Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate - food, consumables, important combos and the BBQ minigame

As well as gaining power by forging and upgrading a delicious selection of weapons and armour pieces, there are plenty of temporary offensive and defensive buffs you can grant to your hunter. From making the most of your pre-hunt snacks, to grilling the perfect steak, the next part of our guide will help you make sense of the various combat boosts available in the game.

Cooking in Monster Hunter 4

In each of your hub areas you'll be able to take advantage of a feline friend who's capably of cooking up some seriously useful stat-boosting treats. Different combinations of food ingredients will grant different combat boosts to both you and your Palico companion.

There are two factors that effect the boosts you'll receive from the meal you concoct: the two ingredients you combine together, and the method you use to cook the dish. There are two food skills to consider as well. Fixed Skills are always the same, every time you use a particular recipe, while Daily Skills change after you finish up a quest, or kill a big monster out in the wilds.

In the early days, look for combinations that increase your stamina and attacking power, as these will make your opening quests much easier to both survive and complete. Later on in the game, you'll probably want to start thinking about exploring those feasts that will protect you against certain damage types.

If you don't want to experiment yourself, you can reference one of the game's wiki sites for a breakdown of what's what.

Consumables to take with you on every hunt

Here's a quick checklist of some of the most important items you should include in your backpack before heading out on a hunt - any hunt. Take as many of each as you think you'll need. If you're playing the game around the launch window, you can even get a huge bundle of free consumables just by downloading a small patch from the eStore.

• Whetstones - use these to sharpen your weapon's blade as it becomes dulled through combat.
• Potion - provides a minor health refill.
• Mega Potion - provides a more significant health refill.
• Antidote - removes debilitating effects.
• Well-done Steak - fight (and flee) for longer with this stamina-boosting steak.
• Paintballs - tag your massive monsters and track them as they move around the map.
• Iron Pickaxe (or better) - for chipping rocks off the nodes you pass.
• Bug Net (or better) - for scooping up butterflies and bugs.

If you need to capture a beast for the challenge at hand, make sure you include these items as well - you won't be able to complete the mission without them.

• Tranq Bomb - for stunning a near-death beast and dragging it back to camp.
• Traps - whichever flavour of trap you fancy.

Important combos in Monster Hunter 4

There are a huge number of crafting combos to consider in Monster Hunter 4, but there are a handful of specific creations that it pays to have in stock at all times. As you head deeper into the game beyond the scope of this guide, we recommend checking out the Wikia page. In the meantime, you should always experiment with combos as you discover new resources.

Here's what every hunter will want to keep in their larder stock, and where you'll find the ingredients to make them with.

Ingredient locations

How to use the BBQ correctly

As well as visiting the chef in town, you can do some cooking of your own too! When you kill certain beasts you'll be able to carve the Raw Meat item from their corpses. If you've bought your BBQ Spit along with you, you can then cook the meat into two different Steaks, which can then be either eaten to boost your Stamina bar, or combined with other items.

Leave the meat on the spit too long and you'll get nothing but burned meat. Take it off too early though, and your Raw Meat will remain exactly that. Here's how to get the results you need every time.

Rare Steak

Halfway through the music you'll see the meat change colour slightly. Hit the A button to create your Rare Steak.

Well-done Steak

Just after the music stops, the meat on the spit will turn a slightly darker shade of brown. Hit the A button as soon as this happens to create a Well-Done Steak.

- The next part of our guide covers Expeditions, gathering and fishing.

- To find the rest of our Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate guide, head back to the first page.