That One Level / Monster Hunter

General

• Let's face it, Capture Quests are a pain to do, mainly because you have a constant fear of killing the monster by accident. And worse yet, you can't even kill the target monster, already depriving you of your precious carves before the quest even BEGINS. And for most inexperienced players, it's really easy to forget that it's a Capture Quest while you're in the heat of battle. This brings us to another problem: THERE'S NO ENEMY HEALTH BAR. The only way to see when its health is low enough to capture is to have the Capture Guru skill gemmed in your armor set, but that will require you sacrificing another gemmed in skill. By the way, Capture Guru requires you to use a Paintball for it to work. And capturing a monster requires at least one trap, and you can hold only one of each type of trap, and there are only two types of traps in the game. Not only that, but you can only set down one trap at a time, meaning that you would have to wait for the trap to automatically despawn before you can place another one down. What's worse, you're likely bound to run out of traps, as more often than not, a monster can and will leave the area JUST AS SOON as you place down a trap. Speaking of which, it's ABSURDLY easy to wedge yourself into an Unwinnable by Design situation if you run out of traps or Tranquilizer Bombs, unless of course you carry the required combination materials to create more of these items; this isn't helped by your limited Item Pouch storage. And in older Monster Hunter games, the Tranquilizer Bombs dealt scratch damage, making it possible to kill the monster in that manner as well. All of this is merely in single-player. Multiplayer? If you're playing with randoms, you better hope they have the sense to stop attacking the moment they're told the monster is ready for capture, which doesn't always happen if there's language barriers, your teammates ignore chats and signals, or are just plain griefing. Or if it's a quest well below your level (for example, level 2 Deviant quests and you're in postgame G-rank), it's entirely possible to kill the monster before Capture Guru activates, as it may take a few seconds after the monster is weak enough to actually flash the monster's icon. It's probably for the better that Capture quests are less frequent in newer games, and World and Rise highlight when the monster is ripe for capture without adjustments. Even so, it really says something when even an NPC lampshades just how worrisome these quests are:
  Caravaneer from 4 Ultimate: Okay, I'll level with ya: These Capture Quests can be a big pain in the ole keister.

Monster Hunter: Rise now makes Capture Guru automatic; you'll always be notified (with an blue generic monster head icon under the monster's icon) when a monster is ready for capture. If that is not enough, Master Rank gets rid of capture quests completely, with capture objectives relegated to sidequests that you can do in any quest.

• There are also times where a Capture Quest is the introductory quest for any monster. For example, the first Gendrome Village Quest in 4 Ultimate makes you have to capture it. Then there is the first Shogun Ceanataur Village Quest in Generations. Most other introductory quests are normal hunting quests, but then you have these quests.
• Any quest where you have to hunt two monsters at the same time, in the same area, with no way to separate them. While most quests with multiple monsters allow you to use dung bombs so you only have to fight one at a time, these quests only have one area where monsters can be fought, forcing you to fight both of them at the same time. Not only is it a hassle keeping an eye on more than one monster, players have far less opportunities to attack safely, since a moment where one monster is vulnerable will often be wasted by another monster attacking at the same time. The Arena, which only has one area where monsters can be fought, is especially prone to these kinds of battles. Sometimes the arena will let you split the monsters apart with a fence, but you have no control over the fence once you trigger it, it takes several minutes to cool down, and you can't freely move between the two halves; you have to faint or use a Farcaster, or have an EZ Farcaster as well since it counts as a separate item — of which you can only carry one of unless you carry the materials to combine more — to go back to base camp so you can enter the opposite side. Worse yet, with both monsters chasing after you, it's FAR too easy to trap them on the same side, and if this happens, it's ALWAYS bad. Both of them got stuck on your side? Have fun getting knocked around for the next few minutes! Both of them are stuck on the other side? You have to wait for the fence to go back down. You thought it was bad enough that you can't control the fence? Some quests won't even allow you to use the fence switch AT ALL!
• Small, thin areas are loathed by players because they make it even harder to avoid a monster's attacks. Besides giving players less room to maneuver, they can cause attacks players could normally avoid to hit them. For example, a charging monster can usually be avoided by moving to the side, but if you're to close to a wall, the wall might "push" the monster toward you, causing you to get hit anyway.
• Item transport quests are loathed by a large majority of the players, due to the slow running pace when in transport mode, one high jump or hit from a monster being all it takes to drop the item (unless you have certain food or armor skills), and some quests introducing boundary-blocking boulders and new monsters for each successive transport item you have to deliver just to make each successive delivery longer and more painful. It gets worse if there's a large monster present, as you will have to hunt it to make transport possible at all. Oh, and some of the villager request quests in 4, 4 Ultimate, and Generations are transport quests. And in Generations, some of those are Hub quests, meaning that you will have to transport 3 or more of the same item; sure you could get a friend or two to help out, but would they be willing to do such tedious quests? World finally gave some much-needed relief with the Ghillie Mantle, which makes things much less tedious. However, mantles were removed in Rise, but fortunately, item transports do not come in actual quests, but instead appear as village requests that you can do on expeditions.
• Honestly, the Fishing quests can be a slog sometimes, as the fish that you want to catch won't always be close to the line when you throw it in, and more often than not, a DIFFERENT fish will reach the hook before the target, and that is just frustrating. There is a way to jerk the hook in a certain direction and change its position in the water using the Circle Pad, but that is never hinted in the game at all. Players would only find this out randomly. While trying to lure and catch the target fish is tough on its own, trying to find it is a different story. There are times where the target won't even show up. If it's a rare catch that's the target, then good luck. In addition, you have to know WHERE the fish will even spawn, and that isn't hinted in the game either. Sometimes, certain bait will spawn in a different batch of fish, but there isn't a specific bait for EVERY fish, not even some of the ones that are Accounting Items (there is a specific bait for Goldenfish, but not for Premium Sashimi). But there is a trick that involves cycling the batch of fish that spawn in a fishing point using bait. Just use the bait and reel back in immediately, and you'll find that the bait hasn't been used up, as no fish have grabbed it. Then you'll see that the fish in the fishing point are different than before. While it makes finding the fish easier, there's still the annoying shenanigan of trying to lure in the right one without another fish interfering with your progress.
• A lot of Gathering quests in general can be rather boring. Even if some of them involve hunting small monsters for certain materials which is at least a bit interesting, for they involve combat, these levels are still tedious. For veteran hunters who have completed the game, why should we do these quests when we can be hunting and/or speedrunning powerful monsters? Here, the only "monster" you're at the mercy of is the RNG. Given that this is Monster Hunter, the RNG will most likely be as evil as possible, and you won't always obtain the item that you're looking for. If you're unable to obtain a sufficient amount of the item you're looking for after frantically looking through every gathering patch to the point where there are none left in the whole map, then it's time to abandon the quest and do it all over again! You also have to know which patches give you the item you're looking for, and where you can even find these patches. And guess what? The game doesn't tell you this either! Commence the eye twitching. Players of World and Rise can breathe a sigh of relief, as the items to be gathered are both marked on the map and segregated from the rest of the drops.
• In Generations, Prowler quests work differently than standard quests. For starters, you can't go in as a Hunter, you can only go in as a Prowler, playing as one of your Palicoes. While it IS fun to play as a cat, playing through the Prowler quest line is "PURR-etty" draggy at first. The quest line starts off with the above-mentioned Gathering quests, which are sluggish on their own, and there's even a few Fishing quests in the mix. Overtime, some small monster slaying quests start appearing, and then it becomes more interesting. By the way, that's before getting into the fact that Prowlers and their weapon and armor have lower attack and defense than standard Blademasters, even in the endgame of G-Rank AND with a maximized level, and they can't heal themselves as easily, because they can't use items.
  • The Prowler Fishing quests deserve special mention. You know how there's a trick with using bait to cycle which fish show up in a fishing spot? This time, you can't use any bait to do the cycling trick, because as mentioned above, Prowlers can't use any items. Oh, and if a Plesioth shows up as an intruder in these Fishing quests, you are unable to use a normal bob on your fishing pole and you're instead forced into using a frog bob used mainly for fishing out the Plesioth, which will ignore it anyway because you're in its sight. And the fish will ignore the frog bob because it's not the normal bob. That means you're forced to defeat it before you can continue the quest, which will pretty much result in dozens of minutes being subtracted from the quest timer. If you don't want any time subtracted from the timer, then you might as well abandon the quest and start all over again. And if you do somehow manage to defeat the Plesioth, the frog bob will not disappear until its corpse vanishes from the map.
• In almost every title released, there is always one particular marathon quest called "Monster Hunter!" which pits the player against several powerful flagship monsters one after the other, with only short breaks in between. The catch is that unless you're already familiar with the monsters involved, chances are you won't be able to kill them all before the 50-minute time limit expires, much less manage to keep enough resources on your person once the last couple of fights roll around. Making matters worse in Freedom Unite is the fact that this quest also happens to be offline, which means you can't bring any friends with you...
• For Prowlers in Generations and Generations Ultimate, most of the one-area maps do not have a bed at the base camp, thus depriving you of a way to recharge your Acorns, which are one of the biggest advantages of playing a Prowler (largely to make up for the fact that they have lower defenses than same-grade Blademasters and can't heal themselves as easily).

