Augmenting is one of the end game of Monster Hunter World (next to pet collection of course) which will require you to hunt this so called Tempered Monsters in exchange of Streamstones. It is really grindy, so how do you make sure that each of your choices is correct?

First, What Is Augments?

A slot has a level between 1 and 3. A level 3 can hold a level 3, 2 or 1. If your slot isn't a high enough level, then you can't put that high a level decoration. You can also add a slot to the weapon, but only one Awaken Slot Upgrade can be added. If you want another slot upgrade, go for the normal Augmentation. The Awaken weapon can also gain potential level if you use it during the Saffi’jiiva Siege. If you already had a decent weapon, make sure to bring it in the Siege! Affinity Increase: Increase affinity. Stacks with other upgrades +10% affinity (+5 for 2nd and 3rd affinity augmentation) Defense Increase: Increase defense and adds a chance to reduce damage taken each time you receive damage. Stacks with other upgrades +10 defense: Slot Upgrade: Adds an extra slot. Stack with other upgrades to increase the. Augmentation Description; Attack Increase: Increases attack power. Stacks with other upgrades. Affinity Increase: Increases affinity. Stacks with other upgrades. Defense Upgrade: Increases defense and adds a chance to reduce damage taken each time you receive damage. Stacks with other upgrades. Slot Upgrade: Adds an extra slot (for decorations). The Augmentations available are: Extra Augmentation Slots, which increases the number of Augment Slots on the weapon. Cannot be rolled back. Attack Increase, which raises base Attack Power by 5 TrUe Raw with each application.

You will get the option to Augment armor and weapon by getting either a Warrior’s Streamstone or Hero’s Streamstone from a Threat Level 2 Tempered Investigations or Threat Level 3 Tempered Investigations then talking to the Smithy afterwards. After finishing the dialogue, you should see an option like below:

You can get a Threat Level 2 Investigation by gathering tracks from Tier 2 Tempered Monsters, and Threat Level 3 from Level 3 Monsters which is basically all Tempered Elder Dragons. Doesn’t make sense at first, since you need to have a Tier 2 Tempered Monster first, before you can gather tracks to unlock that Tier 2 Investigations which will provide you the monster you need. But, you need to remember that you can gather tracks by doing expeditions or some quests designed for gathering tracks, like the 9 star event quest Tracking The Delivery. For a really beginner tip, the tempered tracks are those that is being pointed out by the blue scoutflies.

Now, what is this Threat Level? Well, while gathering tempered tracks, you will see those purple flame beside the word Threat Level. Mine has 3 since all Tempered Elder Dragon is level 3.

After getting a couple of tracks, you should see an unlocked tempered investigations that you can manage on your Research Center. You can sort them by Special Rewards so that you’ll see your investigations with the most reward first. For a quick reference, if the requirement is HR 13 or higher, this is a Tier 1 Tempered Investigation, HR 30 or higher is Tier 2 which has a 3% chance of giving you a Warrior’s Streamstone for each reward slot and HR 50 or higher is Tier 3 Tempered Elder Dragon which can give you an either Warrior’s Streamstone (12% chance) or Hero’s Streamstone (3% chance) on each reward slot.

As you can see, if you want to get a lot of Warrior’s Streamstone or Hero’s Streamstone, you need to be farming a lot of Tempered Elder Dragons.

Augmenting Armors

A very straight forward process, augmenting an armor will let you upgrade the armor more than its initial upgrade limit. Meaning, you can upgrade it more for additional defense. You can’t augment an armor that hasn’t reached it upgrade limit yet tho. The requirement of the augmentation will vary depending on the rarity of the armor you’re trying to augment, you can check out the table below for more details.

Basically, choose your most favorite armor set, upgrade them, then augment them, then upgrade them again, and you’ll need a lot of armor spheres for this.

As for the Streamstone requirement, you can get this almost every time from different threat level tempered investigations. Streamstone shard will be given from the threat level 1 investigation, streamstone is from doing the threat level 2 investigations, and gleaming streamstone is from the Tempered Elder Dragons.

Augmenting Weapons

Weapon augmenting is where it gets interesting, and you can augment a fully upgraded weapon up to 3 times depending on its rarity. The rarity will also declare what kinds of material will you be needing. Also, what is frustrating about this is, aside from getting the Hero or Warrior’s Streamstone, it will also be RNG if that streamstone is compatible with your preferred weapon. So, if I want to augment my rarity 6 Greatsword, I will be needing a Warrior’s Streamstone: Sword, since this is what is needed for both Greatsword and Longsword. So, for every Warrior’s Streamstone I get, I have 1 out of 7 chance that it will be compatible for my weapon.

For more information regarding the requirements, you can look at the table below which will provide some of the material needed:

And, depending on the type of augment that you’ll apply to your weapon, an additional material will be needed. Each augment effects and material needed will be given below:

Click the image to zoom in

Okay, so that is what you’ll need for the materials, the question now is, what Augment do I use?

