Hunt - Rathalos¶

The Rathalos at first glance looks awfully similar to a Rathian. At second and third glance, too! In fact, the Rathalos is virtually identical to the Rathian, although their behaviors are different enough to warrant mention. First, however, the similarities. You can expect most of the same attacks from the Rathalos that you saw the Rathian used, including the standing fireball attack (sometimes in a triple-fireball variant), the “pace-back-and-forth” “attack”, the aerial tail flip along with the standard bites and tail sweeps.

Where the Rathalos differs is in how it prosecutes these attacks, largely preferring to stay aerial, where it’ll perform flying charges, clawing dives, breath fire both as a fireball and as an arc, this last attack mostly being close range. In addition, the Rathalos also has a diagonal aerial tail swipe, although it’s much less common than the vertical one, which it’ll spam even more relentlessly than the Rathian did. Fortunately, being in the air often means it’s less likely to use its ground-based attacks. Like the Rathian, the Rathalos makes liberal use of fire attacks and can inflict poison with its tail attacks.

Since it tends to remain flying a good portion of the time, Flash Pods will prove to be invaluable for this fight. On top of that, you can save yourself a lot of grief by wearing armor with the Fire Resistance or Poison Resistance skills. The Rathalos will still have no trouble dealing damage to you, either way, but eliminating at least one of the damage-over-time effects and mitigating fire damage will help quite a bit, and at this point in the game, you should be able to grind for an craft armor that suits your needs well enough.

The Rathalos’s lair is in AREA 16, same as the Rathian, and it’s not uncommon to find the two together in the Ancient Forest. Ideally, you’ll avoid fighting them both at the same time… that’s a quest for another day. That said, the Rathalos is highly mobile, venturing between AREAS 14 and 15, and its wings allow it to traverse vertical areas much faster than you can manage, which may make tracking it down a chore at times.

The Rathalos’s weak points include its head, wings and tail, the former of which is the most damage-receptive target, but the tail, being severable, might be the easiest and most appealing… same as with the Rathian, really. Since the Rathalos prefers to stay in the air much more than the Rathian, taking pains to target its wings may also be worth your while. It is vulnerable to Dragon element attacks and resistant to fire, but it’s not particularly vulnerable to any ailments.