Monster Hunter Rise Best Crafting Items

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Melika Jeddi

Like many other millennials, Melika's introduction to RPGs was through Pokémon. She loved being able to wander the world and go on her own adventure, and that combination of lore and exploration was what made her fall in love with the RPG genre. She tends to prefer turn-based combat over real-time combat due to a tendency to panic during fights. However, she is open to trying anything with smooth controls, cool graphics, and an engaging story. Her current RPG obsession is Monster Hunter Rise, but she is always on the lookout for new titles to enjoy.

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• Monster Hunter Rise Best Crafting Items - April 8, 2023

I often feel rather conflicted when playing Monster Hunter Rise. It’s easy to justify killing aggressive monsters like an Arzuros, but what did the sweet little Melynx do to me? Don’t get me wrong, I still kill them all indiscriminately, but I do feel a bit bad about it.

One thing I don’t have to feel bad about, though, is crafting. An essential element of the game, crafting allows you to make use of all the fascinating items you discover whilst completing quests. Crafting is relatively simple on the surface, but there are many aspects you need to consider.

In this guide, I’ll talk you through the best items to gather, what to craft and when, and how to craft them. By the end, you should feel ready to take on any quest that you set your mind to, safe in the knowledge that you can craft everything you need! Onwards, hunters!

The Most Useful Crafting Items

• Potion and Mega Potion
• Pitfall Trap
• Herbal Medicine
• Energy Drink
• Poison Smoke Bomb
• Barrel Bomb and Large Barrel Bomb
• Drugged Meat
• Catalyst
• Armorskin and Mega Armorskin

What is Crafting and Why is it Useful?

Crafting is simply the process of taking existing items and turning them into new items. Normally you’ll be using 2 different items, but it can sometimes be only one. For example, crafting deodorant only requires Sunscorned Grass. There are a few other recipes that also use only a single ingredient.

Crafting recipes are nice and easy in Monster Hunter Rise. Some games require you to go out and find crafting blueprints, or to be gifted them by NPCs.

That’s not the case here. In Monster Hunter Rise, you’re able to start crafting items as soon as you’ve discovered the ingredients for that recipe. Until then, the missing recipes appear as ‘???’ in the crafting list.

So, why craft? Because it makes your life easier. Quests can be challenging, especially as you start getting into the higher star levels. With the low-level quests, you can get away with just using the stuff you find in the Supply Box, but after a while, that’s not going to cut it anymore.

You’ll get to a point where you’ll need a range of consumables, traps, and other combat items to take down the larger monsters in your path.

Technically, you could buy a lot of the items, either from the market or from the Argosy. However, this is impractical for two reasons.

Firstly, it’s likely to be pretty expensive, and your money/ points could be put to better use buying items that you can’t craft yourself such as Charms. Secondly, you’d have to rely on that item being in stock. Crafting offers you a cheaper and more consistent source of the items that you’re after.

Crafting also has the benefit of being accessible on the go. Sometimes, you may not realize you need a certain item until you find yourself in a tricky situation.

Or you may have brought an item along with you, used it up, and find yourself in need of another one. Being able to craft new items for yourself is an invaluable skill.

How to Craft in Monster Hunter Rise

Crafting is an essential process, and thankfully the developers have made it really easy, too. There are two different ways to craft – from your inventory or from your Item Box.

If you’re out on a quest, you’ll have to rely on what’s in your inventory. To craft whilst out and about, open your start menu, and navigate to ‘Crafting List’. From there, you’ll see a list of recipes. The ones that you can make will be highlighted, whilst any that you don’t currently have the ingredients for will be grayed out.

However, if you’re not on a quest, you’ll want to craft directly from your Item Box. That way, you’re not limited by what’s currently in your inventory, and you’ll have access to all your items.

Then you can simply scroll through the list of crafting recipes, select the one you want to craft, and with one click of a button, you can craft it there and then.

Another option is auto-crafting. There may be certain items that you wish to craft every time the option is available to you. That way, as soon as you pick up the necessary ingredients for it, they’ll be combined automatically and the completed item will go into your inventory.

