For a newcomer, the amount of tips and tricks you need to learn in Monster Hunter Wilds can feel overwhelming. Just figuring out which weapon to use or what armor to upgrade can be a lot, but mastering the game’s somewhat cryptic combat mechanics can take dozens of hours. Even friends who have played hundreds of hours of prior games won’t be able to help you with new systems like offset attacks and power clashes, though. For that, we can help you learn all about this new move, how it works, and why it is so important.
How to do power clashes
Power clashes are another new move type that is only used by certain weapons in Monster Hunter Wilds. Before getting into the details, make sure you’re rocking one of the following weapons to be able to pull off a power clash:
- Great Sword
- Gunlance
- Sword and Shield
- Charge Blade
- Lance
- Heavy Bowgun
While the offset attack asks you to time an attack to interrupt an enemy, power clashes trigger when you time your block to parry an incoming attack. This requires perfect timing, but it also doesn’t work on every attack. You will know you are performing a perfect guard when you see a small white glow around your character when tanking the hit. Perform enough perfect guards to build up the power clash it will trigger eventually. Once this happens, you will be prompted to mash your attack button to win the clash. If you do, the monster will be knocked down and wide open to attack.
The other big difference between this and offset attacks is that there are no complex inputs or combos to activate it for each weapon. As long as you can master the timing, power attacks are a much more reliable tool. But, like offset attacks and status effects, it will take more blocks to trigger additional power clashes as you keep using them.