Quests

Second generation quests

• In Unite, Lance Training Rajang for a Sword Saint Piercing (a piece of headgear which provides the Fencing skill). Unless you're very good with a Lance, the task itself basically pits you as a Mighty Glacier against a monster who happens to be a Lightning Bruiser.
• In Freedom 2 / Unite, the High Rank HR5 urgent quest "Land of the Tremors" is infamous among veteran players, pitting hunters against a pair of Tigrex on the narrow ledges of the Snowy Mountains. As if the precarious terrain wasn't bad enough, you are forced to deal with a pair of relentless meat-eating reptilian freight trains possessing hitboxes bigger than what most modern MonHun players are accustomed to while minding your positioning. Making matters worse is that they very often cross paths with one another, forcing players to fight them simultaneously most of the time. Better pack those Dung Bombs!
• In Unite, the G-Rank quest "Green Waves of Verdure" requires you to hunt two Green Plesioths in the Old Jungle. There are only two areas in which the Plesioths fight so you fight them simultaneously most of the time. Not only that, it's difficult to see in those two areas as they are filled with dense vegetation.

Third generation quests

• From Tri, "Heat Exhaustion", one of the 5-star Moga quests. It requires you to transport two Powderstone items, all the way from the peak of the Volcano map back down to base camp. Since Powderstone is a transport-mode item, you can only carry one at a time. To make matters worse, "Powderstone is extremely hot!" That is, it will constantly sap at your health, regardless of your Heat Res stat. You can't put down the Powderstone to attack or use items (e.g. your Mega Potions), as that causes it to blow up, and unless you have certain skills on hand, getting struck by an enemy also causes the Powderstone to drop. There is a shortcut you can take from the Peak, but it involves a drop and thus will break your Powderstone unless you have a skill that prevents damage to transported items in a fall (e.g. Felyne Lander). And this quest has an Unstable environment, meaning that you could be running on your merry way from area to area, with no apparent large monster activity on the map, and then Uragaan appears in front of your face.
• 3 Ultimate has "Sticky Situation", the Urgent Quest for Hunter Rank 6. Brachydios is already considered to be That One Boss on its own; however, Sticky Situation throws TWO of them at you at once, and the G-rank variants of them, no less. While this is already bad enough, the fact that the fight takes place in the Tundra makes it worse as two areas of the map are inaccessible to either Brachydios, which means that they will be crossing paths frequently, even if you chase them off with Dung Bombs. This is particularly frustrating because Brachydios are highly dependent on Splash Damage, ensuring that any crossfire between the two ensures that you'll be treading through a minefield, especially if one or both become enraged. And to put the cherry on it, one of the Brachydios is bigger than usual, which means that it's even harder to evade the nearly ceaseless barrage of attacks. And unless you can find a group who has already surpassed it and can help you grind higher rank G-rank quests, it's not like the gear you'll have the first time you'll do this quest will be all that strong for this, either.
• The "Siren's Song" quest from 3 Ultimate is the last 6-star Moga quest, and one of the most annoying. You have to defeat at least two Qurupecos within the 50-minute time limit, AND the Qurupecos in this quest can summon the Deviljho if given the opportunity, forcing you to waste time trying to separate the Deviljho so you can fight safely. The first time you encounter this quest, it's possible to run out of time because your equipment will likely give you only just enough power to capture two Qurupecos.
• "Bear Trap" from 3 Ultimate is a nightmare for any first time player, requiring you to trap an Arzuros. You are given little advice and only two shock traps with a few tranquilizers. Not too bad if you know what you're doing, but this is a massive dificulty spike, especially because the Arzuros has low health and is much easier to hit than the Great Jaggi (which you must also trap later), so it's easy to accidentally kill.
• "The Lord of the Seas" requires you to capture a Lagiacrus. In the Flooded Forest. Thought dodging the oversized hitboxes of its powerful attacks was hard in the open ocean? Now you have to do it in the cramped, murky, Camera Screw-laden rivers. In this mission, Lagiacrus will never go on land, so you are forced to fight this Lightning Bruiser entirely on its turf. The kicker is that when you finally manage to get it in the trap, the screwy underwater controls make it easy to miss your Tranq Bombs. Hope you brought another Shock Trap and more Tranq Bombs! On top of that, the quest has an unstable environment, so a Royal Ludroth or a Gobul, both tough fights in the water, could come join the fun. It was toned down slightly in 3 Ultimate so that the environment is now stable, but it's still not easy.
• The Event Quest "Clashing Fists!" in 3 Ultimate is "crushingly" difficult. The target is a Brachydios, which is troublesome enough. The catch: this Brachydios is not only much larger than normal, with massively increased health, attack power, and range to match, but is permanently enraged unless exhausted. You get the materials to craft the Majestic Scepter for your effort, but you need to complete this quest a minimum of three times to get the five Crowns of Glory to craft it. Here's an idea of what it's like.