You may wish to do this with items you use regularly such as Potions or Antidotes. To set auto-crafting, you want to go into the sub-menu from the crafting list page.

Most Useful Items to Gather

So, to actually craft using your recipes, you’ll need ingredients. But with several different maps available to traverse, just where do you start? Which ingredients should be your main focus?

When you first start playing you can pick up pretty much anything you find, but towards the higher levels, you’ll find your inventory quickly filling up during a mission, and you’ll have to prioritize.

These items below, although by no means exhaustive, are a great place to start when searching for useful ingredients.

Honey

Although it’s not rare, it’s quite sparse around the map in most biomes, so you’ll need to keep an eye out for it. It appears in the form of a beehive.

Honey is used in several different crafting recipes, often very useful ones, and so it’s an excellent item to gather a lot of. One excellent use of Honey is to produce Catalyst.

Spider Web

Not as common as you might think, you can still find Spider Webs dotted around the map. The most convenient biome to harvest it would be Shrine Ruins, as that’s accessible even for beginner players, and there are several areas where it can spawn.

Spider Webs are used in the process of making Nets, which in turn are essential for hunting gear such as Pitfall Traps.

Raw Meat

As well as being useful for creating Steak (more on that later), raw meat can be really handy as a crafting material. It’s used to make compromised bait to lure in larger monsters such as Great Baggi or Tigrex.

Some examples of recipes crafted with Raw Meat are Drugged Meat and Poisoned Meat.

Antidote Herb

You can probably guess from the name which crafting recipe these are used in. That’s right, Antidote.

An Antidote is necessary to cure poison or venom and is itself a crafting ingredient used to make Herbal Medicine. Antidote Herb is most plentiful in the Shrine Ruins biome, appearing in almost every area within it.

Nitroshroom

This spicy mushroom is harder to find than many mushrooms, so you’ll need to keep your eyes out. Nitroshroom is most commonly found in the Citadel, a location that was introduced as part of the Sunbreak expansion.

However, if you haven’t unlocked Citadel, you can find Nitroshroom more sparsely in other biomes such as Shrine Ruins or Sandy Plains. Nitroshroom is used in 3 crafting recipes, including Energy Drink.

Smokenut

Used in 2 handy recipes, Farcaster and Poison Smoke Bomb, a Smokenut is a useful item to forage.

It’s less commonly found than many of the other ingredients in this list, only appearing in Citadel, Jungle, and Flooded Forest. The best place to harvest it is from Flooded Forest as it appears in 6 different areas.

Adamant Seed

This item is almost essential if you’re looking for ways to improve your defense whilst out in the field. Crafting aside, you can ingest it to temporarily boost your defense, but the main reason it’s so handy is because of what you can create with it.

It’s a key ingredient for Armorskin, which offers you a permanent (until the end of the quest) defense boost. It’s also used in a couple of other crafting recipes. Finding it may be a bit tricky, though, as it’s quite rare, not appearing in more than 3 areas in any of the biomes.

Barrel

You can find either Small Barrel or Large Barrel in Monster Hunter Rise, although obviously Large Barrel is better. They can be used to make Barrel Bombs, which are useful weapons against larger monsters.

Finding Barrels is slightly dependent on luck, as instead of finding the item itself, you have to loot a Junk Pile, so there are a few other items you could find instead. Barrels can be found in Shrine Ruins, Sandy Plains, and Flooded Forest.

Best Items to Craft

Now, naturally ‘best items to craft’ is rather subjective. Everyone will have a different play style, so the items that you use regularly could vary from what others use regularly. However, some items should be a staple regardless of how you play. I’ve included these ones in this list.

I’ve also suggested some options for useful items to craft that could work for specific types of players. That way, regardless of how you approach the game, you’ll be covered. For each item, I’ve spoken about the ingredients necessary, as well as the best times to craft and use the item.

I haven’t included a category for ammo as it’s just too subjective. Some players may not even use projectile weapons, and the ones that do will have wildly different preferences. The ‘best’ ammo will also heavily depend on how far along you are in the game, and which ingredients you have access to.

