During the first three chapters of the game’s main questline, your adventures in the Forbidden Lands are fairly linear. You’ll travel to new regions, get embroiled in plot-points that serve to lead you to the next monster hunt, and while you can occasionally take a break to free roam or repeat past hunts, the game really opens up after you see the credits roll. At this point you’ll be introduced to High Rank and Tempered monsters and, aside from being gated once in a while by a new main quest when your Hunter Rank reaches certain levels, you’ll be free to explore and hunt freely. Two useful way for you to engage in the game’s content during the endgame are via Field Surveys and Investigations, and this page will explain how both work in Monster Hunter Wilds!

Page Breakdown¶

Field Surveys¶

After you reach Chapter 4 you’ll get a break from the main quest format you followed through the first three chapters of the game, replaced instead by more open goals to boost your Hunter Rank by hunting… anything you please, really. Once your Hunter Rank reaches these goals, you can choose to chat with a specific NPC to get your next proper quest, move the chains, all that business… or you can just blissfully keep hunting high rank monsters. You won’t increase your Hunter Rank, but any progress earned will be saved up until you complete the next main quest that raises your Hunter Rank cap, so this progress is not really going to waste, either. This format continues until you complete Chapter 6 and finish the main questline, after which you’ll be left with only repeating old quests (via Optional Quests) and Field Surveys as your primary forms of content.

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(1 of 4) You can start Field Survey hunts via the world map,

Field Surveys are pretty straight-forward as gameplay elements go - you see a monster roaming a region, either in-person or while looking at the detailed (local) map or world map, and you can select this monster to start an impromptu hunt. To start Field Survey hunts:

• From the World Map: Go to the world map, select the region and you’ll see a list of monsters currently active in said area. Press / to scroll a list of these active monsters, select one, and pick the option “Create Quest”.

• From the Detailed Map: Open up the local map, find a monster’s icon as it roams around, select it with / until the option “Begin Field Survey” pops up.

• In the Field: Just attack a monster repeatedly and eventually a quest will begin to hunt it automatically. This can take some effort, as getting attacked by a monster or flinging a Dung Pod at it won’t suffice.

Field Survey hunts function like any other quest hunts, albeit with a few differences - you have a time limit and are permitted to faint a few times per hunt. Kill or capture the target monster(s) and you win, gaining materials, decorations, zenny and Hunter Rank. Unlike the main quest hunts, however, the monsters you’ll find on the field have varying strength levels (indicated by purple diamonds) and can give you bonus rewards, including materials, decorations and weapon shards, making them more lucrative than simply repeating optional quests. Complete the hunt Thundering Flowers and you’ll unlock Tempered monsters as well as standard high-rank variants, which can also be found roaming around as well. If you scout monsters with your binoculars you can also determine their size and potentially earn [miniature crowns and giant crowns], which, along with superior drops, is another reason to complete Field Surveys instead of optional quests.

Investigations¶

Once you’ve completed a Field Survey hunt, you can then save that hunt as an Investigation, which lets you fight the same monster up to three more times. You will get the same rewards, the monster will be at the same strength, you will encounter it at the same time and in the same conditions as during the original Field Survey, and the monster will have the same bonus drops. It will also be the same size, so if you find a miniature crown or giant crown, you can potentially invite some friends (or randos, as you prefer) so they can get that crown, too. It does cost some Guild Points to save a Field Survey as an Investigation, however, but it’s a small price to pay to repeat a particularly lucrative hunt!

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(1 of 4) You can save a monster you spot as a future Investigation directly from the local map, if you wish to hunt it later.

If you select a monster via the local map you’ll get the option to “Save as Investigation”, which allows you to avoid engaging in a Field Survey hunt, if you for some reason don’t want to fight the monster immediately but want it saved for later, although this does ultimately mean you’ll get to fight it one fewer time.

All in all, Field Surveys are a good way to pick out particularly interesting or lucrative monsters and hunt them via late-game free-roam, and if you want to repeat that specific hunt again, save it as an Investigation!