Lance High Rank and Endgame Builds for Monster Hunter Wilds

If you are looking to charge into Monster Hunter Wilds with the Lance, this guide has everything you need. From early High Rank to full endgame builds, we cover the best weapons, armor pieces, skills, and decoration options to help you stay tanky and deal a good amount of damage throughout your hunts.

To skip straight to the endgame builds, please click the button below.

Title Update 4, released on December 19th, is the final major update, featuring the fearsome Gogmazios siege. This brings in upgraded Artian weapons that have a significant impact on ideal builds, alongside new armor sets and the ability to transcend armor - providing better decoration slots. Due to all of this, there's a significant shake up from previously recommended endgame sets.

A quick breakdown of Lance changes on this page as of the title update are as follows:

• A new section focused on the Gogmazios Artian Weapon upgrade path and ideal skills to pick up has been added. This provides information on best practices for reinforcements, and skills to aim for.
• The ideal endgame set has seen significant changes. With the benefits of transcending paired with Gogmazios Artian weapons providing a skill, the options are significantly increased.
• Talismans remain the chase goal for your endgame gearsets - with rank 7 and 8 having access to skill combinations that, if lucky, can outperform craftable options.

Artian Weapons are the strongest option available deep into the endgame for the Lance, and are worth the investment if you're willing to grind out the ideal rolls. While the Zoh Shia Blazing Sital weapon is competitive with Artian offerings, Skyscraper is more universal with counters, and paths into the significantly stronger Gogma Artian version.

As the Lance is a fast attacking weapon with good Element scaling, a fully completed loadout requires you to have a separate Skyscraper for every situation, covering each elemental weakness. You should always aim to craft weapons with all 3 of the same element on your one Blade and two Disc selections to maximize the element value on the resulting weapon. Also aim to use 3 Attack infusions to maximize the raw throughput. Ideally, you want the following reinforcements, though this changes once you upgrade to your Gogma version:

• Attack Boost +5
• Attack Boost +5
• Attack Boost +5
• Attack Boost +5
• Sharpness Boost +30

For the 3 decoration slots an ideal setup includes the following three, but until you have solid mixed decorations you may have to pick and choose how to fill out the weapon:

• Guardian/Ironwall III
• Critical III
• Mastery III

After defeating Gogmazios, you'll receive Tarred Devices, which can be used by Gemma to reinforce the previous Artian Weapon, Skyscraper, into a much stronger version. When upgraded, your previous Lance will have its Element or Status maintained, but gain additional bonuses to either Attack, Affinity, or Element depending on the devices used. You should be using three Attack infusions. It will also gain one random Set Bonus Skill and one random Group Skill from a pool, and allow you to reinforce the the 5 bonuses it rolls. Reinforcements and Skills can be rerolled for additional materials.

Your goal is to acquire both Gore Magala's Tyranny and Lord's Soul, but the priority is always the set bonus skill first to match your armor set. Your ideal reinforcements are two Attack EX, two Attack III, and one Sharpness EX. You can only ever have two of any level of a given reinforcement per attribute though, so if you roll a combination of extra Sharpness or Affinity, these can sometimes be worth keeping.

Due to the nature of acquiring your ideal Artian weapon, and how much armor sets now rely on this random roll, it may be difficult to assemble the endgame set provided on this page. Due to that, below is a list of skills to prioritize while working toward the complete setup:

Armor Skills:

• Gore Magala's Tyranny - 2-piece
• Antivirus - Level 3 (With the Gore set bonus)
• Rathalos's Flare - 2-piece
• Agitator - Level 5
• Weakness Exploit - Level 5
• Lord's Soul - 3-piece
• Binding Counter - 2-piece
• Maximum Might - Level 3
• Burst - Level 1
• Flayer - Level 1

Weapon Skills:

• Master's Touch - Level 3
• Offensive Guard - Level 3
• Critical Boost - Level 3-5
• Guard - Level 1-3 (Comfort)
• Attack Boost - Level 1-5
• Critical Eye - Level 1-5

The absolute strongest options involve using element counters on specific monsters (especially on Rank 9 hunts), as these come at no cost to raw power on Artian weapons. You still want to aim for the same all-attack infusions, though having a Lance of each element available for match-ups is your ultimate goal. Below are some drop-down lists of monsters countered by each element:

• Fire - Click for Match-ups

  • Blangonga
  • Congalala
  • Doshaguma
  • Gore Magala
  • Gypceros
  • Hirabami
  • Jin Dahaad
  • Lala Barina
  • Lagiacrus
  • Nerscylla
  • Gogmazios (Solid)
• Water - Click for Match-ups