Maximizing Weapon Augments

For maximizing your augment, I will divide it into 3 parts, the DPS, the Health Augment and the situational.

Before going any further, let me explain to you the raw attack damage first. If you look at your Status, the game will provide you an attack value that depends on the weapon equipped and buffs. Now, that attack value is basically a bloated raw attack, with a multiplier depending on your weapon equipped. If you have a Greatsword equipped, this multiplier will be 4.8, a Dual Blades will have a multiplier of 1.4, etc.

The best way to see this multiplier is by looking at all of the first Tier Blacksteel Weapons. Blacksteel Chopper I (Greatsword) will have a 480 attack, while a Blacksteel Twins I (Dual Blades) will have 140 attack which make it hard to compare them, but they should be the same right, since they are the same first tier Blacksteel? Well, if you look at their raw attack, which is the attack value divided by the multiplier (in the Blacksteel Chopper I, that is 480 divided 4.8, for the Blacksteel Twins I, 140 divided by 1.4), you will get the same raw attack value which is 100, so, they are actually equal. And this is important for the next part.

Maximum Damage Per Second Theory

Okay, for example, you are a perfect hunter, you don’t get hit and you just want to ensure that all of your hit will do more damage, should you use attack augment or affinity augment? Considering only the raw attack value, it will be optimal to add attack augment if your raw attack value is less than 200, and any number more than that, for your first augment, it should be affinity.

Before looking at the math behind it, lets look at affinity first. Affinity is basically a chance to do 25% more damage (without Critical Boost, lets look at this later). So, a 10 affinity means, that in average, 1 out of your 10 attacks will do 25% percent more damage. Theoretically, you’ll be doing about 2.5% increase damage in all of your hit. So, if you have a raw attack value of 200, the damage increase is 200*(1.025)=205, which is equal to just adding the attack augment. However, if you have a raw attack of only 150, a 10 affinity will only provide you 150*(1.025)=153.75 raw attack, making the attack augment a better choice since it will add 5 raw attack increase directly.

How about if you have 2 augments and you have 200 raw attack, is it better to add 2 attack augments or 2 affinity augment? Lets compute it then, according to the table above, the 2nd affinity augment will actually provide you only 5 affinity, so 2 affinity augment will be 15 affinity in total, so 15 percent chance to do additional 25 percent damage. Lets multiply it to get the theoretical damage increase, and you’ll get around 3.75% increase in raw attack. Multiply that by 200 and you’ll get 7.5 increased raw attack, meaning, the 2 attack augments will be better since it will provide you 210 raw attack. If you do 1 attack augment and 1 affinity augment, you will be doing (200+5)*1.025=210.125, exactly 0.125 higher. What it means is that, if you are doing 2 or 3 augments, look at the current raw attack, if it is higher than 200, go for the additional 10affinity, then do attack augment for the rest. Even if you have around 300 raw attack using buffs, 1 affinity and 2 attack augment will always be the most damage increased, beating 3 affinity, 3 attack and 2 affinity 1 attack set up.

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How about using critical boost? Will it change the augment to use if I’m using a critical boost? Well, if you have a lvl 3 critical boost, that means that your affinity hit will now be a 40% damage increase, and the raw attack value to consider here will be 125, if you have more than 125 raw attack, choose the first affinity augment each time. For the next 2 augments, will it still be affinity or attack this time? The number here is 250 raw attack, if you have more than 250 raw attack after doing meals and buffs, go for affinity then, otherwise, still attack augment for the next 2 augment.

But, how about doing attack boost instead of critical boost, since critical boost jewel requires lvl 2 slot, maybe its better to use 6 attack jewel lvl 1 instead? Lvl 6 attack boost will provide you +18 raw attack and 5 percent affinity. Well, lets look at this realistically. I usually use the Purgation’s Atrocity with raw attack of 210, along with might seed with 10 raw, demon drug with 5 raw, powercharm and powertalon for 15 raw and demon powder for 10, Attack up L from food which provides 15 raw, for a total of 265 raw. If I use Lvl 6 Attack Boost, that will be bumped up to 283 with 5 affinity. If we do the affinity augment to my weapon, I’ll be have 293.6125 raw damage. But, if we use Lvl 3 Crit Boost, then add 1 affinity augment, it will be 265 * (1.04) = 275.6 raw attack. So, considering this information, crit boost is not that worth it.

I know that we can still consider other situations like, critical element, master’s touch and a lot more but we can leave that up to part 2 to be released next week, along with the detailed computations for the remaining 3 augments.

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References:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterHunterWorld/comments/848dgs/tempered_farming_augmentation_and_you_in_mhw/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ysj6c2boC6GarFvMah34e6VviZeaoKB6QWovWLSGlsY/htmlview?sle=true#
https://fextralife.com/mhw-attack-values-you/
https://monsterhunterworld.wiki.fextralife.com/Decorations

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