk, high gain.

This mod edits the file of each and every monster, as far as I can tell. That means, any other mod that contains monster files will clash with this mod.

Old World Stamina Cap Drain[www.nexusmods.com]

"Makes your stamina cap drain every 6 minutes like in Freedom Unite."

Every 15 minutes, you lose 25 max Stamina permanently and have to use certain items to regain it. However, if you are remotely competent, you will basically never have to deal with this mechanic. ᴬᵗ ˡᵉᵃˢᵗ ᴵ ᵛᵉʳʸ ʳᵃʳᵉˡʸ ᵈᶦᵈ

With this mod, you can reduce the said delay to 40% of the original value, so you have to actually carry around rations or cooked meat for longer hunts now. Mind that the file that changes this mechanic may be used by other mods that also change player parameters, so you can't use both mods unless there's some editing involved.

Oldschool Finite and Mineable Whetstones[www.nexusmods.com]

"Makes whetstones finite like before World and adds them to shops/mining spots."

This is a curious one. Instead of having an infinite-use whetstone, you have to work for it now. This mod makes it finite.

According to the mod page, you have a 10% chance of getting a whetstone from any mining spot, except Guiding Lands ones. You can also buy them for 200 zennies a pop, if that's what you want. Considering what that last part means, mods that change the shop list will clash with this mod. I'm also pretty positive it changes mining spot loot tables, so other mods that do anything of that sort will also have common files.

Increased Multiplayer Scaling[www.nexusmods.com]

"Increases the Scaling of Monster HP for Multiplayer."

Because they sure as hell don't have the amount of HP we think they do when the party is well-equipped. Now, you can pump all monster HP about 70% to 100% per person in multiplayer, depending on the monster. You'll probably have to be the host of the quest for this mod to work, however.

Mind that this mod doesn't change anything other than monster HP and part HP. Ailment thresholds will still be the same, for example. Some monsters are also "exempt", since they were always scaled for a full party.

Save Editor

MHWI Save Editor[www.nexusmods.com]

"An open-source save editor for MHW Iceborne."

Now, this mighty powerful tool gets its own section for multiple reasons. It is capable of fixing and editing many things, and also a pinch of cheating if you are here for that. I recommend this tool for the more "reasonable" uses, however. These include: removing gear permanently (including Guardian armor pieces), uncapping Guiding Lands levels so you can level all regions to level 7 without a trainer and letting you add certain removed Event Quest content.

Of course, don't forget to make use of the most vital part of this save editor, which is its ability to back up your save. Always have multiple backups! You can never be too safe! It prevents user errors as well, since with a backup, you can roll your save back any time if you manage to mess up.

Currently, this save editor is capable of:

• Change Steam ID, Hunter and Palico names
  
• Edit character playtime
  
• Edit Zenny & Research Points, Steamworks stored fuel
  
• Edit item amounts
  
• Add or remove items to your item boxes
  
• Uncraft equipment (only refunds materials), including nonremovable ones like Guardian armor parts
  
• Swap character slots (Note: photo data may be corrupted)
  
• Duplicate character slots
  
• Edit Guiding Lands region levels to as high as you've had reached before
  
• Uncap Guiding Lands region levels (which lets you level all regions to 7 without other methods)
  
• Get limited-time items like Artemis Gear and Assassin's Hood+
  
• Get limited-time layered armor like Artemis and Bayek (Note: Artemis requires you to be MR)
  
• Add Loadouts for DLC layered armor, like Yukumo, Silver Knight, and Samurai
  
• Display item names in any language supported by the game
  
• A backup system, to keep your save files safe
  
• Some fixes for possible issues in save files (maybe invalid items or something)

Mod Organiser 2 and ReShade

Turns out, it was much easier than I thought, and it doesn't lag like MHW Mod Manager does!

In this section, I'll explain how to install MO2 and use it as your mod manager, while also providing information about how to use ReShade with DirectX12. You'll be able to handle mods and conflicts easily.

One handicap of using MO2 is that you will have to run the game through MO2 or a shortcut you created through MO2. It will be worth the hassle, though!

Prerequisites:

Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables[learn.microsoft.com] (both X86 and X64)
The ability to read and follow instructions
Basic computer skills
Some patience

Installing MO2

1. Download and install Mod Organiser 2[www.nexusmods.com].

2. Once you are done installing, either run MO2 when prompted by the installer, or find it and launch it yourself. Click on "Next" at the first screen.

