Monster Hunter Rise Affinity Explained: Affinity vs. Attack

In true Monster Hunter fashion, Monster Hunter Rise gives players the ability to thoughtfully customize their character, by changing their weapons, skills, cosmetics, armor, among various other items, all of which will affect the character in different ways. With that said, among the many values players can control in Monster Hunter Rise, Affinity is without a doubt one of the most important ones. But what is Affinity, how can you raise it, and is the stat most important than Attack?

Monster Hunter Rise Affinity Explained: What is Affinity?

To put it simply, affinity is a weapon stat that determines the chance of landing critical hits in Monster Hunter Rise. In the game, critical hits deal an extra amount of 25% raw physical damage. With that said, differently than most games, in MHRise, affinity can be either positive or negative, with the latter increasing your chance to score weaker hits, which will deal 25% less Raw physical damage.

How to Raise Affinity in MHRise

You can raise your affinity by wearing pieces of armor, talismans, or decorations with skills focused on increasing your weapon’s affinity, such as Critical Eye, Agitator, Maximum Might, Latent Power, or Weakness Exploit.

Affinity vs Attack: Which to Prioritize?

If you plan on using a physical build in Monster Hunter Rise, we advise you to get as much affinity as you can, as long as it doesn’t significantly lower your overall attack, which determines your attack power. For those looking to deal mostly elemental damage, is good to point out that for affinity to affect this type of damage you need to be using a piece of equipment with the Critical Element skill, which allows your Critical hits to deal up to 15% increased elemental damage.

Now that you know what affinity is, how to raise it, as well as how the value compares to attack, don’t forget to check out how to manually save your game on the newly PC version of Monster Hunter Rise.

Monster Hunter Rise is currently available for the Nintendo Switch and on PC. The PC version of the title can be brought exclusively on Steam, for $59.99 USD.