Monster Hunter World - How to use the Insect Glaive

The Insect Glaive weapon has been revised in Monster Hunter World to include special Kinsect creatures that seek out buffs for your upcoming combos. New players often ask what these colours (red, orange, white) actually mean so for this guide I'm attempting to answer those questions and explain how the Insect Glaive works.

How the Insect Glaive works

Let's start with a quick recap on how the Insect Glaive actually works. Acting like a staff with a razor sharp end, the Glaive has some of the best ariel attacking movesets in the game. It's dance like mobility is unmatched by many weapons but the coloured buffs are what really give the Glaive it's punch!

Thanks to the Kinsects, these buffs are not hard to acquire either. Simply holding the appropriate button on your controller will send the Kinsect (flying bug) off towards the monster to collect a particular buff from its body. Depending on the body part targeted, the buff colour will vary - there are general principles which you'll find further down this guide.

Once the Kinsect returns to the player, the buff is transferred and shown clearly at the top corner of the screen, in one of the three buff slots.

Buff Slots

As a quick example, let's study two different screenshots. The first screenshot below shows the top left hand corner of the game screen. There are three empty slots, numbered 1 to 3:

Empty Kinsect slots

These are your Kinsect buff slots and each slot will fill with a particular colour when the bug retrieves that buff from a monsters body.

The second screenshot below shows what the UI looks like when all three buffs have been collected (red, white, orange). Notice that there is no green buff, reasons are explained a little further down:

Full Kinsect slots

Important: the buffs will only last a short duration so it's important for the player to utilize the buff before it wears out.

Controls

On PS4 the controls for the Kinsect are as follows:

L2 + Triangle - Sends out the Kinect to "Harvest Extract"
L2 + Circle - Recalls the Kinsect back again

Now that we understand how to acquire buffs, let's understand what each of the colours mean...

What do the colours mean?

To put it simply, there are four colours that the Kinsect can retrieve:

Red - taken from the offensive parts (head, claws etc.), grants an attack boost and extended attack animations (more hits).
White - taken from the wings or legs, grants a movement speed boost.
Orange - taken from the body, grants knockback protection (defense boost).
Green - slightly random but usually taken from tail, heals the player immediately

The three main colours are red, white and orange. The green colour is never transferred to your buff slot since the healing effect is applied immediately and has no impact on your playstyle or combos.

Players should note that small monsters or herbivores do not offer every colour above, in most cases only offering one of the three.

Extended combos

Gaining all three colours (red, orange, white) will grant an extended and increased combo-buff which consists of all of the boosts together. During this phase, the player also has a glowing outline around their character. This is an incredibly impressive boost which offers the greatest attack potential from the Glaive, granting double hits during combos.

Even combing only two colours is enough to grant hybrid effects e.g. orange and white, red and orange etc.