Wild Hunt

A Monster Hunter–inspired hunting mod for NeoForge 1.21.1. Take a contract from the guild, track something enormous across its own hunting ground, bring it down, carve it, and forge what you carved into the gear that lets you face the next one.

Eight weapon types, each with its own combat system

These aren't reskinned swords. Every weapon has its own combo tree, its own resource to manage, and its own reason to pick it.

• Dual Blades — build the demon gauge, ignite Demon Mode, finish with the Blade Dance
• Great Sword — charge through three levels, tackle through an attack to keep the charge
• Long Sword — a spirit gauge fed by landing cuts; spend it on the Spirit Blade chain, land the Roundslash to sharpen the blade white → yellow → red, and end fights with the Spirit Helm Breaker from the air
• Insect Glaive — send the kinsect for extracts, vault, and fight from above
• Heavy Bowgun — five ammo types, a slow reload, and a shot that hits like a siege piece
• Light Bowgun — two thirds the cycle time, barely slows you down, sights you can aim down and a reload you watch down the barrel
• Bow — no ammo, no quiver. Hold the draw through three charge levels, then choose: a volley, an Arc Shot lobbed over cover, a Power Shot, or the Dragon Piercer driven down the length of a monster
• Hunting Horn — every swing plays a note, and the last three notes spell a song. Perform it and everyone in earshot gets the buff: speed, attack, defence, recovery, a shield, thunder on every weapon, or the Thunderclap, which is not a buff at all

Five apex monsters

Ashfang burns. Skarn calls the storm, and has a Fulgur variant that hits harder. Vorrath drags chain-blade wings behind it. Maegroth, the Hollow Sovereign, is an elder dragon that lays siege. Kharzul waits in the crypt, and the guild will not post a contract for it.

They enrage, they tire, they limp when they're hurt, and they'll break off to recover. You can sever tails, break parts for better carves, mount them, trap them with pitfalls, and capture them alive with tranq bombs for different rewards.

Put two of them on one hunting ground and they fight. They size each other up, trade blows, and the loser runs; the winner is open for a moment after. Now and then an intruder turns up on a hunt uninvited.

Elements

Every weapon carries an element decided by what it was forged from, and every monster resists what made it. You cannot burn Ashfang. Chainwing weapons do almost nothing to Vorrath. Bringing the right weapon to the right monster is the difference between a fifteen-minute hunt and a forty-minute one — and you'll hear it when you get it right.

Armour cuts both ways: a set carries its monster's strength and its monster's flaw. Five sets, one per monster, each a full model with its own skills at two, three and four pieces.

Sigils

Every weapon and every piece of armour has sockets. A sigil set in one gives a trait — attack, a critical chance, element power, an element's resistance, health, defence, speed, roar guard, a faster gauge — and twenty-two of them in four grades are forged at the smithy from the parts you carve. Set them at the smithy's Fitting tab, where you can see every trait you're wearing added up. Build a thunder set for Skarn, a defence set for Maegroth, or something nobody thought of.

Between the hunts

The hunting grounds are not a corridor to the boss. There is an island to work on the way there.

• Guild orders — a second board at the receptionist. Bring the counter what it asks for and get paid in coins, rank points and a reward box. Carry up to three at once, into a hunt if you like
• Gathering — herb patches, bone piles and ore veins across every island, and the monster's own leavings outside its lair, where a patient hunter can pick up a scale without drawing a blade. Two wild herbs and a bottle make a potion in the field
• Wildlife — the skittish Duskhare that bolts when you walk up, the Bristleback boar, and the Moorhorn, a plated grazing giant three blocks at the shoulder. They travel in herds, flee the monster, and never fight back. Pelts, hides, and meat that cooks into a well-done steak

The Vargrim

A hunting beast of your own. Forge a whistle at the smithy and blow it. It follows you, it waits where you leave it, and it carries you: walk, sprint and jump across the hunting grounds on its back. Send it to gather and it brings back herbs, bones and berries. Let it fight and it bites, howls to pull a monster off you, and backs off when it's hurt. Dress it with a saddle, a collar and a charm, and rest it at the Kennel.

Capture, and keep

A captured monster isn't gone. It goes to the Guild's Research Habitat at your hall, where you can walk among them, feed them at the trough and watch them sleep. The longer the Guild keeps one, the more it learns: weaknesses, resistances, materials, habits, written up on the research board and in your Hunter's Notebook. The habitat has four levels; the last one holds the apex monsters. Release one when you're done and it runs for the hills.

A guild, a story, and somewhere to hunt

Hunts run in their own dimension, on islands built for the monster you're tracking. Take contracts from the receptionist, forge at the smithy, climb ten hunter ranks, and follow a six-chapter story with full conversations and cutscenes — from your first contract on the ash plains to the thing in the black crypt that nine hunters never came back from.

The Guild Headquarters is a real building: a nave with galleries, a watchtower, a plaza, and five wings attached from the day it generates: a Canteen where the Guild Chef serves meals before a hunt, a Herb Garden whose beds grow back as you hunt, a Training Yard with dummies that count your hits and your damage per second, a Kennel for your Vargrim, and the Research Habitat. Pay for the next level of any of them and the wing grows in place, around whatever you've built there yourself. The Receptionist and the Smith work their counter and their forge while you're away, and look up when you come in.

Getting started

Find a Guild Hall. They generate in plains, forests, taigas and savannas, and the Receptionist and the Smith are inside. Talk to the Receptionist to begin.

• Adding the mod to a world you've already played? Structures only appear in newly generated chunks, so head for terrain you haven't explored
• With cheats on, /locate structure wildhunt:guild_hall finds the nearest one
• Or type /guildhub from anywhere. It needs no permissions and takes you to the Guild Hub, where both of them are waiting
• Updating from 0.4.0? Your hall and everything you built at it stay as they are, and every new wing can be bought there. The new headquarters building only generates with new halls, so explore for one if you want to see it

Requirements

• NeoForge 1.21.1
• GeckoLib and PlayerAnimator (required)
• Better Combat (optional) — install it and the weapons swing with its animations
• JEI or EMI (optional) — smithy recipes show up in both

Wild Hunt is inspired by monster hunting games. All models, textures and code are original.