If you’re confused about the canteen and food buffs in Monster Hunter: World, you’ve found the right place. Newer players may be confused by the initially arcane food buff system but it’s actually simple. Learning to leverage it will definitely improve your hunting!
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Food in Monster Hunter: World – How does it work?
To summarize: Food buffs have 5 major components.
- Felyne Skill – Determined by food “color”.
- Stat Increase – Determined by food type (meat, fish, etc) + amount.
- Health Boost – Determined by ingredient freshness.
- Activation Chance – Determined by ingredient freshness.
- Stamina Boost – Always present.
You CAN CONTROL WHAT BUFFS YOU GET – but there ARE limitations. Read on.
Felyne Skills and “Food Color”
If you’re here you’re wondering HOW to get a specific Felyne skill, as mentioned above, it’s determined by “food color“.
Here’s a quick rundown of Felyne skills and the amount of “food color” they need.
| Felyne Skill | Needs Color | C | Amt | Effect |
| Felyne Polisher | Courage | R | 2 | Often speeds up sharpening time. |
| Felyne Rider | Courage | R | 4 | Makes it easier to mount monsters. |
| Felyne Slugger | Courage | R | 6 | Makes it easier to stun monsters. |
| Felyne Acrobat | Resilience | B | 2 | Allows quicker recovery when sent flying. |
| Felyne Feet | Resilience | B | 4 | Prevents you from getting knocked on your butt. |
| Felyne Moxie | Resilience | B | 6 | Prevents fainting one time. |
| Felyne Rise (Hi) | Vigor | O | 2 | Greatly extends invulnerability period when getting up. |
| Felyne Black Belt | Vigor | O | 4 | Reduces stamina depletion from evading, blocking etc. |
| Felyne Heroics | Vigor | O | 6 | Greatly increases attack when health is low. |
| Felyne Groomer | Acumen | P | 2 | Halves duration of Defense Down and speeds up blight recovery |
| Felyne Medic | Acumen | P | 4 | Increases health recovery from items. |
| Felyne Specialist | Acumen | P | 6 | Increases the potency of abnormal status attacks. |
| Felyne Sharpshooter | Artillery | Y | 2 | Increases the power of normal shots and normal arrows. |
| Felyne Bombardier | Artillery | Y | 4 | Increases ballista, sticky ammo and gunlance shell damage. |
| Felyne Pyro | Artillery | Y | 6 | Upgrades Large Barrel Bombs to Mega Barrel Bombs |
| Felyne Iron Carver | Perception | Gr | 2 | Prevents knockbacks while carving. |
| Felyne Exchanger | Perception | Gr | 4 | Increases research points rewards at the end of a quest. |
| Felyne Carver (Hi) | Perception | Gr | 6 | Often increases the number of times you can carve. |
| Felyne Harvester | Fortune | Go | 2 | Reduces the time between gathering point respawns. |
| Felyne Fat Cat | Fortune | Go | 4 | Increases the amount of zenny received at the end of a quest. |
| Felyne Lucky Cat | Fortune | Go | 6 | Sometimes increases the items received at the end of a quest. |
To clarify, Feline Polisher (the first on this list) needs 2 red ingredients of any type. Check the next tab for more info on food color (if it isn’t painfully obvious by now).
Since there is a maximum of 6 ingredient slots – you can only have a total of 6 “needs”. So either you go for Felyne Skills that total to 2-2-2, 4-2, or 6.
I do not have all the data on the Felyne Daily Skills (Will update!).
To clarify, these are what I’m talking about when I say “Food Color“.
| Meat, Fish & Veggies | Alcohol | ||
| Red | Courage | Green | Perception |
| Blue | Resilience | Gold | Fortune |
| Orange | Vigor | ||
| Purple | Acumen | ||
| Yellow | Artillery | ||
To check this, go to the meat section. The very first meat “Wyvern Thigh” is in the “Red Food Color Row (Courage)” – everything right of it is also in the red category. The second meat down “Tough Meat” is in the “Blue Food Color Row (Resilience)“. So on and so forth.
