Monster Hunter Wilds Artian Weapons Guide: Rarity Tiers, Farming, and What's Actually Worth Building
Complete guide to the Artian weapon system in Monster Hunter Wilds. Covers R6, R7, R8 tiers, Tempered material farming, element combining, and the best Artian weapons to prioritize.
What Are Artian Weapons?
Artian weapons are the endgame weapon system in Monster Hunter Wilds. They sit above standard monster-tree weapons in the crafting hierarchy, using materials from Tempered monsters instead of regular hunts. The big selling point: customizable elements during crafting, more decoration slots than anything else, and raw stats that outclass normal weapons at equivalent rarity.
They’re also a grind. A real one. I’ve spent more hours farming Tempered monsters for Artian materials than I spent on the entire story. But the payoff is real. A fully built R8 Artian weapon with the right element changes how fast you clear hunts.
How to Unlock Artian Crafting
Artian weapons unlock after you complete Chapter 4-3. That’s the quest introducing Tempered Lala Barina, which also opens the Tempered monster system. After finishing that quest, visit the Smithy and you’ll see a new “Artian” branch in every weapon’s crafting tree.
The initial options are Rarity 6. Higher tiers gate behind Hunter Rank milestones.
The Three Rarity Tiers
Rarity 6 — Stepping Stone (Skip It)
R6 Artian weapons come from base Tempered monster materials. They have one decoration slot, blue sharpness, and attack values comparable to standard High Rank weapons. They exist to introduce the system, not to be your endgame.
I crafted one R6 Long Sword out of curiosity and immediately regretted spending the materials. Within three hunts I had better options from the regular monster tree. Save your resources.
Rarity 7 — Mid-Tier (HR 61+, Also Skip It)
R7 unlocks at Hunter Rank 61 when higher-tier Tempered monsters start appearing. Two decoration slots, some white sharpness, better attack. An improvement over R6 but still a temporary weapon.
The problem with R7 is opportunity cost. Every Tempered material you spend on R7 is a material you don’t have for R8. And R7-to-R8 isn’t an upgrade path. They’re separate crafts. Building R7 doesn’t give you a head start on R8.
Rarity 8 — The Real Prize (HR 100+ / Arch-Tempered)
R8 Artian weapons use materials from Arch-Tempered monsters, which appear at HR 100 and above. Three decoration slots, generous white sharpness, high base attack, and the best element values in the game.
This is what you’re farming for. Three deco slots give you build flexibility that no other weapon matches. You can slot in skills that would normally require armor compromises. The effective damage difference between an R8 Artian and a standard monster weapon isn’t just the raw numbers. It’s the extra skills those three slots enable.
My recommendation: skip R6 and R7 entirely. Use your best monster-tree weapon (Rathian, Doshaguma, whatever got you through the story) until you can access Arch-Tempered hunts and build R8 directly.
The one exception: if Tempered hunts are walling you and you genuinely need a stat bump, craft one R7 for your main weapon type. Treat it as a bridge, not a destination.
Element Combining
Artian weapons let you choose their element during crafting by combining 2-3 elemental materials.
Matching elements (2-3 of the same type): You get that element on the weapon. Three Fire materials produce a Fire Artian weapon. More matching materials mean higher element values.
Mixed elements (no matching set): You get a raw weapon with no element. This isn’t terrible for slow weapons like Great Sword or Hammer that favor raw damage, but most weapon types want the element.
For fast-hitting weapons (Dual Blades, Sword and Shield, Bow, Light Bowgun), I recommend building a full elemental set. One Artian weapon per element, five total. Slower weapons can get by with fewer. Great Sword really only needs two or three elements covering its worst matchups.
Practical element sourcing:
- Fire: Tempered Rathalos and Rathian materials
- Thunder: Tempered Rey Dau materials
- Ice: Tempered Nu Udra or Gelidron materials
- Water: Tempered Uth Duna materials
- Dragon: Tempered Gore Magala materials
Plan your farming sessions around the element you need. Random Tempered hunts waste time. Target specific monsters.