Consumables

These are items that you consume whilst out on a quest that will provide you with some kind of boost or effect. These are only used out in the locations, and will not provide an effect in Kamura Village. You can use a consumable by navigating to it in your bottom menu, and then pressing the interact button when you’re ready.

Potions/ Mega Potions

These are the bread and butter of Monster Hunter Rise. Chances are that you’re gonna be taking damage from time to time whilst out there taking on all those monsters. Sometimes you’ll be right next to a Vigorwasp and can just use that to heal. However, other times you’ll have to rely on your own inventory.

Potions and Mega Potions should definitely be on your auto-craft list, that way you’ll nearly always have them to hand. You might also consider selecting Mega Potion along the bottom menu and having it as your default item unless you need to change to something else.

To craft Potion, you’ll need:

• Herb

To craft Mega Potion, you’ll need:

• Potion
• Honey

Energy Drink

One of the most frustrating things when out on a quest is the constant loss of stamina. Stamina is used for any kind of running, including wall running. At the start of a quest, your bar will be pretty fall, and you’ll be able to scale medium cliffs with ease.

But after a few minutes, that bar will be starting to look rather unhealthy, and you might need to rely on Wirebugs to climb even a relatively small rock.

To combat this, you’ll need to use Stamina consumables. Now, there are other ones such as Well-Done Steak or your basic Rations, but Energy Drink is arguably the best. It can be crafted in an instant unlike Steak and boosts significantly more Stamina than a Ration.

Although it’s really useful, the ingredients used to create it appear in other useful recipes. Therefore, I wouldn’t recommend having it on your auto-craft list. Instead, craft a few at a time as and when you need them for a quest.

To craft Energy Drink, you’ll need:

• Honey
• Nitroshroom

Herbal Medicine

This is essentially just a better Antidote, and it’s always worth having a few in your inventory in case you contract any poisonous effects.

You can consume it to rid yourself of the poison as well as restore some health. This secondary effect is useful as poison will drain your health, so it works to recover the damage that you sustained whilst you were crafting/ navigating to the Herbal Medicine.

This is another recipe that I’d recommend having on the auto-craft list, along with the Antidote that you’ll need to craft Herbal Medicine in the first place.

To craft Herbal Medicine, you’ll need:

• Antidote
• Blue Mushroom

Armorskin/ Mega Armorskin

When you’re facing off against a large monster, you need to accept the probability that it will get a few hits in.

No matter how quick you are at dodging, the chances are that you’ll slip up eventually unless you’re an absolute pro. It can’t be helped. So to counter that, you need to ensure that you are ready to deal with that eventuality.

One way of dealing with damage is to consume Potions when it happens, but there’s also a smarter way. You’ve probably heard of the old adage ‘prevention is better than cure’.

So if Potions represent ‘cure’ in this case, then ‘prevention’ can be covered by Armorskin. This is a potion that will boost your defense when consumed, so you’ll take less damage from hits.

The best thing about Armorskin is that it is essentially a permanent boost. You’ll keep the elevated defense until you complete the quest or you cart.

Carting is a term that refers to losing all your health and having to restart from back at your cart at the beginning of the map. Mega Armorskin works exactly the same as its regular counterpart, it just offers more of a boost.

To craft Armorskin, you’ll need:

• Catalyst
• Adamant Seed

To craft Mega Armorskin, you’ll need:

• Armorskin
• Pale Extract

Combat Items & Traps

This section is for items that will help you during combat with monsters. These are items that you’ll need to actively use against a monster, rather than boosting any of your own stats. These items aren’t consumed by you and are instead placed/ thrown out in the field.

Pitfall Trap

Just as with Drugged Meat, this is another situation where different players will have their own opinion as to which trap is best.

I think that both opinions are valid in this respect, but I’m here to make the case for Pitfall Trap. Traps are used against larger monsters. Top tip – if you’ve got a monster in a trap, use a Tranq Bomb to keep it there for longer.

Pitfall Trap captures a monster and drops it into the ground. From there, you can capture it (provided you’ve weakened it enough) or kill it. If you decide to kill it, the Pitfall Trap allows you to attack uninterrupted for a time until the monster breaks out of it.

