These loadouts are just what I use, I don't say these are the best.
You can use whatever you like, especially early game you'll probably have to.

Before any hunt you should eat at a canteen, that's why there's mostly no health/stamina increasing items in these builds.


Free Meal is great for saving resources and having to go to camp less. Though there is one problem: You can't craft when your Item bag is full and these loadouts start FULL. The idea is that you drink a Demondrug at the start of the quest and then have that slot free, but with Free Meal that's not guaranteed. Sure you can toss an item to have space to craft but thats messy. If you intend on using Free Meal I suggest leaving 1 slot free so you can craft.

Items:
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Crafting:
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Radial Menus are crucial to using Items efficiently in fights, and fast crafting.
You should absolutely set up these menus to use/craft the items you need.

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This is my most used loadout, by far. Perfect for hunting any monster that can be trapped. It has everything you need:

• Healing Items: Mega Potions, Max Potions + Ingredients
  
• Farcaster
  
• Shock Traps + Ingredients, Tranq Bomb
  
• Damage: Demondrug, Demon Powder, Might Seed
  
• Stats: Powercharm, Powertalon
  
• Flash Pods, Dung Pods
  
• Astera Jerky, Nulberry, Herbal Powder
  
• Smoke Bombs

Most of this stuff is self explanatory.



Swapped Shock Traps with Pitfall Traps. you only really need them against Rajang and Zinogre but you fight them surprisingly often lategame.


For Bow I bring materials to craft power coating and paralysis coating. If your playsyle revolves around a different coating you can bring crafting mats for that one.


This is my usual loadout for spread ammo 3. You should only use the spread 1 ammo to craft more. Don't forget to add Spread Ammo 1 and 3 to your radial menu so you can craft everything on the fly.
Generally with any ammo type you have enough ammo if you bring crafting materials like this. BUT for sticky ammo you run out a lot earlier so i like to bring another ammo type (like normal 2/3) that the gun can use. For example in the quest "Mew are number one" the arena has no camp so you cannot resupply.

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A bare bones build with only the essentials and lots of space to gather stuff. Baitbugs for fishing ^^

you should never leave camp without these

Ingredients: Mega Nutrients + Mandragora [5]
The best heal there is. you can heal fully up to 7 times.

Not only for healing bleed! This item can heal all recoverable health. Teostra burns your entire healthbar? you can just get it all back with this. And you get Natural Recovery Up as a bonus!

It can cure: Waterblight, Thunderblight, Iceblight, Dragonblight and Effluvial Buildup
So basically everything and you can carry 10 of them. You need them all the time.

Fastest way back to camp. good to get out of a sticky situation or to resupply.

Ingredients: Godbug + Gloamgrass Bud [4]
Are you a good teammate?

It maximizes your health and stamina bars, really useful if you fainted and don't have your food buffs anymore.

Along with Might Seed and Demon Powder these increase your Attack Power. I usually take Mega Demondrug but if you can't craft them all the time normal Demondrug is perfectly fine.

Ingredients: Trap Tool + Thunderbug [2]
Stuns the monster for 7.5s. Effective against all monsters that are not elderdragons. Also (Furious) Rajang can't be trapped by it when enraged and Zinogre can't be trapped while he's charged. Use Pitfall Trap in those situations.

Ingredients: Trap Tool + Net [2]
Takes a little longer to set up but stuns the monster for 15s. Effective against all monsters that are not elderdragons. (Furious) Rajang can only be trapped by it while he's enraged.

Used to capture a monster. "After being affected by two bombs, a Monster can be captured for the next 45 seconds, and every successive tranquilizer extends the duration by 100 seconds, with no upper limit." - mhw wiki
Capture with a trap. For bowguns you don't have to carry them since you can use Tranq Ammo for the same effect.

Dash Juice is essential on bow and dual blades. On other weapons it's nice to have but doesn't increase your dps that much.

Ingredient: Flashbug [10]
Can be used to stun monsters shortly, particularly when flying. Master Rank monsters are more resistant to them so in general Flash Pods will only work once on them. That's why i only carry 3, since you rarely need any more. But on low/high rank you can certainly take crafting materials for these.

Used to repell monsters, making them flee the area they are in. Useful if you are bothered by bazelgeuse or deviljho for example.

A lot of players don't seem to understand how armor works, but it's really simple: Every point of defense is essentially +1% HP (not multiplicative) so at 100 defense you have double your normal health at 1000 defense that is +1000% hp you have 11x your starting health. simple.

Here are the values that each item gives:
Mega Armorskin: 25
Hardshell Powder: 20
Adamant Seed: 20
Armorcharm: 12
Armortalon: 18

In total that is 95 defense (these are the items that stack, another armorskin would not stack)
How much of an impact those points make depends on how far you are in the game. When you are at about 300 defense i'd say it's still worth it. At 600 you should probably skip everything you have to use yourself so only bring Armorcharm and Armortalon as they are passive. Once you reach 1000 armor it really doesn't make a difference.

Wait a minute... you said earlier that demondrug is good, so why is armor bad???

True attack only goes up to 340 (fatalis weapons), so even small numbers make more of a difference. Also attack helps you with the core objective of the game: Killing a monster.
Any time you attack the demondrug helps you. Defense only helps when you get hit.

Hides anyone in the smoke from the monster. The monster will then usually do a "sniffing" animation during which you can attack it. Particularly useful against fatalis as it causes him to land when all hunters are hidden.

Cures poison in a large area. I prefer this over antidote since it's faster to use and also heals your teammates. If poison is a big problem for you i'd suggest you get 2-3 levels of the antidote skill so you don't have to worry about it at all.

Mega Barrel Bombs deal 150 damage per bomb. Think about how long it takes for you to do 300 damage just with your weapon. The less damage you do the better these are. But keep in mind that they blow you away if you stand too close. I personally think they are not worth the hassle.

Against monsters weak to poison these deal 130 in 25s, once they trigger. These do not wake sleeping monsters. When you use them on a sleeping monster think about how long the fight is likely to last. on a monster that went to sleep on its own it probably has about 10% hp left. Is it even going to stay alive for 25 seconds?

Against Diablos & Black Diablos these are really effective, since they can spent a long time underground.
Works against Lavasioth and Jyuratodus as well when they are diving.
Thanks to steam user Kanashi for pointing that out.

Might Pill is not included because it only lasts 20 seconds, that's something for speedrunners.
Kanashi points out that: "It can be used mid-air after you mount a monster and trip him, very potent on hammer loadouts who just happen to have the highest raw dmg modifier for dmg boost items."

Energy Drink is only useful on a couple of monsters: radobaan, nightshade paolumu...
If you really want to counteract sleep use the Pep Skill to completely prevent it. Constantly using Energy Drink is just annoying.

You don't need to bring them.
On the maps where you need them the plants are already there, set them to auto craft and gather at the beginning of the hunt.

I'm not perfect, neither is this guide.
If you have suggestions whats better to take just leave em in the comments.
Let's come up with the best loadouts together!