Monster Hunter World item crafting: How item combinations work and the best items to craft for a hunt

Monster Hunter World crafting enables you to make all sorts of useful, sometimes even essential items - ranging from invigorating health potions to monster-snaring traps. The importance of crafting shouldn't be underestimated.

To successfully craft an item, you'll first need to gather the materials listed in its Crafting List recipe. You can buy a small selection of materials from the Provisions Stockpile at base, but for the most part, you'll need to acquire them by foraging around different environments.

Although monster hunting is definitely your primary focus, you should get into the habit of gathering materials wherever you go.

Elsewhere, our Monster Hunter World tips can help you decide when to farm, what to forage and what to do between hunts, and our Monster Hunter World walkthrough and guide can help with main quest and story progress.

How to get materials for Crafting in Monster Hunter World

Materials in Monster Hunter World fall within several different categories: plants, fungus, bones, insects, gems, plus a few unclassifiable items such as spiders webs and honey - that's not including the body parts that can be carved from slaughtered small creatures and monster to make armour and weapons, of course.

Gathering from material nodes

Materials are found at specific spawn nodes on your map - Bone Piles for bones, bushes for plants, Mining Outcrops for Ores and so on.

As you roam the environment, your Scoutflies will highlight these gathering spots, and they're also visible on your map. Simply interact with a node to gather materials from it.

Bear in mind that certain materials are exclusive to certain environments, and some are even exclusive to certain areas within those environments. As such, you'll often need to explore the world thoroughly to find specific materials that you need. Items will also differ between Low Rank and High Rank.

There is, however, a selection of common, essential materials - such as herbs and honey - that can be found pretty much anywhere.

Some nodes, such as bushes and fungus, contain one specific material, and can only be gathered from once. Others, such as Bone Piles and Mining Outcrops will yield a random item when used, and can be gathered from three times. Once a node is depleted, you'll have to wait a while before you can gather from it again.

Buying materials at the Provisions Stockpile

Some commonly used items can be bought from the shopkeeper at the Provisions Stockpile back at base. The available stock will expand as your level increases and you progress through the story.

Growing materials at the Botanical Research area

It's possible to generate more of a specific material at the Botanical Research area once you've progressed far enough in the game to unlock it - handy for materials you'll need frequently, such as honey.

Speak to the researcher, select the Cultivate option then select the material you wish to generate while away on adventure. You can use the Fertilize option to increase the amount produced, and different fertilisers will interact with specific materials in different ways, sometimes dramatically increasing their yield.

Over time, you'll unlock more cultivation boxes, so you can generate different (or more of the same) materials simultaneously.

Monster Hunter World | How to Unlock More Slots at the Farm (Botanical Research Center)

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How to craft items and how item combinations work in Monster Hunter World

There are two methods of crafting items, each with its own advantages and disadvantages:

Crafting items in your personal inventory

The first method can be done anywhere, out in the field or back at base, simply by calling up the Items and Equipment menu and then selecting the Crafting List option.

This option only allows you to craft items using the materials in your personal inventory, and will deposit the newly crafted items straight back into your inventory. It's a great tool for crafting items in an emergency - such as health potions or antidotes - during a quest or expedition. However, it's limited by your small inventory size.

Crafting items at an Item Box

The second crafting option can be done at any Item Box - that's the big red chest that's found in numerous locations around the base area (usually by a quest board or quest handler), in your room, or in the tent at a campsite.

This option enables you to directly craft an item using the materials in your box, and is best used for preparation pre- and post-quest.

All items received at the end of a quest or expedition will be send to your box unless you sell them, and you should get into the habit of emptying all the materials you've carved or foraged while out in the field into your box at regular intervals.

This will ensure that everything is ready and waiting in your box for your next crafting session, and will also stop you from rapidly running out of personal inventory space and having to abandon items in the field.

To craft an item in your box, interact with the chest and choose the Crafting List option. When you use this method, the resulting items will we placed back into the box.

Don't forget to move anything you need into your inventory using the Manage Items option once you're done. There's nothing more frustrating then discovering you forgot to pack something when you're in the middle of a quest!

Crafting items using the Crafting List

The Crafting List works the same no matter how you access it. Open it and you'll see a long list of your currently unlocked recipes split across multiple pages.

More will be added as you progress through the game, and find new materials out in the field. You can filter the list to show only the recipes you have the required materials for, or by item type - Healing/Support, Traps/Offense, Ammo/Coatings.

Highlight a recipe to see a brief description of the item, and the material or materials needed to craft it. Assuming you have the necessary materials, simply hit the button beneath the ingredients list to craft one of that item. There's also an option to craft a specific number of an item if you need more than one.

Note that sometimes a recipe name will appear as a row of question marks. You'll need to craft it using the specified materials in order to find out what it makes.

How to use the auto-crafting option

Monster Hunter World features a new auto-crafting option which lets you choose specific items to be crafted automatically whenever you have sufficient materials in your inventory out in the field. This is a handy way to ensure that commonly used items, such as health potions, are ready and waiting in your inventory for emergency use.

You can access the auto-crafting option from your personal or item box Crafting List. Once the menu is open, highlight the item you wish to enable auto-crafting for, then hit the auto-crafting button shown on-screen. A blue tick is displayed next to an item when auto-crafting is enabled. Hit the button again to disable auto-crafting for that item.

Although auto-crafting is handy in the early stages of Monster Hunter World, giving you one less thing to worry about, you might want to disable it once you become more accustomed to the flow of the game. This way, you'll have full control over which materials are used for what, and won't suddenly find yourself short of specific materials in an emergency situation.

The best items to craft in Monster Hunter World

In Monster Hunter, certain items are essential for your survival - potions, for instance, can be used to refresh your health, counter poison, and restore stamina. Other items are less critical, but can significantly tip the balance in your favour during a tougher hunt.

When facing a Monster for the first time, it's often wise to hedge your bets and take a selection of items out into the field. Once you've got a handle on the enemy, you can begin to tailor your quest load-out specifically for that creature, increasing the amount of available inventory space you have for carves and foraging.

Over time, you'll develop your own strategies and preferred items to take on a quest. However, the below are a handful of must-haves that no hunter should be without: