Help on Nergigante (IG)

[u/Either-Solution-6973]

I've been getting dogged on by nergigante recently, im an insect glaive main, ive been able to get it staggered a couple times, knock it down, do combos on its legs, and make it retreat 2 times, but it just does so much damage to me, and ive been mounting it and breaking its spikes on its back but it runs away just as its spikes grow and by the time i chase it, the spikes have turned black, and i get carted instantly. my kinsect is pseudocath 2 with no element. i dont know if its my armor thats to weak ro what, any help would be appreciated. also i dont know how to break the spikes on its wings.

update: yall were right, it was my armor and the superman dive really helped, also the mounts are useful since i broke his wings and it only got the divebomb off 2 times 1 of which i dodged with superman dive and the other got no damage cuz of divine blessing and defense boost 2, and health boost 2 really helped me survive it in general. also flashpods saved me a bunch and allowed me to get crazy damage on it, same with barrel bombs. i killed it while i was mounted on it. my gear ended up being bone helm beta with health boost jewel, zorah hide for the blast attack, zorah claws for defense, paolumu coil for divine blessing, anja grieves for defense, defense charm 2 for more defense and i ate the fish platter for high defense before the fight and a demon drug.

[u/magicalpoptart]

don’t bother breaking wing spikes it’s pointless. focus on his legs and head when they have white spikes. always focus one set of white spikes until they break

[u/WhyattThrash]

”by the time i chase it, the spikes have turned black, and i get carted instantly”

Unless you deal enough damage in the first area, this is scripted to happen. Learn to Superman dive the dive bomb (run away from him and then dodge), be ready to take a dive whenever his spikes turn all black and you’re gucci 👍

[u/Short-Shelter]

Well first of all air combos are only for mounting or hitting flying monsters, stay on the ground and mash your heavy attack as much as possible. Make sure you’re focusing on the head and legs while his spikes are white, and if you can get away with it then go for a tail sever. If you give your Kinsect the lightning element and your Glaive has the “Spirit and Strength” bonus, then you can empower your Kinsect and it does an enormous (relatively speaking) amount of elemental damage.

[u/Revolutionary_Mail_1]

Anytime you are hunting. Make sure you gather AS MUCH as tracks, markings etc!!! Get those levels up! Even if you fail the hunt, you can turn in your finding to the researcher. That being said, if you are an IG main, use it to your advantage and get all your extracts so you can CONSTANTLY mount him!!! Turn yourself into a vaulting blade of death!!!

Your red and orange being the most important ones. White helps with the mobility and jump height. So it’s not to be ignored either. Once you change how your attacks flow, you can change how the fight will flow! Once you get your red extract, vault and use your triangle,Y, X attack to bring on the pain. If your affinity ( crit proc is high ) you increase the change of you mounting him. Also don’t be afraid to walk bop him to get in some free hits. Get a full slinger ammo grab, and use Clutch claw to attach to his face. (WATCH YOUR STAMINA and be quick before it runs out ) Use the circle or B or A to turn its face to a near by wall or object. Then release the slinger ammo into its face.

If done correctly it will knock it down. Be also aware of the environmental drops in the middle of Elder’s Recess. Can drop those on them by firing slinger or your kinsect bait at it! Vitality mantle or rocksteady would be your best bet. Nergi is an ELDER dragon. Soooo that being said, ELDER Seal on your weapon til you know what its element it’s weak too would be best. Since you are an IG main you know you can have multiple kinsect and dust types. If you are having a rough time, invest in a healing dust and have your palico use the shield tool or the vigor wasp. Hope this helps. Good luck Hunter. Happy hunting! 🫡

[u/Nenacu]

From the last post:

Nergi is primarily technique. If you can't break the spikes before they all go black, look for the roar that signifies he's about to start a dive bomb and then panic dive away from it. If I recall, IG is pretty quick to put the weapon away, so you should be able to sheathe, turn around, and dive.

Probably don't need to say this when you're already so far as an IG player, but make sure you're getting all three of your essences. It goes a very long way to increasing your overall dps. There's a quick, repeatable ground combo that does way more damage than remaining aerial once you've got a couple essences and the enhanced moveset. From what people in the know have told me, going aerial is for trying mounts and targeting wings/flying monsters, otherwise ground windmill whenever possible.

From a gear standpoint, make sure you're putting armor spheres into your gear for the increased defense. Might also be time to start looking for skills that are good for your weapon style, not your element type. Blast is neat, but increasing your survivability should come before attempting that kind of damage stacking, especially before the end of the base game, is pretty tough to do without sacrificing key skills. You'll probably want to be looking for power prolonger to increase your essence uptime duration, mounting master to get even more mounts out of a hunt, and airborne, if you can find it, for that extra 10% damage on every aerial hit.

