Hey this page is probably pretty outdated at this point because I kind of dropped off the game not long after global release. Please take it all with a grain of salt.
On August 8th, I got access to the early soft-release of Monster Hunter Now, due to living in one of the early release countries. Below I am compiling my observations regarding aspects of the game which are not explicitly stated anywhere I could find. Some of these are just my impression (look for terms like "roughly" or "approximately"), some I have tested and timed, and some I have gathered from the Support Community forums and then tested myself.
I will not spend too much effort explaining the basic mechanics of the game as they will become all too obvious when playing.
The world in Monster Hunter Now, like other Niantic games, places objects on top of the map of your real environment. Some of these objects will spawn randomly, while others will have fixed or semi-fixed locations. The times at which they spawn or replenish will also vary in flexibility.
Further, the map is split up into chunks which represent three different biomes, which determine which objects can spawn there. Biomes change daily, at what is 9pm for me, though it may be a different time for others, and follow a fixed progression. Forest becomes desert, desert becomes swamp, swamp becomes forest.
The landmarks that Niantic uses in all their games take the form of fixed gathering nodes in Monster Hunter Now. Interacting with these when they are in range will give you one material per tap, and will randomly vary in how many times they can be tapped. The least I can recall is 3, and the most was maybe 6, but I need to test this further.
As for how long it takes for new materials to spawn, or in other words for the node to replenish, it seems to take 3 hours from the moment you exhausted the node.
Fixed gathering nodes are the limiting factor for rural players. Currently, some materials can only be gathered from these nodes (e.g., carpenterbugs), so depending on what you want to craft you will eventually have to make your way to one of Niantic's landmarks to get stuff. I really hope they change this sometime in the future, but for now that is the state of things.
These are of course the main focus of the game, and the main thing you will want to plan for when going out to play.
Early into the soft launch it was mentioned on the Support Community forums that they spawn at the top of every hour divisible by three. So expect new monsters at 3h00, 6h00, 9h00, 12h00, 15h00, 18h00, 21h00 and 24h00, local time. I was skeptical that they would work on local time, as I live in a weird timezone that usually gets lumped in with another, but indeed they do follow this precise schedule. Monsters in the field which have not been slain will be replaced with new ones in the same spot, so if there's one you want to hunt, you'd best get to it.
The locations of large monster spawns are generally close to roads, walking trails and parking lots. The closer together the roads, the more clustered together the spawns seem to be. Up to this point it doesn't look like it varies too much from place to place, so long as there's a path on the map nearby. I've tried downtowns, residential areas, shopping malls, nature trails, highways, rural villages and their connecting roads, and even campground lakes. In all of these, The monsters seem more or less consistently distributed within range of all roads or paths that appear on the map. (There was one time I went to a mall and found it to be kind of a dead zone, but that nay have been a bug as the next time I went there were plenty of spawns near outer walls and parking lot.)
Further, the spawn locations of large monsters seem to be decided at the daily biome change, so every spawn after that will be in the same spots even if it's a different monster.
These gathering points offer a single material when interacting with the node, and then they despawn entirely. An area exhausted of its gathering nodes seems to spawn more after a minimum of 15 minutes, though they may not show up unless you move around, switch apps or fully restart the app.
Similarly to large monsters, I believe they spawn in locations which are chosen from many fixed options rather than being truly random. From what I can tell, these nodes don't despawn automatically until the change of day. The change of day cycle may also be the moment at which the game selects many of its gathering point spawn locations and which nodes will be there, as some days I find a lot of repeats, but this would require further testing. I know there is some randomness, but I'm not sure how much.
Small monsters will spawn and even despawn every five minutes or so, even without having to open and close the app. Locations vary so much that I have yet to really see a pattern. Times seem to also vary, not following a fixed schedule but usually taking about five minutes.
Small monsters in this game are reliable enough, and non-threatening enough (the flying ones don't even seem to have an attack programmed), that you can kind of use them as squishy training dummies.
To summarize and add a bit more actionable stuff to the infodump that is this page thus far, here are some tips.
Since monsters spawn at the top of every hour divisible by three, you may want to plan your trips around spawn times. For example, you can head out not too long before the reset (e.g., 17h00), go as far as you can, then when reset hits (18h00) you can turn around and make your way home on the same route with all new spawns. Of course, if you have the option to take a more circular route where you're always walking in new areas, then this is irrelevant.
