MH Outlanders Beginner Guide: What to Do in Your First 2 Hours

Before you press play

Spend two minutes in the settings menu before your first hunt. Frame-rate stability matters more than sharpness on a phone, and camera sensitivity is personal — you can adjust both now instead of fighting them mid-quest. Our settings guide covers the toggles worth changing on day one; the short version is: prioritise smooth performance, enable any target-lock assist, and set the camera so you can still see the monster while attacking.

Also make sure you've installed the game properly first. If the store page is missing or the download stalls, the download & install guide and the errors & fixes page handle those problems.

Step 1 — Clear the tutorial without rushing

The opening sequence teaches movement, gathering, and the basic attack flow. Don't mash through it: the combat controls it introduces are the ones you'll use for the next hundred hours.

• Learn dodge timing now. Almost every early death is a mistimed dodge, not low damage.
• Note the targeting behaviour. Understand how the camera locks on before you fight anything large.
• Gather everything marked. Early materials are cheap to carry and useful to have banked.

Step 2 — Pick a weapon you'll actually enjoy

You'll be asked to choose a starting weapon type. There is no wrong answer, but your first pick shapes how the whole game feels, so choose based on how you like to play rather than on what looks strongest on a list.

As a rule of thumb for mobile: reach and safety make the first hours easier, while high-commitment weapons reward practice but punish mistakes. Try at least two types before settling in — you can change your loadout later, so treat this as sampling, not a commitment. The best weapons for beginners page breaks down each type by how forgiving it is on a touchscreen.

Step 3 — Work through the early quests in order

Early quests are paced to teach systems one at a time: gathering, crafting, then hunting. Follow them rather than wandering, because several mechanics unlock only after specific quests.

• Complete story quests first — they gate features you'll want later.
• Pick up side objectives when they're on your route; don't detour far for them yet.
• Craft your first piece of gear as soon as the game offers it, but don't perfect it.

Step 4 — Your first real hunt

The first large-monster fight is your real test. Keep these habits from the start:

• Observe before you commit. Watch one attack cycle before going aggressive.
• Heal early, not at 10% health. Getting knocked out costs more time than a cautious retreat.
• Use the environment. Terrain and traps are tools, not decoration.
• Break parts when you safely can. Extra materials are worth the detour.

What to spend and what to save

Mobile Monster Hunter games tend to layer several currencies and upgrade tracks. In your first hours, keep it simple:

Resource type	Spend now?	Why
Basic consumables (potions, whetstones)	Yes	Cheap, replaceable, keep you alive
Story-required upgrades	Yes	They gate progress and are usually free
Premium currency	No	Wait until you understand the economy
Rare upgrade materials	No	Save for the weapon you settle on
Cosmetic pulls	No	Purely optional and easy to regret early

For a deeper look at how summon-style systems usually work, see gacha & contracts explained.

Common first-day mistakes

1. Chasing the tier list too early

Launch-week rankings are provisional and will shift after the first balance patches. Playing something you enjoy beats playing something that's theoretically "S-tier" for a week.

2. Ignoring companions and support systems

Your companion and team slots are not decoration — they cover your weak spots. See the adventurers & companions overview.

3. Burning materials on the wrong gear

Early armour is disposable. Upgrade only what the story requires, and hoard the rest until you know your main weapon.

What to do after your second hour

Once the tutorial is behind you: settle on a weapon, unlock multiplayer, and start planning a first proper build. If you're about to hunt with other people, read how to play with friends so your first group hunt isn't a mess.

Ecology level: the hidden ceiling on everything else

Ecology level is the game's own term for a system that never appears in combat, which is exactly why players miss it. It sits above your other progression as a cap: the maximum level your key upgradeable items and your Buddies can reach is unlocked by ecology level, and a number of quests and challenge stages — including their higher-difficulty versions — stay locked until your ecology level meets the requirement. If an upgrade track seems to have stopped for no reason, this is usually the cause.

Raising it is deliberately gentle at first. The first three increases ask for nothing beyond your adventure level being at the right stage. From there, each increase also requires clearing a breakthrough challenge quest — a gate rather than a difficulty spike. The quests are comfortable at a normal level of investment, and failing one simply means retrying it.

• Adventure level is the prerequisite. It rises from adventure experience, which comes from daily tasks, spending your stamina-style resource, den assignments, and any side quests you still have open.
• Levelling adventure level pays twice. Each increase also hands out rewards, including standard recruit tickets.
• A higher ecology level makes the open world harder. Wild monsters gain stars as you climb, so if the field already feels rough there is no harm in pausing here until your gear catches up.

How character growth is structured

Every Adventurer grows along the same three tracks. Understanding the order they unlock in saves a lot of materials.

Track	How it works
Level	Capped at 80 and raised with experience items from quests and hunts. Attack, defence and health climb steadily, but on their own they will not release a character's full potential.
Breakthrough	Consumes rare monster materials. Stats jump, passive multipliers improve, and talent-tree nodes begin to open — this is the track that changes how a character plays.
Insight	Duplicate copies of a character convert into shards that unlock this track. Each layer raises base stats, and the deeper layers add genuinely new combat mechanics.

Skills sit outside those three tracks and are upgraded one action module at a time — normal attacks, specials, dodge counters and ultimates each level separately. They use skill books in three grades: the blue grade comes steadily from daily stamina dungeons, purple from long continuous-hunt dungeons, and gold only from season-limited events or first clears of hard stages. Every skill level raises that skill's damage and its chance of triggering status effects. Later breakthroughs open a specialisation choice with three routes — burst damage, status and break, or team support — which is the point where two players using the same character can genuinely diverge.

There is also a card-style loadout layer alongside all of this: cards of different costs are spent against a fixed point budget, and holding matching sets unlocks bonuses — two cards for a basic effect, four for the core one. The cards drop from field hunts, the top rarity is very rare, and duplicates can be fed into an alchemy-style system to produce a card with the stats you actually want.

Two systems sit outside your Adventurers entirely. Buddies follow the same level, breakthrough and insight structure, gaining experience from hunts or from training while you are away; their breakthrough materials are separate from yours and grant your character a flat attack bonus. Account-wide progression runs on its own track that unlocks as the story advances — its levels require clearing harder hunts, raising gear rarity and lifting overall combat power, and once it levels it applies a percentage bonus to the attack, defence and health of every character you own. That makes it the one upgrade that never becomes obsolete.