Monster Hunter Now Rakes in $14 Million on 5 Million Downloads in First Week

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Following the footsteps of Pokémon GO and its plethora of events, Niantic has announced a Monster Hunter Now Halloween event! Get ready to pick pumpkins, or at least rocks painted like pumpkins that have appeared across the map!

Unlocked after completing Chapter 2 of Monster Hunter Now, the Bow specializes in mid-range charged attacks. Unlike most other weapons with charging mechanics, you can dodge and still maintain your charge. However, after completing your dodge, you will automatically fire your arrow at its current charge level.

The Great Sword is the second weapon you unlock in Monster Hunter Now. As a big, hulking behemoth of a weapon, it’s slow to hit but packs a punch. Coupled with elemental damage, the Great Sword can be excellent for Large Monster hunts, especially if you’re aiming for A Rank. However, you need to get the timing down for both your attacks and your dodges. If you can get a perfect dodge and follow up with an attack, hunts will take no time at all.

The Long Sword in Monster Hunter Now feels like a fusion between the Sword & Shield and Great Sword. Regarding attack speed and power, it falls somewhere between the two. The Long Sword does more damage than the Sword & Shield, but swings faster than the Great Sword.

When you start Monster Hunter Now, your first weapon will be the Sword & Shield. This weapon allows you to attack quickly and guard against incoming attacks. However, you won’t do a lot of damage. In Large Monster hunts, this will be a detriment due to the 75-second time constraint.

Like Great Swords and Long Swords in Monster Hunter Now, Hammers are slow weapons with a high damage output. However, Hammers have the added bonus of potentially stunning monsters. You have a higher chance of stunning monsters if you hit a monster’s head.

Monster Hunter Now currently has two ranged weapons: the Bow and the Light Bowgun. Think of these like how the Great Sword is to the Sword & Shield. While both the Bow and Light Bowgun offer increased distance, the Bow is a slower weapon with a higher damage output while the Light Bowgun attacks rapidly with less damage.

In addition to a weapon’s Special Skill, all weapons and armor pieces in Monster Hunter Now have Equipment Skills. These skills enhance your combat in some way, either by providing stat buffs or reducing monsters’ effects.

Monster Hunter Now focuses on combat, treating exploration as a secondary feature. As such, the game has a simple but expansive equipment system. Equipment is broken up into Weapons and Armor. From there, Weapons branch out into different weapon types and Armor splits into different sets.

Large Monsters are the core of the Monster Hunter Now gameplay. Focusing on combat, the game offers monstrous enemies with unique attack patterns. To master the game, you’re encouraged to learn these patterns and time your attacks and dodges accordingly. But if you want to button (or screen) mash, you can do that too.

When hunting Large Monsters in Monster Hunter Now, you have the option to either solo the hunt or invite other hunters to join you. The Group Hunt feature unlocks at Hunter Rank 6 and allows you and up to three other hunters to form a team during a hunt.