Fourth generation quests

• The 6-Star Quest "Egg-straction: Final Mission" in 4U. The Quest requires you to carry three Wyvern Eggs from Area 8 back to the start point in three progressively long runs. That doesn't sound particularly difficult, barring the fact that each Area in between has its own share of annoying Mooks to run around, including Remobras. However, as soon as you step into Area 8 for the first time, the game sends a Frenzied Rathalos and a Frenzied Rathian at you, at the same time. You can opt to hunt them to get them out of your way, but this Quest also happens to be Low Rank, which means that if you didn't skip it and come back with High Rank gear, both can be nightmarishly difficult to fight due to the Frenzy Virus cranking up their aggressiveness. And that's before how merely holding the Wyvern Egg on this map causes both wyverns to go Papa Wolf and Mama Bear at you.
• The 4U Event Quest "Three Virtues" quickly gained notoriety for being ridiculously difficult since its release. It's a High Rank Quest featuring a back-to-back-to-back Boss Rush against Zinogre, Kirin, and Rajang, two of which are already varying degrees of That One Boss, all of which have High Rank health and do G-rank damage. And to make it worse, you need to do this Quest if you want the Link armor. Generations toned it down to the more manageable Gammoth, Malfestio, and Brachydios.
  • 4 features some crazy endgame High Rank quests. One requires you to hunt a Deviljho and a Rajang at the same time. Too easy? How about two Furious Rajang in one map. Just a warm-up? Try "Akantor Coup", slaying a permanently-enraged Akantor. Still doable? Try "Naked and Afraid", hunting two Deviljho at the same time without wearing any armor? Fortunately, none of these are required to progress unless you really need those new Wycoon trading materials.
• The G-1 key quest "Line in the Sand" in 4U has you fighting dual Cephadromes in the daytime Dunes. Normally you could simply toss a Dung Bomb at one of the monsters to drive them towards a different area, but in this quest the Cephadromes only alternate between two locations on the map, meaning they will almost always be fighting side by side even if you managed to temporarily repel one of them with poop. Making matters worse is the fact that Cephadrome in 4U has been buffed up using a combination of Nibelsnarf's and Plesioth's abilities. Hope you brought a lot of Sonic Bombs...
• If you're soloing, the G-1 quest "Death and Taxidermy" can be this. It's a fairly simple quest on paper: capture one Nerscylla. It's bad enough that it's a capture quest, but the real catch is that it takes place in the Primal Forest. Why this is a catch needs explaining. First off, Nerscylla only appears in one zone without webbing. All the others are two level areas. This means that Nerscylla will more often than not be up on top or climbing upside-down underneath the webbing. Now would be a good time to mention that you can't set traps on the webbing. This means you have to place a trap on the ground and pray that the Nerscylla climbs to the floor and steps on it before it moves to another zone. And since you can only have one trap on the map at a time, you have to wait for your other trap to destroy itself before you can set another. You could easily end up in an Unwinnable by Design situation. Perhaps worst of all, this is one of only two G-rank quests in which the non-subspecies Nerscylla shows up (the other is a Frenzied dual with Tetsucabra), and therefore the only way to farm it for materials reliably; you could hunt it in an Expedition, but it doesn't always show up and you'll only get the rewards for carving it and breaking its parts.
• The arena quest "Grudge Match: Triplets" in 4U pits you (and potentially, one buddy) against three Tigrex in the arena. The first two fight you at the same time, while the last one is an Apex Tigrex. Worse yet, three out of the five weapon choices do not have Wystones to help deal with the Apex Tigrex.
• The G-2 quest "Fire Drill" in 4U, which pits players against a Stygian Zinogre and a Brachydios in the Volcanic Hollow, is considered one of the worst Beef Gates in the game as it's a mandatory quest for getting to G-3. Brachydios is all kinds of That One Boss on his own, but then you factor in Stygian Zinogre, who was given massive buffs in his combo skills, increased damage for all attacks and incredibly erratic flight patterns for his homing Dragonblight balls—the latter of which are now unleashed with almost every major attack he does in his fully charged state—and suddenly you have tons of players getting stuck at this one quest trying to finish it, only to end up getting triple-carted multiple times.
• The G-3 urgent quest "Advanced: Quagmire Quarrel" in 4U. It requires you to slay a Gogmazios. Its tremendous power brings Blademasters to very low health and outright kills Gunners. While it has obvious tells, its attacks cover wide ranges and can catch players unaware. Its large health pool makes it a long fight and give it more chances to land its attacks. Overall, a tedious fight that can end in an instant. Gathering halls in G-3 consisting mostly of this urgent speaks for itself. If you're feeling even more tough or stupid, there's a special Event Quest that seems like a normal Gog quest...only for the music to change at the start of the quest as it's revealed that this Gog starts off in phase 2.
• The Caravaneer's Challenge in 4U, unlocked by completing every single Low Rank quest before it. Despite being officially a Low Rank quest, it's anything but suited for Low Rank players (and besides, several prerequisite quests require you to be at HR 7 or above anyway): the quest pits you against Frenzied Zinogre, Furious Rajang, and Shagaru Magala, all of which are actually their High-Rank variants, all on the single-area Sanctuary map. Granted, the Rajang, let alone Furious Rajang, is first encountered in High-Rank, hinting at the quest being at that level of difficulty. Oh, and did you think the quest will make you fight them sequentially? No, the quest starts with Rajang and Zinogre prowling the area at the same time. The Rajang will constantly harass you with its thunder beam attack, while the Zinogre will pounce you all over the place, with Shagaru Magala appearing once you've killed both. Even if you have G-rank equipment, you'll be hurting hard if you try to charge your targets carelessly. It makes a return in Generations Ultimate, except this time all monsters are their G Rank variants and the Zinogre is Hyper instead.
• 4 and 4U have Powderstone quests similar to Tri's. But unlike the Volcano in the third generation, the Volcanic Hollow has the Powderstones at the bottom of the map, forcing hunters to climb all the way up to Base Camp to turn the Powderstones in. And three of the maps along the way are infested with either Genprey, Rhenoplos or Konchu. And since the Powderstone gathering point is so far from base camp, the damage over time from holding a Powderstone might drain your entire life bar unless you sprint all the time when possible and stop only to recover stamina. On the plus side, some of these Powderstone quests are in the Gathering Hall, so you can have someone heal you with Area of Effect recovery items such as Lifepowders and Recovery Shots and protect you from monsters, but woe be to those who try to solo these quests without several support skills to aid them.
