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Most weapons inMonster Hunter Wildsare either simple to understand how to use, or mechanically dense. Those that are mechanically dense usually have a big learning curve when it comes to understanding how to be successful with them, but have very high ceilings.
The Heavy Bowgun is a bit of an enigma when it comes to this classification: it’s both a mechanically dense weapon, but is also possibly the easiest-to-understand weapon in the game, save perhapsfor the Hammer. That’s because most of the mechanics with the Heavy Bowgun come in the preparation, and the actual fighting bit with it is extremely straightforward.
Heavy Bowgun Overview
The Heavy Bowgun has a lot to consider when you’re both interacting with the open-world, and when you’re deciding what monster you’re hunting. Understanding what different types of ammo affect a monster is crucial when going after some of the tougher prey, and sopreparing and loading your Heavy Bowgun up properly is going to make all the difference.
But when it comes to the actual fight itself, theHeavy Bowgun is very, very simple. It’s going to impede your movement quite a bit, and it can be particular when it comes to effective range. But it’s also easy to consistently maintain heavy damage with it, particularly shining when playing with another Hunter that’s using something melee.
The Heavy Bowgun is going to transform your dodge into a less capable variant, so keep that in mind when preparing to dodge monster attacks.
Guard/Auto-Guard
Your Heavy Bowgun can Guard,allowing you to block some damage from incoming attacks. The Heavy Bowgun can alsoAuto-Guard when not performing most actions, though this is only effective from the front.
You cannot perform a Perfect Guard from Auto-Guard; you’ll need to manually Guard immediately before a monster attack lands for a Perfect Guard, which will automatically attack a monster back.
Heavy Bowgun Ammo Types
There are a ton of ammo types for the Heavy Bowgun; these areall crafted through a variety of thingsyou find in different biomes. The ammo types include:
Blastnut OR Bomb Arowana Scale + Normal Ammo
Tranq Bomb + Normal Ammo
Used tocapture monsters caught in traps.
All of these ammo types are going to bemore useful in a variety of situations; for instance, the Recover Ammo is going to be especially useful when playing with other Hunters, allowing you to heal multiple people without anybody using a potion.
The more you fight certain monsters, the more you’ll learn about their weaknesses. Once you’ve defeated them once, you can check your Monster Field Guide to see what kinds of effects are going to be particularly useful, and what kinds a monster is immune to.
How To Customize Your Heavy Bowgun
You cancustomize your Heavy Bowgun by going to the Smithy, navigating to Equipment Menu, and down to Customize Bowgun. From here, you can customize any Heavy or Light Bowgun that you’ve crafted; this includes customizing theirmods and their special ammo.
In the case of mods, they mostly revolve aroundincreasing ammo capacityfor certain magazine types like Elemental, Spread, and more, along with various mods thatimprove the Ignition Mode.
Heavy Bowgun Combos And Tips
There aren’t too many different combos with the Bowgun; primarily, you just shoot gun. But, where you choose to stand while you shoot your Heavy Bowgun is going to be largely determined by what ammo type you’re using.Every ammo type has a certain range that it’s effective in, and shooting from outside that range is going to do significantly less damage.
You can tell if you’re in your ammo type’s ideal range by going into Focus Mode and looking at your reticle. If the reticle has turned orange and changed shape slightly, you’re in the ideal range.
Basic Attacks
Basic Attacking with your Heavy Bowgunfires whatever ammo you’ve selected to use. You canaim this by holding Focus Mode, so that you ensure you’re hitting exactly where you’d like to hit.
By default, this is going to fire the normal version of your Heavy Bowgun, using the ammo that you’ve crafted or selected, and not Special Ammo.Your ammo count is going to be displayed near the bottom right of your screen.
When you’ve emptied your magazine, you can reload by pressing the fire button, or the Basic Attack button.
You canchange the ammo loaded into your Heavy Bowgun on the flyso that you can adapt to a situation as it changes; just keep an eye on your ammo count for the ammo types that are not infinite.
Ignition Mode
Switching into Ignition Mode is going to swap you from using the ammo that you’ve crafted/default ammo, andchange into Special Ammo.Special Ammo is an unlimited resource, but it cannot fire indefinitely; it recharges by dealing damage and spending time in the regular mode.
There are multiple types of Ignition Mode, and this is customizable on your Bowgun in the Bowgun Customization screen.
In general, if you’re on the defensive, it’s best to be in the regular mode of the Heavy Bowgun. If you’re on the offensive and have the charge for it, it’s best to be in Ignition Mode. There are exceptions to this, but usually only when you’ve got a particular plan with your crafted ammo.
Your Heavy Bowgun willsuffer recoil when firing in this mode, so you’ll need to compensate for that to stay on target.
Focus Blast: Wyvern Howl Shot
The Focus Blast for every weapon is meant to be aimed at amonster’s wound;when it hits a wound, the attack is going todeal significantly extra damage.
For the Heavy Bowgun, you can perform this attack at range, launching one of your three charges for this attack, which refills automatically. When in normal mode, this will only fire one of these, still dealing very good damage.
In Ignition Mode, you can charge this ability, allowing you to fire two or three charges at once,dealing exponentially more damage. Just be sure that this attack hits, because those charges don’t come back very quickly.
