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Qurious Crafting explained: how to unlock and use augments in Monster Hunter Rise SunbreakRamp up for Sunbreak’s endgame with powerful new augments

Ramp up for Sunbreak’s endgame with powerful new augments

Malzeno, the flagship monster of Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak

Want to know how to unlock and use Qurious Crafting and augments in Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak?Title Update 1 forSunbreakis here, bringing a wealth of new content and powerful upgrades. The biggest piece of the patch is the new Qurious Crafting system, which introduces weapon augments reminiscent of Iceborne’s system. Qurious Crafting also includes brand-new armor augments that shake up Sunbreak builds in unpredictable ways.

To access Qurious Crafting, you’ll need to hunt monsters using the new Anomalous Investigation system. This guide will walk you through unlocking investigations, raising your Anomaly Research Level, and powering up your Sunbreak builds with the new Qurious Crafting Augments.

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak Review | A Delightfully Difficult Expansion That Doesn’t DisappointWatch on YouTube

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak Review | A Delightfully Difficult Expansion That Doesn’t Disappoint

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How to unlock Anomaly Investigations and Qurious Crafting

To unlock Anomaly Quests and Investigations, you need to reach Master Rank 10. You will need to complete Sunbreak’s main story anddefeat Gaismagormto uncap your Master Rank, then run a few more hunts to reach MR10. At MR10, you will receive an Urgent Quest to hunt an Afflicted Arzuros. Complete that quest uncap your rank again and gain access to Anomaly Quests and Anomaly Investigations.

If you’ve been grinding Sunbreak since launch, you will already be familiar with Anomaly Quests. These hunts send you after power Afflicted Monsters that reward unique Afflicted Materials. Previously, these materials were only used to complete Rarity 10 weapon upgrades and craft certain decorations.

Now, you can also use those materials for weapon augments.After completing your first Anomaly Investigation, speak to the smithy in Elgado to unlock Qurious Crafting.This new system lets you use afflicted materials to augment weapons and armor. We’ll break these down in detail shortly.

Anomaly Investigations are a new system that will be somewhat familiar toMonster Hunter Worldveterans. Investigations have randomized targets, time limits, and maximum allowed faints. The target monster from an investigation will drop the usual afflicted materials, plus a new material called Amber Essence, which you can use to augment your armor. Higher level investigations are tougher, but drop more rare materials that you will need for more expensive augments.

Enabling augmentation on a longsword in Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak

How to augment weapons and best weapon augments

The best weapon augments depend strongly on your build, but a few options are generically powerful:

augment slots on a longsword in Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak

On many weapons that need a point of Handicraft to reach purple sharpness, you can nowreplace Handicraft with the Sharpness Boost augmentto free up a slot on your armor.

The Rampage Slot upgrade augment may also be useful for elemental weapons and Switch Axes that can get more value out of the level 3 Elembane and Switcher jewels than anti-species in some matchups. However, since Rampage Slot Upgrade takes up four augment slots, you will probably get as much or more value out of Attack and Elemental boost augments in many cases.

The armor augmenting UI in Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak

Armor augments explained and what to roll for

Armor augments are a brand new system that gives players a long-term grind with the potential for some extreme build optimizations. You can augment armor using Amber Essence. Each time you augment an armor piece, a number of potential stat changes are randomly rolled. Potential outcomes include increases and reductions to the armor’s defense, elemental resists, slots, and even skill points. Thankfully, there is no need to fear negative results; you can choose to keep either the newly rolled augment or stick with what you have.

So, your goal is to farm up Amber Essence in Anomaly Investigations, then roll your armor for upgrades to your builds. But what kind of upgrades should you be looking for? That answer is a bit more complicated.

In general,you want armor augments that add useful skills to your build without removing skill points that you need.

Sometimes that’s as simple as rolling comfortable, quality-of-life skills like Spiribird Caller or Speed Eating. Additional slots or slot upgrades are always a plus too. Even a level 1 slot has value, allowing for points of skills like Defiance or Stun Resistance.

Points of high-value damage skills like Weakness Exploit or Attack Boost are also universally desirable.

If your build is already capping these skills out, you have a chance to get creative. You can use any freed-up slots on your armor to invest in skills like Focus, Wirebug Whisperer, and Offensive Guard that may have previously been hard to max. Sometimes you’ll even be able to swap out entire armor pieces if you can roll their skills onto a different piece in your build.

Basically, any augment that adds useful skill points is a good augment. This typically comes at the cost of some defense and resists, but those losses are marginal. Better skills just about always outweigh worse defenses. Even if you do get a particularly bad roll, you can always reject it to keep your previous augment and keep on rolling.

That’s everything you need to start augmenting your gear with Qurious Crafting in Sunbreak! Random rolls mean there is a big grind ahead, but a good armor augment can lead to unprecedented build flexibilty. If you’re still working through the Sunbreak story, check out our guide tounlocking all switch skills in Sunbreakfor some power-ups.