3. MO2 will ask you what type of instance you want to create. Pick "Portable" and click "Next".

4. MO2 will now ask you to choose the target game. If Monster Hunter: World is listed by default, simply pick it and click "Next". If it isn't shown by default, click on "Browse", then navigate to the game directory. Then choose the game's executable.

You can keep clicking "Next" without changing anything until it's done installing.

Configuring MO2 and Installing Mods

1. Now that you successfully installed MO2, you can launch it and be greeted by...

⠀
Now, do yourself a favor and (optionally) turn on dark mode. You can find it under Tools > Settings > Theme tab > choose one of the styles in the drop-down menu. I can recommend the one named "1809 Dark Mode", and the following images will be using that theme.

2. That mod list is looking a little empty, isn't it? I can fix that~. Well, actually, you will be fixing that, my dear reader. Get your mod archives (ending with .zip, or maybe .7z) and start piling them in one folder. You can create a "downloads" folder in MO2 directory for easier access and use. Keeping stuff in one place lets you conveniently forget about them without actually losing track of them.

3. Once you are done downloading and/or moving your mod archives, switch back to MO2 and click the second icon from the left on the top bar. A window will open which will let you choose a mod archive. Navigate to your "downloads" folder in MO2 directory, then pick a mod (preferably, the topmost one). Unfortunately, you have to pick them one by one, but it shouldn't take long.

Continue until you run out of mods to add to the list. Mind that mods that aren't packed just with the NativePC folder will be "installed" at the game directory rather than inside the NativePC folder, so you might need to extract and repack mods to prevent that. Some mod authors did a little trolling while packing their mods.

⠀
⠀
4. You should now have all of your mods listed on the left side. I got more than 70 myself over here, but the amount may vary for you. I also added some Essentials into the list myself, since they work as usual. I don't think they load unless you add them through MO2, anyway.

Now, if you did the same, move Stracker's Loader to the very top of the list by right-clicking it, hover over to "Send to...", then select "Lowest priority". This will move it to priority 1, which means it will load before everything else. Do the same for Performance Booster and Plugin Extender (priority 2).

Everything else is free game, but if something isn't loading while it should, make sure to check its priority. Bumping it up a bunch might solve the problem. For reference, I have everything except the two essentials I mentioned ordered alphabetically, so load order shouldn't cause issues.
⠀
⠀
4.1. Optionally, you can create separators to manage mods easier. I didn't bother with it except for outdated or disabled mods, but you can categorize them more extensively if you prefer. You can create separators by clicking the small "wrench and screwdriver" icon and then by selecting "Create separator".

You can freely drag and reorder separators and mods. This will change mod priority, as well.

⠀
5. Now that you got all your mods on the list, select them all by hitting CTRL + A, right-click on a mod, then select "Enable selected" to enable all of your mods. Make sure to check if all mod archives are packed correctly. That means, NativePC should be the top level folder. If it's in another folder with the mod's name or mod's variant (such as an optional file), extract the archive and archive it again with just NativePC in it.

⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ᴺᵒʷ, ᵗʰᵃᵗ'ˢ ᵃ ˡᵒᵗᵗᵃ ᵐᵒᵈˢ, ᶦⁿⁿᶦᵗ?

6. If you have any conflicts, mods which are conflicting each other will be marked with lightning symbols. You will have to choose between two mods or override one with the other. The one that has a smaller load order number will load first, which means it will override the other conflicting files.

Once you are done fiddling with your mods, click "Run" in the top-right corner to launch the game and check if your mods loaded correctly or not. If you have any specific issues, check the Troubleshooting section.

6.1. Optionally, create a shortcut on your Desktop by clicking the "Shortcut" button below "Run" and selecting "Desktop". This will let you run the game with all currently enabled mods without having to launch MO2 and clicking "Run".

Installing ReShade with MO2

1. Download the latest version of ReShade[reshade.me] from its own site. You don't need the one with full add-on support, in case you wonder.

2. Start the installer. It will now ask for you to pick a target application. Find and pick "Monster Hunter: World" on the list. You can use the search bar at the bottom to make things easier. After you find the game, click on it to select it, then click "Next".

3. Choose "Microsoft DirectX 10/11/12", then Click "Next".

4. ReShade will now ask you to select effects. Now, this part depends on what ReShade preset you picked. Different presets call for different effects, so you don't have to pick everything on the list. You need to pick the ones recommended for your preset, then click "Next" to finish the installation process.

5. ReShade is successfully installed! However, it will currently NOT load it if you are using DirectX12. Which means, we'll have to force it to load.

