Are you looking to complete your crown and mini-crown collection in Monster Hunter Wilds? Good news! There is a method that makes finding crowned monsters much easier, and it takes advantage of some unique mechanics in the Wounded Hollow area. Read on to learn how to manipulate monster sizes and increase your chances of encountering those rare crowns!
What Are Crowned Monsters?
For those who may not know about this, here is a quick reminder. Crowned monsters in Monster Hunter Wilds are creatures that appear significantly larger or smaller than their usual size. These monsters are marked with either a golden crown (for the largest specimens) or a mini-crown (for the smallest ones). Many hunters love to collect these special sizes for achievements, trophies, or personal completion goals. Since monster sizes are mostly randomized, finding a crowned version of a specific monster can be a challenging task—unless you use a few clever tricks.
Using Wounded Hollow to Manipulate Monster Sizes
Step-by-Step Guide:
- Rest at a campsite anywhere in the world until a monster whose crown or mini-crown you are missing appears in Wounded Hollow.
- Example: If you are missing an Ajarakan golden crown, rest until Ajarakan appears in Wounded Hollow.
- Travel to Wounded Hollow and equip your Binoculars to check if the monster has a crown.
- If the monster does not have a crown, fast travel to another location (preferably Suja, as it avoids the camp selection screen and speeds up the process). Fast Travelling allows the game to change the monster’s size.
- Return to Wounded Hollow and check again.
- Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you see the crown you need.
- Once you find a crowned monster, you can either hunt it immediately or save it as an Investigation:
- Open the map.
- Select the monster.
- Choose Create Quest.
- From the quest overview, press the select button (X on PlayStation, A on Xbox) and choose Save as Investigation.
- This allows you to hunt the monster up to 3 times. If you hunt it immediately, you can save the investigation afterward for a total of 4 hunts.
It is good to note that Mini-Crowns seem to appear less often than the normal golden ones. It is also important tot know that both Apex monsters and Guardians do not appear in the Wounded Hollows for now.
What About Monsters That Do Not Appear in Wounded Hollow?
As mentioned before, some monsters such as Apex monsters (Nu Udra, Rey Dau, Uth Duna, Jin Dhaad) and Guardian monsters (G.Fulgur Anjanath, G.Doshaguma, G.Ebony Odogaron, G.Rathalos), do not spawn in Wounded Hollow. For these, you will need to rest in their native environments until a crowned version appears.
The issue is that Fast-travelling will not change the size of the monsters outside the Wounded Hollows, so you have to do a full rest, which can be expansive in Research Points.
Alternative method to save research points:
- Create an autosave by resting once.
- Check for crowns.
- If no crowns are present, quit to the title menu and reload rather than repeatedly resting.
Finding Crowned Monsters Through SOS-Flares
If you are hunting specific monsters, responding to Investigation SOS-flares is another great method:
- Many players host crowned monster investigations and post SOS-flares to fill their own crown collection.
- Look for quests with lower-tier rewards, these are often crown-hunting sessions.
- If you have a crowned monster investigation, use an SOS-flare to share it with others!
Important: Be respectful. Do not abandon SOS-quests if the monster does not have a crown, as it disrupts other players’ experiences. The first goal of SOS flares is to get help from others, so if you join one, help the player out even if it is not a Crown monster!
Shoutout to Reddit user RottenRailing for these Crown hunting tips! You can find an extremely well detailed guide on their Reddit post here, where they also share a Discord server you can join for Crown hunting:
