Monster Hunter World

Migui’s MHGU Hunting Horn Compendium

478445 AARA1 1024x576 - Migui's MHGU Hunting Horn Compendium

Welcome to my Hunting Horn compendium for Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate.

I go by Migui in MH and other games, or The Legman. I am main Hunting Horn since 2nd generation. I play all the other weapons as well, but the horn is my favorite by far and in MHGU I have played it for the 90% of my hunts from low till endgame. I am however not a pro player, I still cart and get hit and fu*kup but I guess thousands of hours playing the horn end adding up a little of experience that I want to share.

I will be updating it later on with the comments I receive and useful links. So bear with me a little and let's jam!

Bread and butter: the moveset

Better watch

if you are brand new to the horn.

A few useful terms:

Backslam: this is the move you do from idle if you input X+A, the horn will go back and slam the monster with a high reach and move your character backwards. This is a massive damaging hit.

Flourish: If you have your left stick moving forward and you hit A, the horn performs a golf swing in two steps. The moment it does the second golf swing you can input any other note for free!

Superpound: Forward LS and X+A does at first the superpound. This deals a lot of damage, but sends mates flying away and leaves you stuck in a long animation.

Recital: when you compile a song and play it. In MHGU you are stuck into this animation until you are hit or it ends. Be careful!

Encore: once you play a song, you can hit recital again to play it for the second time. This extends the duration of the songs and also makes some buffs even stronger!

Remember: always be with the self improvement buff and always dodge-cancel after every move to not get stuck in animations.

I’m coming from 4U, what’s different?

We are still in 4th generation so the hunting horn works by hitting the monster and then using recitals whenever there is an opening.

The biggest difference is the double note mechanic. When you hit a monster, the note becomes double. If all the notes in a song are double, the horn will play that song and the previous one or, if you are playing self improvement, it will automatically add attack deflection prevention.

The horn is meant to be played always with self improvement as you already know. With it, it is the fastest weapon unsheated and never bounces. So this is an upkeep cost to have at all times. Fortunately, it is just a two note song so it is rather cheap and simple to keep it up.

Besides this, there are arts and styles, but we will get there in a moment.

Im coming from World, what’s different?

World drastically changed how HH is meant to be played because of the song queue. In World also, Self Improvement gives you a buff for your attack, only for you, and for free. And also recitals deal more damage than in other games. So in World you want to prebuff using the song queue and then spam typically what we call a “fodder song” to get into forward recitals which you can dodge-cancel at any given time. The recital spam in World is a lot more prominent than in this game.

World nerfed the Motion Values of many important hits like the backslam, but it gave us the SI buffs, it gave us several cancelling points in recitals and most importantly the song queue, so sort of makes up for it. Just don't expect to spam recitals as much as you should be doing in World (Scoutflies spam I am looking at you).

In GU I suggest you to start with Guild style and you will get used to the double note system. In this game, the backslam is more powerful than in World and unlike in World, the superpound sends people flying away so you need to master the backslam in order to play efficiently and not send mates flying away.

Also in GU you will not have flinch free unless you are using a horn with purple, red, orange which has the knockbacks negated song, so you need to mind your positioning or your game will be a trip festival.

Another difference is that you cannot cancel a recital once you start playing it. In World there are several moments where you can cancel so you are never truly commited. Be careful because you need to save recitals for openings or you risk getting hit.

What makes a good hunting horn good

First and foremost, raw, affinity, slots and sharpness just like any other weapon. Element is secondary because it doesn’t hit as fast as other weapons to justify giving up raw for more element. So I never consider it when picking a Hunting Horn.

Secondly, the songs: you want hunting horns that have at least Attack Up S (+10% damage) which encores in L, (+15%). You will not give up Attack Up L (+15%) which encores in Attack Up XL (+20%) unless the horn has a lot of raw as a trade-off (this is the case for example of Redhelm horn).

This reduces the list quite a lot.

There are horns that are situationally great against some monsters despite lacking an attack song.

On status heavy monsters such as Dreadqueen, which is constantly dealing poison, you might give up on attack and get a horn with status negation, such as the mantis boss horn or Elderfrost.

Outside this kind of specific encounters, it is never a good trade to give up attack for anything else.

Also do not underestimate the usefulness of Hunting Horns that have Negate Stamina song. Specially if you play with stamina-heavy users like dual blades, lances or bows.

I recommend you to go to Kiranico and spend some time watching every single horn and picking up your choices. I will recommend you some of mine later on the guide.

Horn and healing: a personal disclaimer

I know. There are lots of healing horns out there, and most of the times are used by corner horners. This is a sad mistake that should stop happening.

The healing songs are underwhelming, they have a chance to heal for less randomly and you cannot rely on them to save people unless you stop paying attention to the monster to do so. Some good horns include them, though, so if you have them you might as well use it but they are not going to make you a healer. They will make you a burden for the team because your damage output is going to suck since you are bringing a supbar weapon with subpar buffs.

