Sunbreak Sharpness Guide: Gauge, Modifiers, and Skills

This is a guide to weapon sharpness in Monster Hunter Rise (MH Rise) Sunbreak. Find out about how sharpness works, sharpness level damage modifiers, all the skills related to sharpness, and ways to sharpen your weapon.

What is Sharpness?

Represents Weapon Effectiveness

Sharpness in Monster Hunter: Rise (MH Rise) is a gauge on the top left that represents your weapon's strength or effectiveness. It serves as a modifier for your weapon's damage and attack deflection rate.

At yellow sharpness, your weapon's damage modifier is, by default, multiplied to one (1x), Both your weapon's raw and elemental damage multiplier increases when your sharpness modifier is green and above, and becomes weaker as it falls into orange and below.

Lower sharpness levels also mean that your weapon strikes are more likely to get deflected. Make sure to keep your weapon sharpened to avoid such DPS loss.

Damage Formula Explanations

Sharpness Also Affects Shelling

For the Gunlance, shelling damage is affected by sharpness. It deals less damage as the sharpness goes down a level.

Damage for the Gunlance can be improved through Artillery.

Charge Blade Phials Disregard Sharpness

Sharpness, regardless of its gauge level, is unaffected by phial attack damage like those of the Charge Blade's SAED and are therefore not subject to the regular sharpness modifier.

When using Impact Phials, their damage can be modified with Artillery or Load Shells. For Element Phials, it is recommended to use skills that increase Elemental Attack.

Only Melee Weapons Need To Be Sharpened

Melee Weapon	Ranged Weapon

Ranged weapons, meaning the Light Bowgun, Heavy Bowgun, and Bow, all do not have sharpness gauges. This means that their damage will be computed a bit differently from melee weapons.

All melee weapons, even those that deal blunt damage (Hammer and Hunting Horn), need to be sharpened.

Some Weapons Dull Quicker than Others

Slow-hitters like the Great Sword degrade the sharpness bar considerably slower than faster weapons like the Dual Blades.

The more a weapon strikes a target, the more it dulls. Faster weapons will benefit more from sharpness-preserving skills like Protective Polish and Master's Touch.

Sharpness Levels

Each Sharpness Level Has a Multiplier

Sharpness Modifier Table
Sharpness Level	Raw Damage	Elemental Damage	% Loss/Gain (Raw | Ele.)
Red	0.5	0.25	-50% | -67%
Orange	0.75	0.5	-25% | -33%
Yellow	1	0.75	0% | 0%
Green	1.05	1	+5% | +33%
Blue	1.2	1.063	+20% | +42%
White	1.32	1.15	+32% | +53%
Purple	1.39	1.27	+39% | +69%

Each color in the sharpness gauge signifies your sharpness modifier, with red having the lowest damage multiplier (making you deal half the damage) and purple having the highest.

A whole bar sharpness level signifies the current usable sharpness of the weapon. A half bar sharpness level signifies the amount of potential sharpness that can be extended through skills or augments like Handicraft and the Sharpness Boost Qurious Augment.

Yellow sharpness should be your weapon's acceptable bare minimum, but it is recommended to always keep your weapon sharpened at its highest sharpness level.

Sharpness Gauge Varies Per Weapon

Generally, the higher the weapon rarity, the longer the sharpness gauge and thus better damage multipliers.

Each weapon, however, varies in sharpness levels. Some can have very short purple sharpness and long amounts of white sharpness.

Some weapons have unique default sharpness like Garangolm weapons (default maximum blue) and Crimson Grow Valstrax weapons (only red and white).

All Skills Related To Sharpness

Look out for the sharpness skills below in different armor sets, talismans, and jewels.

List of Skills

How to Sharpen Your Weapon

Use a Whetstone, Whetfish, or Great Whetfish

There are three (3) items in the game that you can use to manually sharpen your weapon. Sharpening will instantly refill your sharpness gauge to the highest available level.

The Whetstone is provided right from the start and doesn't run out, but it takes the most amount of cycles.

Meanwhile, you will have to fish for Whetfish and Great Whetfish. Also, the amount you can carry per hunt is limited to 5 and 3, respectively. But they are useful for when you need to quickly sharpen on the battlefield!

Sharpening Cycles

It is good to have the Speed Sharpening skill, as the Lv. 3 version of this skill can speed up your weapon sharpening speed as much as 3 seconds.

This can be extremely helpful against fast-moving monsters like Rajang, whose attacks can be too quick to evade.

Blastslash Dango (Dango Polisher)

Blastslash dango can lessen your sharpening cycles to 3 cycles or less. However, even if you have Dango Polisher at Lvl. 4 through Hopping Skewers, the effect is still random.

Speed Sharpening and Blastslash Dango Interaction

Consuming Blastslash does not guarantee you less sharpening cycles. However, if you have Speed Sharpening skill at Lv 2 or higher equipped, this will remove the random aspect of Blastslash, and guarantees you lesser sharpening cycles.

Preserving Weapon Sharpness

Sharpness Recovery Switch Skills

Some switch skills can help in maintaining your weapon's sharpness. Look out for them listed in the table below and consider incorporating them into your weapon's play style.

Weapon	Switch Skill	Effect
Gunlance	Guard Edge	A strong block that uses wirebugs. If the block is timed right, you will enjoy bonus sharpness recovery. Can also combo into a variety of attacks afterward.
Dual Blades	Ironshine Silk (Sunbreak)	Evading just in time before an attack hits will sharpen your weapon. Works well with Shrouded Vault, and all other evasion moves. Effect lasts for 45s.
Sword and Shield	Destroyer Oil (Sunbreak)	Uses a Wirebug to cover your blade with a special ointment whose effects triggered by the friction with the shield. Also restores 20 Sharpness when used. While active, monsters flinch easily, creating more opening for attack.

How to Unlock Switch Skills

Hunting Horn Sharpness Songs

If you are using a Hunting Horn or have a hunter using it in your party, any of the effects below can be a big help in maintaining weapon sharpness without having to use a sharpening animation.

Song	Effect
Sharpness Regeneration	Good for significantly reducing the need for you and other hunters to sharpen.
Sharpness Loss Reduced	Temporarily reduces loss of weapon sharpness.
Sharpness Extension	Temporarily extends the weapon sharpness gauge. However, it cannot increase the gauge past its maximum.

Hunting Horn Songs and Melodies

Qurious Weapon Crafting Augments

If you have time to invest into qurious crafting, then we suggest increasing your Anomaly Slots and adding the Sharpness Boost Augment to your endgame weapons. This augment will take some considerable amount of space.

Having level 1 of the sharpness boost can be enough at the start of endgame, and the rest can be dedicated to Attack Boost, Affinity Boost, or Elemental Boost augments. Increasing your Anomaly Slots to Level 5 will also give a +10 increase to your weapon's sharpness

Qurious Augment	Effect
Sharpness Boost Augment	Extends your sharpness gauge, similar to Handicraft. +10 sharpness per level.
Anomaly Slot Level 5	At Level 5, the unlocked Anomaly Slot gives you +10 sharpness.

List of Weapon Qurious Crafting Augments

Monster Hunter Rise Related Links

All Game Mechanics Guides