SO, Alatreon is here and let me tell you he’s one tough customer, and after many many tries I've finally beaten his story quest. (of course he gave me a load of junk as a reward but that’s my life in the series for you, lol)
I’ve not had this stern of a challenge since AT Nergi. (although behemoth too but i’m no pro) My poor wrists and arms need a rest.
I can’t really offer anyone a proper strategy yet since my run was very much flail and see what happens, as i was experimenting with strategies myself and still learning how to fight him, but i’ll share what i can under the cut to avoid spoilers for those who want to figure it out on their own. (You absolute maniacs, go you and i also feel so very sorry for you)
__*If you are solo or two manning it, take your palicos with the plunderblade, it’ll help get you started.* Also Farcasters are disabled for the entire fight, so don’t bother with them.
Surviving Escaton Judgment
Alatreon has 3 elemental modes, fire, dragon and ice. You need to counter these in order to weaken is ultimate, the Escaton Judgement. There is no way to survive this in a practical manner, you HAVE to weaken him with the appropriate elements. (Ice for his fire mode, dragon for his dragon mode, fire for his ice mode. Note: you can use dragon at any stage to weaken him but it’s not as effective, and fire and ice also work on his dragon mode but again, not as effective) You will know what mode he is in by his colour.
You will know when you have because he will topple in a dramatic way.
Doing so will weaken his ultimate and allow you to survive it IF you eat astera jerky or max potions. You will need to do this every time he enters either ice or fire mode.
To somewhat manage and control the fight make breaking his horns a priority if you can, but ONLY if you have managed to weaken his ult first, if not focus on that. Surviving is ult IS ABSOLUTE PRIORITY. (forget any part breaks until that’s done too)
To break his horns you need to weaken his head and wall slam him, but careful, this can ONLY be done in DRAGON mode. You can also break them with normal weapon attacks but to be safe, use the wall slam strategy, it has yet to fail me.
I highly recommend trying to get his LBG as soon as possible regardless of whether or not you are playing solo or in a group, as it can rapid fire all of the elemental ammo.
If melee, coordinate who uses what element with your squad (Unless you are confidant you can break his horns, in which case, all use the same one for max elemental dps). I recommend fast elemental weapons if you can; dual blades, insect-glaives, bows, and light bowguns seem to be a good choice against him.
If fighting him solo and melee, first of all good luck! (i feel you, i did it with dualblades and lbg)
Secondly, break his horn asap. You’ll likely be starting the fight with ice weapons and so make sure to break his horns when he’s shifting out of fire mode into dragon. This will disable his ice mode till the next elemental rotation. In theory by the time he switches back to fire, you can break his other horn when he’s in dragon mode and hopefully kill him before he switches back to ice on the third rotation. If you can’t kill him by then? That’s were his lbg comes in buuuut, try kill him before then, because it gets messy otherwise. (only way back to camp is to cart, sooo)
Oh and he hits incredibly hard so be careful as well as several pin moves, lots of aoe attacks and ranged stuff.
Other than that, it’s just a case of learning his moves. Like with AT nergi, it’s a balancing act of aggression and caution. But for the love of Gog, weaken his ult, for your sanity and your squad. And if your using a heavy weapon, please tenderise for the light weapon users, he doesn’t give you many opportunities to tenderise without it costing you the elemental stagger. (i’ve learnt that the hard way)
I hope hope some of this helps those that may still be struggling.
Monster hunter is like one of those animes where your friend is like, "oh yeah, i saw it but i didnt like it" and your like "how far in did you get?" And theyre like "episode 3" (a reasonable stopping point) but ya gotta be like "no! Watch until AT LEAST episode 7" (totally unreasonable) but its unfair to itself because normaly the first person is justified in watching 3 episodes because by then they should understand what they're getting into. Monster hunter, on the other hand is like if you took that anime, and made it so episodes 1-6 are a documentary on rock collection but then episodes 7-30 are [the good parts of] black☆rockshooter