• In 4U, the 7-star Gathering Hall quest "Advanced: More Mohran" pits you against a High Rank Dah'ren Mohran, simular to "Advanced: Fleet Action". However, there are some major differences. To start, during the Dragonship chase phase, you can't board it at all! You pretty much have to rely on the finite artillery ammo, and your chances to strike its arms up close are pretty rare. It also likes to hit the Dragonship a lot compared to the "Fleet Action" version and hurls rocks and weapon-blocking spikes at a much faster rate. Most irritatingly, if you're trying to farm this quest with random players, it has a requirement of HR 8 or above but it's not a G-rank quest, meaning you'll be spending a lot of time booting out players who are High Rank but don't meet the HR requirement until you can finally assemble a team to take it down with. There are G-rank players who find the G-rank Dah'ren Mohran to be easier, because while it does more damage, has more HP, and starts immediately in front of the Dragonship in the second phase, at least it doesn't follow the tricky, non-standard pattern of the "More Mohran" version and it can be boarded.
• Deviant Monsters in Generations:
  • In general, they are just stupidly powerful for the minimum HR requirements that their respective quests have. For example, the level 1 quests for Redhelm Arzuros, Snowbaron Lagombi, and Dreadqueen Rathian only require participants to at least be HR 2, and while it is possible for a HR 2 team to kill any of these monsters in time, these monsters have HP and damage equivalent to High Rank monsters.
  • Dreadqueen VIII, Dreadking VIII, Thunderlord X, Grimclaw VII, and Hellblade VII have one thing in common: they're set in a single-area level with Bulldrome running amok. Bulldrome will never leave you alone ever, especially when it's enraged. If you try to use a Smoke Bomb to prevent Bulldrome from seeing you, it runs around so much that it's bound to get close anyways. Think you'd be smart and kill it first? It respawns ^note Thankfully, only twice. Hellblade VII is the nastiest, since Bulldrome will be more than happy to set off Blastblight for massive damage.
  • The second capture quest for each Deviant Monster is hated by many. The quest requires capturing the deviant monster, which is bad enough, but it also adds the stipulation that you cannot bring any items with you to the quest. Worst of all, the item box only gives you the one trap at the start. Think you can just ignore that little hitch by ordering a trap Supply Drop from the Provision Division? Think again, because the trap in that Supply Drop is an EZ Shock Trap, i.e the same kind in the Supply Box.
  • All of the Silverwind Nargacuga capture missions are hair-pulling. Silverwind Nargacuga hops all over the place and prefers to spam tail beams and spikes from afar instead of coming close, making it difficult to bait. If you don't have Capture Guru, it is very easy to accidentally kill Silverwind, as it rarely changes areas when near death. When it comes to actually capturing, Silverwind's constant leaping makes getting it in the trap almost a matter of luck.
  • The Dreadking Rathalos capture map is also quite irritating. As many know, Rathalos has a tendency to stay in the air, and unlike Rathian, rarely charges you on the ground. You also don't have nearly enough Flash Bombs to keep him under control.
  • Nightcloak Malfestio is a real pain to try and bag as well. Nightcloak is already a pretty obnoxious piece of work to begin with, but what makes the mission itself cancerous is Nightcloak's tendency to swoop around just over the traps, at the same time rarely moving towards them despite the various Hunters standing on them.
  • The Redhelm Arzuros quests at Low and High Rank are pretty straightforward. Then Redhelm IX makes you hunt a Redhelm and a Savage Deviljho.
  • Every G-rank Deviant has one quest with a nasty failure condition. You know how in the vast majority of quests, you fail after three carts? Here, that number of carts drops to one. You can eat for Felyne Insurance so that your party is allowed to cart once, but you can't always get it as a meal option and it might not be part of a buff you really need. You can try going in as a Prowler so that you're protected from the first two One-Hit Kills, but you now have to manage the Support Gauge and keep up the momentum to keep the necessary buffs up.
  • G-rank Deviants all have a capture quest as the G1 quest, which is annoying if you're trying to unlock the Bloodbath Diablos since you're effectively forced into going with a Capture Guru set, a Prowler with Monsterdar and a Purr-ison skill, or easily risk an accidental kill.
  • Now if you thought "one cart is quest failure" quests and capture quests were annoying enough, Bloodbath G2 is both; a capture quest and a one-chance quest, against the most difficult Deviant monster in the game.
  • While the two monsters within Nightcloak G4 aren't too much of a problem normally, mixing them together makes a truly dreadful experience. It consists of a Nightcloak Malfestio and a Hyper Basarios. The Basarios hits like a truck; literally, as it just loves to dash at you, and the impact from the (usually) Hyper-charged parts is strong enough that it's usually a One-Hit Kill to Gunners and a hefty blow to Blademasters. In addition, it's also been "blessed" with the ability to close any potential gaps beyond the dash spam by puking lava bombs as well as the standard heat beam thanks to being Hyper. Plus, Blademasters are at a massive disadvantage against it because, well, it's Basarios. The damn thing's almost never far behind the Nightcloak when it flees, so you constantly have to deal with a pissed-off Schnitzel on your tail while you deal with the owl. Nightcloak, on the other hand, does what Nightcloak does best, shooting Feather Flechettes that cause confusion (starting here, it gains the ability to fire three of them at once), swooping around like mad while you're too busy fumbling with confusion to keep track of it, leaving you easy pickings for the aforementioned Basarios, and generally just being an obnoxious piece of crap.
  • Elderfrost G5 is murder. To start, you face off against a standard Tigrex, with a Snowbaron Lagombi a few minutes later. Tigrex is bad enough on its own even without Hyper or Deviant modifiers, doing truckloads of damage, darting across the map with its charges, and having a roar loud enough to damage you, while Snowbaron is just as slippery and is a smaller target, making it harder to hit. After both are downed, you then go up against Elderfrost Gammoth, and hopefully you've somehow managed to save all of your carts, because its attacks hit harder than ever and can easily render you helpless with Snowman status, with its stampede attack in particular being all but a guaranteed One-Hit Kill to Gunners if it connects. And this particular Elderfrost has 18,700 hit points, the highest of any non-EX Deviant monster in the game, and which is even more than some EX monsters!
  • Grimclaw G5 is just as bad as Elderfrost G5. This quest contains the aforementioned Elderfrost Gammoth, which also has incredibly high HP. Then there is the agile Barioth, who moves all over the place and pelts players with ice. And at the end, there is Grimclaw Tigrex. The main problem here is the fact that after 15 minutes, the Barioth will automatically enter the Polar Field, a one-area map, while you are still fighting the Elderfrost, combined with the fact that Elderfrost has such a high health pool. That means you will always have to fight two monsters in the same area with no way to separate them. Not even a fence switch. That is without mentioning the Grimclaw Tigrex, a walking destroyer that can devour a player's health bar in one bite with its Steam Explosion attacks, and by the time Grimclaw appears, the Barioth will still be around to knock players around. This video shows the hectic chaos that one will encounter in this quest.