Getting the Felyne Skill you want
Practical Example: “I want to get Felyne Moxie (Free Death) 100% of the time!”
Looking at the chart, Felyne Moxie needs 6 “Blue” (Resilience) ingredients of any type. So either you add all 6 blue meats and you’ll get it. All 4 blue fish and 2 blue vegetables. 3 blue meat + 3 blue vegetables. 2-2-2, 4-1-1… You get the picture.
If you’re going for a skill that needs 4 or 6 of a color – you’ll end up with “blanks” simply because you cannot fill all three Felyne skill slots. That’s where Felyne Daily Skills come in – they simply fill in the blanks.
Stat Increases and Food Types
Stat increase works similarly. The table below should explain it nicely.
| Type | Amt | Effect | Gains |
| Meat | 2 | Attack Up (S) | ? |
| Meat | 4 | Attack Up (M) | ? |
| Meat | 6 | Attack Up (L) | ? |
| Fish | 2 | Defense Up (S) | ? |
| Fish | 4 | Defense Up (M) | ? |
| Fish | 6 | Defense Up (L) | ? |
| Vegetable | 2 | Elemental Res Up (S) | ? |
| Vegetable | 4 | Elemental Res Up (M) | ? |
| Vegetable | 6 | Elemental Res Up (L) | ? |
Forgive me but I haven’t noted down the amounts. L should be 20 (updating soon). The above table speaks for itself. “You need 6 Meats for Attack Up (L)“, so on so forth.
Since there is a maximum of 6 ingredient slots – you can only have a total of 6 “needs”. So either you go for Felyne Skills that total to 2-2-2, 4-2, or 6.
Recipes: Making Custom Platters!
Combining your knowledge you can make food that suits your needs. I’ll give some practical examples.
“I’m going to a 1 feint Anjanath tempered investigation, and I want a free death, and some defense and semi-chunky fire resistance to prevent firebreath from killing me…”
| “BRG Safety Specialty” | ||
| I want | Needs | Type |
| Felyne Moxie | 6 | Blue |
| Defense Up (S) | 2 | Meat |
| Elemental Res Up (M) | 4 | Vegetable |
“I just want Attack Up (L), and Felyne Polisher. Felyne Bombardier sounds good too.”
| “BRG IDGAF NoPuss Platter” | ||
| I want | Needs | Type |
| Attack Up (L) | 6 | Meat |
| Felyne Polisher | 2 | Red |
| Felyne Bombardier | 4 | Yellow |
“I need Fucium Ore – brb Elder Recess RQ”
| “BRG Farmy Felafel” | ||
| I want | Needs | Type |
| Felyne Harvester | 2 | Gold |
| Any | – | – |
| Any | – | – |
*(Gold is only on Alcohol, Green too)
As you can see the food buff system can be leveraged.
But remember the commonly used ones:
6 MEAT : ATTACK UP (L)
6 BLUE : FELYNE MOXIE (FREE DEATH)
HP Increase, Activation Chance & Ingredient Freshness
This one is a little annoying. For each fresh ingredient you add, you get +10 max hp boost. This is great – but sadly the ingredient freshness system “can be annoying” especially if you want to craft razor-specific food each time.
I DO NOT HAVE THE DATA ON FRESHNESS. “How long does an ingredient stay fresh”? I have no idea. “What activities reduce freshness?” I have no idea. Please chime in on this if you can.
Luckily ingredients are not difficult to farm – simply tedious. You can survive with Health Boost armor skill nodes and Mega Nutrients if you happen to be sitting on old ingredients.
MHW Ingredient List?
I WANT TO MAKE A FULL TABLE OF INGREDIENTS, THEIR UNLOCKING SOURCE AND HOW TO FARM THEM EFFECTIVELY – BUT I NEED YOUR HELP GUYS. I’ll also be starting a new game since I need to take note of other things (this will be one of them). I’ll be updating this soon, but don’t expect it ASAP.
