This guide is going to show you how to defeat Rathalos in Monster Hunter Rise using the exact method that I did during my playthrough.
I’ll also talk you through the materials and rewards that Rathalos drops, so let’s get into it!
Rathalos Resistances and Weaknesses
Just like Rathian, Rathalos is strong against Fire-type weapons. It is a fire breathing dragon after all.
Its weak points are its head, wings, and tail. For most of the fight, you will most likely be hitting the wings. These wings have a big hitbox and going to its head and tail makes it easier to spot the behavior of Rathalos.
The best elemental weapon to bring against Rathalos will be the Dragon and Thunder element. It will take a while before you reach Dragon weapons so you might be stuck to Thunder weapons even on High Rank.
How to Fight Rathalos
Like previously mentioned, Rathalos is basically fighting Rathian.
Its tail can also inflict poison which can be deadly during combat but instead of a bicycle kick, he flips around in a vertical line with more coverage. It is harder to spot than Rathian’s attack so be careful.
Rathalos has a lot of ranged fire attacks and a lot of variations. His most basic attack is where he spits a fireball 3 times in a random area within his line of sight.
You can generally look for the direction where his head is facing and completely circle him from behind as fast as you can to deal damage.
He also has a fire beam attack where he flies first and starts breathing fire on the ground. When you see him doing this, it will face up and shoot his fire beam in a straight line. This is extremely quick so if you react slowly to when it starts breathing fire, you might get hit and this can cause some serious damage depending on your fire resistance.
You can see his head tilt while he does this so you predict where he will line up the attack.
Rathalos also attacks with a charge that is quite annoying. He literally just runs everyone around the area and hits everyone in its path. This attack lasts for a long time and he generally charges around 5 to 6 times. Wait until Rathalos stops before doing damage.
It will be hard to catch up if you want to deal damage between the charge attacks and if you try aerial attacks to catch up, he will still hit you.
The main strategy I use against Rathalos is just going below and try to stagger him as much as possible.
Most of his attacks do not hit you when you are directly below him and near his legs. Even the double tail swipe does not hit you if you position closer to the tail below him.
His tail will be the only weak point you can hit here but it is generally safe and you can adapt to his attacks from here. This will give you the opportunity to time when to go out and hit his head or tail.
The tooltip written on Rathalos text says Rathalos is susceptible to Flash Bombs and ends with “However”. This ‘however’ refers to the fact that Rathalos develops a resistance against that item if you spam it too much.
Rathalos Drops and Rewards
Rathalos drops the following items and materials:
For Low Ranks
- Rathalos Scale
- Rathalos Shell
- Rathalos Webbing
- Rathalos Tail
- Flame Sac
- Rathalos Marrow
- Rathalos Plate
- Rath Wingtalon
- Wyvern Tear
For High Ranks
- Rathalos Scale+
- Rathalos Carapace
- Rathalos Wing
- Inferno Sac
- Rathalos Marrow
- Rathalos Medulla
- Rathalos Plate
- Rathalos Ruby
- Rathalos Tail
- Wyvern Tear
- Large Wyvern Tear
One thing to note about the rewards is that there are multiple methods of getting these items. All of these methods stack so it is better to do everything before you end the quest. These methods are breaking and carving monster parts, natural drops, target quest rewards, capturing rewards, and Palico gathering.
The most efficient way is to break all the parts of the monster and capturing it when it is weak.
This allows you to obtain more materials by doing each method and you will see the results at the end of the quest or hunt.
Conclusion
If you know how to beat Rathian in Monster Hunter, it will be easy to adapt to fighting Rathalos, the King of the Skies. They both have similar attacks but with different variations.
Rathalos is slightly harder than Rathian but since they are similar, you can adapt quickly on High Rank to beat it easily.
If you are looking to get the Rathalos Ruby, it has an extremely low drop rate but it drops from multiple methods so just keep grinding Rathalos until you get it.
You can even do Rampage quests as there are a ton of random materials you can get from doing it as long as the monster showed up in the Rampage.