  • Bloodbath G4 is torture all the way through. The previous Bloodbath Diablos quests were set in the Desert, which is flat and wide open in most areas. This one is set in the Dunes, which has much smaller areas and has tons of ledges, sloped surfaces, and climbable walls. Bloodbath starts out in the wide Area 7, but soon moves to areas that make dodging difficult with tiny spaces (1, 3) or tons of ledges (4, 10), and often does so once it hits its second phase. Bloodbath Diablos is bad enough, but then there's the second monster: Seregios, and a Hyper at that. Diablos in the previous quest was slow and predictable, but Seregios is incredibly fast and erratic, and its Hyper-boosted sweeping kicks turn into That One Attack, especially if the kicks are sped up. The two monsters start out in two adjacent areas and will meet up within a few minutes, regardless of which one you fight first, and will continue to meet up even when separated. Both monsters also hit significantly harder than usual, with Seregios tearing through your health in record time and Bloodbath outright one-shotting at times. The Pub Manager ain't kidding when she says a Bloodbath Diablos is powerful enough to end a Hunter's entire career.
• The arena quest "Grudge Match: Plesioth" in Generations is the worst of the arena quests. The target is, obviously, a Plesioth. Plesioth got a new, delayed hipcheck, and its bite attack inflicts Sleep. None of the weapon options have Energy Drinks. The only way you're going to survive is if Plesioth runs over you. Of the five options, all of them have the same armor, a mixed set consisting of the Chakra and Bath Towel sets, which have defense so low that you might as well not be wearing any armor. Seriously, a tail spin takes away a third of your health. All the sets have Guts, but it basically only activates if you're at full health. None of the weapon options are any good: The Great Sword has an abysmal set of items, and its Hunter Art is Brimstone Slash, which is so slow that the only way to use it is to trap Plesioth or wait until it's exhausted; Sword & Shield's Insta-Evade attack has a jump, which puts you directly into the range of its tail spin (which it is more than happy to spam); Hunting Horn has an awful set of songs (three Attack Up S, Sonic Waves, and Fire Res L); Gunlance takes enormous damage even if you block; and unless you're good, the Light Bowgun may not be enough to defeat Plesioth in good time. And you have to defeat Plesioth within 10 minutes (along with the other arena quests) to unlock the Barrage Earrings. Oh, and Plesioth can sometimes retreat to the water, where it remains unhittable for minutes at a time if you didn't choose LBG.
• If you complete what appears to be all of the Low Rank Village Quests in Generations, you're presented with one final batch of "Advanced" quests to top off Village Low Rank. Most of them are Boss Rushes, one makes you fight two Rajang at once, the other makes you fight a Gold Rathian and a Silver Rathalos at once, and despite the Low Rank designation the monsters involved all have the health and damage output to challenge High Rank and even G-rank Hunters!
• "A Tragedy In Silver And Gold" is generally considered to be a frontrunner for the most difficult quest in Generations Ultimate. It pits you against G-Rank Hyper Silver Rathalos and Gold Rathian, on the same map, simultaneously. Both of these monsters are That One Boss of the highest order, and this quest multiplies that exponentially with the pair's Battle Couple instincts. The map (Ruined Pinnacle) is not a single area, but the moment you engage in combat with one wyvern, the other will come rushing to the area to help its mate murder you. They CAN be driven off with Dung Bombs, but if the one you are fighting stays in the same area, the other will come rushing back about a minute after you forced it to leave. You can stop the other one from noticing you with Smoke Bombs, but using one will disable Flash Bombs^note  Vision-obscuring smoke would of course prevent the light from blinding them , which are almost necessary for dealing with these two, especially the Rathalos. And in case you're wondering why someone would take this challenge on, it's because the third and final level of the Chaos Oil Hunter Art is locked behind completion of this quest.
• "The Fated Four" is an incredibly hard Boss Rush pitting you through Gammoth, Astalos, Mizutsune, and worst of all, Glavenus in that order. All four of these bosses are challenging on their own right, but doing all four is downright absurd with three lives and no subquest rewards available. To make things worse, this is a village quest, meaning that you can’t bring friends in to help you. Here’s a quick overview of each one of the Four.
  • Gammoth hits like a truck and its ice will constantly lower your stamina. This thing will drain supplies quickly, but at least is very slow.
  • Astalos flies around delivering moderately damaging attack pretty quickly. Not too deadly, but rage mode is brutal on this thing.
  • Mizutsune can be surprisingly challenging, since Gammoth and Astalos both drained your supplies, so by this point you can be low on supplies. Other than that, Mizutsune is by far the easiest of the Four.
  • Glavenus is just insanely powerful with a shocking amount of speed. The tail swipes are devastatingly strong and can burn you, forcing you to roll around constantly, oftentimes right into its next attack. It is hard enough to fight on its own, but by this point, you’re almost out of supplies. Many a near perfect run has ended due to this thing hitting players with insane power.
  • The kicker: "The Fated Four" is the easiest version of this Boss Rush. There's "Advanced: The Field's a Stage", which bumps all four up to High Rank power and has you fight two at a time (thankfully you get the fence). If that wasn't enough, Generations Ultimate brings "Advanced: Ultimate Generation" in which the four are all G-Rank Hyper versions, and throws in the fast and powerful Valstrax for good measure.
• In Generations Ultimate, the G4 key quest "A Very Long Engravement" seems to have a rather high failure rate, as it sends both Gravios and Glavenus at you at once. Both of them are veritable hard-hitters, with Gravios being a Mighty Glacier who can easily send your party from zero to triple cart with its surprisingly powerful sweeping fire beam, while Glavenus is a Lightning Bruiser who's as tough and difficult-to-hit as ever. And that's before they decide to meet in the same area, at which point someone is going to cart if you can't separate them fast enough.
• Also in G4, there's yet another key quest titled "A Titanic Clash", involving an Agnaktor and a Duramboros. Unlike the above entry which takes place in the Volcano, this quest happens in a ONE-AREA MAP, that being the Arena. Despite the decrease in base HP primarily present in most Hunt-A-Thon quests, these two will still take quite a while to defeat for their own reasons. The Duramboros, while being an easy target to hit, has a naturally high health pool and hits quite hard, but shouldn't be too hard to deal with if you know what you're doing. The Agnaktor, on the other hand, can be harder to deal with, both figuratively AND literally. Its magma armor will most likely deflect your attacks unless you have Mind's Eye, it tends to move a lot more agile, being a Leviathan and all, and it can waste time by burrowing all over the place for around twenty to thirty seconds. Altogether, you have a tough "multiple monsters in one area" level that makes a mighty Beef Gate on your way to Ahtal-Ka.

