Sunbreak Best Buddies to Bring: Palico vs. Palamute

This is a guide to the best buddy combinations to bring in Monster Hunter Rise (MH Rise: Sunbreak). Read on to learn the best Palicoes to bring, should you bring a Palamute or a Palico, and the best behavior for your buddies in hunts!

Should I Bring a Palico or a Palamute?

Palico vs. Palamute
Have a Palamute for Mobility
Bring a Palamute for More Damage
Have a Palico for More Skills
Bring a Palico for Gathering

Have a Palamute for Mobility

Palamutes are great to use if you plan to cover a lot of distance in a hunt (moving into a different area after a monster encounter, for example.) They move quickly, and can even be faster than using the Wiredash for travel.

You can ride Palamutes from point A to point B (you can even sharpen your weapon while doing so). Because of this, they excel not only in letting you chase retreating Large Monsters, but also in helping you move quickly during exploration.

During a fight, they have a variety of skills that can make them more effective in combat, ranging from attack buffs to status nullification. However, they have less utility skills than a Palico.

Palamutes Have Limited Utility

Despite lacking party-wide utility skills, they still do have some utility options that can help the hunter and enhance their combat experience. Heal Blade Scroll can be helpful for those area-wide heals during combat. Guarding Parasol gives your Palamute a strong defensive option. The Heavy Strike Scroll can temporarily strengthen your Palamute's attack in combat.

In the Sunbreak expansion, Palamutes become much more useful for gathering runs with the Sniff 'Em Out! command (marks items on the map) and the Palamute Pouch (gives 8 additional item slots).

Moving across the map with a Palamute becomes less frequent once you have devised a quick route on foot and have unlocked many of the sub-camps and Great Wirebug locations.

Palamute Guide and Controls

Bring a Palamute for More Damage

Compared to Palicoes, Palamutes do attack faster thanks to their mobility, making them handy DPS dealers on solo hunts.

They make up for their lack of party utility with status buildup if they are equipped with status weapons. Paired with a Palico having Knockout King and Status Effect Up in your party, your buddies will be dealing status effects left and right in no time.

Builds and Best Equipment for Palamutes

Have a Palico for More Utility

Palicoes have abundant utility options and are exceptional in using them. This can range from buffing a whole party to setting traps that give you a safe window in dealing damage. Healer Types are recommended for starting players, while Assist Types become increasingly helpful as you reach towards the endgame.

In exchange for all these, however, a Palico will not deal as much a damage as a well-equipped Palamute. They also lack the Palamute's fast traversal feature.

Palicoes Excel at Party-Wide Support

Because Palicos can give buffs not just to themselves but to others, they will also work well in multiplayer.

The support move Felyne Silkbind for Assist Types are helpful to have since they significantly hinder monster movement (keeping them mostly in place), giving hunters using ranged weapons the most benefit. Others include the Shock and Poison Purr-ison traps, which act just like hunter traps.

Bombardier Types are handy palico types, too, as they can inflict a lot of blast damage and even use Flash Bombay, which is similar to a hunter's Flash Bomb.

Palico Guide and Best Support Type

Bring a Palico for Gathering

Unlike Palamutes, Palicoes will gather items when exploring maps.

In combat, you will want to have the Pilfer support move on your Palico for stealing monster materials. This is helpful if you are aiming for monster material farming.

For gathering-exclusive expeditions, it would be good to bring two Palicoes then lap around the map several times to gain a massive amount of items. Bringing them works better with the Raisin d'etre Dango to shorten the respawn time of gathering points.

Builds and Best Equipment for Palicoes

Buddy Summary and Setups

Depends on Your Hunter Setup

Your buddies serve to augment your already existing hunter setup (what armor, skills, items, and weapons you have). Do not base your entire hunting setup on your buddies!

You will find yourself switching buddies from time to time, so it will be good to regularly build up your available buddy list by scouting buddies. Other buddies you do not bring with you can serve other valuable tasks such as serving in the Meowcenaries.

Buddy Plaza Guide

Buddy Team Combinations

You can have up to two (2) buddies active in a hunt, and this can be either of the three buddy setups.

Feel free to go with any of these depending on the kind of hunt you are going to take!

Palico and Palamute Buddy Skills Guide

Palamute and Palico Mix Team

This is the default team setup at the start of the game. This is also the most balanced of the three, giving you both the utility of a Palico and the additional strength and mobility of a Palamute.

For an effective and quick gathering setup, you can have a Gathering Type Palico while having a Palamute as your traversal option.

Double Palamute Team

This is the go-to setup if you want to deal some extra damage while also having a good traversal option.

For some utility to make up for the lack of a Palico, you can have a Palamute equipped with the Heal Blade Scroll.

Double Palico Team

The ultimate utility buddy gang! For the price of not having a traversal option, you have twice the Palico utility skills or, you can have two different types of Palico in a hunt.

You can make up for the lack of quick map traversal once you have unlocked different ways to cross the map without a Palico such as sub-camps and Great Wirebugs.

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