  • Ajarakan
  • Guardian Ebony Odogaron
  • Gravios
  • Nu Udra
  • Quematrice
  • Rompopolo
• Thunder - Click for Match-ups

  • Balahara
  • Chatacabra
  • Hirabami
  • Mizutsune
  • Seregios
  • Uth Duna
  • Omega Planetes
• Ice - Click for Match-ups

  • Guardian Fulgur Anjanath
  • Rey Dau
  • Xu Wu
  • Yian Kut-Ku
• Dragon - Click for Match-ups

  • Arkveld
  • Guardian Doshaguma
  • Guardian Rathalos
  • Rathalos
  • Rathian
  • Zoh Shia
  • Gogmazios (Liquid / Gaseous)

Added as a bonus update during Title Update 2, hunts against monsters that are 9 star and above can now also reward appraisable talismans. These can come with skill and decoration slots otherwise unobtainable from the smithy, and should you be lucky enough, can push your build to the next level. Rolling a perfect talisman is an extremely big time investment, so sometimes it's best to just look out for options that are good enough. Big ticket skills to look out for are:

• Offensive Guard
• Master's Touch
• Guard (Comfort)
• Attack Boost
• Critical Eye

Acquiring any of these skills - especially alongside a weapon decoration slot - outpaces any other option available to craft. If you can't get hold of these though, generally a Challenger Charm III or Power Charm III will suffice, depending on preference. Remember that when you slot in a talisman that provides weapon skills, you may need to adjust your decorations to still pick up desirable armor skills.

Traditionally the most powerful armor sets available in Monster Hunter, in Wilds the Gamma sets are being released with each Title Update. These grant access to the Lord's Soul 3-set bonus - a powerful additional cheat death effect - while coming with a slightly higher budget for strong skills. The sets currently released are:

• Rey Dau - this set focuses on Latent Power, which while a generally less appealing skill comes on very efficient pieces. With the advent of Title Update 4, it's become a less appealing method of access to Lord's Soul however.
• Uth Duna - this set features Peak Performance prominently, which is generally very difficult to optimize. Despite that, the Legs allow for some interesting build opportunities, and can be used as a way to access Quick Sheathe easily.
• Nu Udra - this set features Burst and Resentment, which, while useful, aren't typically utilized in Lance builds.
• Jin Dahaad - this set features Agitator and Foray, and provides an extremely efficient way of picking up key skills. Also makes it much easier to access Lord's Soul when paired with your Artian Weapon, and is featured in the endgame build.

After reaching Hunter Rank 50, you unlock access to the majority of endgame monsters, and will slowly unlock more event quests as you progress up to 100. Currently we have a curated primary endgame build, and a starting build for you to tackle endgame hunts effectively.

As you move into High Rank, it's time to start shifting builds toward more tailored skills for the Lance. In particular, Offensive Guard from weapons becomes premium as it grants a consistent attack boost whenever you successfully Guard, which you'll be doing a lot.

As your access to decorations will still be quite limited, while appealing it's not worth the time to go out of your way to farm them. It is better to just slot any you have access to that provide some extra comfort, as much of the set has limited access to high value slots.

This set provides a great springboard to get through the early parts of high rank and start unlocking more monsters. Balahara Lance III gets you started with Blue Sharpness while maintaining 2 points in Offensive Guard, which should last for quite a while.

Early Armor sets are lacking in strong offensive skills, so sticking to the efficient Guardian Ebony Odogaron 2-piece with some Burst skills remains a good choice. Mix this in with Chatacabra pieces to grab some early points in Weakness Exploit to match a Talisman craft that can be made with Rathian parts, and you have a solid core to start climbing in HR.

• Offensive Guard - Level 2
• Burst - Level 2
• Weakness Exploit - Level 2
• Evade Extender - Level 2
• Speed Eating - Level 1
• Divine Blessing - Level 1
• Resentment - Level 1
• Ebony Odogaron's Power - 2-piece

As you progress through High Rank and unlock stronger monsters, we can start to to form a build closer to the final endgame sets. Your first priority is to cut out the Low Rank armor pieces, and the second is to start streamlining your skills toward offense. This comes in two stages, with the first being available as you reach 6 star hunts opening up more Alpha and Beta sets, and the second with access to Gore Magala at 40+.

We've separated these two stages into the tabs below depending on what gear you currently have access to: