Hey folks! I've been playing and enjoying Monster Hunter World, about 10-15 hours in right now. I feel like I have a handle on most aspects of the game at this point (I also played a chunk of 4U), but a few things still confuse me. Hoping some folks here may be able to answer!

1. I was trying bows, and am confused on the Iron Bow vs Hunter's Bow (ie, Ore tree vs Bone tree weapons). For melee weapons, these trees offer a small trade-off between sharpness and raw damage. However, the bow does not have sharpness... so does the Iron Bow have any advantage over the Hunter's Bow?
2. For the most part, it seems I can undo weapon upgrades and get the parts back. However, sometimes I can't, such as when I upgraded to my Charge Blade to the Jagras Strongarm. I first thought this was was maybe because I went to a different "tier" of weapon, but I did a similar leap with my bow and can still go back. Not sure why I sometimes can and sometimes can't.
3. When playing together with a friend, if we both are on the same story mission, and neither of us have done it, it looks like we cannot play it together. I know you have to wait after the cutscene before sending a SOS flare, but I did that and my friend could not see the flare. My guess is they have to see the cutscene on their own first, is that right?

@majormitch: Not sure about 2 but I'll try 1 and 3.

1. The difference is damage, types of special coatings you can use and the upgrade trees.

3. That depends, it could be the cutscene thing, but I know there are Hunter Ranks and if you aren't a high enough rank you cannot respond to certain SOS's. Usually I'll see my rank go up after these types of quests. So if you're both rank 2 and the quest requires a rank of 3 then they can't respond.

1. The major difference between one bow and another is usually the coatings they can use. There very early bows can often only use close-range coating and power coating, but most bows have more options. Generally speaking, that should probably be the primary factor in picking a bow to use. Some bows also have bonus potency on certain coatings, denoted by a + symbol, so keep that in mind.

2. Honestly I don't know if there is specific reason for that either. I've only done it a few times, but I didn't notice any obvious factor.

3. Yes, both players have to have seen the cutscene once. Honestly, I would just do those quests solo or with rando's if you really need help, until you get to high rank and those quests are few and far between. But if you really want to co-op everything I would probably just each start separately until the SOS is available and then abandon the quest to queue up together.

@ozzie: @zeik: Thanks to you both! For #3 I was trying to play the story missions with my brother, who's at the same HR and everything as me. Neither of us have had trouble solo, we're still early on, just thought it would be more fun to team up. But the game doesn't really seem engineered for co-op play in the story missions, sounds like we'll be better off doing those on our own, and only team up for the harder side stuff.

Also, that makes sense for #1, still a little confused on #2 but it's not the end of the world and maybe I'll figure it out one day :)

As far as 2 goes, there's usually a specific model change that accompanies it. With the switch axe, for example, I've noticed the blade itself changes from a flat shape to a crescent moon shape. I can switch out and degrade anything up to that point.

Regardless, it warns you either way.

@burncoat: Yeah, I did get the warning when I did that for my charge blade, so I wasn't surprised that I couldn't go back with it. I got confused when I upgraded my bow in a similar way, switching to a different type of bow via a tree branch change, that appeared to have a model change, and then DIDN'T get the warning. It seems like I did the same thing with both weapons, but one can go back and the other can't. Probably some detail I'm missing, I jsut don't know what, so it seems inconsistent.

@majormitch: I might be wrong, but I think it might be the upgrades where the version has a thicker border around them. I haven't figured out what else that border might mean.

Edit: Ye, it's most definitely the upgrades with a big additional border around them. Why they would make certain upgrades non-revertable though, who knows ?

The square border weapons cannot be downgraded. However, once you upgrade to it once, you can forge that weapon again without having to upgrade along the tree to it. Saves time and resources later on when trying to get some of the later tree stuff.

That's incorrect. The ones you can forge are the ones with the hammer icon in the top left corner, and you can forge them regardless if you've upgraded to them or not.

@ares42: Thanks for clarifying about the borders. I have no idea why they do it that way and make a select few things non-revertable. But at least now I know how they mark it in the UI.

@majormitch: All the other answers here are good, but I wanted to clarify a little mis-information that has been going around regarding your third question: You don't need to fire the SOS flare to have your friend join you. The SOS flare turns your quest into a publically joinable online session, it doesn't actually change whether or not your friend can join.

If you want to do story together (which admittedly is very poorly set up) the best thing to do is as follows:

1. Both you and your friend connect to a session together. Easiest way to do this initially is to go to the Options menu -> Communication Tab -> Invite a Friend (it will send them a PSN invite). After you are in the same session I recommend making a squad and inviting your friend so next time you play you can just automatically join the squad session and not have to faff with invites.

2. Both of you start the same story quest separately, and play until you have seen the cutscene. One of you then needs to "Return from Quest" after seeing the cutscene.

3. The person who quit should go to the quest board, go to Join a Quest -> Available Quests -> Assigned Quests. There you should see the story quest your friend is already on. Just join up and depart.

Hope that helps, and any questions just ask. It's not super well implemented or obvious in the game.

@bollard: Ah, OK, that explains some things. Thanks for clarifying! This game does a bad job explaining a lot of that, and definitely doesn't seem to intend for players to go through the story together.

@majormitch:I believe the thing with having story quests set up like that is a legacy one: The story quests take the place of the "Village Chief quests" of older Monster Hunters, which were not doable online. You were supposed to go through them solo, and they kinda tutorialized you and introduced monsters and mechanics slowly, but you could jump into the low rank online quests whenever you wanted to if you wanted a break from that.

I'm brand new to Monster Hunter and wanted to jump in with a related weapon upgrade question. I'm starting out with sword and shield, and have crafted one upgrade, moving from the starter weapon to the bone version. So far I've pretty much only done main quests - I finished the first non-Ancient Forrest quest last night so I think that's 4 or 5 hunts? When I've tried to upgrade my weapon further, I'm told I can't despite looking like I have all the required parts. Is this gated some other way besides basic part acquisition?

Is there an ideal weapon for capturing monsters? I was thinking the bow since i cant seem to hit monster with the tranq bomb, i just keep throwing them on the ground. Also, i am getting them in traps when theyre weak first.

Edit - shout out to the charge sword for being a awesome weapon in general.

@travisrex: Capturing is always the same way. Attack the monster until it is limping. Get it in a trap and then use 2 tranq bombs next to the monster.

@travisrex: A little tip, you don't actually have to throw the tanq bombs second. If you throw them down in advance the effect will last a solid minute and will be instantly captured when they enter the trap. If they're not quite at the threshold you'll also have some time to wail on them while in the trap and cross the damage threshold.

You also need to have enough money (Zenny) to pay for the upgrade. The price is displayed in the bottom-right area of the screen.

@asmo917: If you have multiple different versions of a weapon type you might have selected the wrong one, as in you selected to upgrade your iron weapon but trying to upgrade in the bone path.

@zeik: @indure:

Thanks guys

Successfully caught a monster, what a pain in the ass, lol