Monster Hunter Rise: Wyvern Riding Guide

Image: HGG / Ashley Clark

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Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

Wyvern riding is a new addition to Monster Hunter Rise. It takes over the mounting attacks present in earlier titles like World, giving you greater control over the monster and a few opportunities to pick up handy rewards.

It’s a fun new mechanic that encompasses the more free spirit of the game, and we’re eager to share what we’ve learned. This week, we’re taking a closer look at wyvern riding in Monster Hunter Rise.

Let’s get started!

How to Ride Monsters in Monster Hunter Rise

We’ll begin with the basics. The first part of this guide will be a tutorial on how to wyvern ride in Monster Hunter Rise, covering all the essentials that will get you on the monster’s back and shedding shinies in no time.

Preparing to Ride

As you begin your hunt, you’ll want to incorporate aerial moves and Silkbind attacks into your move set. These attacks (marked by blue numbers) build up the monster’s riding meter until they reach the riding threshold. When this happens, the monster will be briefly immobilized and you’ll have a chance to jump on and start wyvern riding. Just watch for the prompt and get ready to ride!

MHR Wyvern Riding 3 — *Use your Silkbind attacks!*

Each weapon has three Silkbind abilities — one built permanently into your move set, and two that you can swap between. If you find yourself having trouble pinning the monster down, consider exchanging one of your Silkbind moves for its corresponding Switch Skill to see if it suits your play style better.

Riding the Monster

Once you’re actually on the monster, you have a few different options. The wyvern riding meter gives you control over your monster for a pretty decent amount of time, so you’re free to ride it around the map a bit if you’d like to take the fight somewhere else. Simply hold R and use L Analog to steer your new personal taxi wherever you’d like to go.

Now, wyvern riding alone won’t get you very far. In order to make the most of your little rodeo, you’re going to need to bonk them into things. These things can be walls or other monsters — whichever is more convenient — and require a bit more active management of your combos and wyvern riding meter.

To slam your monster into walls (or other parts of the environment), simply face them in the direction you want them to move and press Y. This will launch them headfirst into whatever object they’re facing, toppling them and tying them down so that you can kick them while they’re down.

*Don’t forget to quickly regain your footing!*

If you’re engaging with another monster, you can use X and A to command your monster to attack, culminating in a final X + A Mounted Punisher to deal a lot of damage at once. You can also press B to perform an emergency evade. This latter part will be important, as getting hit by the other monster will reduce the amount of time you can spend wyvern riding, and may cut your ride short before you’re ready.

No matter how you use your monster, make sure you keep a close eye on your meter so you know exactly how much time you have remaining. It sucks to jump off the monster prematurely without any rewards or in the middle of an area that’s hard to fight in.

Dismounting

Once you’ve slammed your monster or performed your Mounted Punisher, your wyvern riding time is over. The monster will fall to the ground and be temporarily restrained by Wirebugs, and you’ll be launched a short distance away. The monster will only be downed for a short time, so you’ll want to run up and hit them as much as you can while they’re open.

MHR Wyvern Riding 4 — *Nargacuga isn’t a fan of being tied down*

That’s it! It’s pretty easy to get the hang of wyvern riding once you try it a few times, so the best way to improve is to get out there and practice, practice, practice!

Wyvern Riding Tips and Tricks

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s take a look at a few helpful strategies that will make wyvern riding a little easier and more profitable for you.

1. Use Puppet Spiders

Puppet Spiders are a great way to quickly initiate wyvern riding. These sticky little fellas are part of the endemic life scattered about each region, so you’ll likely stumble across a few of them while you’re out gathering and picking up Spiribirds.

*Bless his heart, he’s trying to be scary*

Puppet Spiders shoot out a sticky web that immobilizes and restrains their target. If you set them down near a monster, they’ll wrap them up in enough webbing that you can hop aboard and start riding as though you’d snared them yourself.

2. Pit Monsters Against Each Other

Like we mentioned before, fighting other monsters while wyvern riding is a great way to get some extra shinies, but there’s a better approach than simply hitting whichever monster you’re not riding.

If you’re lucky enough to get your target monster and another monster down at the same time, try to aim for riding your target monster first (this is ideal, but not totally necessary). Climb aboard and use your combos to attack the unbound monster, but instead of executing your Mounted Punisher attack, slam your monster into them using Y. This will make the other monster rideable, and you can swap between them to take a turn whaling on your target monster. You’ll end this attack with the Mounted Punisher to further weaken your quarry.

This is a great strategy because you’ll get drops from both monsters, rather than just one. It works especially well for multi-monster hunts, but it’s a great way to simply get as many shinies as possible.

3. Keep Thresholds in Mind

The target monster of a given quest will always have a higher riding threshold than other monsters on the map. This is useful if you want to use wyvern riding as an attack, but can make it difficult for setting up specific combos or grabbing extra shinies.

*He may look scary, but he’s no match for my tiny little rope bugs*

It’s also worth noting that most monsters can only be ridden once per hunt — after your first wyvern ride, the threshold increases and it becomes much harder to mount a second time. Working around your thresholds and making use of specific strategies and items (which we’ll discuss shortly) will make it much easier to make the most of your rides!

4. Delay Your Mounted Punishers

When you get the prompt for your Mounted Punisher attack, there’s actually a brief window after the prompt triggers before you actually have to press the button. It can be really tempting to initiate the combo right away, but if you hold off for just a moment, you can get a few more regular attacks in.

It doesn’t make a huge difference, but you can weaken your target monster a little more and raise your chances of getting a few more shinies. Just make sure not to miss your window entirely! It’ll likely take some practice to time perfectly, but it’s worth a shot.

5. Don’t Forget to Multi-Slam

When you’re ready to launch your monster into the wall for some materials, keep in mind that you can pull it off more than once. For a brief period after your first wall slam, you can recover using B and steer the monster toward another wall for a second slam.

MHR Wyvern Riding 1 — *Recover quick enough and you can slam them all over again*

Provided you time everything correctly (and the environment allows), you can slam your monster up to three times before they fall down and get restrained by the Wirebugs. Try to strategically steer your monster toward hallways where it’ll be easy to quickly recover from a slam and launch into another wall.

Become a High Grounder

That’s it for our guide on how to wyvern ride in Monster Hunter Rise — thanks for reading! If you have any other helpful suggestions to offer, feel free to help out your fellow hunters and drop them in the comments. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social for more Monster Hunter guides like this.

Happy hunting!