How do weapons with status ailments work

monster-hunter-3-ultimate

While looking at one of the weapon trees, I noticed the last four "elements" are not really elements in the same sense as the rest. Poison, Paralyze, Sleep, and Slime are more like status inflictions. These types still have a damage associated with them. How does status damage work to inflict status ailments on monsters and how does it relate to normal damage types?

Best Answer

Status Ailments work under a tolerance system. Every monster has a certain tolerance to an ailment, and after the monster has been dealt enough damage to bring their tolerance to zero the status ailment will take effect. Once the ailment wears off their tolerance will be reset, but to a higher value, making it harder to apply the ailment again. Also note that a monsters tolerance will regenerate over time to their maximum tolerance. This means you need to be consistently applying status damage in order to inflict the status ailment, or the monsters tolerance will just keep regenerating. Finally, each successful application of an ailment will be less effective than the previous one.

For example, suppose a Monster has a poison tolerance of 100, and it increased by 30 every time you apply the ailment. If you deal 10 poison damage with every attack it would take you 10 attacks in order to inflict the status on the monster the first time, 13 attacks for the second, 16 attacks for the third, et cetera. This is assuming you're attacking fast enough to consistently apply the status before the monsters tolerance increases.

The effectiveness of a status ailments varies from monsters to monster. Every monster will have a difference tolerance, tolerance increase, and effect duration for every ailment.

There are 6 kind of status ailments:

  • Paralyze: Stuns a monster in place for a short time.
  • Sleep: Forces a monster to got to sleep. Note that the first hit on a sleeping monster inflicts 300% damage.
  • Poison: Deals damage over time to a monster.
  • Slime: Explodes, dealing explosive damage to a monster (the same kind a barrel bomb does).
  • KO: Knocks a monster over for a short time. Unlike Paralyze, KO damage is only deal if applied to the head. It is inflicted by all Impact damage (i.e. Hammers), Crag and Exhaust shots from the bowgun, and Exhaust coating for the bow.
  • Exhaust: Makes a monster tired, like when they run out of stamina. This results in the monsters being slower, failing to perform attacks, and more. Everything that deals KO damage when applied to the head will deal Exhaust damage when applied anywhere else. The only except to this are Crag Shots for the Bowgun, which are only capable of dealing KO damage.
Related Topic