Resourcing in Monster Hunter games simple means gathering materials for weapons, armors, upgrades, villager requests, etc.

MINING

Mining is one of the most useful types of item gathering. You’ll need a pickaxe of some sort. The material that you’re working with is rough, so it’s a good idea to bring along a lot of the Iron Pickaxes (easily purchased in the market) or even some Mega Pickaxes. Otherwise, you could run out of tools in the middle of your run. Generally, you’ll find places to dig along walls in caves, or where you see lumps of rock out in the open. You’ll probably have the most likely places memorized within a few hours.

As you dig, you’ll likely find a variety of items that can be used to produce powerful weapons. Some of the core ingredients can be quite rare. You might need to make 2 or 3 trips to an area to gather enough, and there might be only a point or two in a certain cave that yields what you’re hoping to find.  But, mining nodes do eventually respawn after several minutes so if you have the time and patience, hang around for a bit and you’ll be back to smacking a rock with a stick in no time!

BUG CATCHING

Though you might not suppose that insects would be very important, they actually serve as a core ingredient for various potions and such that you’ll very likely want to have with you on tough quests. Some powerful equipment also requires you to find insects. As you move through a given area, just watch for butterflies hovering over patches of grass and shrubbery. You can dash over to where they are and use your net until they vanish. You’ll usually get three to five insects from a given point. Many points in the game will yield the same few bugs, but there are special exceptions.

DIGGING

Digging requires no items and is easy. For the most part, you can dig where you see bone piles, either on the ground or below the surface of the water. Monster dens often are a good place to dig, or along the side of fallen logs. Mushrooms also indicate a good place to dig, or flowers and cactus plants in the Sandy Desert area.

FISHING

There are two ways to fish. The most common method involves tackle, such as worms and crickets (both items that can often be found by digging). You can fish in shallow pools of water in the right environments, or by standing along the ocean shore.

Underwater fishing is more like standard hunting. Certain swimming monsters (such as the Sharqs found in the Deserted Island environment) can be hit with your weapons to kill them. However, a better technique is to almost kill monsters using conventional means, then to skin them using the harpoon to deal a death blow. The harpoon can also be used throughout a fight to slowly inflict damage, but it’s far less conventional than standard weapons. It also tends to break fairly quickly.