Fifth Generation quests (World/Iceborne):

• When you have to track down monsters to unlock the quest for them through expeditions or optional quests, confounded with the fact that players can't join in on these expeditions most of the time.
  • This can get tedious as they might not actually spawn, are randomly placed in some levels, or if they do spawn, but are in an area out of the way to the optional quest you are doing at the moment.
  • The one to find Nergigante deserves special mention. You must do this, but a glitch might cause the blue scoutflies to not pick up the tracks or worse of all, cause the tracks to not spawn. This is alleviated somewhat by the fact that they are in a somewhat-fixed position, but with no blue scoutflies finding them this might turn into a Pixel Hunt.
• The Azure Rathalos arena quest has become notorious for pitting you against one of the most evasive monsters in the game using crappy gear and only three Flash Pods. Additionally, the Azure Rathalos has multiplayer-level health even if you're fighting solo.
• The Lunastra Special Assignments are frustratingly difficult for some players. "The Blazing Sun" is a standard hunt against a Teostra, but "Pandora's Arena" gives you only fifteen minutes to do enough damage to repel Lunastra. The lack of space in the Special Arena makes it all the more frustrating to deal with the nasty new tricks Lunastra was given in World, like blue flames that do heat damage or a supernova attack that rapidly drains your health. Then in "No Remorse, No Surrender" you have to fight Teostra and Lunastra together. Fighting two Elder Dragons at once can give even veteran hunters pause, especially since these two have a devastating "bond" attack. This can get better or worse since a third Elder Dragon can join in: Getting Nergigante can actually be to the players benefit since it can, and will attack and deal massive damage to either of the other two. Kushala Daora however can make the hunt worse, especially if it gets to pull off tornado attacks; plus, it doesn't deal as much damage to either Teostra or Lunastra as Nergigante.
• The Velkhana quest in the Iceborne beta. In earlier games, the Demo’s final quests give you 20 minutes to slay the target. But here, you have only 15 minutes. You heard that right. FIFTEEN minutes. The strongest enemy in this Beta quest isn't Velkhana, but it's the quest timer itself. Many players failed to defeat the target enemy just because of the timer running out. Here is an accurate representation of the quest.
• "Hymn of Moon and Sun," the 6-star optional quest unlocked at Master Rank 125, can be quite frustrating for a lot of players. Not only does it require players to hunt both Gold Rathian and Silver Rathalos simultaneously (albeit, it takes ten minutes for the latter to show up), the fight takes place in Nergigante's lair in the Elder's Recess. Aside from both being able to trigger the same environmental hazards the Elder Dragon does (the stalactites), the area has no slinger ammo at all, making it hard to set up flinch shots.
• "The Black Dragon", the Special Assignment quest against Fatalis, can be a nightmare starting off. In addition to Fatalis being a pain in the ass in and of itself, you can't launch an SOS beacon until you manage to make it to Fatalis's second phase. That means for the entirety of the first phase, the only help you get is from your Palico and the Exciteable A-Lister, who may be actually helpful thanks to his Dust of Life assists and firing binders, but his help simply isn't enough when you have Fatalis bearing down on you (and mostly you). Once you make it to the second phase, you'll finally be able to call for backup from other players, but each attempt at the quest from that point onwards will be without the A-Lister's help, and you still have the rest of the fight with Fatalis to deal with. Good luck! You'll need it!

