Creatures

Nothing in this game is caught. A Rider takes a Monstie by beating the adult badly enough that it limps home, then walking into the den behind it and lifting an egg out of the nest while it sleeps. That means the useful difference between the monsters we have written up is not their move list, it is the lever that sends each one running. Sorted that way, our seven pages fall into four rungs, from the fights the story books for you up to the ones that demand a named condition before the den opens.

Settle the turn order before any of it. A clash lost on the triangle is a turn you were going to spend on a paintball, so the attack type and Kinship rules are worth reading before the first rung, and the den and egg rules matter after the retreat lands.

The seven monsters at a glance

Rung one: the fights the story books for you

Two of the seven need no plan at all beyond turning up. Nargacuga cannot be found in the wild before its quest fires, so the boss battle in Alcala is the only door, and the den waiting behind that battle holds the egg. Anjanath is stranger: your first meeting with it is a loss written into the script, and the rematch is the wall between chapter two and chapter three, so the game will not let you leave without a win.

Prepare the rematch rather than the first meeting. Sap Plant and Paintberry crafts the paintballs, water damage cracks the nose, and a finding charm dropped into the prayer pot beforehand tilts the nest towards a sparkling egg. Take nothing dull out of that den, because a shiny one hatches into something better.

Rung two: the paintball window

Once the story has introduced a monster, it starts turning up in the overworld, and from that point a paintball is the common lever. Each page adds its own rider to it. Lagiacrus becomes a random spawn around Pomore Garden after the Lamure fight, and the fast way to farm it is to shift the time of day so the spawns reroll, then travel straight to the garden stand. Throw the paintball, follow it with a Rathalos Kinship Skill, and hit the head and chest while dodging the thunder charge and the tail lash.

Tigrex answers to the clock instead: land a paintball and finish the fight inside three turns and its retreat rate climbs sharply. Mizutsune settles near the Catavan Stand in Pomore's Garden once Bewitching Menace is done, and its bubbles will halve your health in one strike, so the retreat is a race between your potions and its ailments. Feed the Prayer Pot a Finding Charm and a Finding Prayer before you start it.

Rung three: monsters with a named condition

Two of ours will not go home for damage alone. Glavenus wants the killing blow to come from a Mizutsune kinship ability, which quietly fixes your collection order: the fox comes first, the blade tail second. If it is not in the neighbourhood, take the subquest A Scrivener's Worries, which asks for a low ranked Glavenus and therefore guarantees one exists. In the fight, remember its tail has no weak point while its head and body take slashing, piercing and blunt, and that its behaviour changes its attack type as it goes, running Power by default, Technical when enraged and Speed while it is charging a Blazeball.

Tigrex is our example of a Royal Monster, and the requirement listed against it is a two step: stun it with a Shock Trap while it is targeting your monstie with a Power attack, then break its head with a Great Sword. Armor carrying the Den Protector skill, or a monstie born with the Den Protector gene, keeps that den worth following. Royal Tigrex opens on Speed with a normal element, is weak to thunder and to blunt hits on the head, and swaps to Power the moment it rages. The other five sleepers are listed in our Royal Monster locations guide, and Tigrex also shows up as an ordinary monster once the fourth region opens, which is a far cheaper way to farm its eggs.

Rung four: leave the adult alone

The last rung is not a fight at all. Rare dens can hand you the same eggs with the adult nowhere in sight, which is the sane way to get a Mizutsune when its ailments make the boss a chore, and the only way to see the Silverhand and Rainbow colourings of Nargacuga, which sit in rare dens around Alcala. Lagiacrus eggs turn up in dens where nothing has spawned at all. What the shells look like, and what the rarest tier of den holds, is covered in the full egg list.

The one that never retreats

Yian Garuga is the outlier in this bucket, because our page treats it as a kill rather than a capture. Its poison runs until an antidote stops it, so the stock you bring matters more than the party you bring. Break the head while it is enraged, which drops it long enough to work on the tail, and the fight softens from there. The party we ran it with paired Pukei-Pukei and Shaulk on speed and power openers, with Leia riding for the poison rain and Alwin covering charges and heals, and you can put that party together from our early Monstie picks.

Whichever rung you are on, dress for it. The defence numbers and skills of every set we rate sit in the armor rundown, and the rest of the game is indexed on our Monster Hunter Stories 2 hub.