There are several stats to consider when it comes to picking your ideal weapon, and unlike armor weapons don’t have the siren’s song of fashion to distract you from gameplay effectiveness. While there’s a fair bit to consider, most of the stats on weapons are pretty straight-forward: damage, elemental/status damage, and skills should be fairly intuitive. But there are other stats to consider, namely a weapon’s Sharpness and Affinity, whose effects are more obtuse. This page will explain what sharpness does in Monster Hunter Wilds.

Page Breakdown¶

Sharpness Effects¶

One of the more ambiguous properties of weapons in the Monster Hunter series is sharpness - look under the AttackAffinity/Element lines and you’ll see the “Sharpness” bar - a multicolored sword that starts out red, then changes to orange, yellow, green, blue and finally white. Some colors - especially blue and white - may not appear on every sharpness bar, especially for early-game weapons, but they should all have the first three colors (red, orange and yellow), and it’s worth noting that the lengths of these colors will vary by weapon.

Monster Armor Penetration¶

A weapon’s sharpness stat indicates two things, the first will become obvious to even new players before long - the sharper a weapon, the more likely it is to penetrate monster armor. Not all parts of a monster’s body are equally protected - hard carapaces, soft underbellies, ect., - some bits will resist damage more than others, and if your weapon isn’t sharp enough your strikes may just bounce right off the monster’s hide! A sharper weapon can deal damage to these hardpoints and generally make fighting some enemies easier. As you land blows with your weapon in battle, its sharpness will degrade, forcing you to use your whetstone to refill its sharpness. This is ideally done after a monster flees an area, and you can sharpen your weapon while riding your seikret, so you should get in the habit of sharpening your weapon as you chase monsters to new areas.

Sharpness and Damage¶

The second function of sharpness is a hidden damage modifier - yellow sharpness is the “average” sharpness (at least when it comes to raw physical damage - elemental damage works a bit different), conferring no benefit nor penalty, but every grade of sharpness above or below yellow will increase or decrease the weapon’s damage output. Check the table below, for details:

Sharpness Damage Multiplier¶

As you can see, a weapon’s Attack value is shaded to some extent by its sharpness. Hope Edge I Longsword (297 Attack) might seem significantly inferior to a Bone Shotel I Longsword (363 Attack), but the former’s moderate green sharpness maximum means it’ll do a bit more damage than listed compared to the latter’s yellow maximum. It won’t close the gap completely, but you may have an easier time landing hits against heavily armored foes with the former weapon due to its higher sharpness, while the latter may boink off monster armor more often. On the other hand, don’t necessarily be lured by a weapon with a sliver of high sharpness - you’ll need to spend time sharpening your weapon to maintain that bonus, and it may not be worth the trouble unless a weapon has a significant level of high sharpness.

As you craft higher-tier weapons, keep an eye on the sharpness gauge for weapons with better sharpness properties - higher tier weapons can vary a bit in their sharpness properties and at higher damage values the differences between green, blue and white sharpness can count for a lot of damage! This is especially true for weapons with elemental/status effects, as dropping to yellow sharpness will decrease their efficacy significantly.