Revision 1

The hunting loop is the repeating cycle that structures play in Monster Hunter Outlanders. Official material describes it consistently across three years of announcements: explore a region, find clues, track and observe the target, hunt it, carve it, craft from what you carried home, and take on something harder. The stages below are the ones the game has actually described. Where a stage is only named and not explained, that is said plainly rather than filled in.

Stage One: The Assignment

Hunts begin from assignments rather than from a monster simply appearing. Official material states that exploring a region with the building system can surface special items and important clues related to an assignment, which places the assignment first and the clue trail second. The wording used across announcements is that players use clues found in the environment to progress through hunts.

Stage Two: Exploration and Clues

Aesoland is split into several areas by terrain and weather, and the fields connect seamlessly. Players gather resources as they move and can place field facilities such as launchers, ziplines and gliding equipment. Those facilities are explicitly framed as a way to engage with the wilderness from different angles, which means the clue trail is not always at ground level and the building system is part of tracking rather than a separate activity.

Stage Three: Observation

Watching a monster before engaging it is a stated mechanic. Official material describes observing how monsters hunt, how they taunt, and how they interact with one another, and turning that knowledge into an advantage during the hunt itself. Applied to Radiant species this matters more than usual, because those monsters are described as becoming violent during a hunt, with increased aggression and attacking ability compared to their ordinary forms.

Stage Four: The Hunt

The fight itself runs on the seven weapon types, each carried by a particular Adventurer. The mobile control scheme condenses combos into single button presses, and each weapon adds its own follow-up moves and its own resource, whether that is a charge level, a gauge or a stack of some kind. Perfect Evades and Perfect Guards are the shared defensive tools. A hunt can be taken solo or with a party of up to four, and party members can combine co-op skills.

Stage Five: Carving and Crafting

Materials come from two places: gathering in the field and carving what has been hunted. Those materials feed crafting, which announcement material describes as producing individualised gear and tools. The same crafting system supplies the field facilities used during exploration, so a successful hunt directly widens what can be reached in the next one.

Stage Six: Back to the Hub

A Gathering Hub has been referenced in official coverage of the second closed beta test, alongside field expeditions and in-game events, and two persistent social structures have been named: fixed teams and adventure guilds. These sit between hunts and are presumably where a group re-forms, but none of them has had its features described.

Not Yet Confirmed

• Whether hunts have time limits, faint limits, or a fail state of any kind.

• Whether there is a quest board, a rank gate, or a story-driven unlock order.

• How tracking works mechanically: whether clues are collected, scanned, or simply found.

• Whether monsters can be captured as well as slain, and whether trap and status items exist.

• Carve counts, reward tables and material rarity.

• How expeditions differ from assignments.

• Whether the Gathering Hub supports multiplayer matchmaking, and how parties are formed outside the single-tap squad.

• Any detail of how Adventure Mode and Classic Mode change the loop.