Monster Hunter World Light Bowgun Beginner’s Guide by Cruces

Intro

  Having finally finished with the campaign I feel confident that I suck as much as I did when starting.

  Yet I have managed to finish the campaign (yes it baffled me too).

  So if I can do it with the LBG you can do it too.

  Here is my guide to noob gunners from a noob gunner.

  I am also celebrating the fact that LBG has raised from the 13th most popular rank to the 9th (YAY) according to the First Wyvernian

Weapon choice

  So you want to be a gunner? good for you, but why LBG you may ask, there are two other ranged weapons, why pick that one?

  I have tried all ranged weapons and this is a comparison (as I see it) of all ranged weapons

• LBG along with the bow has the smallest range of the three
• When comparing mobility, LBG is the most mobile one (followed by Bow)
• When attacking a static target LBG does the least damage
• LBG has the most recoil of all ranged weapons (followed by HBG and then Bow which has none)
• LBG has the possibility of applying a wider range of debuffs (though some bows are on par) and a wider range of buffs , so it’s good if you wish to support your team, in the right hands it is a Hunting Horn very very very lite.

  So after all the above are you still confused? why pick LBG when others seem better? One word: mobility, more words: see below

Basic stuff

  I won’t explain the controls, you can find those at the training area, but here’s some things you should know

• Critical distance is where you do the most damage, if you are further than critical distance you do very little damage, if you are closer you still do decent damage, but not as much, try to learn where the critical distance is.
• Critical distance is signified by a second circle appearing inside your aiming reticle. If that shows , that means that the monster is within critical distance.
• The actual critical distance though is calculated from the spot where the shot is fired, to the spot where the monster is when it landed, so if you’re shooting at a monster charging towards you then a) DON’T b) it may hit even though when you fired you weren’t in critical distance
• Try to be prepared for the hunt, if a monster does poison , try to start with a few antidotes, if it can shock you, try to carry nullberies, you’ll learn what you need as you learn about the monster.
• Each shot you have has three things to consider, recoil, reload speed and firing type.
• Recoil means how much knockback you will suffer when firing. +1 means you will not even notice it, +4 means that a mule kicked you.+1 and +2 are quite tolerable, and allow you to attack while moving, try to use shots with more recoil than that only when it’s safe
• Reload means how long it will take for your weapon to reload, fast means you can reload while moving and it is really fast, normal also allows you to reload while moving but it takes a bit of time, slower than that means you will stop on your tracks, and you should only do it if you are safe
• Firing types are normal firing, rapid fire, and auto-reload. Normal fire means one press of R2 one bullet shot, pretty straightforward. Rapid fire means one press and 3 shots come out, each does less damage, but if all three hit you do far more damage, this is definitely a boost damage wise, but if your weapon has high recoil it will stop you from moving while doing that, also all shots are fired with the same point of origin and trajectory as the first shot. Auto-reload means that after each shot the weapon reloads, haven’t had much practice with that.
• If you draw your weapon with the triangle it will draw into a reload (if it was previously empty)
• Holding down the triangle button while your weapon is out, will reload all ammo
• When jumping press the triangle button, this will perform a mounting attack , and when you land reload your current ammo, on ammo with slow and very slow reload speeds ,this is much faster

Strategy

  I started with the LBG on the last half of MH4U because of this guide:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/3ds/762804-monster-hunter-4-ultimate/faqs/71429

  I did ok, but gave up on Silver Rathalos and haven’t touched a monster hunter since then….until now.

  Now the guide is quite old, but the Strategy part is still quite true, and it is what has made me a better gunner, even if you don’t go for LBG but some other ranged weapon you really should read it.

  The TLDR is this.

  Pick your time and your battles, it’s a turn based game, monster gets a turn, you get a turn , then monster then you etc.

  Sometimes a monster gets a lot of turns before you get one, sometimes you get a lot of turns.

  A turn is defined by one action, shooting, reloading, drinking they all are considered turns.