Fifth Generation quests (Rise)

• The Magnamalo Demo quest in Rise suffers the EXACT same problem as the Velkhana beta quest: instead of twenty minutes, you have to defeat it in FIFTEEN minutes. And Magnamalo itself has proven to be a terrifying adversary. Not to mention the cruddy equipment you go in with.

Fifth Generation quests (Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak)

• In the Sunbreak Demo, Capcom did the EXACT SAME THING with the Malzeno quest, giving it 15 minutes instead of 20, along with Malzeno itself being just as formidable if not moreso than Magnamalo. At this point, the "15-minute quest" pattern is fully established for each demo's final quest, and will very much always be that way.
• "Moonlight Espinascapade" requires you to hunt an Espinas, who is already That One Boss thanks to its ruthlessly aggressively behavior and fireballs that can inflict Fireblight, Poison, and Paralysis all in one go, but this is a Follower Quest and you're forced to hunt with only Arlow, whose focus is on defense, as your companion — no other Followers or players allowed. Have fun trying to take down "that asshole from Frontier" with it focusing its aggro on you!
• The Event Quests in this game can be quite rough, even without the stat modifiers of Anomaly Investigations quests or the threat of being blown up with a Qurio explosion. It doesn't help that there is no option to join a random player's Event Quest in progress (meaning you likely won't get Join Requests unless it's the most recently-added quest) nor can you bring Followers along for their various single-player benefits:
  • "Hazard: Legendary Strike." Flaming Espinas' Hazard incarnation is capable of using a nigh-instantaneous bull charge like its original Frontier incarnation, and as a Hazard monster, a direct hit is going to hurt. Staying far from Espinas will goad it into using the insta-charge more often, encouraging you to stay close to it to avoid taking a cheap charge to the face - but that's easier said than done with its brutal physical attacks. As if that wasn't enough, it's now able to use its Limit Break supernova much earlier and more often to the point of it being a Spam Attack, and the explosion is even bigger to boot - good luck staying near it.
  • "Daily Practice", the final event quest of Sunbreak, certainly lives up to its status as the final challenge of the game. The quest pits you against Scorned Magnamalo and Primordial Malzeno in the Citadel, both of which are not only much larger than normal, but have incredible damage buffs surpassing even those of Hazard quests. And considering that both of them were already among some of the most aggressive and difficult monsters you could hunt in Sunbreak, this translates to both of them being able to easily two-shot players with endgame armor and Spiribird buffs, and some of their stronger attacks are outright upgraded to One Hit Kills. The only saving graces are that they still have roughly the same amount of health as usual despite their boosted attacks, and that they will engage in a Turf War if they meet, giving you some free damage and a guaranteed mount.
• With the addition of Anomaly Investigations, virtually any of them has the potential to become one of these once you get into the higher levels. Aside from the main target always being an Afflicted monster or Risen Elder (who are already very powerful by themselves, particularly the latter), everything else about them is randomized, including the map, the monsters you face, the time limit, the number of faints, and the number of players allowed. In addition to all the monsters involved getting significant HP and damage buffs as you climb up the Investigation levels, negative modifiers become far more common and the monsters faced will ramp up as well; you'll go from facing a single Afflicted/Risen to regularly taking on multiple souped-up Elder Dragons, Apexes, or other equally powerful baddies on the side, often multiple at a time (up to four in a single quest at the highest ranks) and with only 1-2 faints or a tightened time limit. Higher level ones also tend to take place in one of the arena-type maps: although they'll offer a Prism Spiribird and the monsters are fought individually (if there are multiple), there are no breaks outside of Farcasters, and for multi-hunts there'll still be periods when a second monster arrives once the first is sufficiently wounded. The latter is especially bad considering that the resulting mess can swiftly cart you in seconds given the damage buffs, and the monsters have enough health that you usually won't be able to finish the wounded one before the newcomer causes some serious pain. Worse still, if you want to maximize the Anomaly Points gained from the quest, you're going to have to tackle some of the more sadistic ones since they give by far the most score.
  • If you clear a Level 300 Investigation, you'll unlock a Special Investigation for that quest. Take that quest which probably gave you trouble already, and crank all the monsters' stats and hitboxes through the roof while still keeping any modifiers that it may have had, and you get a recipe for disaster. Fortunately, these ones only give a cosmetic Bragging Rights Reward and are totally optional, leaving them solely to hunters seeking further challenge.

