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What is crown hunting in Monster Hunter Wilds?

Here's how to find crown monsters and why you might want to.

Josh Broadwell

March 20, 2025 4:45 PM

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Monster Hunter Wilds' crown hunting is the informal name the Monster Hunter community gave to the practice of, well, hunting crowns. If you've never even seen a crown in Monster Hunter, there's a good reason for that. Unless you're actively looking for them, you'll almost never realize you've found one.

Our Monster Hunter Wilds crown hunting guide explains how crowns work and what you get from the effort of hunting them down.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Crown hunting explained

Crown hunting is the act of finding the largest or smallest monsters of their species in the game. Wilds and other Monster Hunter games denote these achievements with a crown symbol next to the monster's field guide entry – a large gold crown for the biggest and a smaller gold crown for the smallest. You might also see a silver crown, which is just the game's way of telling you that you almost got the biggest size. 

Crowns only show up for monsters the game classifies as Large Monsters – Gravios, Rey Dau, all the ones that are the subject of main story quests, and so on. The field guide doesn't record sizes for Small Monsters, the ones that only take a few hits to down, like the herbivore shell-dropping Ceratonoth.

Previous Monster Hunter games had no way to see whether a monster you were targeting was of an especially large or small size. Monster Hunter Wilds changes that. Equip your binoculars from the item bar – they're one of the permanent items you get with the BBQ Grill and Ghillie Mantle – and press the item button to pull them out. Once you focus on a monster, a banner with their name will appear, along with a crown, if they're particularly large or small.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Crown farming tips

Monster Hunter Wilds' achievement list includes several achievements unlocked by getting a certain number of gold and miniature crowns. Silver crowns reward you with nothing and don't count toward achievements, even though the field guide might log them. 

The game determines a monster's size when they enter a map. If the monster you're after doesn't have a crown, start a quest or change time by spending Guild Points and resting in a tent to force a reset. 

During chapter four in the post-game, you'll have access to the Wounded Hollow, a region where every monster that isn't an Apex Predator – Nu Udra, Rey Dau, and the like – has a chance of appearing. If you leave the entrance and return, the monsters and their sizes reset. It's a much faster way to try farming crowns and one that costs no Guild Points.

For more Monster Hunter Wilds help, check out our guides for how to get Oricalcite, Nightflower Pollen, and Great Hornfly to craft high-level armor and weapons with.

Josh Broadwell

Contributing Editor

Josh is a freelance writer and reporter who specializes in guides, reviews, and whatever else he can convince someone to commission. You may have seen him on NPR, IGN, Polygon, or VG 24/7 or on Twitter, shouting about Trails. When he isn’t working, you’ll likely find him outside with his Belgian Malinois and Australian Shepherd or curled up with an RPG of some description.