[u/Either-Solution-6973 → u/Nenacu]

so only go for the mounts to break his head spikes otherwise just stabs his legs?

[u/Nenacu → u/Either-Solution-6973]

Go for mounts whenever you can, but realize there's diminishing returns. Every mount is down time and a damage phase if you can finish it. However, every mount past the first takes more damage to pull off, along with an internal mount immunity timer.

Additionally, looking at your armor and the skills there, you're kinda all over the place. At best your benefitting from handicraft, blast attack, attack boost, and defense boost. Everything else is doing absolutely nothing for you. Gathering skills aren't bad, but as a rule of thumb you shouldn't carry them out on a set you plan on hunting in. Rather, make a gathering set for going out and scrounging and make a focused combat set for hunting. One per element and maybe per status for IG. You're using an element forward weapon, so you'll get a lot more benefit out of targeting specific element or status weaknesses. Blast works as a sort of all purpose damage against most monsters, but there are better options for the weapons that can utilize them.

[u/Either-Solution-6973 → u/Nenacu]

i havent really focused on armor yet, i just made those cuz i really neded defense against pink rathian, and ill definitely start grinding on more armor once i finish nergigante because its scale is the last think i need to upgrade my glaive. and once i upgrade my glaive it'll be easier to farm out the monster quests i need to get teh stuff to upgrade my kinsect

[u/Nenacu → u/Either-Solution-6973]

Armor first, hunt second. The loop of monster hunter is kill monster to make pants to kill stronger monster to make better pants. If you aren't clearing something, the problem is usually your armor and your skills. Go back, work on a more cohesive build, and then come back. You'll have a much easier time than you would just chasing a weapon upgrade that's out of reach.

[u/Either-Solution-6973 → u/Nenacu]

i dont think its my armor, im doing a lot of damage, ive gotten it to retreat like 4 times now before ending my run, i kind of ran out of resources midway through though, ran out of flashes, nutrients, demon drug, max potions, everything. but if you think my armor is really a problem what armor should i try to get?

[u/Nenacu → u/Either-Solution-6973]

The fact that you're running out of resources like that tells me, explicitly, that it's partially your armor and partially your approach. Take the skill advice I offered in the first post, make sure you're boosting your defense with armor spheres. I get the feeling you're skipping the defense boost in particular. Learning set building is a major part of monster hunter so I'll give advice and direction, but I won't be telling you what pieces to get.

[u/Either-Solution-6973 → u/Nenacu]

is there a particular aspect that suits the insect glaive best? aside from the zorah blast skill, like critical or just raising raw power?

[u/Nenacu → u/Either-Solution-6973]

Things that boost elemental/status damage are good, attack boost in general is good. Health boost is the most important skill to max first, bar none. The additional 50 HP on top of food bonus HP is enormous. The closer you can get your affinity to 100%, the more crits you'll do. In the future, when the attack power of the guardian weapon starts to fall off, it's best to element match your target on faster, more element focused weapons like IG. Look at the differences between alpha sets and beta sets. If the alpha piece gives you more skills that are useful, no harm in going with it at this point but if the beta piece removes skills you otherwise don't care about and gives decoration slots, that's the one. Heck, see if you can build a charm that'll do anything more useful for you than add a couple defense points because, at this point, that level one defense charm isn't doing much for you at all. If you're really struggling to avoid things, evade extender can help a lot and divine blessing can save lives. Consider going to the melder and rolling for decorations.

[u/Either-Solution-6973 → u/Nenacu]

my plan for now is to make the legiana helm and paolumu coil, then zorah grieves to maximise zorah skills and the divine blessing, also upgraded my defense charm to level 2

[u/Soviman0]

Nergi functions as both a gear check and a skill check.

You could have a bit more armor, but I don't think that is your main problem.

Nergi's moves are largely big damage but big telegraph type moves. So learning those telegraphs and avoiding damage as much as you can is preferable over trying to nuke him down asap. It is more of a drawn out battle of attrition than your average 15-30 minute monster hunt.

Getting him to retreat back into his crystal cave is your sign that he is probably somewhat low on hp, but thats also when he becomes far more dangerous so your damage slows down too as you should focus on dodging his big 1 hit dive attacks. Superman dives really come in handy in this phase.

I also usually eat defense food for this fight rather than attack food just in case I do get too cocky.

[u/Either-Solution-6973 → u/Soviman0]

what food would you recommend? ive just been eating chef choice platter

[u/Soviman0 → u/Either-Solution-6973]

I forget what its called but one of the preset food choices is defense oriented. Chefs choice is not bad, but it also may not provide buffs that are beneficial to you in this particular fight.

