Alatreon Hitzones+Guide [Spreadsheet Estimates]

The damage for elemental Charge Blades is set, making it easy to figure out effective elements on a monster.

Elemental damage is absolutely necessary to defeat Alatreon, solo or with a team. I took painful hours to document what documents were burned by the guild, and even documented it's new morphing "Dragon" mode.

The data comes first, but I include a mini guide to help people decide what their teams should do, and even what you should do as a random if you wish to experience that pain.

Summary

Alatreon needs elemental weapons in order to beaten. The fight is a giant elemental and raw DPS check. If you don't get a special flinch telling that you've weakened Alatreon, the nova he does when switching between Fire and Ice mode is practically impossible to survive. You need to SEAL Alatreon's power with maximum effectiveness elemental weapons.

Here I will list a spreadsheet of raw data for you to decide a strategy, and I'll give my take on what your team should do.

SPREADSHEET

Spreadsheet key- Alatreon's hitzones are estimated on the right for each mode.
I used math sheets on the left to estimate these values. Some of them are guesses based on certain consistencies in data.
Again, these values are estimates.

0.00 means no elemental damage
0.05 means every little elemental damage
0.15-0.20 is ideal elemental damage

Alatreon Basic Mechanics

Alatreon is a giant pendulum. This is the elemental order of modes.

Fire>Dragon>Ice>Dragon>[repeat]

Alatreon's special assignment always starts in Fire mode. The event Alatreon will start in fire mode during the real time day. It will start in Ice mode during real time night. If you run Altreon in the evening, you will need a different strategy.

Alatreon's pendulum of elemental shift can only be interrupted during dragon mode. You must break the horns to do so.

I personally believe this is the best strategy to beating Alatreon. An ideal run would look like this.
Fire>Dragon[break horn]>Fire>Dragon[break horn]>Fire>Dragon>KILL


Alatreon after about 5-7 minutes will trigger a nova attack. It cannot be avoided. Farcasters are locked during the entire quest. You must achieve a special flinch. When you achieve the flinch, Alatreon's nova can still kill but will be much less powerful. Alatreon will only ever nova at the end of Dragon mode. If you have yet to achieve a seal on Alatreon and it shifts to Dragon mode, you must go into panic overdrive to seal it.

To survive a weakened nova, consider stacking health boosters with your team, only two maxed health boosters are required to survive without drinking potions. If you do not have health boosters, carry astera jerky to instantly heal health lost.

FAQs and Strategy

FAQs

Is every element useful? No. Dragon is trash. Attempting to "cover" all elements will not help you. You must pick an element with absolute maximum effectiveness and keep it in that mode. Using Water and Thunder is not recommended. It is not effective enough.

Can I run a non-elemental weapon? No. You actively kill yourself and your team by running a non-elemental of any kind.

Can we cover all elements and be safe? No. You need to have at least two members with maximum element weaknesses. If the other two members aren't using an effective element as well (values of 0.05 are not effective enough), you cannot seal it before it shifts to dragon mode unless your two maximum element weaknesses are insanely good and making no mistakes.

When should we seal Alatreon? The moment you start the fight. If you are not attacking Alatreon at every moment you can with the maximum effective element, you are wasting precious time. If Alatreon gets into Dragon mode, ALL effective element decreases heavily. The goal should be to seal Alatreon in it's Fire or Ice mode, and break its horn to prevent a complete cycle of the elements.

Does Elderseal help? No. Dragon element is trash. Do not use it.

Will the Aquashot help me? No. No. And no. If you aren't focusing on Ice or Fire first thing, you are losing elemental damage overall. Can it help? Yes, but it will be only moderately effective, and becomes useless if you do not keep it from entering ice mode. If Alatreon starts in Ice mode, the Aquashot is useless.

Strategy

The Pendulum Shift
If Alatreon starts in Fire mode-
Run a large team of ice weapons. Seal Alatreon ASAP! Soften his head. When Dragon mode is entered, break the horns ASAP! Continue to run as much damage into Alatreon as possible. Huddle and health booster to survive the nova. Repeat until the next horn break. After both horns break, you can no longer stop the pendulum. Finishing the fight becomes a giant DPS check after both horns break. If you cannot kill it after both horn breaks and stopping an Ice mode shift, your team needs more raw and elemental damage.

If Alatreon starts in Ice mode-
Do the same as the strategy above, but use fire weapons. Same strategy to the end.


Other strategy notes-
Alatreon is immune to flashes in rage mode.

Save slinger pod flinch shots for when it starts flying. A knockdown from the air will always occur from a successful flinch shot. You have two flinch shots before Alatreon becomes enraged. DO NOT PRESSURE RAGE FOR CHALLENGER DPS. FLIGHT PERIODS EFFECTIVELY REDUCE YOUR DPS IN THE LONG RUN.

