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You don’t have to kill monsters in Monster Hunter Wilds. Capturing them with traps and Tranq Bombs is one of the most effective ways to get rare materials and defeat monsters faster. In our experience, catching monsters isn’t as ideal as previous games in the series — you will get more materials, but it isn’t a huge difference. Instead, the biggest factor is how much time it saves you. Catching monsters is faster than killing them, and you’ll always know right away when they’re ready to catch.
You won’t get a tutorial for catching monsters until after you’ve completed the main story campaign and reached the early portions of the post-game content. You can start catching earlier, but the game never directs you to try it — here’s what you need to know about catching monsters and reaping the rewards.
How To Catch Monsters
Monsters can be caught in Monster Hunter Wilds instead of killed. Doing this will defeat the captured monster instantly, ending the hunt and rewarding you with a larger-than-normal bounty of materials. You can get rare materials faster by catching monsters instead of killing them.
To catch a monster, you’ll need a trap and Tranq Bombs. Any trap will work. Crafting Tranq Bombs requires a rare material called Sleep Herb — we’ll talk more about finding Sleep Herbs later. Here’s how to catch a monster.
- Fight a monster until they’re severely weakened. When they’re weak enough, a skull icon will appear on your map on the monster’s location. This skull icon signals that the monster is weak enough to be caught.
- Place a Pitfall Trap or Shock Trap and ensnare the monster. Lure it into the trap. When it’s caught, you’re ready to capture it.
- Use Tranq Bombs while standing directly on the trapped monster. Throw them directly on the ground and keep doing it until the monster is defeated — it will require multiple Tranq Bombs.
The process is straightforward once you get the hang of it. Fight a monster until the skull icon appears on the map, then trap the monster with a trap (any type), then use Tranq Bombs to finish the monster off and capture it. Depending on the monster, you’ll need to drop 2-3 Tranq Bombs or more to fully catch it. You can also use Tranq Ammo or other Tranq gear, but Tranq Bombs (so far) seem like the most effective option.
The newest feature here is the skull marker that makes knowing when a monster can be caught much easier — much older games in the series forced players to guess when a monster was weak enough. Now you’ll know for sure. No need to waste valuable Tranq Bombs on monsters that aren’t fully ready to be caught.
Catching monsters in previous games would also get you the best rewards and the most loot — you could reliably get valuable monster parts that you couldn’t get any other way. That doesn’t seem to be the case in Monster Hunter Wilds, but catching monsters is much faster than fully defeating them and does still give a higher level of loot. It’s still worth doing, even if it isn’t 100% required like previous games.
How To Find Sleep Herb
Tranq Bombs are a limited resource you’ll need to capture monsters. If you don’t have Tranq Bombs, you can’t catch monsters — and Tranq Bombs are hard to find. Farming plots don’t exist in Monster Hunter Wilds so you can’t simply grow new materials for making them — you’ll need to go find them yourself.
Tranq Bombs are made with Sleep Herbs. Sleep Herbs are the roadblock — they’re not easy to find, and they’re pretty rare on the world maps. You can view them from the map to make picking them easier. Here’s a location you can visit to farm Sleep Herbs.
- Sleep Herb Location: Go to the Windward Plains map next to Area 10. There are three Sleep Herb spawn points here. They’re near the southeastern campsite. There are two by the river and another by itself — check the map for their exact location.
You may need to pause monster hunting just to collect lots of Sleep Herbs. If you know this location, you can quickly grab three between hunts.