Launch MO2 again, then click the 6th icon at the top bar (two gears). Click on "Monster Hunter: World" to select it as a target, then locate the "Force load libraries" checkbox. Enable it. Afterwards, click on "Configure Libraries". Yet another window will appear. Add a row, then click on the "..." on the left side, navigate to the game directory, then select the game's executable. Once done, click the second "..." and select "dxgi.dll" in the game directory. Make sure to check the little checkbox for the row you added.

Congratulations! You can now use ReShade while also using DirectX12.

You can do the same thing for SharpPluginLoader (SPL) if you are having issues with it loading.

⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ᶠᵒˡˡᵒʷ ᵗʰᵉ ʸᵉˡˡᵒʷ ᵖᵃᶦⁿᵗ
⠀
⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ᴺᵒʷ ᵗʰᵃᵗ'ˢ ʷʰᵃᵗ ᴵ ᶜᵃˡˡ "ᶜᵒˡᵒʳᶠᵘˡ"
⠀

Troubleshooting

Got confused? Game crashing? Mods not working/loading? You have come to the right place. In this section, I'll list a few methods to find what's wrong with the game and/or the mods you installed.

Before trying anything, do the sensible thing and note down what mods you got. If you are modding by hand, good luck to you, since you are heavily inconveniencing yourself by not using the MHW Mod Manager listed in the Essentials section (or Mod Organiser 2).

Read. The. Damn. Mod. Pages. This section is here as a last resort. Read first before starting anything in this section.

"I couldn't figure out how to install mods..."

When in doubt, just extract the mod files into the game directory. They should automatically merge, unless the author did a little trolling and packed it incorrectly. The entire idea is to put the mod files into NativePC, which the game will load at launch.

For the MHW Mod Manager: You must tell it where the mods should go before it works by itself. Drag-and-drop the mods into the manager and let it lag like hell do its magic. You might or might not need to extract and re-pack a mod for the manager. Sometimes it works without fiddling, sometimes it doesn't. I repack the mods I got with only the NativePC folder inside a .zip file just to be sure, and it didn't fail yet.

For MO2: It has its own section, so read that instead.

Remember that adding or removing mods requires a restart of the game. In most cases, you won't be able to remove mods while the game is running, anyway. To be safe, just don't fiddle with the files while the game is running.

"Game is not booting up (or stays at a black screen after booting)"

You need to delete all mods (NativePC folder as a whole) and Stracker's Loader ("hid.dll" and "loader.dll" in game directory). Reinstall all mods one by one (or in groups of 2, 3 or 5 if you want to do it faster) and find which mod is causing issues.

This issue is usually caused by either an old version of Stracker's Loader OR having an old version of the game. Some mods may also cause it due to the same reason, as far as I'm aware. Sometimes other programs may cause issues as well. Discord's overlay may cause crashing at launch, for example.

Basically, make sure everything is up-to-date. The game itself included. If it doesn't solve the issue, chances are it wasn't about mods to begin with.

"Game launches but X mod does not work / does not load / does not whatever"

Make sure you installed the mod/s properly. Some authors place the NativePC folder into another folder, so extracting it doesn't install the mod. The contents of the mod's NativePC folder should be copied into the NativePC folder in the game directory for a mod to load.

If you installed it correctly, but it still does not load, check if the mod in question is updated for the latest MHW version. Read the mod pages and see if the mods require something else to work.

• A decent amount of mods still require Stracker's Loader even if they don't list it as a prerequisite
  
• Plugin mods require the Performance Booster and Plugin Extender to work
  
• Custom quests require the Quest Loader which comes together with Stracker's Loader
  
• SharpPluginLoader is required to load C# plugins

Make sure you have everything you need for a mod to work. ᵀʰᵉʳᵉ ᶦˢ ᵃ ʳᵉᵃˢᵒⁿ ʷᵉ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵃⁿ "ᴱˢˢᵉⁿᵗᶦᵃˡˢ" ˢᵉᶜᵗᶦᵒⁿ ᶦⁿ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵘᶦᵈᵉ.

If your issue is caused by Vortex's non-existent load order (or whatever other problem it is capable of producing): Don't use Vortex. MHW Mod Manager lags a little if a mod has a lot of files or is too large, but it will ultimately be better. The only downside is the lag, but that's manageable. Just be patient.

"X and Y mod are incompatible (and/or have shared files)"

No solution unless you learn modding or pay/request someone to combine the mods. In some cases, combining the mods may not be an option as well.

You need to use initiative when combining mods that have common files. If the shared file/s is/are not very important, you can probably overwrite it and it will cause no issues. This method requires knowledge of the files to an extent, however. Just give up on one of the mods if you don't know what you are doing.

