Status

[Last update: 15 January 2026]

Since Now has shorter fights, status works a little differently here.

Thanks to An Actual CAT from the unofficial MHNow Discord and Lsama (japanese article) whose researches helped me do this article, and Day from the same Discord for fixing some of my misconceptions

1. Status effects
2. Differences with mainline games
   1. Bowguns status ammo damage
3. Skills
   1. Additive / multiplicative skills
   2. Status chances skills
   3. Ailment Opportunist
   4. Damage skills
4. Generic status builds
   1. Poison
   2. Paralysis
   3. Sleep

Status effects

• Poison : DoT for a set time, dealing damage to the monster’s main HP bar (does not contribute towards partbreak), 7,5/12/18% of the monster’s total health per proc based on its sensibility. Sometimes has secondary effects (a poisoned Legiana can’t fly, reduces the strength of Kushala wind barrier, etc)
• Blast: instant damage on the part where it procs (contribute towards partbreak inheriting the damage type who procs hit meaning it can event cut tails), around 5
  of the monster’s max HP (unless resistant)
• Paralysis : immobilizes the monster for a set period of time where it will take 110% damage
• Sleep: triggers a special animation where the monster goes to sleep. The first hit who wakes the monster up deals 200% damage (in mp, every player benefits from this effect, unlike mainline games where only the first hit of the whole party gets buffed)
• Stun: temporarely immobilizes the monsters, special status condition dealt by every attack dealing blunt damage

Also note that paralysis and sleep can in some occurences mess with the monster’s state. For instance, sleep can put Rajang out of its rage mode and both can cancel Goss Harag enraged state (which makes it more resistant).

Differences with mainline games

As a reminder, a status weapon has a 33% chance of dealing status damage on every hit. The status damage dealt feels an hidden gauge and once the gauge is filled, the status procs, dealing its effects.

In mainline games, once poison, paralysis and stun proc, any status damage dealt during their effects won’t register for the following proc. This is not the case in Now as status damage gets registered even when the status is currently active. This is huge for paralysis and stun since they allow you to trigger themselves multiple time in a row in the right conditions.

In multiplayer, the status trigger gauge don’t get increased depending on the player number, unlike HP (in mainline games, statuts becomes harder to proc in mp). And since the monster’s HP increase, blast damage is adapted based on the number of players. Thus status tends to become stronger in a team.

There are a few special case regarding the status proc chances:

• bowguns status ammos deal guaranteed status damage based on the weapon rank
• while in sword mode, SA phials explosions deal guaranteed status damage
• GL shots don’t deal status damage
• CB phials don’t deal status damage

In Now, so that every weapon can use statuts within its shorter hunts, every weapon has an hidden status multiplier.

Weapon	Multiplier	Special case
SnS	1,4
DB	0,8
GS	3,5
LS	1,8
Hammer	2,0
HH	1,1
Lance	1,5
GL	1,5
SA	1,2	Sword mode phial explosions (0,4)
CB	1,6
LBG	3,0
HBG	3,0
Bow	1,1

MHNow also uses MHRise’s style system. While the multipliers shared here are pretty balanced around all base styles, they can become way more powerful on styles allowing higher hit counts or quick access to the monster’s back (for the Status Sneak Attack skill described later). Noteworthy mentions are Drill Slash SnS, Surging Slash GS, Aquatic Strike Hammer or Blast Dash GL.

In mainline games, the status gauge increase by a set amount after each proc until it reaches a cap. That’s not the case in Now where a multiplicative factor in applied to the gauge, making each consecutive proc exponentially harder.

Status	Multiplicative factor
Poison	2
Paralysis	2
Sleep	3
Blast	1,3
Stun	2,5

Here is the status damage formula without skills:

Status value X Weapon multiplier

Adding multiplicative (Slugger) and additive (Poison Attack, Paralysis Attack, etc) skills, here’s what it looks like:

(Status value + Additive skill) X Multiplicative skill X Weapon multiplier

Multiplicative skill results are rounded to the unit above.

Bowguns status ammo damage

Status ammo damage is based on the weapon rank.

Bowgun rank	Status damage
2	60
3	90
4	120
5	150
6	180
7	195
8	210
9	225
10	240

Skills

As explained before, stun is a special case amongst statuses. Only Slugger impacts its performance, none of the skills described under impact it.

Additive / multiplicative skills

These being:

• Poison Attack for poison
• Paralysis Attack for paralysis
• Sleep Attack for sleep
• Blast Attack for blast
• Charge Master (multiplicative) for charged attacks

At first glance, they aren’t that great.

Demo using a Rathian SnS 10-5 and the Poison Attack skill on a 10 star Great Jagras (poison gauge: 4680):

Proc number	Status gauge	Rathian SnS 722 poison post multiplier	Rathian SnS + Poison Attack 5 932 poison post multiplier
1	4680	7 hits (21 hits approx.)	6 hits (18 hits approx.)
2	9360	14 hits (42 hits approx.)	12 hits (36 hits approx.)
3	18720	28 hits (84 hits approx.)	24 hits (72 hits approx.)
4	37440	56 hits (168 hits approx.)	48 hits (144 hits approx.)

The issue is pretty damning here: while you get greater returns with each proc, the 1min15 duration of MHNow hunts severely hinders these skills. At best, you can hope for one more status proc for a huge investement.

Additive skills can get some value on bowguns: since their ammo deals guaranteed damage and they have a set number of ammos on each reload, having some Status Attack can sometimes make the difference between triggering a status in one ammo rotation instead of two.

The first level can also be used on slow weapons. Indeed, while going from 6 to 7 hits to trigger with an SnS who will chain a lot of hits isn’t such a big deal, it makes a huge difference on a GS with way less hits.

