What to Farm Before Ascendance in Monster Hunter Wilds

Why Bother Farming During a Content Gap

Ascendance lands in 2027, and the free Title Updates are done. That leaves a long stretch where nothing new is coming. It is tempting to shelve the game until the expansion, and honestly that is a valid choice. But if you plan to dive straight into Master Rank the day Ascendance drops, a little prep now saves you real pain later.

The trick is farming the right things. Most of your current armor and weapons get power-crept the moment you reach Master Rank, so grinding a perfect High Rank set is mostly wasted effort. What you want are the resources that carry over and the gear that smooths out the first few hours of new content. Here is where to spend your time and where not to.

Farm Armor Spheres First

This is the one veterans always bring up, and they are right. Armor spheres upgrade your armor’s defense, and Master Rank gear has a much taller upgrade ceiling than High Rank. The early hours of any expansion drain your sphere reserves fast, and farming them back up while you are also learning new monsters is miserable.

Bank them now while the hunts are easy. A few good sources:

• Trade monster parts at Roqul in the Oilwell Basin for armor spheres. Convert the materials you are drowning in.
• Tempered hunts drop higher-tier spheres directly as rewards, including Hard Armor Spheres.
• Nightflower Pollen from the Ephemeral Blossom plant can be traded through Sekka for Hard Armor Spheres and gold melding tickets.

You cannot really over-farm these. Whatever pile you build now, Master Rank will happily consume.

Lock In a Couple of Artian Weapons

Artian weapons are the current top weapon tier, built from parts that drop off Tempered monsters. They will be outclassed by Master Rank weapons eventually, but two things make them worth farming now.

First, they carry you comfortably through Arch-Tempered Arkveld, the hardest current fight and the best test of whether you are Master Rank ready. Second, the early hours of Master Rank are smoother with a strong weapon in hand rather than scraping by on whatever you crafted at HR 50.

Hunt Tempered Rey Dau, Uth Duna, Nu Udra, Jin Dahaad, Gore Magala, and Arkveld for Rarity 8 Artian parts. A tip worth knowing: dual hunts with Tempered Apex monsters give roughly four times the resources of a single hunt, and even a dual non-Tempered hunt more than doubles your part and gem yield. Run those when you can.

Do not chase a flawless roll on five different weapon types. Pick the one or two weapons you actually main, get them to a good-enough state, and stop. The perfect-roll grind belongs to the Master Rank weapon tier.

Build Up Decorations

Decorations are your skill backbone, and unlike armor, a good decoration stays useful across gear changes. A Weakness Exploit jewel or an Attack Boost jewel works just as well on a Master Rank set as it does now.

Tempered hunts drop higher-rarity decorations the higher the monster’s threat tier. Run Tempered investigations and bank the jewels you pull. You can also feed surplus decorations into the Melding Pot to convert them into randomized decorations and Artian Fragments, so nothing goes to waste. Aim to have your core offensive jewels (Weakness Exploit, Critical Boost, Attack Boost) maxed and a spare set squirreled away. You will plug those straight into your first Master Rank build.

Chase Talismans With Timeworn Charms

The anniversary update added Timeworn Charms, and they make talisman farming far less painful than it used to be. Timeworn Charms are appraisal items with a much higher chance of producing Rarity 7 and 8 talismans than older appraisal sources. They drop from the 10-star Arch-Tempered event quests.

A great talisman is one of the few pieces of gear that genuinely carries into the expansion. It lives in its own slot, provides skills and decoration slots, and a god-roll talisman frees up space on any armor set you build later. So farming one now is time well spent.

The loop is simple: run 10-star Arch-Tempered quests, collect Timeworn Charms, and appraise them for talisman rolls. You can also use Gold Talisman Tickets to meld Timeworn Charms at a rate of 10 charms per ticket. If you logged in during the anniversary window between February 18 and March 18, 2026, you should have grabbed a free Gold Talisman Ticket from the Hunter Appreciation Pack. Our full talisman farming guide breaks down what a keeper roll looks like, and the Timeworn Charms guide covers the system in detail.

Beat Arch-Tempered Arkveld

This is less about farming and more about readiness. Arch-Tempered Arkveld is the toughest fight currently in the game, gated behind HR 100. If you can clear it comfortably, you are in good shape for Master Rank. If you cannot, that is your real prep project for the gap.

Clearing it also unlocks the Arkveld Gamma armor and the Lord Soul support set, plus a steady supply of Timeworn Charms. Two birds. Our Arch-Tempered Arkveld build guide walks through the gear and approach.

What to Skip

A few things are not worth your time right now:

• Perfecting a High Rank armor set. It gets replaced in the first hours of Master Rank. Functional beats perfect.
• Maxing every weapon type. Unless you genuinely swap weapons constantly, two strong weapons is plenty.
• Hoarding common materials. Low-tier monster parts are not the bottleneck. Spheres, decorations, and talismans are.
• Burning out. This is the big one. If grinding feels like a chore, walk away and come back closer to launch. There is no deadline, and a fresh expansion is more fun when you are not already sick of the game.

The Prep Checklist

Here is the short version to keep you on track:

1. Bank armor spheres until it feels excessive, then bank more.
2. Get one or two main weapons to a strong Artian state.
3. Max your core offensive decorations and stash a spare set.
4. Farm Timeworn Charms for a god-roll talisman.
5. Clear Arch-Tempered Arkveld as your readiness benchmark.

Do those five things at a relaxed pace and you will walk into the Skybound Eyrie ready to hunt instead of scrambling to catch up. For the full picture of what is coming, check our Ascendance everything we know guide.