What are you supposed to be doing in the Kulve Taroth siege?

[Kak]

I ran around with someone scooping up footprints for a few minutes, whacked her and apparently broke a couple of things, and then she left.

What's the actual objective?

[Stefe]

The objective is to break off her horns. It's highly unlikely that you'll do so during pursuit level 1, so it's usually done in multiple runs.

How it works is that during each run you'll collect tracks and break off as many parts as you can. This will slowly increase the pursuit level for the siege of the current session. As the pursuit level increases, Kulve Taroth's maximum HP decreases. The idea is to increase the pursuit level enough that you will be able to break off her horns within the time limit. This typically happens during pursuit level 3 or higher.

[Jethro]

Most efficient way is to just gather tracks in the first run to increase Pursuit level and then finish the siege by breaking the horns in a second run.

The point of that is that it's highly unlikely to finish the siege in a single run in random lobbies. So phase 2-4 in p1 are a waste of time.

edit:
At least this was true for the time pre IB. With all the powercreep going on it may be worth it by now.

[Keagian]

Pursuit lvl 1, you have two options.

Passive: Collect tracks and wait for her to leave the area.

Active Return: Hunt her as usual trying to break as much parts as you can. If she runs to the 3rd area, return from quest

Active: Same as Active Return but continue fighting her until she leaves.

Pursuit lvl 4+, you can continue breaking parts that you missed or you can push for the kill by trying to deal as much damage as you can to her horn in phase 4.

[ExDiver]

If you want to do the siege then go to the dedicated session for Kulve. Siege is for the whole session so if there is 16 players then it will be faster.
Your objective is to Break her horns, if you have MR gear then it should be easy even on Pursuit Level 1. If you're HR player then stick with the players in 4P group and try to do your best. If you want to raise pursuit level faster then gather her tracks on the map and just walk around.
This siege gives you High Rank Kulve Weapons, there is already 450+ of her weapons so it's kinda sick :D But if you want to upgrade these weapons in MR Kulve then you have to do some HR Kulve.
MR Kulve is in the Event Quests in the Iceborne Expansion and can be slayed solo.

[9oaD]

It is boring to just walk along behind gathering tracks. Seems like a lot of people do that. It is better to gather tracks and play with the cannons and environment traps