Alatreon's thunder charge-
Alatreon will appear to charge lightning at certain times. It's one of the best openings to attack Alatreon. Under Alatreon is always perfectly safe. However, if you are to the side of him, pay attention to the direction of the charge. The attack will branch outward from a outward bursting charge animation, and vise-versa for the inward branching lightning.


Other primary strategy recommendations? I can't find a better one. It's the hardest DPS check in the entire game.

Conclusion

It's a DPS check. Good luck.

Focus on controlling its elemental shift, and focus on the primary elemental weakness at hand. The rest is your skill in survival.

[howardxu23]

@JRubz can you add in the fact that alatron ELEMENTAL hitzones is not actually the same thought him, it is the best on his face and front legs, worse everywhere else

[Olenhol ᶘᵒᴥᵒᶅ]

also healthbooster is a waste... all you need is one point into wide range for both nullberry share and to use Jerky

On nove if everybody uses jerky with small time space between each pop, you will survive it no problem.
with full heal at the end even.

[Olenhol ᶘᵒᴥᵒᶅ]

You can have him go into dragon without doing more than 2 attacks. You can then have him go into stance swap without ANY attack in dragon, if you burst his arse.

[Olenhol ᶘᵒᴥᵒᶅ]

Also time has something to do with it but not only. there is a bar of "elemental discharge" and stance swap. it loads on its own when he does attacks. and is attacked. but also get chipped away when you for example, elemental discharge him. I dont rly get this bar yet, I wasnt testing for that yet.

[Olenhol ᶘᵒᴥᵒᶅ]

https://mhworld.kiranico.com/monsters/ErdcV/alatreon

Its not a dps check too.. Weapons with even 1 element of dragon do 1 to 3 dmg into treshhold on fire/ice
Weapons wth buttwhipping 160 dragon do... same. Tested it. I seems like it lookes at MV of a move and then on a element type, multiplies it by current stance weakness. It seem like only primary weakness (dragon on dragon, fire/ice on ice/fire) get big multiplier dependent on a weapon element power. Yet, its not linear. I increses in jumps, from 4 per hit to 6 and 8 to even 12 to 20 per hit on slow weapons.

[Prinny]

@Ironclaw i hope it helps, also by searching more into the new information people release, there is something else interesting, water and thunder are actually a better thing to bring that ice and fire, because water and thunder can deal elemental damage during any phase of the monster(at a lesser rate that strictly his weakness phase)

So bringing water, thunder and dragon all together are also a good option, the problem i have with bringing all ice at the beginning is that the monster only has two horns, which mean he will still pass in Ice state after the second nova

you can see the spreadsheet of weaknesses for each element and each phase of the monster here: https://imgur.com/a/23xSx4P

by looking at the numbers, dragon can look trash overall compare to thunder and water, which mean what i experienced with a full dragon composition was not even the easiest setup to do and i still find that pretty easy(the only difficulty remaining being the monster itself)

[jrubz]

@Hiatus Good call, I'll try to add that in the future if I test it consistently with a team and it works.

[Hiatus]

Another way to get Alatreon down from flying is to use a smoke bomb.

If you're solo or in a coordinated group, stacking on some smoke bombs will cause him to lose sight and the minimap will go purple. During this time, firing a slinger pod on the ground will cause him to land and search for you.

[Ironclaw]

@Prinny: That does sort of suggest that dragon is better than I gave it credit for, assuming you're saying 4 dragon out-performed 2 fire + 2 ice, but I'm not sure why you'd go 2 fire + 2 ice unless you were expecting to miss the horn break?

Or are you saying 2 dragon out-performed 2 ice vs fire start, and 2 fire vs ice start, with the other players being random players from a public lobby? Because that is a very interesting result, if so.

I'll try out a non-dragon weapon myself in the next couple of days and see if it feels better or worse, I suppose. It does feel like it's usually my fault when I cart to Escaton, not just dragon element being bad, but I don't currently have anything to compare with, I'm going purely by theoretical numbers and my feeling that the Escaton DPS check shouldn't be as tight with fully upgraded/augmented gear as it actually seems to be.

So yeah maybe I'm wrong on this one and dragon is fine. Thanks for responding.

[Prinny]

@Ironclaw, by the simple fact that trying a 2 man ice / 2 man fire was simply ineffective in public lobby, with full augmented sets and weapons, while running full dragon with the same sets is instantly effective and all nova negated just by hunting the monster normally and breaking the horns when we can.

it's just waow the difference i saw at the first try of full dragon vs all my tries with fire and ice, or even full ice for the start of the fight, it's night vs day, all my runs with full dragons in public lobby is now successfull in term of reducing the nova to almost 0, the only difficulty is the fight now, not the nova anymore