Why are monsters constantly running away?

[TheDude]

Did they up their chance to do this? Why is this every single monsters go-to tactic. Oh, they hit me twice? Time to run! Oh I just finished running away? Let's run away!

It's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying, nothing I do can stop them. If I get lucky I might stumble them before they can run. I keep getting told flinch shot but it never works for me. Get up to the head, press ctrl or whatever it is, i shot them in the head and jump off and........ nothing they end up just running away. I'm annoyed that they made the clutch claw so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ integral, made it confusing as hell, no explanation just here you go, you're gonna need this but we're not going to tell you how, then made the controls EVEN ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ WORSE.

Almost had Galvenus done but he annoyed me so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ much after 30-40 minutes and like 10 retreats I said ♥♥♥♥ it and alt-f4-ed.

[JamesFace]

You can only flinch shot them if they aren’t enraged. Sometimes even when they run away they are enraged. If you have special ammo (red drop) or crystal burst loaded you can just fire the slinger and it will usually stagger them. Dragon pods sometimes take a few shots tho.

[Suzaku]

Monsters always feel like they run more often during longer fights, but really, it's just that. The fight is going too long. You're not being aggressive enough, dealing too little damage, so you spend more time chasing because the monster is literally bored of you.

[RopeDrink]

Firstly, engaging monsters outside of specific areas (let's call them 'open-arenas') will automatically make the monster try to move to whatever is considered an open-arena in that area. For example, if you engage a Great Jagras en route from the tunnels to the Aptonoth, it will always move to that open Aptonoth area and await a fight, so expect the monster to run away 'after two hits' when starting off. That is normal.

After that, it'll run after a few-minute intervals and/or when you have sufficiently injured it enough to want to rest, so it's up to you to pin it to an area as much as possible and/or ensure each trip to an 'open-arena' results in you doing as much damage as possible. After said timer, it'll then move onto whatever is regarded as the next 'open-arena' and this will keep cycling until the monster leaves the area, it dies, it's injured and wants to move to wherever it sleeps, you fail the mission, or you cart too much.

So, that's the monster PoV out of the way.

Almost had Galvenus done but he annoyed me so ♥♥♥♥ing much after 30-40 minutes and like 10 retreats I said ♥♥♥♥ it and alt-f4-ed.

This is kinda the point.

If a fight is taking way too long, it can be for various reasons - often a lot of reasons at once. It's no secret that monsters fleeing became a bit more prevalent @ Iceborne expansion (specifically clutch-claw patch), but not enough to seem extreme unless you're just not doing much damage, which can boil down to many things. Passivity, gear, build, weapon choice, resistance or inappropriate element, lack of weakspot abuse, claw use, not making enough opportunities for yourself, taking too much damage or spending lots of time to recover, etc, etc.

Shredding down those hunt-times comes as a result of many things, so be sure to look inward first before feeling it's the game's fault. It's also unfortunate that the post-Iceborne starter set might also give newer people the impression (after roflstomping their way through the campaign with ease) that the game randomly has a difficulty spike or hunt-time-spike later on when they become normalized. It's good that said set helps people to catch up, but bad in that it can easily give a wrong impression later. Not saying that is you, just something for people starting out to be mindful of.

Back when I started, my OCD made it very difficult for me to mix and match gear-pieces to make good use of equipment skills, so I'd usually just build full sets if (a) they looked good and (b) the skills seems remotely useful, and never do anything more than use my LBG (which, in the hands of a noob, isn't exactly a big DPS weapon) to shoot pesky pellets at monsters that would get bored of the fly trying to kill them and run off for 15minutes while my mission timers drooped.

Then I started reading the actual monster notes, consider elements, inspect the weakspots, consider things like sleep-shots into triple barrel wyvernblast openers, use melee more (which can lead to stunlocks for more wyvern nonsense), better use of flashes, pods and environment to pin monsters to one area for as long as possible (rather than just 'It's running? Yes. Can I flash it to stop it? No? Time to run after it for 3minutes'), and do whatever I could to optimize my play.

Sure, I was having fun, but most fights were overly long. Started considering other weapons, researching proper builds, farming gems and doing all the usual grunt work to give myself more options vs more monsters. 15mins becomes 10mins, then eventually 5min, then eventually less - and the quicker you learn to kill things, the less it runs, because it can't run if it's dead. Most veterans will only see it run once or twice - initially, when you engage (which is normal), and probably when it tries to head over to its nest after being bust open by a good build.

Until then, expect the monster to run quite often. It's usually a sign that improvement (in one way or another) is required.

[Dagný]

I see you unlocked Raider Ride but didn't get the Experienced Rider achievement. Use Raider Rides more, it'll make you less angry and you can sharpen your weapon, drink potions/buff, craft and soon you'll be fighting the monster again

[Corrupt-nz]

This post again .....

[TheDude]

Originally posted by Otachi-nz:

This post again .....

You wasted more time writing a reply than if you had just... ya know, not clicked it. It's like finding an ad for guitar lessons, calling him then yelling: "BUT I DON"T WANT GUITAR LESSONS".

Then why the ♥♥♥♥ did you call?

[Dex]

Oh man, if you think they run away a lot in this game, you'd really hate the old games. It was painful with the separated maps

[Dagný]

Originally posted by Dex:

Oh man, if you think they run away a lot in this game, you'd really hate the old games. It was painful with the separated maps

yes yes yes

it's awful when you forget to mark the monsters with paintball

[Dex]

Originally posted by Dahlia Hawthorne:

Originally posted by Dex:

Oh man, if you think they run away a lot in this game, you'd really hate the old games. It was painful with the separated maps

yes yes yes

it's awful when you forget to mark the monsters with paintball

oh god those paintballs. if you forgot to reapply it, good luck! have fun running around for 10 minutes trying to find the stupid thing.

[Flynnhiccup]

Monsters can only be flinched shot when they are not enraged. They have to have Yellow Icon on the Mini Map.

Or you can use flash pods so they'll get stunned when they run away but do take note that spamming flash pods will build monsters resistance to it so use it wisely.

[RedViper]

Originally posted by Dex:

Originally posted by Dahlia Hawthorne:

yes yes yes

it's awful when you forget to mark the monsters with paintball

oh god those paintballs. if you forgot to reapply it, good luck! have fun running around for 10 minutes trying to find the stupid thing.

I'm glad they removed the paintball, not only it made no sense, but also was annoying if you forgot to re-apply it to a flying monster.