Maps

• The second-generation games and Generations Ultimate have the Jungle, where several areas are thick in trees and vines that can block your view. Furthermore, the areas are connected roughly in three concentric rings of paths that offer limited connections between the three layers, meaning that getting to a monster in what appears to be an adjacent area can require you to cross through several other areas with the risk of getting lost, unless you happen to have the map with you. And don't think of eating for Felyne Explorer in Generations Ultimate; doing so dumps you right at base camp instead without fail! This map makes a return in Rise: Sunbreak, although it's not as bad due to maps now being seamless and this one not being as complex as other maps in the game.
• Once more from 2nd generation and Generations, the Arctic Ridge. The area connectors make very little sense, the three topmost areas — where 95% of the fighting takes place — take so long to get to, and there's two filler areas that serve little purpose other than padding out the map because no large monsters ever go there. If you happen to get carted, it's pretty much an automatic two or so minutes added on to the elapsed time. And even with the improved climbing speed mechanics introduced in generation 4, it's still tedious to get to the top of the mountain, even if you took the shortcut from Area 2 to Area 7.
• In Tri and 3 Ultimate, the Flooded Forest is one of the most tedious maps in the game if you're hunting monsters that can go underwater, due to monsters becoming Lightning Bruisers compared to you when they go for a swim. Of its 10 areas, half of them have swimmable water, three of which are underwater-only. (To compare, Deserted Island / Moga Woods has only two water areas, one of which is completely submerged.) Get ready to wrestle with the clumsy swimming controls if your target is a Royal Ludroth or Gobul, or worse, a Lagiacrus or a Plesioth. Alleviated in Portable 3rd, which strips out swimming by having the previously-underwater areas dry up and become land areas, and its revamped variant in Rise, which is also "low tide" like its Portable 3rd variant, although the high cliffs might make fighting monsters atop the plateaus a little annoying.
• Several areas in 4U qualify for this in general, thanks to the new emphasis on verticality.
  • On paper, it adds some diverse and visually stunning locations, while allowing players to use the terrain to their advantage through the new jumping and mounting mechanics. In practice, this amounts to awkwardly-placed cliffs and ledges which often impede player movement and interrupt rolls, while the enemy monsters can easily run through these ledges. It makes sense, given that the monsters are considerably bigger than the player. The ledges are also prone to issues with an Event-Obscuring Camera, as the camera refuses to view from inside a ledge and instead will zoom way in to give you a nice shot of your character's ass instead of the monster. Slopes look nice and give terrain a more natural feel, but also require extra vertical aiming from weapons that use ranged attacks.
  • Many areas that have two levels of elevation, where the lower level is solid ground and the higher level is made up of vines, can be a real pain to fight in. The upper levels can usually only be reached by climbing, which leaves you more vulnerable to attacks, consumes a lot of stamina if you want to climb quickly, and requires you to sheathe your weapon to climb it.^note You can climb walls while your weapon is out by rolling into them and pressing the A button, but if your weapon is incapable of rolling, like the Lance, you have no choice but to sheathe it first. On the other hand, the lower levels can only be reached by jumping into a gap on the upper level, which can be hard to find in some areas. What's more, fighting on the upper level means you might accidentally roll off a ledge and land back onto the lower level, forcing you to climb back up again. The monsters meanwhile can just change elevations wherever they want, by digging through the upper level. Some monsters, namely Kecha Wacha, Nerscylla, and G-rank Congalala, can hang from the vines instead of walking, making it hard to hit them from above and below. This gets especially annoying in multiplayer hunts, because if even one person is on a different elevation than everyone else, the monster might change elevations, forcing everyone else to change as well.
  • Area 4 of the Ancestral Steppe has rather steep slopes and numerous ledges, and the little open space present is close to two zone boundaries. And the kicker: Rajang spawns here in G-rank.
  • Area 2 of Heaven's Mount has two elevations, with the higher elevation only reachable by climbing, and the lower level having numerous ledges that can mess up your dodges. That's already a hassle in the middle of a fight, but the worst part is the lower level has a big trunk in the middle of it, causing the lower level to be a very cramped environment.
  • Area 3 of Heaven's Mount features multiple cliffs that you have to climb up to in order to reach Area 8, where you will be climbing up to if you're after a Rathian, a Rathalos, or their eggs. The Remobras here can and will knock you off in mid-climb if you're not very mindful of them, and the narrow lower ledges make fighting large monsters much harder than usual.
  • The Tower Summit has two long ridges approximately dividing the area into thirds. The unbroken ridges make it all too easy to attempt a roll only to do a small hop right into an incoming fireball.
  • Ingle Isle, unlike the examples above, actually starts off nice and flat. However, once the battle gets underway and the monsters start stomping around, huge sections of the ground collapse into lava-filled sinkholes (complete with movement-impeding ledges) which damage players without the Heat Cancel skill. What's left are relatively narrow walkways that provide little maneuvering room around the large monsters that appear here, such as Akantor, Crimson Fatalis, and Alatreon. Fortunately, the sinkholes eventually refill.
  • Area 5 of the Dunes consists mostly of long rivers of sand with small areas of stable ground and a few small destructible platforms. The sand carries you downstream while you stand on it, throwing off your attacks while not hindering the monsters, because they're a lot heavier than you. Thankfully, not many monsters travel here, but Area 7 has a giant sand pit with similar mechanics that opens up if the pillar is destroyed, and a lot of monsters do travel there.
  • The Everwood is randomly generated from multiple maps. Some are more annoying to navigate:
    • The caves map. A good third of the area is packed with small stepping-stone rocks that make any attempt to dodge around them incredibly difficult, while another third is full of flowing sand which will ruin your positioning, hinder your movements and make trap-setting impossible. The remaining tracts of stable ground are narrow and sloped, making them liable to cause Camera Screw. And finally, several of the tougher monsters that can be encountered on expeditions favor this area, including Deviljho and the 'Blos wyverns, the latter of which are more than happy to charge right over the little stepping stones you're frantically clambering over to headbutt you, because they're big, and you're small.
    • One of the least liked Everwood areas is known as "The Maze", a small section of ruins with randomly generated and/or closed off paths that tend to wind around a lot. While no large monsters may be encountered in these sections, running back and forth through them while chasing monsters across different areas tends to waste lots of time, which can result in the monsters fleeing the Everwood altogether if too much time is spent wandering around.
• The Ancient Forest in World is a massive, multi-level labyrinth filled with countless tiny passages and many close, tight areas barely able to fit you and the monster. It's also home to numerous wyverns that can fly to anywhere on the map, forcing you to chase them to the ends of the earth and likely get lost doing so. At least it's free of environmental hazards.
• The lower half of the Rotten Vale in World forces players to have to deal with a poisonous "effluvia" that slowly saps their life. This often means having to build a separate set of armor with effluvia resist just for the region. The very bottom of the map also features acid pools that the player can accidentally step on. It gets quite challenging when you consider that this is where the elder dragon Vaal Hazak is fought, and more than a few hunts against it fail more due to the environmental damage than the dragon's attacks alone.
• The Citadel in Rise: Sunbreak is massive, made to feel even moreso due to combining four biomes into a single map, and has some very confusing passageways combined with tall cliffs to make shortcutting more difficult and Spiribird routes very time-consuming, even with a Palamute. You'd expect a map this vast to have two sub-camps (like the Sandy Plains and the Lava Caverns), but nope, you get only one sub-camp on this map, and it's at the northern edge of the map somewhat covered by several passages, making it a pain to get out of and onto the field. If you're looking to fast-travel into the action, you're better off using the Buddy Recon points.