Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak Palico guide: Best support skills, items & builds

Finetuning your Palico in Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak can become overwhelming with all the options for customization. We’ve simplified it here with the best Palico guide in Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak, including the best support moves.

In the base Monster Hunter Rise game, players relied on RNG based system to acquire the best Palico. This forced players to commit with a specific Palico — placing emphasis on their innate support moves rather than how adorable their design is.

Because style hunter is forever while meta is temporary, that RNG system was a bit of a bummer.

But in Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak, you can now customize the Palicoes to a frightening degree without having to rely on the gacha system. This is largely in part to the Swap Support Moves Function, which allows players to change out the Level 5, 10, and 15 support moves.

Now with a cuteness overload and the skills to boot, here’s how you can customize the best Palico possible in Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak, including what to look out for in terms of support moves.

How to unlock Swap Support Move function in Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak

Each of the level increment support moves has a separate quest unlock feature, but they’re all handled by Nagi the Buddy Agent. For all things related to buddy handling, you’ll want to talk to this cute kitty.

By going through MR quests, you’ll start to unlock side quests by talking with Nagi the Buddy Agent.

There should be three quests total: One that unlocks level 5 support move customization, another that unlocks the level 10 ones, and the final unlocking level 15 support move customization.

• Level 5: Tough Training Tools
  • Get a Hermitaur Hardclaw and a Ceanataur Hardclaw
• Level 10: Grueling Training Ground
  • Slay 8 MR Rachnoid in the Lava Caverns
• Level 15: Top-Notch Training Tools
  • Get 2 Rajang Wildpelt

These quests essentially allow you to fully customize your Palico’s support moves; many of which used to be locked behind RNG making them difficult to optimize.

Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak: Best Support Moves for Palico

Now that you know that the support moves are customizable, here are all the customizable support moves, with the some analysis on the benefits of notable moves.

Level 5 Support Moves

• Healing Bubble
• Go, Fight, Win
• Whirlwind Assault
• Zap Blast Spinner
• Mega Boomerang

For this section, it depends on what the hunter wants. If you’re finding yourself wanting healing, the Healing Bubble is a solid choice. The downside is that these tend to move around, often resulting in mispositioning from the big fight.

Another great choice is Go, Fight, Win, which works wonders for stamina reliant hunters. The other three options cater more according to your Palico’s weapon type.

Level 10 Support Moves

• Vase of Vitality
• Summeown Endemic Life
• Power Drum
• Anti-Monster Mine
• Camouflage

The best options here are probably Vase of Vitality and Powerdrum.

Once again, Vase of Vitality is great for hunters that find themselves getting hit quite often, saving them time of pulling out specific cures for status ailments. For Powerdrum buffs up the entire team, including hunters and buddies — thereby making it the bests option for DPS.

Summeown Endemic Life doesn’t really put in much visible use, and  Camouflage definitely isn’t the move, unless you’re trying to make the monster attack you more.

Anti-Monster Mine isn’t bad, but Powerdrum is typically the better option as it provides a straight buff rather than an RNG based stagger.

Leve 15 Support Moves

• Forbidden Acorn
• Shock Purr-ison
• Fleet-foot Feat
• Flash Bombay
• Shock Tripper

Shock Purr-ison, Flash Bombay, and Shock Tripper are all excellent options here, with differently catered circumstances.

Shock Tripper inflicts thunder blight, which allows a free knock out when hitting the monster on the head thereafter. This works for all monsters, including Elder Dragons.

Shock Purr-ison, also known as shock trap, doesn’t hold the same utility since Elder Dragons are immune to traps. But instead, this provides more utility for when on capture quests.

And for Flash Bombay — this move comes in clutch so often. A properly timed flash, which Palicoes pull off a surprisingly frequently, can easily save you from getting hit by a fatal move. But the issue is, they’ll often use the move on an already flashed monster, making for some laughable moments.

Forbidden Acorn really doesn’t do much to help in the fight. As previously mentioned, buddies rarely faint during quests. And if they do, it’s not a big deal whatsoever — making the extra buddy healing superfluous.

Best Secret Support Moves

These newly introduced Secret Support Moves are pretty much your buddy’s ultimate. In essence, these occur a little more seldom, but arguably provide the most support a buddy ever has in the history of Monster Hunter.

Here is a list of all the Secret Support Moves, followed by descriptions of the moves. Ranking these by “best” is a little difficult, since they’re honestly pretty situational.

• Healing Clover Bat
• Ameowzing Mist
• Felyne Powered-Up
• Felyne Fireworks
• Lottery Box

Healing Clover Bat creates a bat that scatters an auto-healing powder after you’ve inflicted enough damage on the monster. This is honestly an amazing support move, that essentially rewards players for attacking the monster. For those of you find themselves getting hit all the time — and often run low on options, this is the Secret Support move for you.

Ameowzing Mist sets a mine that does elemental damage to large monsters when detonated. In other words, this is a DPS elemental option.

Felyne Powered-Up upgrades Buddy Support Moves and Palamute Gear by means of special performance.

Felyne Fireworks sets up a massive firework that goes off after a fixed period of time. Usable from the Action Bar.

Lottery Box creates, you guessed it, a lottery box! This contains scrolls — when a scroll is drawn, a random support move will be performed.

Here is an overarching summary. Take whichever fits your play style best, and try experimenting with them a bit.

How to unlock Buddy Skill Customization in Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak

Now the next portion — Buddy Skill Customization — follows a similar process to the first. Continue your grind in the MR quests, and Nagi the Buddy Agent should have another side quest for you.

Once completing the side quest, you’ll gain access to customize your buddy skills, which works towards helping you create the best Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak Palico possible.

To expand skill memories of your buddies, you’ll need to use Eurekacorn — which you can find as you play through the game. You can also discover them in the Cohoot nests placed around the base, so make sure you’re consistently looting them.

Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak Best Buddy Skills

There are two main Buddy Skills that you should use in Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak: Support-Centric and Status Attack Up (Equipped Skills).

Support-Centric is a new skill in Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak. The description states: “Makes it easier to trigger Support Moves and Palamute Gear, but attack and defense are reduced.”

There seems to be a trade off here. For less experienced players, they may worry about their adorable companion. But as previously mentioned, having your Palico die on you rarely occurs — and even if it does, the repercussions are rather slim.

A lot of the support moves create a huge impact on the gameplay. From staggers, thunderblight, more traps, more healing; these easily outweigh the sacrifice that is required for the Buddy Skill.

Now, Status Attack Up is insanely useful when combo’d with a weapon with a status ailment — which players definitely should be running. This ties back in with the theme of having your buddy stagger or hinder the monster as long as possible.

Best Weapons & Armor

Okay, so this is a really ambiguous area. In regards to weapons, there are a ton of options for each individual cat buddy. But, as mentioned momentarily before, the most “meta” weapons all have some form of a status ailment.

And since each monster and individual hunter build prioritizes a different status ailment, adjust and cater your Palico’s weapon accordingly. After all, the Palico should be an extension of the Hunter — working side by side to slay all the monsters towards extinction.

But there’s another aspect of weapons: Sharpness or Bluntness. This essentially determines if your Palico will be stunning the monster or cutting off and breaking parts.

Both are fantastic, but you’ll honestly seldom see a Palico successfully cutting a part off the monster. It definitely helps progress the tail cutting. Whatever the case, you can also synergize your Palico’s Buddy Skills to its weapon.

As for Armor, since Layored Armor exists, it really doesn’t matter what your Palico is wearing — so long as it’s a newly forged MR set.

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So, there you have it, everything you need to know about making the best Palico possible in Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak.

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