Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate Guide: How to Kill a Zamtrios

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate has its fair share of aggressive creatures hellbent on nothing more than eating you for breakfast. For most of them, you’d be nothing more than a light snack or the equivalent of finding a piece of potato chip in your teeth four hours after you’ve eaten a bag of them. The trick is killing these gigantic beasts before they stomp on your face. So we at Twinfinite decided it was a good idea to put together some primer guides for taking down each of the more dangerous enemies in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.  This one’s about the Zamtrios, a mix of puffer fish and shark that only nightmares are made of.

Also ice, lots and lots of ice. Enough ice to keep a fraternity in cold beer until the polar ice caps eventually melt, then enough left over to recreate the polar ice caps. Don’t forget ice. Not snow, not sleet, just so much ice you’ll get frostbite in your eyes.

Before you even think about going into battle with the Zamtrios in its traditional stomping ground of the Frozen Seaway, get some hot drinks. You’ll likely only need two for the entire fight but it never hurts to keep a full stock of five on you just in case. Also remember to pick up or bring along Sonic Bombs, this’ll become clear later.

First and foremost we have the Zamtrios’ basic ability. This is a very simple claw attack that it’ll use often in the early stages of battle. This generally comes from the monster’s left and, while damaging, can be easily avoided or blocked by even the least experienced hunters.

Its more concerning abilities come when the Zamtrios of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (the creature’s first appearance in the West) rears back onto its hind legs. The shark-like beast will launch a torrent of icy water from its mouth, moving across the creatures vision from its left to right at close range then back from right to a more central point over a longer distance. This’ll afflict you with a somewhat irritating stamina debuff, causing the bar to fill more slowly than usual. It’s a nuisance, but not one that will cost you the fight.

What can be more problematic though is the Zamtrios’ ability to encase you in ice. This is a fairly unique ability to the beast in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. It launches a huge blob of icy water which will encase you in ice to such an extent that even Jack Frost will wince in sympathy. You’ll be able to move when caught in this but that’s about it. Try to get yourself clipped by the more basic abilities of a Zamtrios when this occurs or look to your comrades for aid. If you’re playing in multiplayer and see a colleague caught in this, make a beeline for them and break out your buddy.

This will not only stop you being able to attack. If your caught in the ice and the Zamtrios starts to look as though it’s going to jump (leans onto its hind quarters) get the hell out of its way. Fail in this, and you’ll be gobbled up in a more annoying than actually painful grapple. It’ll hurt, but being unable to control what you do is a problem in itself. Should this ability hit a Palico, actually use them as bait and attack the Zamtrios while it’s munching on your miaowing friend. Being spit out by this launches the target a fairly long distance, often pushing them back into another area or into a horde of smaller creatures.

Being a shark in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, you know the Zamtrios is going to do some sort of Jaws-style submerged stalking. Never one to disappoint, the beast does this all too often. When the creature is submerges its fin can be seen tracking through the ground wherever the beast is. It’s incredibly tempting to hit this fin while exposed but do be mindful of the follow up. Before it reemerges, the Zamtrios will cause the ground to shake. This’ll make you stagger. That’s the cue to leap the hell out of the way before it bursts from the ground. Get caught and you’re going to take damage. Don’t get caught and you’ve got the chance to do a little damage on this fast-moving menace of the ice seas.

Cast your mind back to the start of this guide where we told you to pick up some Sonic Bombs. When the Zamtrios is submerged, you can throw a Sonic Bomb at the fin to force this sharky enemy in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate back to the surface. It’ll be writhing around on the floor and open to a full barrage of whatever sort of attacks you want to throw on it.

A monster isn’t at its scariest when moving. No no, you want to be really worried when anything in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate stops and just looks at you. When it does it and you’re the target, run at a right angle around the Zamtrios. If you don’t, it’ll spring forward with unnatural speed to knock you on the floor and rip a terrible gouge out of your precious health bar. Try to judge where it’ll land and you’ve got the chance to hit it a couple of times before it lines up for another strike.

