how to kill monster faster?

[sayori]

I'm a new player and I see veterans killing monsters very quickly and even using a lightning trap to capture them.

How do they do this?
2- Is it worth killing or capturing monsters more? I still don't understand what the point of capturing monsters is.

[Suzaku]

Faster hunts simply come with experience and upgrading your weapon. Once you become really familiar with your weapon and the monster's moves, you'll end up spending a lot less time healing and a lot more time dealing good damage. This will dramatically reduce your hunt times.

To capture a monster, you need to damage it until its health is low enough (under 25% for base game monsters; even lower for Iceborne but I don't know the exact amount). Look for signs that it is weak, such as limping back to its nest and going to sleep, or a skull icon showing up on the minimap if your research level is high enough. You can also keep an eye out for any special slinger ammo (thorn, pierce, bomb, etc) that it drops. It will typically drop special pod at 30/20/10% health remaining. Jyuratodus is a notable exception to this as it drops pods frequently throughout the fight.

Once it is weak enough, you need to hit it with 2 tranq bombs, and then catch it in a shock trap or pitfall trap. You can do this in either order.

Capturing monsters gives more materials as a reward, ends the hunt sooner, and can unlock Special Arena optional quests. A capture is also considered a hunt where that matters.

[Abacus]

The game IS pounding on a damage sponge for 30 minutes.

You will eventually upgrade to not be as hampered, but the game will always be about damage sponge large monsters until you are OP and the challenge evaporates. You collect gear after that.

[IxianMace]

From my observations, capturing a monster gives you four to five rewards.
If you kill a monster, you can carve it for three or sometimes four rewards in most cases. This can be increased with food skills or armour skills.

In my view, it's worth capturing a monster in order to end the hunt sooner and gain more rewards on average. There are certain situations where I might opt to kill a monster instead of capturing it, but in general, I prefer to capture.

To add to what Suzaku said with the research level and the skull icon appearing, to be specific, you need to collect enough monster tracks to max out the monster's scoutfly bar. The skull icon won't show up even if the monster is weak enough to be captured if you haven't maxed out its scoutfly bar.

[Bunuffin]

Why tho?

I have 700h+ and i have a tip for you... meta builds are boring, have fun, use utility skills that make some monster easier to fight... The game is about making armor to counter harder monsters, when you get experience with the game you will kill em in under 15min even with a fun build.

For example i run a Mushroomancer (you can eat mushrooms) build with sword and shield with wide range (applies effect to party too), speed eating and free meal secret (75% chance of not using the item)... yeah i don't do damage as my elemental build to exploit weakness but i have so much fun, you don't need damage when you or others won't die xD

Stack defense or evade window extender to make the hunts easier... make stun builds, make areal hammer builds, make unstoppable lance build and so, have fun and don't sweat it.

Some monster drops you can get only with capture some others you can get from carving.

[Krazed]

So, im not going to repeat everything others have said but no one had addressed how to capture using a lightning trap. You must first make a lightning trap using item combos (trap tool + specific mushroom or other items in combo with the trap tool...experiment and find out). Placing traps is easy, just go to the item and use it (fair warning: takes a few seconds to setup, so be careful). Use tranquilizing bombs x2 on the trapped monster. If you take too long, it will escape. Same goes with pitfall traps.

ALSO, just make sure you are investigating the monster tracks so you can learn more about them. Certain items are only available when you capture a monster, same goes for killing a monster. Study the weaknesses of monsters to get an idea of what will help more (i.e. monster resistances or body parts which should be prioritized, etc.)

Hope this helps a bit more.

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by Krazed:

So, im not going to repeat everything others have said but no one had addressed how to capture using a lightning trap. You must first make a lightning trap using item combos (trap tool + specific mushroom or other items in combo with the trap tool...experiment and find out). Placing traps is easy, just go to the item and use it (fair warning: takes a few seconds to setup, so be careful). Use tranquilizing bombs x2 on the trapped monster. If you take too long, it will escape. Same goes with pitfall traps.

Traps don't use mushrooms. Shock traps are trap tools + thunderbug, while pitfalls are trap tools + net (ivy and spiderweb). Tranq bombs are what takes parashrooms and sleep herbs.

Originally posted by Krazed:

ALSO, just make sure you are investigating the monster tracks so you can learn more about them. Certain items are only available when you capture a monster, same goes for killing a monster.

The in-game information is wrong about this. Carve and capture rewards pull from the same loot table in World. So you basically always want to capture when possible due to the increased rewards, shorter hunts, and special arena quests.

[WILL WICK]

无他唯手熟尔

[Anoyun?]

if your watching a speedrun on how fast can kill or capture a monster. everything on that hunt is scripted and calculated. every action/animation matters and also its rng but calculated if the monster acted different on the one they wanted the whole run is scrap. the one you watch is the result of 100 or more times of trial and error until they got what they want and also they are skilled player.

[Canadian Normandy]

Originally posted by WILL WICK:

无他唯手熟尔

why would you answer a post that is written in english by a brazilian, using kata?

[Outer Heaven]

Don't bother with speedrunners, their gear is, most likely, made out of the super monsters like Fatalis and Alatreon. Only watch them if you want to know some openings for your weapon. As for capturing, it gives more resources, but sometimes it is better to just slay and carve since their materials have different probabilities, like if you want to get a gem you will most likely want to slay the monster and carve both the body and the tail.