Forum:Rathian(MHT) Guide by Corrupted89

Guide Made By: Corrupted89

Guide for: Rathian

Game: Monster Hunter Tri

Rank: Any Offline/Online Rathian

Weapon Type: Switch Axe, Thunder/Dragon element optional. High Volt Axe is recommended for mid-level at least.

Armor: Whatever you're comfortable with. I tend to stay with Lagiacrus armor for the decent defense and plethora of skill slots.

Guide: Alright, here goes. Your goal is to take down the Queen, and that means you need some basic knowledge of her moves, like where to be when she does them and what you should be doing in between her attacks:

1.) Any time she is turning towards you, you should be watching her. If it's a slow turn, she's not enraged and you have a little more time to get things done. If she turns very quickly, you best bet is to be getting out of her direct path ASAP.

- In the case that you have a bit of time to react, you can begin formulating how best to go about the primary farming procedures. Depending on your reflexes, you should choose the tail or head to cut/break first. The wings, in my experience, tend to get broken during the course of the fight, either when chopping at the head or during the ian's turn as you strike her legs.

2.) Her fireball attacks take time to execute, and if you're agile, you can get in position for some H&S (Hack and Slash) on her side or head, especially during the triple fireball. Even enraged, this move is perfect for getting in hits or healing between the fighting. If you're looking to flash her, do it just after she launches the LAST fireball.

3.) Her charge, depending on the distance between you and her, is either a good thing or a bad thing. If you have time to dodge and your weapon is sheathed, DON'T DODGE. Instead, veer to the side and position yourself where Rathian will slide to a stop and attack. Even if you miscalculate where she stops, you will still have time to dodge and re-sheathe before she turns. NOTE: This doesn't work if she's enraged.

4.) Her backflip is yet another godsend, and should be abused for tail cutting. It is especially useful to note that you don't want to run from her backflip. Even if you can't gauge whether she will do two in a row, hover before the second, or just do one backflip, you can notice her backing up slightly, and this is the time to roll to the side and quickly turn to attack where you USED to be. If you time it right, Rathian's tail will be in the prime position for some serious slicing.

-During this, she will do one of several things. If she hovers and turns toward you, dodge straight under her, then recuperate accordingly. If she lands, keep attacking. If she does another backflip, turn towards the direction she flipped and perform the Sword Mode roll+upward slash combo to initiate more tail-slashing. During all of this, you can easily roll out of her attack ranges.

5.) The roar isn't normally avoidable, and most armor doesn’t naturally come with Earplugs. Plus, that skill isn't nearly important enough to add to your armor manually via gemming. The best thing to do, if possible, is to superman dive right before the roar. You'll get up about a second before she finishes the roar, ready to react. Most of the time though, you'll be attacking before she roars, and will get stunned right under her. Nine times out of ten though, you'll recover with barely enough time to dodge if you're observant enough.

6.) The tail swing isn't very dangerous, depending on where you are. If you're up close and personal like you should be, the tail swing's first turn won't hit you, giving you at least two more attacks. After she stills for the second half of the swing, jump into her, and the swing will harmlessly pass by, giving you another one or two hits. Keep in mind that sometimes, in Rage Mode, she does two rounds of tail swing in a row.

7.) A note about her aerial attacks: The swooping dive is telegraphed a mile away, and gives you a good four seconds to get out of her flight path. Her forward swoop-lunge is merely a knockback with some minor damage, but it could lead to being vulnerable to her talon grapple, and that could spell the end of your hunting career. Keep on the move until you know what she's going to do.

8.) The rest of her attacks are merely defensive techniques. The bite attack hits to her left, and had a short range, so no worries unless you're a S&S user who likes to hit from that side. what I like to call her "threatening growl+tail wag" is merely annoying, as it can stop a good tail-cutting combo. The wind buffering from her wings will slow you down as well, but that shouldn't be too much trouble, as it takes her just as long to set up an attack from a wing tactic as it does for you to evade said attack. Her newest defensive ability is to back up and fire a spread of fire in front of her about five or six hunters wide. The best defense against this is to roll into her, as it only hits the area in front of her.