Cover your ears and prepare for the beast to roar whenever there’s steam rising from its face. The Zamtrios will roar and then cover itself in incredibly thick icy armor that even the sharpest of weapons has trouble breaking through. In all its forms, the Zamtrios of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is without a doubt at its most deadly when covered in icy armor. For one, its projectile attacks become more powerful and painful. Although, you can rest a bit assured that it isn’t enough to kill you, but still make sure not to become too lax.

What will tear you apart is the liking this monster takes for doing the pouncing attack we mentioned before during this phase. More worrying is that when covered in icy armor, the amount of damage you can take when it simply flies past you is enough to cause severe concern. See a Zamtrios lining up to attack something else when covered in ice and you’d be forgiven for thinking this is a prime chance to strike. It is not, not in the slightest. Attacking from its rear half will make the monster jut massive spikes from its back. These hurt. A lot.

So you can’t attack it because the Zamtrios moves too fast and if you try, it’ll skewer you like a lamb kebab. When do you take the fight to the fin-laden little bugger then? Well those Sonic Bombs we mentioned are the answer. They’re useful when it isn’t iced over, but they’re incredibly useful when it is. As the Zamtrios submerges during its armor phase, the creature will pull itself out of the ice using its front limbs. This is a sort of safe time to strike because if you break some ice, you’ll force it from the water and onto its back for more damage-dealing.

While it is submerged, and we mean seriously only the fin is showing submerged here, throw a Sonic Bomb and rip it from the depths. This’ll almost totally expose its squishy underbelly and make for some of the finest sushi recuperation you’ll ever see in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.

Battling anything in Monster Hunter 4 Hunter is often an exercise in being prepared for the unexpected. The Zamtrios doesn’t disappoint here either. Usually after its armored enraging phase, the Zamtrios will suddenly inflate to several times its original size. Its stomach distends to many times its original size, granting this usually fast beast the ability to roll around like Jabba the Hutt at an all you can eat buffet. In the fat phase as we’ll call it, Zamtrios do three different things usually.

First they’ll rest back on their fat belly and launch out ice balls. This is super easy to avoid and is a great chance to attack that tail fin for maximum damage. If you happen to be hit by it you’ll be back into the icy prison that usually comes, so stick close to comrades just in case.  The second is a bounce. Telegraphed by the beast facing towards its target and roaring before making a small bounce backwards, this is then followed up by a huge bound forwards that causes earthquake damage. Without a shadow of a doubt this is the most dangerous aspect of this phase.

The third and final attack is a humongous roll where the whole creature wobbles in a straight direction. Move to its side and chase the damn thing down. Why get close? Well because in this stage, you can do heaps of damage to a normally fast creature due to its sluggish speed twinned with a fat target. At the end of this, the stomach deflates and the Zamtrios of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate goes back into normal phase, armor phase, fat phase progression.

Be mindful of it using the fat phase because this can actually cover up the fact that the monster is weakened. Always assume in this phase that a Zamtrios is close to death, so give it everything you’ve got.

When grappled, it just rears back and roars often. Very well telegraphed and easy to predict. When armored, however, the thing will also wriggle about like a psychopathic shark thing covered in ice. It’s likely that by now you’re used to dealing with monster rodeos, so just remember all that you’ve learned and be extra careful.

The trick to winning a battle against a Zamtrios is endurance. It’s one of the creatures placed before you in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate that rarely gives you a chance to deal any real damage from close range. Even ranged hunters need to be careful as it can move much faster than you’d think. A hefty amount of cold damage resistance is going to help you here, as is a weapon that dishes out thunder damage.

Melee hunters should be aiming for the legs and tail of the Zamtrios, while long-distance players should focus all of their attention on its fleshy back. Not exactly a hard target to miss now is it?

What monster is causing you trouble in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate? Let us know in the comments down below and we’ll try to get some tips out just for you as soon as we can.