What are Research Points?
Research points are a type of currency spent on many useful features and services at the research base. These range from paying for meals at the canteen, cultivating plants and insects at the botanical garden, to accessing the tailraider safari and crafting palico equipment.
How to Earn Research Points
Hunt Monsters
Hunting as many monsters as you can during quests, investigations, and expeditions will reward you with research points. This is the most common way to earn them. You will be granted additional points for destroying monster parts as well.
Collect Research Samples
Collecting several monster samples, including monster tracks, also grants you research points. Be sure to watch out for samples and tracks indicated by blue scoutflies, as they give you more points.
Find Special Account Items
Special account items are rare materials obtained from gathering points. They cannot be used to craft items or equipment and are only gathered to earn research points. Examples of these are wyvern eggs and rare minerals like beryl or amber.
Turn-in Bounties
Before going on a hunt, stop by the resource center to check available bounties. These involve completing tasks like hunting specific types of monsters, obtaining items from certain gathering points, and even just clearing quests in a particular locale. You will earn a good amount of research points and armor spheres this way.
Efficient Farming Methods
Low Rank
You should not worry too much about farming research points when you are still low rank. Simply progressing through the main story lets you earn a hefty amount. If you do find yourself running low on points, you can deliver Rathian eggs back to camp during expeditions. One egg delivered is worth 250 points.
A good location to do this is in Wildspire Waste. The second campsite is near area 12 where you will find a Rathian nest.
High Rank
The best place to farm research points upon reaching a high rank is Elder’s Recess. You will mainly want to collect blue, true, and abyssal beryl. Keep an eye out for when there is an upsurge in beryl deposits on the map. This causes more beryl gathering points to appear.
Blue, true, and abyssal beryl reward you with 32, 54, and 260 points each. Noahstones, which only appear in area 8 during beryl deposit upsurges, give you 210 points.
Beryl deposits can be found in areas 3 and 8 in normal environmental conditions. More of them appear in crystal-covered areas during upsurges.
For best results, equip armor with geologist and forager’s luck skills. Geologist lets you gather more items from gathering points while forager’s luck increases the rate of obtaining rare items. Recommended armor pieces are shamos goggles beta, king beetle brachia beta, hunter’s coil beta, king beetle crura beta, and the geology charm III.
Where Should Research Points Be Spent?
Research points are best spent on the botanical garden to grow and cultivate high-priority items like mandragoras, honey, blue mushrooms, bitterbugs, flashbugs, thunderbugs, adamant seeds, and might seeds. These are used to make items like max potions, flashpods, shock traps, and demondrugs.
Another good way to use research points is by crafting palico equipment. You will want your palico to have the appropriate elemental resistances by having a good variety of armor to choose from.
For late-game, it is a good idea to have accumulated research points for the elder melder’s first wyverian ritual service. This allows you to meld useful decorations using streamstones and streamstone shards obtained from tempered monsters.
It is not recommended to use your research points for trading items with the Argosy ship. Many of the items it offers can be obtained through quests and are generally not worth spending points on. The tailraider safari is also a poor investment for similar reasons.
It is also better to pay for meals at the canteen with money rather than research points since the former is easier to earn.
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