Well that’s about it for the food buff system in Monster Hunter: World. The Felyne Skill “food color” table up there is for your reference! The food type stat table is easy enough to remember as it is.
Interested in other MHW Guides?
Thanks so much for these nice tables. I once tried to craft my own food, but I didn’t get how it worked, so kept going with the default ones shown. I don’t know much about these Felyne skills, but started focusing on them to further boost my Attack etc. after all the supply item buffs.
Don’t remember the name, there is a skill where you get increased Attack in the beginning of the hunt. How do I get that?
Vouchers, I have a lot and didn’t knew they can give 100% activation. They can be farmed via the Event quests going right now, Glutton one.
And thanks again, I’m going to create some custom food tonight. 🙂
How do I get feline weakener to activate when I go hunt for mini’s? Any idea how to set that up ?
Weakener would be a daily skill no? It’s appearance is random so if you DO see it on the list you might want to go with full freshness to have all the skills active. Or use a voucher for 100% skil activation rate. Daily skills are quite difficult to ENSURE, but you can try.
hey dude i really love your guide here. JW if you are still planning to update it?
Hmm… the only things I could possibly list are the food locations, daily feline skills, and exact buff amounts. Will do!
doesn’t really matter because if you’re not picking fresh ingredients the proc rate of food skills occurrence is quite low. need at least 3/6 fresh to get the skills at all, at which point its NOT going to be any 6x skill or 4x skill netting you realistically a 2 or a 3x fresh ingredient dish which wont proc anything…. so go for a L buff
also note, getting a L buff is significantly more important than any skill. attack > resistance if you’re fighting kirin / B52 bomber > defense (defense is fairly wrong)
the only two skills you should be worrying about are Felyne Weakener (which is a daily that you have no control over) and rider, which is a 4x red skill. so always chose your fresh meats, go for 4x red if possible, or chose to override the default skills with level 2 skills like polisher, groomer, and hi rise. (which are red, purple, and orange meats)
getting 6/6 fresh, getting all 3 recommended skills, and being relegated to a M/S res/defense dish is HORRID, and those 3 skills you’re getting guaranteed, do not outweigh L attack. pick any 3 skills you want, now understand that you were wrong for choosing those 3 skills because attack is better than those.
the only skill to strive for is bombadier and you have to tailor your whole build around it, in which case thats the only thing you want, if you can slap on attack/weakener too, even better.
If I get 6 Blue, do I get all 3 of the skills or just the level 3 one?
Just the final one!
Could gathering the canteen food in the wild (i.e. those gathering points that give account research points) be related with food freshness. Gather allot of rock fruit, and it’ll make it fresh in the canteen?
yes food from the wild guarantees freshness but i don’t know about the rate of freshness deterioration and some materials become fresh out of nowhere
Awesome guide, but all the desire to have customs skills is wasted by a low chance to procure the skill.
So – you need an info section on Food Vouchers
This guarantees all fresh ingredients and works for entire lobby (1 voucher unlocks for 1-16 players) for 1 quest.
How to get vouchers? you can get 1 voucher for ever quest you run.
Spoiler here:
Poogie farms vouchers for you if dropped at the handler near canteen – must be happy, once between quests – I assume must be complete with story line.
thanks for the reminder… I will be updating all these soon
First I will say thank you for this information. For some reason it took a little googling to find what I needed (namely Feline skill explanations.) Anyway, while the list is very useful, I noticed that some of the Felyne skills are missing from your chart. If you have a chance to add these, it would be greatly appreciated.
Felyne Gripper
Felyne Fisher (assume stat inc. while fishing)
Cool Cat (moxie, maybe?)
Aaaannnnd, literally as I’m typing this, I just noticed you can hit the back button to check every Felyne skill there is…doh! Well this is a great list none the less!
I did not list the daily skills but i can 🙂 and thank you!