Tempered Material Farming
Artian materials only drop from Tempered monsters. Regular hunts give you nothing for this system.
Tempered monsters are visually distinct. They glow, they hit harder, and they have blue-glowing wounds visible in Focus Mode (normal wounds glow red). Breaking those blue Tempered Wounds with Focus Strikes drops Wyverian Bloodstones, which are gated materials for R8 crafting. You can’t get them from normal carves or captures.
Tier breakdown:
- T1 Tempered (early monsters like Chatacabra, Kulu-Ya-Ku) drop R6 materials
- T2 Tempered (Rathalos, Gravios, Nerscylla tier) drop R7 materials
- T3 / Arch-Tempered (endgame monsters) drop R8 materials
This tiering is another reason to skip R6 and R7. The materials come from completely different monster pools. Farming T1 monsters for R6 doesn’t help you build R8 at all.
Farming tips:
Break every blue wound you see. Each Tempered Wound broken is a material drop opportunity. In multiplayer, coordinate who’s targeting which wound. A four-player group should be breaking three or four wounds per hunt minimum.
Run Tempered investigations, not optional quests. Investigations with Gold reward slots roughly double your useful material drops per hunt compared to standard Tempered quests. Silver rewards are still better than base quests. Bronze is marginal.
The Melding Pot at HR 41 lets you convert some materials, but the conversion rates for Artian stuff are poor. Direct farming is almost always more efficient. Don’t rely on melding as a shortcut.
Artian vs. Monster-Tree Weapons
Both are available by mid-High Rank. Here’s the honest comparison.
Monster-tree weapons win when:
- You haven’t reached R8 Artian tier yet
- A specific monster weapon has a unique property (Arkveld weapons have special effects worth using)
- You need a weapon right now and don’t have Tempered materials stockpiled
R8 Artian weapons win when:
- You can actually craft them
- You need three decoration slots for a skill-hungry build
- You want maximum element for a specific matchup
- You’re optimizing for endgame farming speed
In practice, the three deco slots on R8 Artian are the deciding factor. Those slots let you run skills that would otherwise force armor compromises. The effective damage from skill flexibility often exceeds the raw stat difference between weapons.
Which Artian Weapons to Build First
Priority 1: Your main weapon type, Fire element. Fire hits a lot of monsters for good damage. It’s the most broadly useful first build.
Priority 2: Same weapon type, Thunder or Ice. Covers matchups where Fire is weak.
Priority 3: Second weapon type (your backup from the dual-loadout system). Having Artian options for both loadout slots means you never need to swap back to monster-tree weapons mid-hunt.
Priority 4: Remaining elements and weapon types. Fill out as you farm. No rush.
Don’t try to build all 14 weapon types at once. That’s 70 weapons (14 types times 5 elements). You’d burn out before finishing. Pick your two mains, build their elemental sets, and expand from there.
The Augmentation Layer
After crafting an R8 Artian weapon, you can augment it at the Smithy using additional Tempered and Arch-Tempered materials. Augmentations add stats like extra attack, affinity, element, or decoration slots (yes, you can go beyond three).
Augmentation uses the same Tempered materials you farmed for crafting, so you’ll need to keep hunting even after building the base weapon. Consider augmentation as the second phase of the Artian grind.
The Melding Pot plays a bigger role here since you can convert excess materials into augmentation stones. It’s not efficient, but it’s useful for converting leftover T1 and T2 materials you don’t need for weapons.
The Bottom Line
Artian weapons are the endgame. They’re what keeps you hunting after the story ends. Skip R6 and R7, farm Arch-Tempered monsters for R8, target specific elements for your main weapon types, and break every blue wound you find. The grind is real, but the results change how your builds work.
For general endgame progression, see the endgame guide. If you’re still working through the story, the beginner’s guide covers what you need for Low and early High Rank.