Biomes are worth keeping in mind. Certain materials and monsters are only found in specific biomes. For monsters, you can check the biome popup or the monster guide to see who goes where. For materials, you can check the material info popup triggered from the equipment screen or item box. Take advantage of the daily biome changes or go explore a new area to get the most out of your travels!
Unfortunately, some materials are only found at fixed gathering spots (landmarks), meaning you may have to go find such nodes for crafting gear. This is especially important for rural players who may not be able to get to a fixed gathering node regularly. You will likely want to plan your trips carefully if you're stuck needing such materials.
If you spend a lot of time in one spot and want to check on local spawns throughout the day, you may want to actually close and reopen the app at such times to ensure that small material nodes respawn. Aside from that, you can check every 3 hours to get your large monsters, or every 6 hours if you do it just before and after the reset.
There is no friend system in the game at this time, and the only way to tell if others are nearby is to go into the menu preparing for a hunt, so if you'd like to check who's around you may want to make sure you always keep a paintballed monster saved (mind the 48-hour expiry on them though!) as you can open the prep menu, check if someone's around, and close it without actually consuming the saved monster. And regarding the range of detection for multiplayer, it is definitely larger than your circle of influence, though the exact distance is still unknown to me. In my own testing with strangers, I couldn't see them and walked around and we still hunted together several times (thanks BraveryBeyond!), and their hunts seemed to all be in a different biome from where I was located, all hinting that the distance between us was fairly forgiving.
Daily quests are worth 1000 zenny each, which is nothing to sneeze at. At the start of the game, gear will be cheap to craft and upgrade, being mostly demanding on materials. Before long you may find yourself mostly just short on zenny. Try to focus your resources and take advantage of daily quests once you start getting them.
Having trouble with a fight because you blew through all your zenny crafting everything early on and can no longer afford to have decent attack or defense like me? Remember that the main consequence of having your health go down to zero is that you'll have to use a potion if you want to pick up where you left off. If you're really low and reaching for that potion already, check how much time you have left. If you don't have much time, then yeah, you probably can't afford the time it takes to faint and res again so you either need to sharpen your senses or heal up. If you do have more time, maybe you can afford to be more reckless before reaching for the green goo. Also, running away from a fight has no consequences. If you can afford to wait for your health to passively regen, you can just leave and try again instead of healing. Because, yeah, potions will add up.
As I mentioned above, small monsters, especially flying ones, are practically just squishy training dummies. There's no timer in their fights, and if you get away from the monster you can swing around all you want without hurting it, so that makes it a great opportunity to figure out the controls for your weapon of choice (e.g., did you know you can do the sns backhop by swiping back while holding to guard? similarly you can tackle with greatsword while holding a charge!), practice your moves, or check different performance settings on your device since yeah the game can lag a bit sometimes mid-combat which is scary. The only things that aren't great to practice on these guys is damage numbers (since they die so fast) and perfect dodges/guards (since the quadrupedal ones attack so inconsistently, and the flying ones not at all).
Thats right, this game has perfect evades, which seem to act similarly to the bushido/adept style dodging in generations in that you come our of it ready to do a fancy move. The game also has a huge amount of i-frames in general, and some attacks can be avoided by gluing yourself to the monster, so there will likely be some ways to cheese fights in the future, with more exploration.
This game has gyro which is optional for melee weapons and not really optional for gunning. While the game's focus mode will generally have you move toward and face the monster at all times, using gyro can help immensely in targeting specific weak spots or breakable parts. I recommend trying it out! (Also it won't play nice if you use it while moving around, so that's another reason besides personal safety to actually stop when hunting, lol.)
The Support Community forums can be accessed in the Other section of the Settings screen (near the bottom). You'll need to log in with the same email you use for the game. The forums have a lot of helpful tips and info from the team, and you can ask questions, discuss with players, or give the devs feedback or bug reports as well.
Also, try listening to the music. This may be the only Niantic game I've played where I actually want to listen to the music, seeing as Monster Hunter usually has some good tunes. I'm listening to the nighttime music right now and it's just so chill.
I'll probably write up more stuff here in the future, but for now happy hunting!