Monster Hunter World Mouse and Keyboard Tips

Monster Hunter World’s mouse and keyboard controls work significantly better out of the box than you might expect, but there are some problems with the default controls and few ways to make the experience even smoother.

Here are a few tips and tricks we learned hunting dozens and dozens of monsters with a mouse.

You can find this option by hitting ESC in-game under the “Items and Equipment” menu, and it is vital.

Customize your Radial Menu: Also under “Items and Equipment,” this is actually a separate thing from the smaller Item Bar in the bottom right. It lets you set up MMO-style hotkey bars with specific items, ammos, and emotes, which are then pulled up with F1-F4 and selected with the number keys. Your Item bar can also be customized by opening the Item Pouch menu and then pressing Space.

Use the Mouse Wheel or Arrow Keys to change items: The default way to use the Item Bar is to hold Q, then navigate with Left and Right mouse clicks. The game doesn’t tell you that you can also use the Mouse Wheel (though not when using a ranged weapon) or the Arrow Keys as well, which is useful for changing items quickly or while gathering/carving, which uses Right Click.

The lock-on system is extremely finicky and bad when using a mouse, and should pretty much be avoided entirely. Thankfully, it’s so easy to manually track targets with a mouse that you won’t need it anyway.

Turn your vertical and horizontal “Mouse: Camera Speed” up from 50 to 51: This is more of a personal preference, but the camera can feel unnaturally slow by default with a mouse. Even one point higher makes a healthy difference, as this value ramps the speed up drastically. So find what’s right for you, but adjust conservatively to start.

Melee weapons will auto-draw when you Left Click to attack, however ranged weapons will not by default — you will need to draw with either CTRL or R (forcing a reload). This is because CTRL is the default attack key, while Left Click is only set to attack while already drawn. To fix this, just swap the bindings. Go to the “Ranged Weapons” tab under the “Keyboard Settings” options of the “Controls” menu, unbind Left Click from “Fire/Shoot (Weapon Drawn)” and rebind it to “Draw Weapon / Standard Attack”, then remove CTRL from “Draw Weapon / Standard Attack” and rebind it to “Fire/Shoot (Weapon Drawn)” as you are required to have something there. Now your ranged weapons will auto-draw like a melee weapon.

A lot of people use the Mouse 4 button (an optional thumb button on the side of some mice) for voice chat or other things. By default, it is bound as the secondary button for Guard/Unique Action. It’s not the best use of it, and if you don’t know it’s bound that way by default, it can cause problems if you use it in a program like Discord as push-to-talk.

A simple tip, but it isn’t mentioned anywhere and allows you to access the text chat, stickers, and gestures. Very helpful for quick use online.

This isn’t hidden information compared to the other stuff on the list, but it’s also not well explained. Holding V pulls out your Slinger, but it will be put away when you let go of the key, whereas C simply toggles it back and forth. V is useful for getting a quick shot in, C is useful for when you are firing more or need to aim carefully.

This is especially useful information if you are new to Monster Hunter World. You have to select the Capture Net from your Item Bar, press E to equip it, the pull out your Slinger with C or V to actually throw the net.