How to beat Magnamalo in Monster Hunter Rise

The Magnamalo is the featured monster in Monster Hunter Rise that’s causing the latest Rampage, an event that riles up the local monsters to attack Kamura Village and its citizens. For the Monster Hunter Rise Demo 2, players will have a rare opportunity to face off against this creature before the game releases on March 26. It’s an extreme hunt, and we highly recommend that if you do it, you’re an experienced hunter, or you take a few friends along for the ride to try and battle against this monster. You’ll only have 15 minutes to complete the hunt before returning to the village and failing the quest.

When you start at your camp, you can press down on the right stick on your Nintendo Switch to obtain the location of Magnamalo. A red arrow will point you in the direction you need to go to find it in your region.

Magnamalo is an armored monster. It has plenty of melee strikes and grabs that we’ll cover, but its signature attacks revolve around its hellfire explosions. These are the purple flames that are gathering around it that Magnamalo fires at you. Any of the attacks can do quite a bit of damage against you, and during the battle, Magnamalo can also use those to jet towards you, closing the distance in little to no time.

You want to watch for when Magnamalo’s body and when it becomes surrounded in hellfire. When it does, you want to aim for those body parts because Magnamalo will take more damage from your attacks. Make sure to aim for those whenever possible. It’s also important to note that when Magnamalo becomes surrounded in its purple flame, it will unleash a powerful attack against you, so making sure to stop it from its body from being covered in hellfire is critical.

Before the battle, there should be a Mizutsune or a Rathalos on your map. We recommend wyvern riding this creature and using it at the start of the fight, or at least some point in it, to take a good chunk of health out of Magnamalo’s health at the start. That should lighten the load. If there are multiple players in your party, you might be able to grab both of them.

Magnamalo’s attacks vary from him rushing forward at you with a wild swipe where it nearly falls over, hellfire strikes that fire from its tail and stomps on the ground multiple times as it moves towards you. Landing a few strikes against Magnamalo typically means you need to veer away or use your wirebug dodge to evade its oncoming attacks. There are a few opportunities to get under the monster to avoid its attack, give it a few solid hits, and then roll away unharmed.

We don’t expect a lot of players to walk away from this encounter as the victor. Magnamalo can hit you once, and you’ll faint, forcing you back to camp to try over again. You only have three tries before you fail the mission. The demo version of Magnamalo is supposed to serve as an opportunity for players to try the fight before the main event, and we certainly walked away from the battle, eager for more.