General Strategy: Items

Here are the items I bring to every Rathian hunt, plus some notes on their usage.

Healing Items - This is a given for just about every quest. You should at least have a full stock of Potions and Mega Potions. If you're lucky, you won't need any. It's quite simple to come out of a Rathian hunt unscathed.

Charms/Talons - Your choice. The extra attack is always a welcome addition, though the items themselves are expensive to acquire at first. You probably just want to wait till mid-late game Rathians.

Antidotes - Always nice to have these just in case. Rathian can only poison you with her backflip, tail cut or not. So, if you can avoid that, you'll never need to restock on these.

Steaks - A few Well-Done Steaks are all you really need. Don't even bother with trying to set steaks out for Rathian to eat, because it's much more efficient just to take advantage of her exhaustion.

Whetstones - Unless your blade's sharpness is naturally low, you won't even need them. A full set of Lagia armor increases the sharpness of most blades to the point where they don't need sharpening in most cases. Still, better safe than sorry with a dull blade.

Bombs - Flash bombs are useful, but not necessary for a nice, clean hunt. Dung Bombs are almost important enough to bring as a needed item, because an unexpected aerial talon lunge means you'll take a lot of damage unless you have these. Tranq bombs are for capturing, of course.

Paintballs - Completely optional really, but for Rathian it is good to know beforehand where she will be, especially for pre-trap setup and capturing.

Traps - I don't use them for lower ranked Rathians because they just don't last long enough to make good use of them. In the High Rank Rathian hunts, it might be a good idea to carry at least one trap (two if you're capturing) for when she's in a prolonged Rage Mode.

Optional Items:

You don't need a lot of bulky items to survive a Rathian encounter. However, my armor choice does have poor Fire resistance. So, newbie hunters could benefit from the Firedouse berries' Fireblight curing, at least until they become adept enough to either dodge all of Rathian's fire attacks or learn to fit in a triple roll into their timeframe for the battle, which extinguishes Fireblight anyways. In groups, you could try bringing an Antidote Horn and/or Health Horn to help your fellow hunters out.

General strategy: Tracking & Hunting

Stock up well before the quest. "A well-prepared hunter makes a live hunter at the end of the day." is what I've come to learn by hunting Rathian for so long. No matter if the quest starts on the Deserted Island or in the Flooded Forest, the strategy is the same (although movement between areas might be hampered), Depending on how high a rank the quest is, you will start off in camp or in a random area. My best advice is to just know the map before you start, so you don't have to run to camp to know where you're going.

Your first goal after checking your gear and filling your health and stamina to MAX (via eating pre-quest and eating during the quest) is to find the Rathian, and possibly any other large monsters in the area. After all, you don't want to be snuck up on. Once you find them, seek out the Rathian, hopefully in an area you feel comfortable fighting her in. A larger area with little resistance between you and the wyvern is ideal, because it gives you more room to maneuver.

When you begin, avoid her initial roar. Before even that, however, there will likely be a period of calm just after she realizes you're there. Use this time to paintball her. She'll begin her routines, and it's your job to begin memorizing the patterns and signs that indicate what she's about to do. This is where you start your parts breaking, because if not she'll die before you can break/cut all four areas. If you're lucky, before she has the chance to exit Rage mode for the first time, you'll have cut her tail and broke her face.

Rage mode is not a good time to attack unless you know you're going to get an opening ahead of time, such as her backflips. While the opening animations to her backflips are shorter in Rage, the vulnerability period is almost exactly the same. You want to start attacking her tail the moment she finishes the flip and comes down into range. Sometimes, this will even stun her, and she'll fall down for even more tail slashing. The tail should always be your first priority no matter what you're on the quest for, because not only does it cut her attack range for her backflip and tail swing by half, it provides a carve for extra loot.

After the tail comes the hardest portion of the breaking cycle: the face. It's the hardest because you stand a greater chance of being thrashed. This just means a different approach is needed. The attacks you're waiting for are her fireballs, her defensive fire "spread" attack, and her standing growl+tail wag. By the time you really start to get into her face, she will be near the point of exhaustion more than likely. It is extremely important NOT to let her eat, because you need her in her weakened state to finish the breaking process. While breaking the face has nothing to do with hampering her offensive capabilities, it's a good practice, because it also gets you used to all of her attacks from the front.

