Endgame Hunting Horn Meta & Progression

Recommended All-Rounder

This guide won't go into much detail on how to play Hunting Horn. For that, you can refer to our Hunting Horn Weapon Guide. When it comes to "meta" this build assumes you want to maximize damage. Some QoL/comfort skills help with damage in a practical sense, but offense is still the main priority.

The most important thing about Hunting Horns is the Song list which is inherent to the weapon.

Weapons

We don't use the Artian Hunting Horn for most builds because of the poor song list. They miss the two important songs this build uses:

• Attack Up (L) ≈ 10% ATK buff
• Affinity/Health Recovery ≈ 15% Affinity buff

This build uses two Hunting Horns to buff yourself/the party immensely. One Horn is used to buff while mounted/going to a monster, and the other for offense and more buffs.

Note: You need Horn Maestro 2 on both weapons in order to maintain buff uptime when swapping Horns.

Resounding Galahad (Main Horn)

Resounding Galahad

• Self-Improvement
• Attack Up (L)
• Knockback Negated
• Extend all Melodies
• Restore Sharpness
• Echo Wave (Dragon)
• Resounding Melody

Gramklang (Buffing/Secondary Horn)

Gramklang

• Self-Improvement
• Health Recovery (S)
• Earplugs (L)
• Affinity Up/Health Recovery
• Echo Wave (Blunt)
• Melody of Life

Buff/Opening Rotation

1. Start with Gramklang
   
2. Self-Improvement
3. Earplugs (L)
4. Affinity Up/Health Recovery
5. Swap Horns to Resounding Galahad
   
6. Attack Up (L)
7. Knockback Negated
8. Extend All Melodies

From here you can use Echo Wave (Dragon) / Restore Sharpness / Resounding Melody for damage and white sharpness uptime.

Weapon Decorations

Since we only use Gramklang for buffs, we don't need anything other than Horn Maestro 2.

Resounding Galahad already has Horn Maestro 2 and Slugger 2 inherently, so we can fill out with damage Decorations.

Notes

Counterstrike 3 (Counter Jewel) is optional and can be used for other skills like Ambush. Counterstrike requires you to get sent flying, and Knockback Negated only stops small Knockbacks. Even still, the skill is very powerful and can be activated with things like a Barrel Bomb if needed.

Gore 2-pc / Fulgur 2-pc is a safe recommendation for Second Wind I to help keep up Maximum Might. You can opt to run 4-pc Gore, but this would require losing out on Counterstrike 3 or Weakness Exploit 2.

Weakness Exploit is mainly for solo/casual non Corrupted Mantle hunts. You can always replace Weakness Exploit with Agitator depending on your preference.