Build Recommendations: Mid Game (High Rank)

As you enter High Rank in Monster Hunter: World, your build strategies need to evolve. This phase introduces more challenging monsters and unlocks better equipment, allowing for more specialized and powerful setups. Focusing on specific monster weaknesses and acquiring High Rank armor and weapons will significantly improve your hunting efficiency and survival.

Optional quests are a great way to acquire materials and rewards for mid-game builds. These quests unlock through various activities:

Finding a monster (low/high/master rank all count as separate).
Capturing monsters (low/high/master rank all count as separate).
Talking to Villagers with a (!) in Astera, Research Base, or Seliana.
Completing previous Optional quests.
Randomly available Rare encounters that last for 2 quests and disappear.
Fully researching monsters (all tabs in the monster manual).
Hunting a certain number of different tempered monsters (quests/investigations with more than one tempered targets only register the first listed).
Your current progress level for Assigned Quests.

"Special Arena:" Quests are unlocked by Capturing the monster. Once completed, they re-appear randomly on your Quest Board. Uncompleted MR Arena Quests will always be made available for you to complete (once the monster has been captured). Checking your hunter's notes may help in researching why some arena quests do not appear, since the notes display how many times you have captured any monster (a "-" means that the monster cannot be captured). However, the research notes display how many times the monster has been captured in total (throughout low, high and master ranks), and you do need to capture any monster at least once in each rank (if it is available) to unlock the corresponding arena quest. Some monsters do not have special arena quests associated with them, such as the Rajang or the Frostfang Barioth.