Monster Hunter Wilds - The Tedious World of Crown Hunting

From all across the games in the series since Monster Hunter Freedom, monsters would come in a variety of sizes. Some are much bigger than normal; others can be the size of an elephant (which is small by Monster Hunter standards). They don’t have more or less health; they just are. If you play the game enough, you can be granted an award by obtaining all gold crowns. That means hunting the smallest and largest possible versions of every monster in the game.

A hunter's work is never done...

A couple of weeks ago, long after I’d completed the endgame and obtained my perfect armour set, I decided to actually knuckle down and 100% Monster Hunter Wilds while waiting for the first Title Update to come out. This was my first time ever doing this, but checking all the rewards on my Hunter Profile, I saw I was already 78% of the way there and there were already tons of people who have done it (without cheating), so it shouldn’t be too hard to get the last 22%, right?

Well, it's 35 hours later, and I want to punch whoever came up with the idea of silver crowns and crown hunting in general. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but it is a long and tedious process that made some points of my playtime miserable. I already had a few crowns just from hunting monsters casually, so my grind was mitigated somewhat. That being said, it did test my patience and my will to actually complete my first Monster Hunter game.

Hunting every do for a pointless prize.

I was hoping the event quests would’ve helped out, but they’ve been kind of underwhelming at this point in time. Some event quests do give you freebie crowns by having monsters be much bigger or smaller than usual. “A Rush of Blood” from Monster Hunter: World gave you a mini Odogoron, while “The Greatest Jagras” had a massive, well, Great Jagras… that could one-shot you no matter the armour you have. They’re fun and it lessens the headache of achievement hunters, and you get cool rewards out of it.

However, after doing some research, I have to admit I am lucky I didn’t lose my sanity by doing this in the previous games. Before Wilds, there was little to no way in-game to tell how big a monster was until the results screen. The only way you could tell before hunting it is to either eyeball it or measure the monster using roundabout methods, such as putting it to sleep and using Barrel Bombs (as shown by Vic Gaming on their channel) or by spotting little details (like in this video by Gaming with Abyss). Or, you could just hunt that particular monster until you get both crowns. Hey, it might take until the species is near extinction, but one of them has to be the right size eventually, right?

Can you tell if this is a crown-worthy monster?

Wilds is actually the easiest game to obtain all the crowns thanks to several features. First off is the Binoculars item: using it to look at a monster will tell you the size of it and reveal if it is the right size for either a silver or gold crown. It saves so much time and effort as all you need is a quick glance rather than hunting it or attempting to measure the thing. You can even look through walls to check. If only it had a more usable range (it works at 60 meters).

Secondly is the Wounded Hollow. This arena-like area has a unique trait in that it doesn’t have a set size for whatever monster that wanders into it. If the monster isn’t big or small enough, you can just leave the area and come back, and it will be a different size. Now, it doesn’t include Guardian and Apex monsters and this will probably be patched out soon enough (which likely will be patched at a later date), but you can easily get the crowns for most of the base roster.

Finally, is… having friends. Creating investigation quests will save the size of the monster. If someone comes across a crown monster, they can easily share it with their hunting buddies and not only that, they’ll have several tries if they use up all the carts. There are also tons of people who are willing to send out SOS Flares to help others in their journey to grab the achievement. I’ve done it myself and I’m glad to support others in their endeavour.

I have now gotten an A Rank in Barrel Bowling.

At the time of writing, I haven’t finished my grind for crowns yet (I still need crowns from all the Guardians, some of the Apexes, and Rompopolo), and to be honest I’ll probably never do this again, but Wilds’ iteration of crown hunting feels a lot more fun that trying to do it in the previous games. It encourages teamwork and working together with a community for everyone to obtain that illustrious award and get one step closer to 100%. At the very least, it’s faster and easier to do. I’m doing this as a solo player, but I thoroughly recommend joining a crown-hunting Discord. There should be plenty out there already who would be glad to help.

I should mention this isn’t my last award, though. I still need to fish up a giant squid, hunt 50 Apexes, and catch 30 whoppers. I’ll need a guide for the giant squid, I could probably get 50 Apexes from just hunting them for crowns, and I think I have eight or nine whoppers already from when I needed Spearfish fins for the Spearfish Greatsword.

I'm happy to inform you that I'm making tons of progress since I wrote this article.

And finally, again at the time of writing, the servers are going to be taken offline for maintenance to prep for the Title Update… where it will include Mizutsune which I probably might need crowns for.

Please wish me luck.