I usually added a note under the mods that may have issues with other mods, because that's not something you can find out about unless you try installing mods with conflicting files. If I missed any ᵃⁿᵈ ˢᵘʳᵉˡʸ ᴵ ᵈᶦᵈ ᵐᶦˢˢ ˢᵒᵐᵉ, whatever mod manager you should already be using will tell you about it.

"Everything else failed, and I'm still confused"

Delete everything in the game directory EXCEPT the "chunk" folder (to not redownload the entire game), the "chunkhipc" folder (if you use High Res textures, to not redownload them) and "graphics_option.ini" (to keep your graphics settings). Then verify the game via Steam to redownload the "missing" files. It will download a bunch of files. You now have a clean installation.

The reason I recommend this is that reinstalling or verifying through Steam may not solve some issues, since files can still be left behind.

Needless to say, any mods you have will be nuked, but if whatever issue you had gets solved... One or more of them were likely the cause. When done, redownload the mods you were using, install them and try again. Do not use the mods you already had. One or more of them could be outdated. Make sure all the mods you got are up-to-date, before downloading them.

Mods have their dedicated folder, and no mod changes anything in terms of game files. This means that you can repeat this process as many times as you want and/or need without needing a complete redownload. Remember that you will need to reinstall ReShade if you do a clean installation, unless you keep the relevant files while performing a clean install, of course.

If you still have issues after this while trying to run the game with non-outdated mods installed... there's a high chance you're missing something else. Maybe it's that GPU driver you update once a year. Maybe it's the Visual Studio x86/x64 you didn't install for Stracker's Loader. It could be anything except the mods, at that point. Well, godspeed. I hope you figure it out.

Credits and Closing Notes

My eternal gratitude to everyone listed below! This guide was possible thanks to:

- Me, myself and I
- Mod creators who made all the mods and tools to make this guide possible
- Every single person in the comments who thanked me for my work
- Folks who suggested some good stuff for me to add into the guide
- That one lad who left hate mail because modding is bad or something and I should feel bad for enhancing my experience
- That other random pal who considers all modding as cheating, leaving a snarky comment
- ᵗʰᵃᵗ ³ ᴬᴹ ᶦᵈᵉᵃ ᵗᵒ ᵃᵈᵈ ᵗʰᵉˢᵉ ˢᵐᵃˡˡ ᵗᵉˣᵗˢ ᵃʳᵒᵘⁿᵈ ᵇᵉᶜᵃᵘˢᵉ ᴵ ᵗʰᶦⁿᵏ ᴵ'ᵐ ˡᵒˢᶦⁿᵍ ᶦᵗ ᶠᵒʳ ʳᵉᵃˡ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵗᶦᵐᵉ
- Everyone who gave me awards in the past years to show their appreciation. It's thanks to you I can afford stuff on the Points Shop. You really rock!

I check Nexus Mods several times every week, and almost on a daily basis, to see if there's anything worth mentioning. Most of the mods are purely on the visual side or are simply not worth mentioning, so there's that.

You can always check the update logs below to see if you missed any new additions. The amount of additions will slow down as time passes, due to less new mods being made often and the game being in a finished state. However, that won't stop me from updating this guide ᵃˢ ˡᵒⁿᵍ ᵃˢ ᴵ'ᵐ ᵃˡᶦᵛᵉ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᶦˢ.

If you liked this guide a little too much and would like to support me, you can donate through BuyMeACoffee or by gifting me an item via trading. I'm eternally grateful if my work was useful and worthy enough for you to consider supporting me!

You can buy me a coffee here.[www.buymeacoffee.com]
Alternatively, you can send me a trade request.

Thanks for your attention, my dear reader. Rating this guide is optional ʲᵘˢᵗ ˡᶦᵏᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ᵐᵒᵈˢ, so it's up to you. Feel free to point out mistakes or broken links. You can always suggest useful mods for this guide, if you happen to find anything noteworthy. Cheers and have fun!