  You have to pick your timing, when the monster is charging towards you, that’s their turn, you dodge, run or react in some fashion.

  When the monster has charged past you then you could get a small or a big turn, this is what you have to learn, how big your turn is.

  Here’s the secret though (and why LBG is so great) , in this game, sometimes you can get a turn during the monster’s turn.

  There are many times when the monster started charging and I was out of the way before it even reached half way, so I got to start firing at it while poor thing was aiming at thin air.

  This is why I like LBG, sure HBG will do a lot of damage, especially on downed monsters its damage CANNOT be surpassed. But the windows on which it can dps when the monster is upright (especially in solo) are much less frequent than those of a LBG.

  Basically you’re exchanging burst for steady dps and safety.

  Sure , someone with a HBG can fire from further away and have more time to react when something happens, but after the monster has attacked, I’ll have started firing long before someone with an HBG has.

  Frankly, LBG (for me) is easy mode.

Tips

• During the first few minutes of each hunt, you should observe the monster, see what it does, and when you can sneak in your turns.
• Learn to always lock on monsters, you should go to your options menu, under targeting select Large Monsters, and under Target Type (or something similar) change it from focus to target.When you fight a monster, if you lock onto it with R3, you can tap L1 to change your camera to face it.For example let’s say (insert big bad monster) is charging you , you can either move (yes, sometimes you don’t even have to evade) or evade out of the way, then quickly press L1, you are now facing the monster, press L2 and start attacking.This is much faster than evading and then turning to face the monster
• A strategy that seems to work for me (most of the time) is always being a bit to the right or left of the monster.If a monster’s body is facing towards 12 o’clock then you should be at 2 or 3 if you are aiming for the head (obviously 4 or 8 if you are going for the tail).What this does is make the monster either charge into nothing or have to change its position in order to target you, and here’s where your high mobility comes in, you can change your position too at the same time…WHILE FIRING
• Always learn the weak spots and shoot them. This may seem self explanatory, but you won’t believe how far I reached before realising how much more damage I would do if I didn’t fire blindly at crit distance.
• On that note, always fire from crit distance
• The fact that some monsters have many weak spots should be considered. Some monsters move a lot, their heads are really hard to hit, now you could be staying there waiting for it to settle its head so you can hit it for great damage, OR you could attack its front legs which are also weak points, but you don’t do as much damadge to them, if you’re a noob like me, guess what you should do :)
• Try to learn where the monster will be, bullets have some travel time, and there are many occasions where I could hit a monster by aiming where its head will be in a second or so (for example when I see it charging a breath attack)
• Try to have fun, if you’re not having fun then there’s no reason to go on with LBG, and I have failed at converting you to the ways of LBG so I shall have to commit ritual suicide, but you know, you shouldn’t mind that
• When a monster is sleeping it will take extra damage from the attack that woke it up, that means that if you wake it up with something big, then it will wake up with a headache. At the start of the game I suggest placing as many Wyvernblasts as you have near its head and attacking one of them (trying not to hit the monster). Later on you should carry barrel bombs and mega barrel bombs, place them next to the monster along with the wyvernblasts and using a stone to trigger one of the bombs. Don’t use spreading shot, because often they are the first to do damage, and the effect of bombs is much smaller.
• Communication is important in multiplayer, and during the heat of battle you can’t blame people for acting crazy, that is why I have made an “I am trying to put it to sleep” emote which I use when I’m firing sleeping ammo. Before that only one group of people realized when the monster was falling asleep, and actually stopped attacking. After that, again there is a number of groups which wake up the monster the moment it sleeps but it’s fewer now.
• Continuing with the above, the way to tell a monster is falling asleep is that the dramatic music starts fading out, and being replaced with the adventuring music and that the monster starts becoming sluggish and falling over. You have A LOT of time while that happens, to stop your attacks, try to do that and take advantage of the sleeping monster….that sounded a bit weird….

Wyvernblast

  Wyvernblast (also referred to as a mine, because you can think of it as a multi-use mine) is your special ammo, it’s the only ability affected by Special Ammo Boost (as I learned the hard way) and is generally an awesome multi purpose ability.

  There are three ways it triggers:

• One is by shooting at it (or for some ammo like slicing , close to it) or using your melee attack to trigger it.
• One is by the monster’s attack hitbox containing the part of the ground with the mine in it, i.e. it wont’ trigger if a monster simply walks over it, but if it attacks towards it it will trigger.
• The last one is if you are shooting while standing on it.

  You can hold up to 3 mines and one mine is replenished every 60 seconds (haven’t counted it, I’m going by what I’ve read online) and has 5 charges, but they sometimes (like when a monster is charging over your mine) may trigger and spend more than one charge.

  You can use the mines either defensively or offensively.

  Offensively means that you save up your mines and when the monster is down you go to his head, place all of them and start shooting (preferably spreading shot) hoping it won’t get up before you finish firing your shots.

  Defensively means that you try to put spread mines between you and your target at all times. What this does is that it protects you from charges (not always) and sudden attacks.

  When a monster charges you it’s hitbox will continuously attack the surrounding land. That means if there is a mine in it’s path, it will trigger, and from what I’ve seen enough times to be destroyed (i.e. use up all the charges), which more often than not will make the monster flinch and thus make it stop its charge.

  If you are a betting or confident person, you can be looking at the monster in the eye and keep attacking, while the monster charges, basically it’s like chicken only you know you will win most of the time, but the times you won’t….eeeh it will hurt a lot.

  My play style involves using it both offensively and defensively, I try to always be on the other side of a mine on the monster, but if there’s a mine on the field I don’t use a second one.

  If I know a monster charges a lot, I will always prioritize trying to put a mine down and replenish it if it expires.

  If the monster doesn’t charge a lot, then I will only spend up to one mine and always keep a backup of two for when I make it fall down.

  Wyvernblast is fixed damage, so if you wish to break off a monster’s part, you should place them near that part when it’s down

  A good combo on a downed monster is to place wyvernblasts next to its head and detonate them with your melee attack (triangle + O) , this will trigger multiple charges and make it much easier to KO the monster, in fact if using two or three wyvernblasts next to the monster’s head and detonating all of them with a melee attack, it is not impossible for it to go back to being KO’ed

The radial menu

  A very important part of your gameplay will be the radial menu.

  You should set it up so that it will be easier to switch ammo (which you may need to do a lot)

  Under options you will find certain types of how the radial menu works.

  My setup is so that buttons correspond to submenus and I select ammo/items with the right stick.

  My setup looks like this (I’m not saying copy it, but maybe it will give you some ideas)

  L1 + Circle leads to my damage ammo, piercing, normal, spread and dragon (for later on monsters that are affected by its secondary effects

  L1 + Triangle leads to my items, mainly health stuff and gadgets

  L1 + X leads to my secondary ammo, poison, exhaust, slicing basically anything that is situational

  L1 + Square is my communication menu, right now it only has two commands, one is the signal, and the other is a custom emote I wrote saying “I’m trying to put it to sleep”, I’m also considering creating another saying “I have bombs don’t wake it up”

  On the submenus I try to put the stuff I mainly use on the horizontal and vertical axii and the less frequently used ones on diagonals. So my pierce 1 ammo is on right, normal 2 is on up, spread 1 is on left.

  Remember that the radial menu customizations you make are saved along with your item pouch when you save an item set, so you can have different radial menus and load them (along with the items) at will.

Ammo

  Now let’s take a look at the ammo:

• Normal 1-2-3: This is pretty straightforward, point and click, this is my main ammo, I use weapons with rapid firing normal 2 and try to have at most recoil +2, this allows me to run and gun all the time, even while evading/moving out of the way.
• Pierce 1-2-3: This ammo goes through the enemy at the direction you’re pointing, if it passes through enough of the enemy it can do more damage than normal, but you have to position yourself right, on small targets it’s not even worth it, but on some targets it’s usually preferable to normal since they are so big. If your gun allows it, try shooting both and seeing which does more damage, this has bigger range than normal ammo.
• Spread 1-2-3: This is VERY close range ammo, it can do the most damage of them all, but at much higher risk, I mainly use it when the monster is down and I can get close enough to attack, or if I have found a blind spot where I can fire at will.
• Elemental Ammo (fire, freeze, water, thunder): This is also has big range, but I haven’t tried it much, when I finish with my core set I plan on making one set for each element with rapid fire for the corresponding elemental ammo, until then I cannot say much
• Dragon Ammo: In theory this is another element but it also has elderseal, elderseal reduces the abilities of elder dragons, and that can be useful it is weird in that it moves very slowly and at an arc, it also behaves like piercing ammo, it can do A LOT of damage (along with the effect mentioned above) but you can only carry 5 ammo with you at a time
• Status Ammo (Paralyze, sleep, exhaust, poison) they almost always do 1-2 damage but work differently. When you fire this ammo you’re doing an amount of damage towards a status effect (you can’t see how much), when that damage surpasses the monster’s threshold, the effect is applied. After the status ends the damage is reset to 0 and you can reapply it but the threshold is higher. It is said that poison can start building up again even when the current poison is in effect, but I can’t be sure of that. Additionally even though it seems to show as having critical range, it only seems to affect the initial damage, not the status damage, so as long as you’re not out of range you’re ok.
• Buff Ammo (Demon , Armor, Recovery) this buffs an ally (you can’t shoot yourself) with extra damage , armor or…health the first two are quite costly to make, as is Recovery 2 ammo, the hitboxes are large though, so if you see an ally running and aim a bit ahead of them more often than not you’ll hit them.
• Slicing Ammo, this used to be the best dps ability, it is no longer the case, it is useful for breaking parts of a monster, and it’s the only ammo that can cut off a tail. As with status ammo , critical distance only affects the initial damage (which is usually 1) and not the actual damage done. Be careful with it because when it explodes it can knock back allies.
• Sticky Ammo this sticks to the target and explodes, dps-wise it’s not too much damage, but it has a knockout effect, so if you aim for the head, you can make a monster dizzy, in multiplayer it can knock allies back.
• Tranquilizer Ammo this is the gunner alternative to Tranquilizer Bombs, not much more to say than that, trap a monster, hit it twice and you caught it.

Mods

  The higher the rarity of your weapon the more mods you can apply.

  Mods come in 5 varieties (shield cannot be applied to LBG)

• Recoil mod: You can apply this to lessen the recoil of the weapon , the chart to the right shows which ammo will be changed when you apply this.
• Reload mod: You can apply this to lessen the reload time a weapon has, the chart to the right shows which ammo will be changed when you apply this.
• Deviation mod: Deviation is how much the reticle will move after you fire, it’s not hugely important
• Close Range mod: Increases the damage you do at close range, if you’re using this with spread ammo its damage raises by a lot
• Long Range mod: Increases the damage you do at long range, if you’re going to use pierce ammo, this can work, it does not work on normal ammo though , even with the Rathalos set which raises your range, this mod goes in effect almost exactly when normal ammo looses critical distance

Your Item pouch and you.

  Being prepared is half the battle.

  On the first part of the game you won’t need much on your item pouch, your ammo, a few potions and maybe some antidotes .

  But the closer you go to the end the more stuff you will need to bring with you.

  4 spaces will always be consumed by powercharm , armorcharm and their upgrades when you reach high rank

  When I started doing 6 star quests my Item pouch usually had these:

• 10 Mega potions
• 6 Antidotes
• 6 Nullberies
• Shock Trap
• 10 Rations

  At 8 stars I also added

• 3 Demondrugs
• 3 Armordrugs
• 2 Max Potions
• Blasting Powder level 2 (to make normal ammo 2 when I run out)
• 2 Barrel Bombs

  And right now I have:

• 1 Farcaster
• Latchberries (cause sometimes I use pierce ammo)
• Replaced Barrel Bombs with Mega Barrel Bombs

  If you’re hunting elders remove the shock traps and add dragonberries to create more dragon ammo if you wish to use those

  The above of course is just an example, if you use spread ammo then bring Needleberries, if you don’t have sleep ammo and not hunting an elder don’t bring barrel bombs, by the time you get to that point you’ll get a feel for what you need

Armour Skills

  The following is based on my opinion, it may be wrong, feel free to correct me.

  I decided to expand a bit on the armour skills, I have divided them to Low Rank Armor skills and High Rank, and will be saying pointing out their usefulness for both High and Low ranks.

Low Rank Skills

Must have skills

• Fortify: Increases your attack and defense every time you fall in battle. (This effect can stack twice.)  This is GODSENT for noobs like me, if you go out on an expedition you can intentionally cart twice and then have a much better start, and on quests it feels like I have some protection, if you believe you don’t need this, I’m pretty sure you’re not a noob, why are you reading this guide????
• Weakness Exploit: Increases the affinity of attacks that exploit a monster weak spot.  That’s pretty much what one would call 50% free crit chance

Useful skills throughout the game

• Attack Boost Increases attack power. Also improves affinity at higher levels.  I consider it a filler skill but a lot of people consider it mandatory
• Critical Eye: Increases affinity  The bonuses aren’t big but as with attack boost it’s a decent filler skill

Useful mostly in LR (because you don’t have access to better skills)

• Defense Boost: Increases defense. Level up to improve resistances as well.   You shouldn’t be hit much but when you are this helps a bit.
• Evade Extender: Increases evade distance.  I would consider this pretty useless, but some people like evading , plus I used it a bit on LR so I shouldn’t be a hypocrite :)
• Evade Window: Extends the invulnerability period when evading.  This is actually a REALLY good defensive skill, if you know about the invulnerability period while dodging, I don’t know much about it, never could figure it out, so for me it’s out, plus as I said I don’t like evading a lot cause it uses up stamina
• Health Boost: Increases health.  same as defense boost, only this increases max health past its maximum, so I guess it’s a bit better???
• Special Ammo Boost: Increases the power of bowgun special ammo and Dragon Piercer.   It’s not that it’s bad, but later on there are better skills competing for the same spot, and I usually prefer the other skills

Useful conditionally

• Artillery Strengthens explosive attacks like gunlance shells, Wyvern’s Fire, charge blade phial attacks, and sticky ammo  Only affects sticky ammo, I don’t use sticky ammo much, plus it only has 9 ammo slots in your pouch, ok , if you have nothing better.
• Aquatic Expert: Improves mobility in water.  I can think of one place where this helps, only use it if you have absolutely nothing better.
• Attack Skills:
  • Fire Attack Increases fire element attack power. (Elemental attack power has a maximum limit.)
  • Ice Attack: Increases ice element attack power. (Elemental attack power has a maximum limit.)
  • Thunder Attack: Increases thunder element attack power. (Elemental attack power has a maximum limit.)
  • Water Attack: Increases water element attack power. (Elemental attack power has a maximum limit.)
     If you’re using a LBG with rapid on those ammo, then they should be good (I haven’t tested fully how good elemental gunning is), otherwise skip them
• Status Attack Skills:
  • Paralysis Attack: Increases the rate of paralysis buildup. (Elemental buildup has a maximum limit.)
  • Poison Attack : Increases the rate of poison buildup. (Elemental buildup has a maximum limit.)
  • Sleep Attack: Increases the rate of sleep buildup. (Elemental buildup has a maximum limit.)
  • Slugger: Makes it easier to stun monsters.
  • Stamina Thief: Increases certain attacks’ ability to exhaust monsters.
     I don’t know if status gunning will ever be as popular or widespread as it used to be, but if it does, these should be useful, otherwise…bit of meh
• Resistance Skills
  • Bleeding Resistance: Grants protection against bleeding.
  • Blight Resistance: Grants protection against all elemental blights
  • Fire Resistance: Increases fire resistance. Also improves defense at higher levels.
  • Ice Resistance: Increases ice resistance. Also improves defense at higher levels.
  • Paralysis Resistance: Reduces the duration of paralysis.
  • Poison Resistance: Grants protection against the effects of poison.
  • Stun Resistance: Reduces stun duration.
  • Sleep Resistance: Reduces the duration of sleep.
  • Thunder Resistance: Increases thunder resistance. Also improves defense at higher levels.
  • Water Resistance: Increases water resistance. Also improves defense at higher levels.
     At HR and LR you don’t really need that many defenses, after that they say these are useful, so I’ll leave them here, if you have a problem with a monster’s specific type of attack use these.
• Constitution:Reduces stamina depletion when performing stamina-draining moves such as evading, etc.  Some people like to evade, I do not, some people will like this, I do not :)
• Dungmaster: Makes monsters hit with slinger dung pods more likely to run.  I rarely use dung so I don’t see how this would help me, but later on if monsters are extremely deadly…maybe, but still it feels like a NO.
• Effluvial Expert: Nullifies or reduces environmental damage in the Rotten Vale.  Helps a bit in Rotten Vale and that’s it.
• Free Meal: Gives you a predetermined chance of consuming a food or drink item for free  Good early on if you wanna save up stuff, later on it becomes more profitable (because the stuff you consume are more expensive) but with the ancient tree farming you shouldn’t really have a problem with consumables
• Mushroomancer: Lets you digest mushrooms that would otherwise be inedible and gain their advantageous effects.  If you wanna play support and really don’t want a Hunting Horn pick this , a gun with recover ammo and Wide-Range (maybe Speed Eating and Free Meal too), congratulations, you are now a support gunner, you shall be called a Bard, because I like bards.
• Speed Eating: Increases meat-eating and item-consumption speed.  If you use a lot of consumables this is good, but there are better stuff
• Wide-Range: Allows the effects of certain items to also affect nearby allies.   See Mushroomancer to see how this could be useful.

I’m not sure how good these are

• Affinity Sliding: Sliding increases your affinity for a short time.  There are some sliding places, but it’s not consistent enough for my liking
• Blindsider: Improves the effectiveness of flash attacks and items  I don’t really use flash bombs, I can hit them from far away too
• Divine Blessing: Has a predetermined chance of reducing the damage you take.  I don’t know how big the chance is (feels small) but it’s an ok defensive skill, I prefer something consistent though
• Earplugs: Grants protection from large monsters’ roars.  This seems good, everyone is raving about how Hunting Horns give this for free and how useful that is, but I don’t know, I’ve only ever died once because a monster roared and then attacked and didn’t have time to react, and the few moments of damage loss don’t seem enough for me to be wasting slots in this.
• Focus: Increases the fill rate for weapons with gauges and the charge rate for weapons with charge attacks.  They say this makes your wyvernblast reload faster, but it’s ok as it is for me
• Heroics: Increases attack power and defense when health drops to 35% or lower.  I get how those could be useful, but do you really feel that confident about the fact that the monster will never hit you again? I don’t
• Item prolonger: Extends the duration of some item effects.  Again should be good with Mushroomancer, but otherwise, no idea, most of the consumables I use are either instant speed or until you cart.
• Leap of Faith: Alows you to do a dive-evade when facing towards large monsters, and extends the dive-evade distance.  Dive-evade is when you have your weapon holstered , are running with your back on the monster , and pressing dive. It is considered good cause it has a lot of invncibility frames, I’ve rarely used it, and it didn’t make much of a difference where I was looking at
• Palico Rally: Powers up Palicoes.  Palicos are great, and really useful, but I don’t see this being good, maybe on a palico with a weapon with eldreseal for solo?
• Recovery Speed: Speeds healing of recoverable damage (the red portion of the health gauge).  I don’t get hit often, so between hits I usually either recover the red part if I feel confident, or drink a potion, may be good later on???
• Recovery Up: Increases the amount recovered when restoring health.  Should be better than Recovery Speed, but still see Recovery Speed.
• Resuscitate: Improves evasion and reduces stamina depletion when afflicted with abnormal status effects.  There are some blights you can have that won’t affect you much , i.e. ones that need an additional trigger to do anything, like dragonblight (??? is that the name???) buteven when the effect takes place , the benefits feel kinda…too little???
• Sporepuff Expert: Recover health when using sporepuffs.  Well there are a number of places where there are sporepuffs, but is this good? who knows.
• Tremor Resistance: Grants protection against ground tremors.  Not sure what is considered a ground tremor. But I’m pretty sure I haven’t been hit by many of them
• Windproof: Grants protection against wind pressure.  Better than ground tremor resistance, but I’ve only been in one situation where I wished I had it, and that was because of poor planning on my part

