Monster Hunter Wilds: How To Use Trick Arrow Gauge & Tracers

The Bow in Monster Hunter Wilds is a powerful mid-range weapon with many mechanics, including the Trick Arrow Gauge and Tracers, two new systems that even veteran hunters may struggle to use correctly. While Tracers can help your arrows home onto a monster's weak points, you must build the Trick Arrow Gauge to use them. The relationship between both systems requires a balance that can be tricky to learn.

The Trick Arrow Gauge and Tracer arrows both come along as the major weapon changes in Monster Hunter Wilds to the Bow. The Bow still retains many of its strong techniques from past games, but these added mechanics are now a core part of the Bow. Many inputs for the Bow are different from past games, so don't be afraid to go into the Practice Mode to see what's changed.

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How The Trick Arrow Gauge Works & How To Use Tracers

All Bow Coatings & The Best Ones To Use

How The Trick Arrow Gauge Works & How To Use Tracers

Build Meter To Empower Your Attacks

At the bottom right corner of your screen, while using the Bow, you'll see the Trick Arrow Gauge, a meter with three different markings on it. The Trick Arrow Gauge represents a resource you can spend to load Tracers and Coatings onto your weapon as you fight a monster. There are several ways the Trick Arrow Gauge charges naturally, including:

Landing shots against monsters (Charged shots fill more Gauge)
Performing the Discerning Dodge with perfect timing
Doing combos against a monster

Charged shots with your Bow in Monster Hunter Wilds charge the most Trick Arrow Gauge, which has three checkpoints in its meter. The Trick Arrow Gauge is built in thirds, with your hunter being able to spend a third of the Gauge to perform techniques tied to it. For example, putting a unique Coating on your Bow costs a third of the Trick Arrow Gauge to do when you press the right input.

Coatings are no longer items you have to craft for the Bow in Monster Hunter Wilds. Instead, every type of Bow you craft comes with a unique set of Coatings you can load into the weapon by using the Trick Arrow Gauge during a hunt.

Another easy way to charge the Trick Arrow Gauge is to dodge incoming monster attacks. Timing a Perfect Dodge against a monster attack automatically charges one-third of the Trick Arrow Gauge, allowing you to gain one use of the resource easily. The more you get used to fighting monsters, the easier it will be to dodge them, which will fill up your Trick Arrow Gauge extremely quickly.

When you build up the Trick Arrow Gauge, you can spend one-third of it to load a Tracer arrow into your next shot. When you shoot a monster with a Tracer arrow, every one of your next shots will be guided toward the spot you hit for a limited time. This allows you to focus on monster weak points, including Open Wounds you create and can see using new Focus Mode attacks in Monster Hunter Wilds.

All Bow Coatings & The Best Ones To Use

Alter Your Arrows To Take Down Monsters Faster

Monster Hunter Wilds Bow using Power Coating to deal more damage with Bow against monster

While the normal shots from your Bow can still be strong, the best attacks with the Bow come from different Coatings you can apply. Every Bow you craft has a unique selection of Coatings that can be applied to your next shots by spending meter from the Trick Arrow Gauge. Once you equip a Coating, it is applied to the next 1–10 shots you fire, with the duration being tied to the Coating you selected.

The table below outlines all the different types of Bow Coatings, including any additional effects they have:

Coating	Effect
Power	Increases overall arrow damage against a monster.
Close-Range	Reduces the range of your arrows but greatly increases their damage.
Pierce	Allows arrows to pierce targets and hit multiple times.
Poison	All arrows you fire while this Coating is active build up the Poison elemental status.
Paralysis	All arrows you fire while this Coating is active build up the Paralysis elemental status.
Sleep	All arrows you fire while this Coating is active build up the Sleep elemental status.
Blast	All arrows you fire while this Coating is active build up the Blast elemental status.
Exhaust	All arrows you fire while the Coating is active build-up Stun damage and the Exhaust status condition.

The best Coatings depend on what Bow build you are using during a hunt, as each Coating can be viable under the right conditions. Overall, Exhaust, Pierce, and Close-Range are more consistent due to their utility against multiple monsters. The weapon difficulty in Monster Hunter Wilds with the Bow comes down to how you can master using certain Coatings to take down monsters fast.

No matter which Coating you use, as long as you learn how to use the Trick Arrow Gauge, it shouldn't be too hard to buff your next arrows. Those who learn how to build the Trick Arrow Gauge fast in Monster Hunter Wilds can take advantage of more Tracers and Coatings to make otherwise challenging hunts trivial as your journey continues.