Pitfall Traps last longer than Shock Traps, which is the main reason I like them. However, they also take longer to set up, so you’ll need to plan their use effectively.

The last thing you want is for the monster to charge you whilst you’re still in the process of putting the trap together. Pitfall Traps also mean that the monster’s head will be easier to reach, as the monster will be pulled into the ground.

To craft Pitfall Trap, you’ll need:

• Trap Tool
• Net

To craft the Net for the Pitfall Trap, you’ll need:

• Ivy
• Spider Web

Drugged Meat

This is a favorite of mine. It’s really convenient to put a larger monster to sleep as it can give you valuable time to restore your own health/ stamina or to craft consumable buffs. It also means you can get some attacks in without being attacked in response. It’s great to use as bait in traps.

However, I wouldn’t recommend having this on the auto-craft list, because there are plenty of other uses for Raw Meat. You don’t want to use it all up making Drugged Meat when other uses could suit you better in certain situations.

For example, you may be running low on stamina when you don’t have the resources to craft Energy Drink. In that situation, you’d want to whip out your BBQ Spit and cook Well-Done Steak, which requires Raw Meat.

Other crafting uses for Raw Meat include Poisoned Meat and Tinged Meat. Both of these offer other options for weakening a monster, and you’ll have to play around with the different options to find what’s best for you. Personally, though, I maintain that Drugged Meat is the best option.

To craft Drugged Meat, you’ll need:

• Sleep Herb
• Raw Meat

Barrel Bomb/ Large Barrel Bomb

This explosive combo can deal serious damage, but you’ll need to be quick. Only set this up once you’re ready to use it, and have a Wirebug ready to get out of there. You’ll want to move the moment that you set the Barrel Bomb down. When done correctly, you can deal a lot of damage to a monster.

The way these work is that you’ll need to decide how many Large Barrel Bombs you want to use. Bear in mind that the hold limit is 3. Then, set them up around the monster.

Finally, prepare your Barrel Bomb ready to detonate them. The Barrel Bomb will explode almost instantaneously, so you’ll need to be careful not to get caught in the crossfire.

The best way to do this safely is to launch the Barrel Bomb from a height. Select the Barrel Bomb along the bottom menu, then jump into the air using your Wirebug.

Aim the Barrel Bomb at the Large Barrel Bombs you’ve set, and then boom! Throw the Barrel Bomb for a massive explosion and watch as the monster loses loads of health.

You get extra damage for using Barrel Bombs against a sleeping monster. Instead of jumping the gun at the start of a fight, consider putting it to sleep using Drugged Meat or a Tranq Bomb. Otherwise, you can lower its health until it runs off to sleep and recover.

To craft Barrel Bomb, you’ll need:

• Small Barrel
• Fire Herb

To craft Large Barrel Bomb, you’ll need:

• Large Barrel
• Gunpowder

Poison Smoke Bomb

Sometimes you may find yourself surrounded by smaller monsters during a mission. Time is often a commodity in Monster Hunter Rise, so instead of tackling them one at a time, anything that produces an area effect is worth considering.

Poison Smoke Bomb is one of the better ways to take out a group of smaller monsters, especially bugs and insects.

Poison Smoke Bomb releases a cloud of toxic gas that causes poison to those in the vicinity. Poison is a mechanic which deals damage over time, but given the low HP of most small monsters, it shouldn’t take long for them to succumb to death, and you can attack them in the meantime to speed that up.

It’s primarily useful against smaller monsters, and that’s what I’d recommend it for. However, you can technically use them to temporarily weaken larger monsters.

You’d need to aim and throw a lot of them for it to have any effect, though, so the general consensus is that it’s not worth it. You can hold up to 10 of them at a time, and it would probably take all of them to deal any poison at all to a larger monster.

To craft Poison Smoke Bomb, you’ll need:

• Smokenut
• Toadstool

Other

Some items don’t have a specific use in either combat or for consumption. However, that doesn’t mean they’re not worth crafting. This section covers everything outside of the above categories. For me, there’s one crafting recipe that stands clear above the others as being absolutely essential for a hunter. Take a look!

