Monster Hunter Rise: How to Change Palamute Appearance

Your Palamute is your best friend in Monster Hunter Rise, and at the start of the game you can change multiple parts of their appearance. You’ll want to design your buddy perfectly at the beginning though, since there’s not all that much about their appearance you can change after you create them.

Visit a Buddy Board to change the appearance of your Palamute in Monster Hunter Rise.

The Buddy Board is where you’ll change the appearance of not only your first Palamute in Monster Hunter Rise, but all of the ones you recruit later in the game. Simply interact with a Buddy Board and select “Appearance Settings,” or “Layered Armor Settings” to change the appearance of any Palamute in your roster.

The options available are slim, and that may be underselling how little there is on offer. You can only change the color of your Palamute’s clothing in the “Appearance Settings,” though you can tweak this for every Palamute you have. That means you can’t actually change the appearance of your Palamute, at least not until Capcom adds Appearance Tokens to the eShop.

This is disappointing, so you’ll want to make sure you get your Palamute just right at character creation. The Palamutes you recruit later in the game can only be renamed, so take their appearance into account before hiring them if that matters to you.

If you want to give your Palamute a fresh look you will have to use the “Layered Armor Settings” portion of the Buddy Board. It’s worth noting that the only Layered Armor available for Palamutes at the moment is all for sale in the eShop, so unless you drop some cash you won’t be able to take advantage of this setting.

Layered Armor for your Palamutes provides a more dramatic change to their appearance, largely changing every aspect of them. To say it directly, Layered Armor changes the breed of your Palamute. That means ears, face shape, fur length, the color of their fur, etc. Palamutes have two slots for Layered Armor, so there will likely be more granular options later down the road, but keep in mind the current offerings will take up both.

It would have been nice to see more options to change your Palamute’s appearance, but for now Layered Armor is the only way you’ll be able to tweak them in any appreciable manner. Hopefully we get more options down the road, and an expansion of the “Appearance Settings” menu.

Monster Hunter Rise is available now on the Nintendo Switch.