My weapons have a tendency to lose sharpness at the worst times. How can I predict when the sharpness will go down so that I can use a whetstone before my next battle, rather than just being stuck in horrible circumstances constantly?
How to tell when the weapons will lose sharpness
monster-hunter-3-ultimate
Related Solutions
Status Ailments work under a tolerance system. Every monster has a certain tolerance to an ailment, and after the monster has been dealt enough damage to bring their tolerance to zero the status ailment will take effect. Once the ailment wears off their tolerance will be reset, but to a higher value, making it harder to apply the ailment again. Also note that a monsters tolerance will regenerate over time to their maximum tolerance. This means you need to be consistently applying status damage in order to inflict the status ailment, or the monsters tolerance will just keep regenerating. Finally, each successful application of an ailment will be less effective than the previous one.
For example, suppose a Monster has a poison tolerance of 100, and it increased by 30 every time you apply the ailment. If you deal 10 poison damage with every attack it would take you 10 attacks in order to inflict the status on the monster the first time, 13 attacks for the second, 16 attacks for the third, et cetera. This is assuming you're attacking fast enough to consistently apply the status before the monsters tolerance increases.
The effectiveness of a status ailments varies from monsters to monster. Every monster will have a difference tolerance, tolerance increase, and effect duration for every ailment.
There are 6 kind of status ailments:
- Paralyze: Stuns a monster in place for a short time.
- Sleep: Forces a monster to got to sleep. Note that the first hit on a sleeping monster inflicts 300% damage.
- Poison: Deals damage over time to a monster.
- Slime: Explodes, dealing explosive damage to a monster (the same kind a barrel bomb does).
- KO: Knocks a monster over for a short time. Unlike Paralyze, KO damage is only deal if applied to the head. It is inflicted by all Impact damage (i.e. Hammers), Crag and Exhaust shots from the bowgun, and Exhaust coating for the bow.
- Exhaust: Makes a monster tired, like when they run out of stamina. This results in the monsters being slower, failing to perform attacks, and more. Everything that deals KO damage when applied to the head will deal Exhaust damage when applied anywhere else. The only except to this are Crag Shots for the Bowgun, which are only capable of dealing KO damage.
There's no way to determine if an item is safe to sell without looking it up online. Even items which have descriptions which make it sound like they could be sold might still have a use. In fact, the Silver Egg is a perfect example of this. The item description says it's "of no use to a hunter", but it's used to craft Fate Jewel 1.
Kiranico is a fantastic resource for any hunter, and contains searchable information on all of the items in the game. It's your best bet to determine if a specific item is safe to sell or not. The sources tab shows you all the places you can get that item from, and the usage tab shows you the various uses of that item. If the item shows up under the uses tab, then it isn't safe to sell. The uses tab doesn't list all possible uses though, strangely enough. So you'll want to check the Veggie Elder, Hunting Fleet, and Villager Request pages as well. Finally, you'll want to double check this page on farming, to see if an item is also used for upgrading the farm or acts as a fertilizer. If the item doesn't show up on any of those pages, then it's safe to sell.
Here are some links to read more about the Veggie Elder, Hunting Fleet, and Villager Requests, just in case you're not familiar with what they are.
I've compiled a short list of some of the items you can safely sell, but this is not a complete list:
- Pittance Fang
- Excellent Fang
- Fortune Fang
- Goldmine Fang
- Steel Egg
- Realmless Crown
- Garbage
- Burnt Meat
With that said, if your main concern is making money, then these safe to sell items aren't how you'll make most of your cash. The best way to make money is by selling monster carves from large wyverns (Great Jaggi, Rathian, Barroth, et ceter). These items are used for crafting weapons and materials, but unless you plan on crafting every weapon and item in the game then you're not going to need every carve from every monster. Kiranico is a good resource for determining which armors/weapon you want, and by extensions which monster carves you don't need.
Farming is another good way to make money, although by the time you hit G-Rank it'll be completely outclassed by monster carves. The Monster Hunter wiki contains a good article on farming which I'd suggest reading. The important thing to take away from it is that farm yield is increased by using fertilizers. Using fertilizers to increase yield is very important if you want to make a good profit from farming. Nulberries are my preferred item for farming. Just check your farm every few hunts, replant a few Nulberries, and then sell the rest.
Best Answer
There's no way to tell exactly how much durability your current sharpness level has, unfortunately.
Generally, most attacks will "consume" the same amount of durability, so you can generally get an idea of how much swinging is needed to use up the current level. You do need to connect with monsters in order for the durability to be consumed; attacking the air won't do anything at all.
There are couple factors to watch out for, though. As you get further on, you will run into monsters that have hardened areas. If your weapon is not sharp enough, it will bounce off, interrupting your combo. Not only do bounced attacks do less damage, but they also consume more durability in the process. Note that only cutting weapons can bounce, though; blunt weapons, like the hunting horn and hammer, won't bounce. Neither will ranged weapons.
Some weapons also have special attacks that will consume more than the regular amount of durability, when those attacks connect. The Gunlance's Wyvern Fire, especially, eats durability like candy.