Monster Hunter World: Iceborne Top Tips For Using Insect Glaives

The Insect Glaive can be one of the best weapons in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, but hunters need to know how to handle them. They’re fast, mobile, and keep hunters on the move at any point during a fight, but the true skill lies in the smaller details.

Deadly on land, and in the air

Essentially this is a staff that you attach helpful bugs to. It allows you to deal damage quickly, but what type of damage that is, and the effect it has on the monster you’re hunting, completely depends on the Kinsects you’ve loaded into it.

Hunters using an Insect Glaive are able to jump on command, unlike any other weapon in the game. This means that there’s a new layer of verticality to every encounter, attack, and strategy you employ. This jumping and attacking in the air can even be used to help you mount monsters.

With such a fast weapon, it’s more efficient to mount the monster and deal damage while out of their attack range. You can wear the monster down quickly, forcing them to collapse, opening them up for massive damage from other hunters in your team.

A word of caution

Unfortunately all the speed and mobility that the Insect Glaive provides comes at a price. You cannot block with this weapon. While in the air you’re defenceless, but even when you’re on the ground you can only dodge or run out of the way of attacks. All trying to block will do is get you hurt, and probably killed.

Kinsects

Kinsects are what you attach to your Insect Glaive in order to make it more powerful. They open up the ability to buff your hunter, attack from range, deal AoE damage, and much more. They break down into three core areas.

• Attacking and dealing damage to enemies
• Harvesting extract in order to buff the hunter
• Leaving dust clouds behind in their wake

You’ll begin with two Kinsects, Culldrone and Mauldrone. Culldrone is a Kinsect with a specialisation in offensive attacks, whereas Mauldrone is a Kinsect that focuses on healing your hunter. Once you’ve got to grips with these guys you can buy or nurture more Kinsects from the Smithy. He’ll help you work out what stats you want them to have, help you change and improve them, and ultimately make it easier to form the best Insect Glaive for you.

Ranged Attacks and Extracts

By aiming with your Insect Glaive, and using the right Kinsects, it’s possible to deal ranged damage to enemies. What you’ll see is that you fire your Kinsect at the enemy, where it attacks them. While you’re fighting in close range you can also achieve the same result by marking a target.

When you’re attacking an enemy, your Kinsects will begin to gather extract. The body part being attacked will change what sort of extract the Kinsect acquires. You’ll gain the extract’s effects once your Kinsect returns to you. The effects of extracts are as follows.

• Red - Improves attack power
• White - Faster movement speed
• Orange - Stops your hunter from being knocked back during combat for a short time
• Green - restores a hunter’s health

You can monitor the type of extract your Kinsect will acquire by keeping an eye on the diamonds that appear near the health and stamina metres. Lots of green will provide more health regeneration, but a combination of red, orange, and white will greatly boost your attack power.

Dust

After attacking an enemy, you’ll notice that your Kinsects leave behind a small cloud of dust. Attacking these clouds will cause a tiny explosion, and can deal even more damage to an enemy if used correctly. The element of the explosion is defined by your Kinsect. You can tweak the Kinsect’s element with the Smithy.

Tips for the Best Results in Hunts

We’ve already mentioned that you can jump and mount monsters with the Insect Glaive. That jump also allows you to evade in mid-air. This is important because it gives you even more maneuverability, allowing you to get away from attacks, and monsters, much faster.

Keep an eye on where you get certain extracts from in a hunt. If you want to focus on dealing more damage, try to hit the body part that provides red extract as much as possible. If you need a health boost, hit the body part that provides green extract.

This weapon is a staff, and it dulls easily. Don’t neglect your whetstone, and sharpen often. If you don’t, you’ll find yourself trying to hit a monster with a blunt stick. With this in mind, remember to evade too. There’s no defence with this weapon, and you will get killed fast if you forget that.

Iceborne Updates to the Insect Glaive

In Iceborne the Insect Glaive got a nice buff. Instead of just sending out Kinsects to attack and gather extract, it’s now possible to charge them up. You do this by holding aim and pressing both attack buttons. The buffed Kinsect will gather two extracts before returning to you, meaning you get a much bigger boost from the attack. However, this move consumes Slinger Ammo, so watch out for those ammo levels.

An effect will be applied to the Kinsect depending on what type of Slinger Ammo it consumes. Consuming ammo dropped by a monster will give it a red power buff, meaning the attack power of the Kinsect is increased, and it causes more dust to form where it attacks.

Slinger Ammo collected in the world will increase the Kinsect’s stamina, allowing it to go for longer. This effect is stacked when you have all three buffs active, pushing your Kinsect to its limit.

With Iceborne came a Downward Stab attack. This is a nice move, pulled off by jumping and hitting the Kinsect marker button whole in the air, but it does more than impale the monster. Your Kinsect will follow and attack the point of the monster you stabbed, effectively making for a double damage attack.

Finally, you can also use the Clutch Claw in mid-air to latch onto a monster. From there, you’re mounted and able to attack as if you’d just jumped onto the beast. This is a small boost to mobility, but on top of what the Insect Glaive can already do, it makes you as agile as you could possibly be in Monster Hunter World.

Those are our top tips for using Insect Glaives in Monster Hunter World Iceborne. As we mentioned, this is a weapon that can be difficult to get your head around. Once you have though, you’ll be a lethal master of small bugs in the field.