Mostly useless

• Dragon Attack: Increases dragon element attack power. (Elemental attack power has a maximum limit.)  You have such a small ammount of dragon shots that even with 10 dragonberries in your pack, it’s still probably not worth it.
• Hunger Resistance: Reduces maximum stamina depletion over time.  You don’t loose that much max stamina that fast, plus you get free rations on every hunt.
• Marathon Runner: Slows down stamina depletion for actions which continuously drain stamina (such as dashing).   Even if you like evading, you won’t be dashing a lot (unless you’re going for a dive);
• Muck Resistance: Reduces impairments to mobility while stuck in monster muck.  I can only think of two monsters that do that, and none of them are hard to beat.
• Slinger Capacity: Increases the loading capacity for slinger ammo obtained in the field.  Most of the time I forget I have a sling, I know that’s probably some sort of mistake…but you get it.
• Speed Crawler: Increases movement speed while crouching.  REAL HUNTERS DON’T CROUCH, but sometimes when you’re with that certain special someone/monster , you get to bend over a lot, not that helpful for me, maybe for someone who likes to plan the hunt a lot and place traps and stuff.
• Stamina Surge: Speeds up stamina recovery.  Even when I did have to use stamina, I never felt like, damn I wish this would regenerate faster.

Absolutely useless (for LBG): these are skills that are for other weapons, let us ignore them

• Airborne Increases the damage caused by jumping attacks.
• Capacity Boost: Increases the gunlance’s shell capacity and charge blade’s phial capacity.
• Guard: Reduces knockbacks and stamina depletion when guarding.
• Heavy Artillery: Increases the firepower of ballistae and cannons.
• Handicraft: Extends the weapon sharpness gauge. However, it will not increase the gauge past its maximum.
• Horn Maestro: Increases the effect duration of hunting horn melodies.
• Jump Master: Prevents attacks from knocking you back during a jump.
• Power Prolonger: Allows long swords, dual blades, insect glaives, switch axes, and charge blades to stay powered up longer.
• Quick Sheath: Speeds up weapon sheating.
• Speed Sharpening: Speeds up weapon sharpening when using a whetstone..

Useful foraging skills: I use these on my set for expedition foraging, I consider them good, and they help me research monsters faster

• Botanist: Increases the quantity of herbs and other consumable items you gather.
• Detector: Shows rare gathering points on the Wildlife Map.
• Forager’s Luck: Increases the chance of finding rare gathering points.
• Geologist: Increases the number of times you can use a gathering point.
• Honey Hunter: Increases the quantity of honey you receive when gathering in the field.
• Scenthound: Increases your scoutflies’ gauge fill rate when you find tracks and other traces left by monsters.
• Scholar: Speeds up progress on research levels and special investigations. (Effect is applied at the quest results screen.)
• Scoutfly Range Up: Expands your scoutflies’ detection range.