Catalyst

This is quite possibly the single most versatile item in the entire game. Catalyst is used in a whopping 9 different crafting recipes, several of which are staples of a hunter’s arsenal.

This is especially true if you use projectile weapons. Catalyst is an item that you have to create rather than just harvesting it in the wild, so being able to craft it is essential.

Despite its usefulness, I’d advise new players against crafting it automatically. That’s because one of the ingredients is Honey, which is used in a few other recipes.

However, once you’ve been playing for a few hours and have unlocked Level 1/ Level 2 quests, Catalyst starts becoming more and more useful.

You’re also likely to have a surplus of Honey by that point. So although initially, you want to be careful about crafting it, there’s no harm in auto-crafting it once you’ve got some more experience. The hold limit is 5, so you’re not gonna use up all your Honey.

So, what makes Catalyst so convenient? It’s a core ingredient in all of the following recipes:

• Max Potion
• Dash Juice
• Demondrug
• Armorskin
• Poison Ammo 2
• Paralysis Ammo 2
• Sleep Ammo 2
• Exhaust Ammo 2
• Recover Ammo 2

To craft Catalyst, you’ll need:

• Bitterbug
• Honey

Cooking Steak

Whilst this isn’t technically a crafting item, I’m including it in this guide as you’re taking a basic item (raw meat) and turning it into a consumable (Steak). Also, when I first started, I assumed that steak would be in the crafting menu and I wasted a long time looking for it. So, here’s how you actually create steak.

First of all, you need to get yourself some raw meat. You can harvest this from many different small monsters. I’d recommend hunting Bombadgy or Gargwa as they have relatively decent drop rates and are easy to find even for new players.

Once you have your raw meat, you need to scroll along your item menu at the bottom. Navigate to ‘BBQ Spit’ which should show the infinity symbol. This indicates that you can use it as many times as you like. It’s worth noting that there will be a red cross through the BBQ Spit if you don’t have any raw meat in your inventory.

Then it’s time to cook! Set up the Spit using the interact button (this will vary depending on which platform you’re using). The meat will start slowly turning whilst a cheerful tune plays. You need to really focus on this next part. You want to look out for when the meat changes color.

After a few seconds, the raw meat will appear cooked, but you don’t want to take it off the Spit yet. If you do, you’d only get Rare Steak.

The next moment is crucial. After a few more seconds, the meat will darken ever-so-slightly. This is barely noticeable and you’ll need to be paying really close attention. As soon as you see this, you need to immediately remove the meat from the Spit. Doing so will grant you Well-Done Steak.

However, only a split second after the color change, the meat will turn black, and you’ll end up with Burnt Steak. It can take a few attempts to get the hang of the timing, but you’ll get there.

FAQs

Conclusion

There we have it! A comprehensive guide to the best crafting items in Monster Hunter Rise. Now, as I mentioned throughout the article, this list is by no means exhaustive.

There are many excellent items that you can craft in the game, and I’ve only covered my top choices here. Depending on your play style, you might find others that work just as well for you if not better.

I’d encourage you to play around with the crafting options. Every time you discover new ingredients, you’ll unlock more crafting recipes.

Therefore it’s good practice to harvest plenty of items when you’re out in the field, as well as buying unique items from the vendors and the Argosy. Check your crafting list regularly to see what you can make, and if there’s something new, then you should give it a try.

Whenever you go out on a quest, make sure to pack a good range of consumables and combat items whilst leaving space in your inventory for harvesting new items. Think carefully about what a particular quest will require, and only take what you’ll need for that quest.

If you’re hunting large monsters, you’re nearly always going to need some kind of trap as well as an item to weaken it. If they don’t go for meat, then something like a Tranq Bomb is a decent alternative.

Hopefully, this guide has proven useful for you, and you feel ready to craft your way to victory!

Looking for more interesting readings? Check out:

• Monster Hunter Rise Getting Started Guide – A Warm Welcome for Kamura Village’s Upcoming Hunter
• Monster Hunter Rise Best Weapons – The Hardest Part Is Picking Just One