Monster Hunter: World recently released on PC, bringing with it a bunch of new hunters looking to climb the ranks and prove themselves to their fellow players.
While power and damage are key to your chances of success, Monster Hunter also has an abundance of extra statistics that you should keep your eyes on when thinking about your next piece of weapon or armor.
Affinity and Elderseal are two of the many key attributes that many hunters miss out on. They only show up as one of many stats next to a weapon with no explanation about what they do and how they’re useful.
With Capcom failing to provide this information, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about these two crucial stats.
Affinity
In short, Affinity is a weapon’s chance to deal more or less damage on attacks.
Affinity is determined by the weapon and skills being used against a monster and can deal a lot more, or less, damage depending on the percentage of Affinity on a weapon. So if your weapon has negative 100 percent Affinity, it’ll do a lot less damage, while 100-percent Affinity will always do more.
Elderseal
Elderseal is a new mechanic added to Monster Hunter: World that’s available in some of the later-game weapons during high rank. Weapons can either have no Elderseal or a mixture of low, medium, or high.
Eldersealed weapons can prevent certain monsters from using their special abilities. These are usually Elder Dragon monsters, such as the Kirin, Teostra, Kushala Daora, and Vall Hazak.
For Kirin, it removes the lightning armor that can surround it at times. The Teostra and Lunastra will have a reduction in their flame aura and will be unable to use their Supernova move in battle when affected by Eldersealed weapons. The Kushala Daora will no longer get its wind barrier, the Vaal Hazak gets a reduction in his effluvia charge, and the Nergigante receives a reduction in how fast its spikes harden.
The higher the Elderseal, the more effective that it’ll be in battle. Dragon Pods, a slinger ammo, also inflict Elderseal.
