Monster Hunter World (MHW) has released the 4th title update for Iceborne for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The highlight is the new monster Alatreon. MeinMMO author Larissa Then has dived into the battle and finally died once again.
In recent months, I haven’t logged into Monster Hunter World as often. The motivation has waned after over 1000 hours of gameplay, at least for me.
The new monsters or variants were usually no longer a challenge. This is mainly due to my great team. We work well together, and everyone knows how to play their character. This often avoids a death or two.
So, I approached the new fight with mixed feelings. Alatreon, known from Monster Hunter Tri, made its way to the monsters of Iceborne. However, I was pleasantly surprised. In this challenging fight, I finally died once again; I literally collected deaths, and it was a huge blast.
Alatreon defeats us after 1.5 minutes – not the other way around
What kind of monster is Alatreon? From the developer diary 6, which was released on July 3rd, I already knew a little about the “new” black dragon.
It alternates its elements between ice, fire, and dragon. Players should also attack it with elemental attacks to mitigate its strongest attack.
How did the first fight go? Those were all the information I had about this fight. I also didn’t want to read further but rather wanted to try a bit. So we dove in on the release day, without knowing what we were even doing.
I have bow sets for all elements, so I just selected one, and we set off as a trio. After I had already died for the first time after about 10 seconds, we managed to deal some damage to Alatreon.
We put it to sleep, broke its horns, and despite its many flying moments, we thought we did well. And then we all died anyway. That was after about 1.5 minutes.
What makes Alatreon so difficult? Alatreon creates a strong shockwave approximately every 5-8 minutes. If you don’t throw life boosters, potions, life powders, and everything at once, you won’t survive it. We didn’t survive it even once.
Unfortunately, it’s not the case that you can hide. Players could shield themselves behind rocks against the monster Behemoth, but not against Alatreon. Almost nothing protects you from death unless you can mitigate the shockwave.
How can you survive the shockwave? This works if you deal a lot of elemental damage to Alatreon. You should also attack it as often as possible with your clutch claw and use slinger ammo against the wall, a very powerful attack in Monster Hunter World. But you’ll also die often while doing this.
Additionally, you should cover different elements in a group. Ideally ice, dragon, and fire. Depending on which element Alatreon assumes, your attacks will be ineffective, and you won’t be able to mitigate the nova. This must then be compensated by teammates with the other elements.
It always starts with a fire phase, so it’s advisable to confront it with ice first. If you have dealt enough elemental damage, the shockwave will be weakened. Hooray, you’ve survived a round! If only there weren’t still the seemingly 100 other attacks that could cost you your life.
How exactly the mechanics work and details on how you can take Alatreon down, you can find out in the video by Arekkz Gaming:
Therefore, play carefully and observe Alatreon very closely. It is very agile and often in the air. If it catches you or your teammates, heal as quickly as possible or throw a potion for your teammates. Otherwise, it is already half the battle if you have mitigated the shockwave.
Much yelling and laughing
And why is this now fun? Admittedly, the first fights were very frustrating, and I almost bit into my controller a couple of times.
However, that also made the fun. The fight against Alatreon was simply not as predictable as many others. At the beginning, we didn’t even know which weapons and elements we should use.
We tried a lot, rebuilt our sets, and progressed a little further with each attempt. And I haven’t felt that in Monster Hunter World for a long time. The feeling of continuous progress in a difficult fight.
In the voice chat, we had a huge blast. We yelled and laughed when we once again passed away. It felt a bit like the beginning of Monster Hunter World: just dying again and not really knowing why.
