How to actually reduce Alatreon's wipe attack damage?

[Theos 🪐]

People have told me that the only way to reduce the damage on his wipe attack (i don't know else to call it, its the attack where you use health boosters and eat astera jerkys to stay alive) is to deal most damage possible to his head and ONLY to his head. But yet I've seen people recommending you to attack his front legs?

So, is it only head damage that weakens it, or is damaging any other part okay too?
Thanks, sorry for the newbie question.

[Suzaku]

You need to deal enough elemental damage to weaken the damage of the wipe (the handler will inform you that you're doing a good/great job at keep Alatreon's power in check), and then breaking his horns is what stops him from swapping elements part of the way through the fight.

Afaik, any elemental damage anywhere will work, but you obviously need to hit the head to break horns.

[Pendergast891]

You need to deal enough ELEMENTAL damage to him to depower his nova

Doesn't really matter where you hit him, but by hitting his head you can destroy his horns preventing him from changing elements for the rest of the fight, allowing you to have consistent damage output from that point onward.

[CookedMeat]

I believe there are very useful Alatreon guides on Steam.
You need to deal elemental damage to get a special knockdown. Each time a knockdown happens (NPC will shout at you), Alatreon's ultima (Escaton Judgement) will be weakened by 1 level.
0 Knockdown = insta kill
1 Knockdown = can survive with booster + astera jerky
2 Knockdowns = can survive with astera jerky only
Etc.
Alatreon changes element during fight. If it starts with Fire, it will change to Dragon at about 4 minutes, then after 4 minutes it will cast Judgement and switches to Ice (opposite of starting element). If you break its horn during dragon phase, it will switch back to Fire after Judgement. Why do you want to do that? Because if you are using an Ice weapon to deal with Alatreon that starts with Fire, you will be dealing 0 elemental damage to Ice Alatreon, so you can't get a knock down (you can still accumulate Ice damage during next dragon phase but its harder), then you will die to second Judgement.

You can hit anywhere you want when it is in Ice/Fire state, but you might want to strategically break its horn (head) during dragon phase if you're using Ice/Fire weapon.

[Ember]

Hitting his arms usually help getting the topple faster since they take the most elemental damage, rest has already been mentioned above. Don't forget Health Boost 3 so you can get a easier timing on jerky and a chance to survive the fight as well.

[Kawalorn]

Originally posted by Pendergast891:

Doesn't really matter where you hit him, but by hitting his head you can destroy his horns preventing him from changing elements for the rest of the fight, allowing you to have consistent damage output from that point onward.

No, it stops him from changing the element ONCE. One time for each horn broken. When both are broken you can no longer stop him from changing element, but any player competent enough to break them should be able to kill him soon after.

[River Victor]

Here are the mechanics of Alatreon:

1. You cannot use Farcaster to change wpns unless you die.

2. There are two quests of Alatreon. One starts with fire and the other starts with ice. Starting with fire, its elemental shift goes like this:

Fire > Dragon >X Ice
then
Ice > Dragon >X Fire
then
Fire > Dragon >X Ice

And so on. Ice will start with ice and change to fire instead. You get the idea. When it's fire, it will be weak to ice. When it's in ice, it will be weak to fire. Dragon deals mediocre dmg throughout.

Note the X. There are two things that will happen at X. First is Eschaton Judgment. That is the ultimate move that drains your health. To make it survivable, you must deal enough elemental damage ANYWHERE. It doesn't matter where. If you do enough, it will tumble. The Handler will praise you and says you've weakened its power. You can make it tumble like that up to 3 times, each time making its Eschaton Judgment successively weaker. If you're good enough to tumble it 3 times, Eschaton Judgment barely deals damage, but you need minimum once to make it survivable.

The second thing that happens at X is elemental transition. Alatreon will be using the opposite element to the starting one. That means that if you bring ice to counter its fire at first, your ice will be completely useless when it shifts to ice. To stop this transition, you must break the horn. It can only be done when it's in dragon phase. Any dmg on the horn still deal dmg during any phase, but breaking it start counting only during dragon. You can spend ONE HORN TO STOP ONE TRANSITION.

So if you stop it, it goes like this

Fire > Dragon >X (1 horn spent, blocked 1 transition)
Fire > Dragon >X (1 horn spent, blocked 1 transition)
Fire > Dragon >X (NO MORE HORNS TO SPEND, can't stop transition)
Ice (ice no longer works, can't meet elemental dmg check) > Dragon >X (forced cart, since couldn't meet elemental dmg check)
Fire > Dragon >X
Ice > Dragon >X (forced cart here, since couldn't meet elemental dmg check)

So the general idea is that you either

bring a mediocre elements like thunder or water and struggle against it throughout but you don't have to worry about breaking horns.

or

bring the element that counter its starting element BUT you have to keep breaking the horns to make it stay in its starting element or the Eschaton Judgment can't be suppressed in the next phase and you can't survive it.

or

Use a gun that can shoot fire AND ice and bring crafting materials.

Do not bring dragon. It is weak throughout, but also mathematically weak in terms of probability due to its being the second element.

[Drat Souma]

2 general methods:
1. Pure Damage: attack head as it's the weakest with a very high Raw damage weapon. You'll not survive the Escaton, but if you're good enough you can kill him before you run out of faints.
2. Elemental checks: use high elemental weapons to attack his legs during his elemental phase as the front legs has the lowest elemental defense. Attack his head when he switches to dragon phase to break one horn so that he doesn't switch to the opposite elemental mode later. Aim to reach the check before Escaton.

Mix strats:
3. Have just enough elemental damage and high Raw, so that they can deplete the HP fast (by hitting the head all the time) while still being able to meet the check for a weaker Escaton.