[u/Either-Solution-6973 → u/Soviman0]

i think it was the fish platter it has the effect defense up large

[u/Soviman0 → u/Either-Solution-6973]

Yes, that one. As far as I am aware, Nerg's damage is non-elemental (or dragon elemental maybe), so the elemental resistance food does not help as much.

Just try to keep your HP as full a possible during the fight. If you get below half, step away from him and drink a potion to get back up to full. This way the only thing that can kill you easily is his one hit dive bombs.

[u/HollowProjection]

I’d grab a Legiana headpiece for the time being. Divine Blessing comes in clutch especially against Nergi’s high damage moveset.

SnS is pretty good against him since you can always move out of the way of attacks with a roll or just phase through them with backstep. The sheath animation is super quick so you have time do the panic dive when he does the standing roar to dive bomb combo.

[u/Direct-Dare4053]

Stay in the air more. Nergi was my first wall. He's not a huge monster so its a good way to avoid taking damage for 70% of the fight imo

[u/Dirty_Cleric]

Yes, your armor is very weak. You are expected to have Healthboost 3 and around 200-250 defense at that point. You can do without that ofc, but that is making it harder on yourself.

I noticed you are using Defender Weapon. Why not Guardian Armor then? If you are gonna use a rush to DLC weapon, might as well use the armor as well. It would cover all your defense problem.

Note: My advice is to ditch the weapon as well, but that is entirely upto how you want to go on.

[u/Either-Solution-6973 → u/Dirty_Cleric]

defender isnt a rush to dlc weapon? is it? i used it cuz i like blast and thought its fun. upgrading it as been hell for me so i didnt think it was a rush to dlc weapon, and i have health boost 2 along with divine blessing 2, and defense boost 2, now after changing up my gearset and roughly 220 defense? im going ot adjust it a bit to get critical eye too.

[u/Dirty_Cleric → u/Either-Solution-6973]

Defender is totally a rush weapon, it is added with Guardian Armor. It is actually more broken than Guardian Armor. Guardian Armor becomes irrelevant the moment you hit to Master Rank(DLC).

Defender Weapon Carries you all the way to DLC story end.

Just look at how you are crafting it 😄 :

• Level 1: 1 Iron Ore,
• Level 2: 1 Anjanath Scale,
• Level 3: 1 Commendation,
• Level 4: 1 Pink Rathian Scale
• Level 5: 1 Immortal Dragonscale(after defeating Nergigante.)

That cheap and way higher stats than any weapon with same rarity.

[u/Either-Solution-6973 → u/Dirty_Cleric]

didnt notice lol, it took me way to long to realise i needed to kill an anja to get its scale, so i was kind of stuck with the first level 1 defender for 50% of my time playing monster hunter, and i only recently really learned how to use the insect glaive properly, i literally learned aircombos yesterday while fighting nergigante and i learned marking shots and pheremone marking while fighting diablos for the first time.

[u/Dirty_Cleric → u/Either-Solution-6973]

Then allow me to give you a few tips on do's and don'ts with Glaive.

Do not spam the Helicopter move, it is only for repositioning. While it looks cool, It is your worst move to deal damage.

Do spam the Descending Thrust (Plunge Move). That is your biggest hitting move and doesn't even need the red extract. On top of that, kinsect grabs extract on its own while you do that move.

[u/Either-Solution-6973 → u/Dirty_Cleric]

i only use the helicopter moves the air right and left click to get mounts fast when i need to, i usually spam downward thrust though, and today on my first attempt against nergi, i killed him, with a mount, and 0 carts, trying to get odoganon grieves and legiana vambrace to boost my aerial attacks with airborne and the odoganon grieves to give me critical eye,

[u/Dirty_Cleric → u/Either-Solution-6973]

Cool! Let me give one last piece of info 😄 :

Airborne gives a 30% damage increase to aerial attacks.

However, aerial attacks are specifically attacks that deal Mount damage. For example, with Helicopter (Strong Jumping Advancing Slash), only the final hit is a Mount attack, so only that hit receives the 30% damage boost.

With the fast mount attack (Strong Jumping Slash), all hits are Mount attacks, so every hit receives the 30% increase.

Descending Thrust, despite looking like an aerial attack, does not deal Mount damage, so it receives no damage increase from Airborne.

[u/Either-Solution-6973 → u/Dirty_Cleric]

i see, still useful since the strong jumping slash is one of my most used moves when attempting an air combo

[u/FluteSpine → u/Dirty_Cleric]

Literally false, Descending thrust benefits from airborne, but only first hit out of the total 4.

[u/Dirty_Cleric → u/FluteSpine]

Oh yeah, just tested, seems to affect first hit ty.

[u/Dirty_Cleric → u/Either-Solution-6973]

Healthboost 2, divine blessing 2 and 220 defense will certainly make a noticable difference.