Past Update Logs

Update Log (2021)
Update Log (2022)
Update Log (2023)
Update Log (2024)

Update Log (2025)

January

- 02.01.2025 Added "Increased Multiplayer Scaling" under Challenge Mods.
- 08.01.2025 Added "Enhanced Camera - Close and Far" under Visual and Sound Mods (Cont. Pt. 3). Added "No Spread Bow", "Increase Bow Range" and "10x Bowgun Range" under Cheaty Mods (Cont. Pt. 2).
- 12.01.2025 Happy birthday to the guide! Today marks the 4th anniversary, and off goes the former update log into the shadow realm. Time really flies when you are having fun...
- 13.01.2025 Added a new section called "Mod Organiser 2 and ReShade" after hours of typing and adjusting. As the name suggests, it's about how to set up MO2 and also use ReShade with it.
- 20.01.2025 Added "Better Daily Canteen Skills", "No Forced Hub Change After Quests - Return to Original Location" and "Permanent Special Arena Quest" under Honorable Mentions (Cont. Pt. 5). Also added "Quest Unlocker - Replay Special and Main Quests" under the same section. Removed "Permanent LRHR Special Arena Iceborne Update" from Custom Quests.

February

- 14.02.2025 Adjusted some formatting and wording. Nothing big, but the mod lists for new hunters look less wall-of-texty because I spaced them out every once in a while. Should be less of an eyesore now.
- 17.02.2025 Adjusted Essentials section to be more concise.

March

- 24.03.2025 Added SharpPluginLoader under Essentials. Turns out it might be required for more than just a handful of C# plugins. Also slightly adjusted some wording here and there in the same section.

April

- 09.04.2025 Removed "Dialog Control" from under Honorable Mentions (Cont. Pt. 4) because it causes crashing. This was mentioned in back in November or December in 2024, but I forgot to remove the problematic mods from the guide.
- 10.04.2025 Also removed "Infinite Monster Guiding Lands Timer" from under Honorable Mentions, and the Mod List for New Hunters sections. Same reason as yesterday.

May

- ???

[Mr. September]

I'm glad my work was useful! Yeah, MO2 is a bit finicky when it comes to some things, but forcing it to load stuff works out. I currently have ReShade and SPL force-load, and I'm on DirectX12 too. Honestly, the only reason I switched to MO2 was to use ReShade with DX12.

I added a line about SPL under the "Mod Organiser 2 and Reshade" section just to give people a heads-up about it. I think I didn't mention it before, and you must have figured it out from the screenshot. I hope it helps other people too in the future.

There should be a guide about MO2 on how to use it with ReShade for MHW, but it was very long-winded and you have to find that elsewhere too (likely on Nexus). I read the entire thing a while ago, made it shorter and added it to the guide for convenience. I'm glad to see it helped someone! Have fun, and happy hunting

[Phanni]

you saved my life with this. i could not for the life of me figure out how to get SPL working on MO2 and there are no other real guides for MO2 MHW.

Never wouldve figured out on my own that forced load settings was what i needed to change.

ty for solving my issue

[Mr. September]

Yeah, I recall mentioning that in the update log last year, but of course I can't expect people to read the past logs all the time, lol. I wouldn't have read it myself, honestly. It's just for keeping records on things, anyway.

I'll remove the mod from the guide for now and check once in a while if it ever gets updated. Thanks for the heads-up

[ReMorze]

Dialog Control has a bug and still not fixed since November, which causes the game to crash if you navigate to Join Quest -> Available Quest where there is no Quest has been posted yet and upon joining a SOS Quest when it fails to join (can't seem to see the error cause it just crashes instantly which my hunch is it's an error to join the SOS Quest). It's been an issue since it got updated to 15.23 ver., so if you're wondering why the game crashes in opening Available Quest and joining SOS Quest with a fail to join error you have to disable this mod.

[Ultimates]

Hello Mr. September !
Thank you so much for your colossal work towards the community !
I figured that you were looking for translators for one of your mod : "Concise Hunting Horn Effect Names (Iceborne)". I did my part, the French version is ready

[Mr. September]

Thanks for the heads-up.

I have no issues myself, since I had SPL for a long time. That explains it, I guess. Anyway. I'm adding it under Essentials, because might as well do that if some plugins that weren't causing any issues before are starting to cause issues somehow.

[samuelvomsee]

Oh, and DPSTickFix is also causing a black screen, both are from the same person, so there might be a connection. I found a fix tho, you need to lnstall the SharpPluginLoader from Fexty.

[samuelvomsee]

Better Input Detection is causing a constant black screen.

[JD]

Thanks for this, I just came from Finishing - Smashing Wilds, a new comer to MH. I played about 13 hours of World but Feel like I know the system slightly better...Seems like im in for a bloody great challenge. Thanks for the Great post.

[Mr. September]

Just got around to testing it, and yeah. It crashed when I tried to depart on a Guiding Lands expedition. The Clutch Claw mod seems fine, though.

Side note: I was getting random CTDs at launch for no apparent reason, and it was caused by Discord's game overlay somehow. Disabling it stopped the crashing.