Status chances skills

These skills being:

• Status Sneak Attack
• Chameleos Venomist for poison
• Teostra Powder for blast

Within a status build, these skills are way stronger. While the previous skills increased the amount of statuts dealt, a decreasing value with each proc, these skills increases your status dealing chances, impacting the 33% chances.

To get into the finer print, they apply a multiplier to the 33% chances. Here are the multipliers and their effects:

Status Sneak Attack	Multiplier	Status dealing chances
0	0	33%
1	0,2	39,6%
2	0,65	54,45%
3	1,1	69,3%
4	1,55	84,15%
5	/	100%

Teostra Powder / Chameleos Venomist	Multiplier	Status dealing chances
0	0	33%
1	0,4	46,2%
2	0,7	56,1%
3	1	66%

Here is the detailed calculus:

33% X (1 + SSA multiplier + ED skill multiplier)

Which gives us these proc chances when paired together:

Demo with a Rathian SnS 10-5 and the SSA and Poison Attack skills on a 10 star Great Jagras (4680 poison gauge):

Proc number	Status gauge	Rathian SnS + Poison Attack 5 932 poison	Rathian SnS Rathian + SSA 5 722 poison
1	4680	6 hits (18 hits approx.)	7 hits (7 hits)
2	9360	12 hits (36 hits approx.)	14 hits (14 hits)
3	18720	24 hits (72 hits approx.)	28 hits (28 hits)
4	37440	48 hits (144 hits approx.)	56 hits (56 hits)

I think the demo is pretty obvious: status dealing chances skills offer more consistency and highly reduces the numbers of hits required to proc a status.

Ailment Opportunist

Kind of a weird one so it gets its own category as it belongs to both the previous one. It increases your status dealing chances to 100% on the hit following a perfect dodge while also increasing its status value using a multiplier.

Ailment Opportunist lvl	Status multiplier
1	2,5
2	3
3	3,5
4	4
5	5

Note that skills like Hellfire Cloak add additional hits following a perfect dodge who deal no status damage. These skills have an anti-synergy with Ailment Opportunist as the additional hit will consume the guaranteed multiplied status buff… On a 0 status hit.

Damage skills

These skills being:

• Build Up Boost (damage increase when you’re dealing status damage)
• Poison Exploit (damage on a poisoned monster)
• Paralysis Exploit (damage on a paralyzed monster)
• Rude Awakener (wake-up hit damage)

Build Up Boost is highly relying on the status chances skills since the higher your chances of dealing status damage, the higher your damage gets.

Paralysis Exploit is really powerful as a paralyzed monster already takes increased damage and more importantly, it can’t move at all, meaning you can attack at full power.

Each Ruder Awakener level adds 30/60/100% to your wake-up hit (so 60/120/200% since these damage are doubled).

Setup	Damage
Base hit	100%
Wake-up hit	200%
Rude Awakener 1 wake-up hit	260%
Rude Awakener 2 wake-up hit	320%
Rude Awakener 3 wake-up hit	400%

Generic status builds

These builds aim to work on most weapon without a skill-tax. Adapt the driftsmelts based on the weapon type and your own playstyle.

Poison

• Chameleos – Glavenus – Nargacuga – Chameleos – Nargacuga
  • Build Up Boost 5, Poison Exploit 3, Chameleos Venomist 2, SSA 1, Raw Power 2, Lock on
  • DRIFTSMELT: 5 Burst / 2 or 3 SSA
  • Noteworthy weapons: Gold Rathian (Poison Exploit 2), Chameleos (SSA 2)
• [Chameleos Bow] Chameleos – Chameleos – Rathian or – Rajang – Gold Rathian
  • Focus 5, Poison Exploit 4, Chameleos Venomist 2, SSA 1, Poison Attack 1
  • DRIFTSMELT: 4 Burst

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Paralysis

• Bishaten – Glavenus – Nargacuga – Bishaten – Nargacuga
  • Build Up Boost 5, Paralysis Exploit 3, Raw Power 2, Lock on
  • DRIFTSMELT: 5 Burst / SSA
  • Noteworthy weapons: Drill Slash SnS, Christmas 2025 DB, Blast Dash GL

• [Aquatic Strike Hammer] Deviljho – Beotodus – Lunagaron – Fulgur Anjanath – Beotodus
  • Blunt Force 5, Slugger 4, Special Boost 2, Lock on
  • DRIFTSMELT: 5 Charged Timer

Sleep

Using Rude Awakener to its full potency requires a powerful one-hit move, GS and LBG being clearly amongst the best thanks to their special dealing massive damage in one burst. A lot of speedruns rely on Critical Ferocity to deal massive damage on an empowered negative crit (but you’re basically playing russian roulette hoping to get said empowered negative crit and not a regular one).

• [Radobaan GS] Nightshade Paolumu – Glavenus – Bazelgeuse – Tigrex – Nightshade Paolumu
  • Rude Awakener 3, Critical Ferocity 4, Raw Power 2, Lock on
  • DRIFTSMELT: 5 Timed Charger / 3 Raw Power

• [Nightshade Paolumu LBG] Nightshade Paolumu – Paolumu – Legiana – Coral Pukei – Nightshade Paolumu
  • Rude Awakener 3, Reload Speed 3, Recoil Down 3
  • DRIFTSMELT: 5 Special Boost

Water Strike Hammer is a specific case of sleep weapon as it uses the sleep animation as a way to land a huge numbers of hits with the Spinning Bludgeon to build up the following sleep and stuns while increasing the attack damage with each consecutive spin.

• [Radobaan Hammer] Deviljho – Beotodus – Lunagaron – Fulgur Anjanath – Beotodus
  • Blunt Force 5, Slugger 4, Special Boost 2, Lock on
  • DRIFTSMELT: 5 Charged Timer