During this process, if she takes to the air at any time, roll and put your weapon away. You want to be clear of her danger zones until she decides to come back down to earth.

If you're successful in breaking the face AND exhausting her stamina, then you're more the ready to take care of those wings. You'll notice that you don't actually break the "wings", but the spikes on the edges of them. That means you need to be at the sides of her head hacking at them as much as possible. If you're consistent about it, you'll shear off one wing quickly, and leave the other open fairly quickly. While not a necessity, it's a good thing to finish the breaking process quickly to avoid her going into Rage Mode and ruining your stamina advantage. One of the greatest advantages to you is that she'll often just stand still and try to compensate for the lack of stamina when she's exhausted, and that means her wings are in neutral position, perfect height for your blade. She doesn't get as angry at you for attacking her wingtips as she would the thick joints of her wing "arms", so try to aim sideways, towards her face, but back enough that you're hitting along the "fingers" and webbing.

When you're done breaking, feel good about the fact that the process usually depletes at least 40% of her health, if not more. Sometimes the timing is just right, and she'll go into Rage Mode just after her second wing is clipped. This is okay, because it also means she will more than likely move to a new area soon. Use the following minutes to heal up/sharpen your weapon as needed, then "nibble" at her until she decided to try and run. Once again, although becoming enraged refills her stamina somewhat, don't let her eat a single bite out of anything. It gets easier as you go, because you can begin to predict her flight patterns a little. If you know she's low on stamina, head for one of the areas she uses as a feeding ground. If you think she's just fleeing, give her about a second or two of lead and follow, that way she's in neutral position, and ripe for a flash bomb.

The next phase is simply tracking her down continually and delivering more and more damage until he is either limping, or constantly enraging. In either case, you can begin to wrap up the battle. Get your Tranqs ready if you're looking to capture, or just nibble at her till she begins her limp and flies to the "safe area" as I call it. It's usually the area just before the nest, and she uses it as a transition before going to the nest to sleep. You need to be in this area before she is. If you’re hunting to kill, you want to be ready for the largest attack in your arsenal. If you're here to capture, set the trap under her (if you have the time) or in her limping path and set back with Tranq Bombs ready. The next little phase is as simple as the one before it, just whittle her down until she croaks or wait for her to be trapped and bomb her. That about wraps up the battle as a whole.

Tips and Tricks:

- Sometimes, she'll become "confused" during Rage Mode and constantly charge or backflip in a direction that couldn't hit you even if you dove for it. Tend to stay out of her way during this, cause she's' slightly unpredictable, and her moves are less telegraphed.

- Higher ranked Rathian quests with additional large monsters generally aren't too bad. Just Dung Bomb the second monster, dodge their attacks, and wait for it to leave. Sometimes though, Rathian will leave along with it if it's been damaged enough, so just follow until you are alone with the Queen again.

- Quests that have both Rathian and Rathalos (Whether he's part of the quest or extra doesn't matter) in them are especially dangerous, as no matter what people say about the Rathalos' normal flight patterns, he sometimes actively seeks out his mate. This can be annoying, as Rathalos is very quick and can phase through Rathian where you cannot. Step lightly.

- Always remember the cardinal rule about Flash Bombs: Point the camera towards the monster, and throw TOWARDS the camera. IT gives the Flash Bomb more range, especially if the Rathian turns and charges you, or turns while hovering.

- Like most fliers, flashing Rathian while airborne makes her stunned on the ground longer and therefore good for more breaking rounds.

- Try to ignore smaller monsters in the area unless they’re annoying you. If you can, get Rathian to attack them as a bonus. Her attack can often get rid of unwanted guests on the battlefield.

Special Thanks:

This is my very first walkthrough, and I just want to thank all of the hunters out there who risk their lives to bring hard-earned lessons to the younger hunters like I’m doing here. Yet, I hope this can be informative to at least one veteran player at the same time. Please send me some feedback if you feel this guide helped you in any way, or felt that it could be improved. I need all the help I can get.