Decorations are the real end of any Monster Hunter game and Monster hunter tales 3 maintains this tradition. You've already acquired most of your equipment, so now it's just a matter of wringing out as much power as possible.
In Stories 3, most decorations are obtained by fully upgrading weapons and armor, which functionally means you need every set of armor before you have all the decorations. There are plenty to choose from and we've found these to be some of the best.
Of course, there are many good decorations that we haven't mentioned here. We have listed the ones that are always useful, while there are many more that are situationally useful.
Critical
Presumably to make it easier to understand for the typical RPG player, Stories changes what is called Affinity in the main games to the more common Crit Rate. And the Crit Rate, as you might expect, is very good.
Critical is simple. Increases your Crit Rate. This increases your Crit Rate by a percentage rather than a set number, so it stacks with any other increase in your Crit Rate.
Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection – Top 10 Weapon Decorations
After all, they are more than just decorations.
The ability to escape
There is no specific evasion stat in Stories 3. Rather, your speed, which also determines turn order, also determines your overall chance to dodge. This means you can specifically increase your Dodge speed in combat.
This can be further boosted with the Evasion Ability Decoration. Like Crit Rate, this stacks with other bonuses. So if you increase your dodge chance in combat, the escape ability becomes even more useful.
Strengthening defense and attack
This is the brightest of all decorations, but still very useful. Each weapon has an Element damage type and each armor has a preset resistance to each Element.
The Attack Boost decoration will simply increase your attack for that particular element. Defense buffs specifically change resistance and allow you to gradually increase it based on decoration level.
Master HtH
Head-to-Heads are a fundamental aspect of combat in Stories 3, and learning each enemy's attack type will allow you to increase the damage you deal, decrease the damage you take, and make it easier to double-attack.
Head-to-Heads already give you extra affinity, and Double Attacks give you even more. And so with HtH Master you will have your kinship indicator filled in the blink of an eye.
Crit-Heal
Being a turn-based game, choosing when to heal is much more tactical in Stories 3. Do you sacrifice an attack just to restore your health? Having some form of passive HP regeneration makes this a lot easier.
Crit-Heal does exactly what it sounds like. Whenever you land a critical hit, you recover HP. The higher the decoration level, the more HP you get back. This one is great for pairing with Critical.
Critical kinship
The Kinship Gauge is what allows you to ride your Monsties in battle. Once you've mounted your Monsties, you can fill the Affinity meter even further and perform Affinity skills.
Being able to fill this gauge faster is always a help, which is why critical kinship is a must. This causes the kinship gauge to fill with each critical hit, and even more so the higher the decoration level.
Toughness
Toughness is very, very useful. There are many monsters in the game, especially closer to the end, that are very powerful. Monsters that can easily defeat you in one hit if your defenses have not been boosted.
Tenacity will save you from this. With it, if you have more than 50% HP, you will survive any attack that would otherwise defeat you. The stronger the decoration, the more HP you recover after activating Tenacity.
Note that Anti-One-Hit-KO is different and specifically only for attacks that are guaranteed to kill in one hit, rather than just very powerful attacks.
A weak point
There are three main types of attacks in Stories 3, with two weapons for each. Each Monster has a weakness for them in some way, with parts exhibiting these specific weaknesses.
Hitting with the right weapon will deal the most damage to that part, and the Weak Point Decoration will increase the Critical Rate even more when you do so. Critical Hits also deal more damage to the Monster Part, so that's a massive help.
Elemental Breaker A attack
While the goal when defeating a monster is to drain their HP to zero, focusing only on HP will make the fight drag on. Being more specific helps immensely, so targeting Monster Parts and Wyvernsoul Gauge should be your priority.
Elemental Breaker and Assault allow you to deal more damage to Monster Parts and Wyvernsoul Gauge when you hit them with their elemental weakness. More and more damage is just piled on top.
A Hero's Testament
Heroic Testament is by far one of the best decorations in the game, which is also why it's so hard to get. Once you defeat the Elder Dragon without knocking it off, it will unlock. Each elder dragon defeated also increases its power.
When equipped, Heroic Testament increases your maximum HP, the damage you deal, and reduces the damage you take. It's just a massive boost in every way with no strings attached. It's great.
Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection – 9 Best Late Game Monsters
Mutation will apparently only make you stronger.