Read:  If we were to get Alatreon in World, how would you introduce him?

Some will say: hey, if I prevent anyone from dying, then I win. My personal experience, and I play since the first MH in ps2, is that you cannot heal incompetence. If you want to heal, do a wide range set and get a weapon that sheaths fast and can make a good use for it.

There is no better support than dealing more damage with your team because it shortens the hunt, it staggers the monster more often and you can let people handle their health by themselves. But for “oh shit” situations everyone should bring life powder or dust of life because mistakes happen. You will not save someone at 1hp with health recovery song because it takes longer to just sheath and chug a lifepowder.

Remember: this is a guide on how I play Hunting Horn and recommend playing it. I personally hate healing. I have soloed all kinds of content with this weapon since it’s a thing and I have never liked the support role. This is a weapon that can wreck monsters with exhaust and stun, and at the same time, giving amazing buffs to your whole party. To me, there is no better support than damage.

If you find it fun, well, that’s your cup of tea, not mine. In this game you can experiment as much as you want and have fun your own way. Just don’t think that because this weapon has buffs you need to be a healer. This is not Wow.

Useful skills

The Hunting Horn is a blunt weapon that deals more exhaust than a hammer, but less stun. Thankfully it has a pretty amazing reach so hitting weak spots will most likely never be a problem.

This means that what you look for a horn are the standard damage skills such as attack up, weakness exploit, sharpness+1,2, etc. The example sets I will give for progression are pretty much this.

Some people like evade extender since positioning is key in HH. I never use it because I am used to the weapon so it's not a particular struggle of mine, but give it a try if you find yourself getting hit when rolling away.

Horn Maestro

In World is okay because it’s just a level 1 decoration and you can always gem into it, but in GU it is a 10 point skill that will occupy valuable slots.

But not only that: remember that we have the double note system. This means that as long as you are not a filthy corner horner you will never have a problem to keep up your buffs.

It is ok if you get it after everything else, just don't give up anything important for it.

Arts and Styles

Let’s face it: the hunting horn arts are underwhelming boring and bad.

Euphony gives buffs only to you. But why? You are already playing songs by playing regularly.

Sonic Smash deals damage but you send people flying.

Harmonize gives you double notes for free. I don’t see why you would want this unless you are fighting some pesky monsters that love to dodge like Glavenus.

And so on.

99% of the times I am playing with either Absolute Readiness or Absolute Evasion.

Guild: if you played horn in 4u, this is how it works. It has all the moves, and it just works. It is the top choice for speed runners because it is consistent: you know all the time what you get without gauges involved. No surprises here.

Valor: 99% of my hunts are Valor HH. The reason is that once in valor mode, the valor dash and the super fast recitals are amazing. But just what happens with every other weapon in valor mode, you need to sheath cancel into valor all the time to keep up the valor gauge filled.

It is worth noting that when you sheath cancel and type the X+A note you always do a backslam instead of a forward superpound. This gives you full control on not sending allies flying and it also helps applying stun a lot easier.

Because if you don’t do this, you cannot even encore when valor is on cooldown! When you begin you will struggle a bit until you learn how to fill the gauge fast. It’s not a big deal in my opinion but I completely understand why speedrunners opt out of this. However for regular play it will always be my choice.

Alchemy: the horn doesn’t like to be sheathed. In this style you need to play with the barrel so… A poor choice for the horn, not to mention that you give up on important moves.

Aerial: you have the double note swing, but airborne. And mounts. I find this a bit weird, but I reckon Aerial Horn can be hilarious in some fights.

Striker: forget it because the arts are bad. Also it has no flourish or backslam. Eww.

Adept: you are still losing important moves for the evade chance. I know some people love adept dodging. I can’t live without double swings for example. Up to you, but here let me quote /u/Ceratic/ from an old MHGen thread:

The answer to this question is very simple.

If you look at the TA wiki there are not HH records for every monster, and where there are with Guild Style they're usually monsters with moves and roars that are viably dodgeable using the default amount of invulnerability frames that the Guild Style offers. Examples for this type of monster: Zinogre, Nargacugas, Garugas, Glavenus', Tigrex' and a few more.

Well what's the difference? In speedrun you're the only one attacking so getting in as much damage as possible in a certain time-frame is top priority. After e.g. an adept dodge, you have almost 2.5 to 3 seconds of uncancellable dashing and running, even though it helps you not get hit, it's a waste of time if that same attack from the monster can be dodged with the normal Guild Style evasion roll, where you do a 1-second roll and then be able to attack again. Furthermore the post-Adept combo is not as powerful as you might think, even if you get all 3 hits in it still takes a little bit longer to perform and still is a little bit weaker than the idle-A + idle -XA combo for example.

Sometimes Adept style is preferred instead of Guild Style on certain monsters like Metal Raths and Dread Raths (pretty self-explainatory as to why you would adept these).

So my recommendation is to play guild and try valor and decide which one suits you better.

Suggested sets and suggested hunting horns

I am not a fan of suggesting sets with crazy charms or forcing people to farm very hard stuff, so I will skip deviant sets on this. I will simply tell you my choices while I was playing the game.


There are many possibilities that expand even further the better your charms are. This section is more catered towards newbies, so experienced players will not find anything surprising here.

Low rank till early high rank


Bulldrome Cap (gunner piece)

Jaggi Mail

Bulldrome Braces

Jaggi Faulds

Bulldrome Greaves

Decorations: 4x <1> Attack.

A surprise, right? As I said earlier on, the horn really likes regular attack skills. And you have no better set in low rank than this one.

By late low rank you can switch to this. I think I saw it on a CantaPerMe video when Gen was current, but my memory is bad:

1 slot weapon

Rathalos Cap (this is the gunner one)

Rathalos Mail

Ceanataur Braces

Rathalos Faulds

Bnahabra Boots

1 slot talisman

Decorations: 1x <1> Sharpness, 1x <1> Tenderizer, 2x <1> Attack, 1x <2> Attack

This gives: Attack up S, Weakness Exploit and Razor Sharp.

I was lucky to have a nice attack charm early on so I could get up to Attack up M with it.


Petrified for the first quests, swapping to Bone and later on, Hunter’s horn. The ability of having attack up and HG earplugs is very good and the horn sports a great raw and sharpness to get you going.

Early high rank to mid-end high rank


I stuck with the Rathalos mixed set until I made the High rank version of it. But if you find it has not enough defense, BujaBujaBu in High Rank also works.

Full Rathalos S is also a good option for the horn, as you will get Attack Up L and Weakness Exploit.


Bone is still an option, it will become Native’s horn when you get to G1.

Glavenus, Tigrex and Magala horns if you want more variety are decent until G1.

By late HR you can farm Grimclaw Tigrex and Hellblade Glavenus. This horns are pretty good until you can make the G rank version of Bone.

Redhelm Arzuros and Astalos (regular) will become top tier by endgame so you might as well begin to farm them. Silverwing is also worth considering, thanks to great sharpness and overall good song list.



If you are not struggling with the lack of defense, stick with it until you can fight glavenus and rathalos in G3. The problem between G1 and G2 is that there isn’t much worth farming that you won’t outclass very soon.

However if you insist on farming a G rank set, Jaggi X, Bulldrome X and Ceanataur X can get you going.

By this point we already have plenty of options for good sets. In G3 I made this:

Rathalos Cap X

Rathalos Mail X

Glavenus Braces X

Glavenus Faulds X

Glavenus Greaves X

With a Tenderizer+3 OO charm I was able to get: Attack Up M, Weakness Exploit and Sharpness+2.

Either full Rathalos X or either full Glavenus X are also good options.


Probably you are still rocking Native’s Horn. By this point, regular Glavenus as well as Magala become relevant again.



His name is… Jho Ceana ? ? ? ?

After beating the Mantis boss, 99% of the blademasters will farm the Jho Ceana set. No surprises here for anyone. Because it is good enough to put up with savage jho’s shenanigans.


Esurient XR

Cenataur XR

Esurient XR

Cenataur XR

Esurient XR

It gives handicraft+15 (so sharpness+2), sharpness+11 (razor sharp), and expert +7 (can get crit Eye with decos or charms). Slots are 3+1+3+1+3.

You want to get a tenderizer charm in there and enjoy the power overwhelming!

At this point, there is not much else to suggest you because the game opens completely and it’s up to you and your charms.


Redhelm Arzuros, Bone, Hyper Gore and Astalos are the top choices in terms of damage output.

Elderfrost and Ahtal-Ka are great utility horns for hunts against Chameleos, Dreadqueen and status heavy monsters overall.

Remember that my recommendations don’t mean that this are the only horns that you should use or that the rest are garbage.

Useful links:

Hunting Horn compilation in Kiranico:

MHXX Motion Values:


MHGen Song lists:

Athena's Armor Set Search:

Monster Hunter Discord:


I hope that you found this useful and have fun playing online. This weapon feels clunky the first time you use it, but it is one of the most rewarding to play and people will love you for using it properly. The reason why it is one of the least used it is because it lacks super powerful finisher-like moves and Capcom has called it support since the early days and not many people wants to work to get the most.

However, it is a perfectly viable weapon. It will make you work more to achieve more hits, and it can be very punishing with your mistakes, specially because it makes you become stuck in animations at times. But once you master it, it will make you feel godly.

If you struggle with it, keep it up. Don't become a corner horner, don't become a healer. Monster Hunter guild halls online needs good Hunting Horn users. You too can be one of them.

If you find any mistake, or want to add, please comment and I will update this and obviously credit you for that.

Please drop by the #hunting_horn channel on Monster Hunter Discord and say hi :).

Happy Hunting,

Migui (The Legman).

Edit 1: After some talk in #hunting_horn I decided to rework a bit the recommendation on Horn Maestro.

Original link

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