Monster Hunter Stories 2 | How to swim

Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin sees you wandering across wide-open spaces, as well as traipsing around monster dens and darker, narrow caverns. Most of the time you can explore everywhere without assistance, however, there are some obstacles you can’t always overcome. You’ll find for example that sometimes there is deep water blocking your path to treasure, items, and even dens in the overworld. It’s well worth swimming around to see what treasures await you in otherwise inaccessible areas. We’ll show you in this handy guide, exactly how you can swim in Monster Hunter Stories 2.

Which areas can you swim in?

Areas on the map that are coloured in light blue indicate water that can be navigated through. Whilst some of this may be shallow enough for you to go through unaided, most of it is much deeper and therefore blocked off without assistance. Often this deeper water will house glowing orbs which are items you can pick up, or will separate the mainland from treasures you can’t otherwise reach. As such swimming is highly recommended in Monster Hunter Stories 2.

How do I swim in Monster Hunter Stories 2?

Like other special traversal methods in Monster Hunter Stories 2, like climbing vines or jumping, to swim, you need to be riding a monster that has the special skill required to execute it. The skill in question is called “Swim“. So when you are looking through your Monstie collection you’ll want to make sure one of them has this skill. Then all you need to do is make sure you are riding that monster as you approach deep water. You don’t even need to press a button, just move into the water to jump in. You can now freely swim about and explore. Navirou will remind you if you try to swim with the wrong Monstie and encourage you to change to the correct one.

Which Monsties have the Swim skill?

When you exit your village for the first time and are greeted with the open sea you’ll be forgiven for thinking you will be able to swim right away. However, this isn’t actually the case. You’ll need to wait a little while until you find your first Monstie that has the Swim skill. The first one you can find will be the Royal Ludroth, which is found in the Alcala region. These, alongside their smaller Ludroth offspring are fairly common. Therefore finding a den with them in or forcing the issue with a Paintball shouldn’t be too problematic.

If you do miss the Royal Ludroth though, you can find a Zamtrios later in the Loloska region. If you’re not sure what to look, for it’s a huge blue fish-type monster often with its smaller Zamite offspring.

With the right Monstie and know-how, you should now be able to swim in Monster Hunter Stories 2