Monster Hunter Wilds: How to Craft Traps and Capture Monsters
Be a nice hunter.
Sometimes you’re hunting down that terrifying monster, dodging lightning bolts and swipes from a tail that would cut you in half — then the beast starts pitifully limping away from you. That’s it, the pang of guilt as you watch this poor creature just trying to live its life run in fear from you. If you’re a kindhearted hunter who just doesn’t want to slay monsters, there’s an option for you. Just like past games, in Monster Hunter Wilds you can craft traps and capture monsters instead, and it’s virtually the same as completing hunts the normal way — but with some potential extra benefits. Here’s exactly how you can capture all those cute monsters.
How to Craft Traps in Monster Hunter Wilds
Tranqs and Traps are generally easy to craft, with materials you’ll likely have already.
Monster Hunter Wilds is a bit tricky with its capturing system. Technically the tutorial on how to do it doesn’t play until after you start Chapter 4, which might make you think it’s not available until then. But you can actually start capturing monsters at any point in the game, as long as you have the materials. In order to capture monsters you need two things, traps and tranquilizers. Traps snare them in place, and tranquilizers are what put them to sleep for capture. Technically, you could just use tranquilizers and capture a monster without using a trap, but it’s drastically more difficult.
To craft you need to enter your tent at Basecamp, or any camp in the wild, and select the crafting menu. Then move over to the tab that has the icon of a little monster falling in a trap. You essentially have two options for both.
- Shock Trap - 1 Trap Tool and 1 Thunderbug Capacitor
- Pitfall Trap - 1 Trap Tool and 1 Net
- Tranq Bombs - 1 Sleep Herb and 1 Parashroom
- Tranq Knife - 1 Throwing Knife and 1 of Parashrom, Toadstool, Sleep Herb, or Tranq Bomb.
Trap Tools are the hardest to find if you don’t know where to get them, but it’s actually quite easy. These can be purchased from the Provisions Merchant at the Basecamp — but they’ll only carry two at a time. So you’ll need to wait a bit for the shop to restock. Nets are crafted from Ivy and Spider Webs, both of which are plentiful in the Ancient Forest area (just look for a spider web and plant icon on your map).
Trap Tools are easily purchased at the Provisions Stockpile, and they’re cheap.
All of the other materials needed are extremely plentiful in almost every area in Monster Hunter Wilds. Thunderbug Capacitors will look like glowing yellow bugs, usually on walls. Sleep Herbs and Parashrooms can literally be found everywhere. Even just taking a few trips on your Seikret should net you what you need. But if you really need to you can open your map, and mark the materials you need — as everything is displayed with an icon.
Once you craft your Tranqs and traps, just make sure you have them in your Item Pouch before you head out on a hunt.
How to Capture Big Monsters in Monster Hunter Wilds
Capturing monsters has some unique benefits, like increased rank experience.
Capturing monsters in Wilds functions basically the same as slaying them, except for landing that final blow. You’ll still need to weaken the monster and get it into a critical state before you have a chance of capturing it.
There are a couple indications you can see that note the monster is ready to be capture. For one, your Palico does a good job of describing the monster’s state, saying it looks like it’s on its last legs. When a monster starts limping and really looking like it’s struggling, it’s generally good. But the biggest tell is a little transparent icon that appears on the map next to the monster’s icon. When that skull appears the monster is on its last legs, so you should immediately stop attacking and start using your traps.
You obviously want to place the trap in the path of your monster, but it’s not always that easy. Your best friend here is Luring Pods, which can be crafted using an Exciteshroom and Bitterbug Broth. Equip these to your Slinger, hit the monster, and it’ll come right at you. If you don’t have any of those, though, you can always attack the monster to get its attention, just be very careful to only use one or two attacks.
If you can’t get a monster into a trap, you can always pick up the trap and put it in a new location.
Once the monster has hit your trap, instantly switch to your Tranqs and hit it. Tranq bombs get thrown directly at your feet, so you’ll need to be on top of the monster — but Tranq Knives get equipped onto your Slinger. Typically it takes two Transqs on a trapped monster to capture it.
Now, for the question of why you’d rather capture a monster than slay it. Well, for one, you just feel better. In past games, you could get more rewards by capturing monsters, and there’s been some debate in the community on that in Wilds — but it seems like that’s still true. On sites like Reddit, players are saying you can get more rank experience from capturing monsters, and there are some monster materials that aren’t obtained by carving — meaning capturing the monster gives you a better chance of getting those. By and large, it seems like you can get slightly better rewards.
How to Capture Small Monsters and Creatures
Outside of hunted monsters, you can capture pretty much every single creature in the game — from tiny lizards to small monsters. Capturing small monsters works exactly the same way as large ones, you need to reduce their health and then use traps/tranqs. The key difference is you’ll need to look for visual cues on when they’re about to go down, as the skull icon will never appear on non-hunt monsters.
For small endemic life, it’s drastically easier, and the game will give you the tool you need early on. Near the start of the game, you’ll get a net that can be shot with your Slinger, and that’s literally all you need to do. Just equip it, shoot a creature, and you’re done. Capturing endemic life adds to your Rank points.