Conditionally useful forging skills

• BBQ Master: Improves your skill at cooking meat.
• Entomologist: Decreases the chances of destroying the bodies of small insect monsters, allowing them to be carved.
• Intimidator: Reduces the chances small monsters will attack after spotting you. (No effect on certain monsters.)
• Pro Transporter: Increases your speed while transporting items and decreases the likelihood of dropping them,
• Stealth: Makes it easier for monsters to lose sight of you.

Useless foraging skills: As in, WHY? WHY ? WHY?

• Carving Pro: Prevents knockback from attacks while carving
• Master Gatherer: Allows you to gather more quickly, and also prevents attacks from knocking you back while gathering.

High Rank Skills

Must have skills

• Maximum Might: Increases affinity when stamina is full.  LBG is not a very stamina intensive weapon so this is really good for it
• Normal Shots: Increases the attack power of normal ammo and normal arrows.
• Piercing Shots: Increases the attack power of piercing ammo and Dragon Piercer.
• Spread/Power Shots: Increases the attack power of spread ammo and power shot arrows.  Pick one (or more of these) corresponding to the ammo you use, that ammo does more damage…that’s it

Good skills to have

• Agitator: Increases attack power and affinity when large monsters become enraged.  Well monsters rage a lot, I think they don’t like me, so it’s basically free damage for almost half the fight
• Critical Boost: Increases the damage of critical hits.  I haven’t managed to actually craft armors with this mod, but since I’m almost always close to 100% crit, this is a straight up damage boost, but don’t be fooled by the first rank saying 30% , your normal crit is 25%, so that just raises it by 5% , not as much as you thought, but still decent.

Conditionally good

• Blast Resistance: Grants protection against blastblight  See Reistance Skills above.
• Bombardier: Increases the damage of explosive items.  I do use a lot of bombs, but it feels like a waste…up to you
• Dragon Resistance: Increases dragon resistance. Also improves defense at higher levels.  See Reistance Skills above.
• Effluvia Resistance: Gain a resistance to effluvial buildup.  See Reistance Skills above.
• Heat Guard: Nullifies damage from heat.  See Reistance Skills above.
• Iron Skin: Grants protection against Defense Down.  See Reistance Skills above.

Not sure yet

• Flinch Free: Prevents knockbacks and other reactions to small damage.   I mean knockbacks are annoying, but hardly lethal
• Free Elem/Ammo Up: Unlocks your weapon’s hidden element. Also increases bowgun loading capacity. (There is a cap to loading capacity.)   Free element is useless, LBGs do not have built in elemental damage (they get it through the ammo). This is considered good, my current weapon has 3 shots of normal 2 ,and with this activated it reaches 4…I don’t find that good enough of a reason to waste 2 points in this skill.
• Partbreaker: Makes it easier to break or sever parts of large monsters.   LBG is not exactly great at breaking parts, I usually break a maximum of one or two parts if I focus on it.
• Peak Performance: Increases attack when your health is full.   Basically the opposite of heroics, it feels like it is really good for LBG, but the problem is that I always get some chip damage, so I will always have to waste time to reactivate this
• Tool Specialist: Reduces the recharge time for specialized tools.   Never wished that my tool would recharge faster, so I don’t see the point….ok so that sounded less dirty in my mind than it came out…

Mostly useless

• Cliffhanger: Decreases stamina depletion when evading while clinging to walls or ivy.   I’m pretty usre I never had to evade while clinging on a wall
• Latent Power: Temporarily increases affinity and reduces stamina depletion when certain conditions are met.   This happens at a set time (I think after 1.5 minutes) or if you take enough damage from the monster (yeah that’s not good so ignore this condition) and lasts for 1 minute I believe, in theory this is a 33% uptime, practically this feels much weaker to others, because it can trigger as the monster is running away or as you are mounting it or when you can’t shoot

Definitely useless

• Blast Attack: Increases the rate of blast buildup.  You don’t have blast ammo

Foraging skills

• Master Fisher: Improves your skill at fishing.