Monster Hunter Wilds Seikret Guide: Mounts, Weapon Swapping, and Combat Tricks

Your Seikret Is Not a Horse

Let’s get this out of the way: the Seikret looks like a weird dinosaur-chicken hybrid, and it’s the most useful companion you’ll have in Monster Hunter Wilds. It’s a bipedal reptilian-avian mount that does way more than carry you from point A to point B.

You can heal while riding. You can sharpen your weapon on its back. You can switch your entire weapon loadout mid-hunt without visiting camp. You can fire Slinger ammo at monsters while closing the distance. And when a monster carts you across the arena, your Seikret will sprint to your rescue.

If you’re treating it like a horse in an open world game, you’re leaving half its utility on the table.

Traversal: Faster Than You Think

The open world in Wilds has no loading screens between zones. Your Seikret is how you cover that distance without spending five minutes jogging.

Auto-move to objectives. Set a waypoint or track a monster, and your Seikret will navigate there automatically. You can take your hands off the controller and manage your inventory while it runs. This sounds small, but when you’re farming and doing back-to-back hunts, the auto-pathing saves real time.

Drift mechanic. Your Seikret can drift around tight corners. Flick the analog stick while sprinting and you’ll slide through turns without losing momentum. It feels weird at first, like drifting in Mario Kart on a dinosaur, but once you get the hang of it, navigating narrow canyons and forest paths becomes smooth.

Jump and glide. Hit the jump button while sprinting and your Seikret leaps into the air. Hold jump to glide down from elevation. This is how you cross ravines, drop off cliffs without taking fall damage, and reach elevated gathering spots. The glide distance is generous — you can cover surprisingly long gaps.

No loading screens. I keep coming back to this because it matters. You ride from the Windward Plains camp straight into a monster fight in the Scarlet Forest border area without a single screen fade. The world is continuous, and your Seikret is the vehicle that makes that seamless.

Weapon Switching: The Big One

This is the feature that changes how you approach every hunt. In Wilds, you carry two full weapon loadouts stored on your Seikret. To swap between them:

• Controller: Press Right on the D-pad
• Keyboard: Press X (default)

Your hunter reaches back, grabs the other weapon off the Seikret’s saddle, and you’re running a completely different setup. Different weapon, different armor skills if you set it up that way (though most people keep the same armor across both slots early on).

Why does this matter? Because different phases of a fight call for different tools. A Hammer is perfect when the monster is grounded and you can aim for the head. But when it starts flying or you need range, swap to a Bow. Running Great Sword for raw damage on downed monsters but Long Sword for mobile combat while they’re aggressive. The combinations are up to you.

You can only swap weapons while mounted on your Seikret. You cannot swap mid-combo on the ground. This means weapon switching is a deliberate decision — you call your Seikret, mount up, swap, and then engage. It adds a layer of planning to each hunt phase.

Mounted Combat: Hit-and-Run Tactics

Riding your Seikret near a monster isn’t just about closing distance. Each weapon type has a unique mounted strike — an attack you perform while dismounting that transitions you from riding into combat.

These mounted strikes are essentially drive-by attacks. You charge the monster on Seikret-back, trigger the mounted strike at the right moment, and your hunter launches off with a weapon-specific attack. Some weapons get wide sweeping slashes. Others get precise thrusts. Heavy weapons like the Hammer get a massive downward slam.

The hit-and-run playstyle works well against monsters that are aggressive and hard to approach on foot. Ride in, land your mounted strike, deal damage, ride away before the retaliation comes, circle back, and repeat. It’s not the most damage-efficient approach against a downed monster, but against something like an enraged Doshaguma charging around, it keeps you safe while still dealing damage.

Dismount aerial attack. When you manually dismount near a monster (without using the mounted strike), you get a standard aerial attack. If this aerial attack connects, it has a chance to trigger a monster mount — the Wyvern Riding equivalent where you hop on the monster itself for extra damage and a knockdown. So your Seikret dismount can chain directly into mounting the monster. Strong sequence.

Using Items While Mounted

You can do all of this while riding:

• Drink potions and mega potions — Full healing without stopping
• Sharpen your weapon — No need to find a safe corner
• Eat rations or steaks — Restore stamina on the move
• Fire Slinger ammo — Aim and shoot at monsters, environmental hazards, or to grab Slinger drops from the ground
• Use traps and bombs — Drop them as you ride past (this one’s mostly for speedrun setups)
• Gather materials — Your Seikret auto-picks up herbs, bugs, and ore as you ride through gathering spots

The item usage alone is a game-changer. In older Monster Hunter games, healing meant sheathing your weapon, standing still, flexing after drinking, and praying the monster didn’t hit you during the animation. Now you just mount up and chug while sprinting away. The flex animation is gone entirely in Wilds, but even so, mounted healing is faster because you’re building distance simultaneously.

Emergency Rescue

This one saved my life more than I want to admit. When you get knocked down by a monster and you’re lying on the ground vulnerable, you can call your Seikret for an emergency pickup.

Your mount sprints over, scoops you up, and carries you to safety. You can then heal while riding away from the monster that just sent you flying. It’s essentially a get-out-of-jail button for when a combo goes wrong and you’re stuck in a bad position.

The rescue isn’t instant — there’s a brief delay while the Seikret runs to your location. If you’re in a tight space or the monster is standing directly on top of you, the rescue might not reach you before the follow-up attack. But in open areas, it’s reliable and has saved me from countless carts.

Seikret Customization

You can change how your Seikret looks at the smithy or from your equipment box:

• Saddle color and style — Multiple designs unlocked through gameplay progression
• Armor plating — Cosmetic changes to the Seikret’s body armor
• Tent color — Affects the tent that appears when you set up pop-up camps (yes, really)
• Stickers and markings — Decorative additions for personalization

None of these affect stats. It’s purely cosmetic. But if you’re going to stare at this thing for 200+ hours, you might as well make it look how you want.

Practical Tips

Call your Seikret proactively, not reactively. If you see a monster winding up a big charge, mount up before the charge connects. Don’t wait until you’re already flying through the air.

Use mounted strikes to initiate fights. Riding in with a mounted strike deals solid opening damage and positions you right next to the monster for follow-up combos. It’s better than jogging up and awkwardly unsheathing.

Swap weapons between hunt phases. Monster limping away to sleep? Swap to your big damage weapon (Great Sword, Charge Blade) for the wake-up hit. Monster enraged and aggressive? Swap to something mobile (Dual Blades, Sword and Shield). The dual loadout system rewards players who adapt.

Sharpen while retreating. Whenever you need to sharpen, call your Seikret and sharpen while riding. No downtime, no risk. This is free efficiency that a lot of players forget about.

Don’t ride during monster knockdowns. When the monster falls over, you want to be on foot dealing damage, not sitting on your Seikret. Dismount before the knockdown and maximize your damage window. The Seikret is for transitions, not for DPS phases.