Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak Garangolm fight walkthrough, weaknesses, and tips

Want to learn how to beat Garangolm in Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak? Garangolm is the first of the “Three Lords,” a trio of monsters at the center of the story in Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak. You will encounter Garangolm relatively early as the first Master Rank 3 quest. This series newcomer is one of the first major difficulty spikes in Sunbreak and can be a real challenge for the unprepared. If you need a hand with this ruinous beast, we’re here to help.

Garangolm fight walkthrough

Garangolm uses its massive fists to pound players and tear boulders from the ground to use as projectiles, dealing damage in large areas in front of it. You need to be in front of Garangolm to hit its weakspots, but unfortunately, that’s the most dangerous place to be. With one particularly dangerous attack, Garangolm shoves both fists into the earth before flipping up a huge chunk of ground, dealing damage in a large directly in front of Garangolm and creating a huge boulder projectile that hits further out.

When Garangolm enrages, one of its fists becomes covered in magma. The newly magmatic fist is extra dangerous, dealing fire damage in an area whenever it attacks and creating fiery new projectiles. Garangolm can also use the magma arm to create an explosion and leap across the battlefield. As the fight progresses, Garangolm also starts to create shockwaves with its fists and head, dealing tons of damage as a secondary effect after many of its attacks. Once the shockwaves start to appear, take extra care when picking your openings. An overly aggressive attack can easily get you killed.

Garangolm weak spots and elemental weaknesses

The above image shows Garangolm’s hitzone values as listed in the in-game Hunter’s Notes. These values determine how much damage each part of a monster takes from each damage type in Monster Hunter Rise, with higher numbers equaling more damage taken. Garangolm is a sturdy monster that doesn’t have any glaringly unprotected parts. However, its head and arms are weakspots for all damage types. Slash and Blunt damage also do well against the tail and torso, where Shot damage struggles. Bow and Bowgun players will need to aim for the arms and head as much as possible.

Garangolm takes very little elemental damage across the board and is immune to the Water and Dragon elements. If you’re using a weapon that typically uses elements, such as Dual Blades, Lightning damage will be your best bet. However, you will still be better off with a non-elemental build in most cases.

How to beat Garangolm: top tips for success

Here are our top tips for victory over Garangolm.

• Watch Garangolm’s arms
• Swap to faster Switch skills to avoid shockwaves
• Break the magma off of Garangolm’s arm

Watch Garangolm’s arms

You can read all of Garangolm’s most dangerous attacks by keeping your focus on its arms. For example, when Garangolm punches both arms into the ground, run parallel to the arms rather than away to dodge the ground flip attack. If you watch the arms, you will quickly learn to identify most of Garangolm’s moveset.

When Garangolm enrages, keep a particularly close watch on the magmatic arm. Garangolm will use that arm to punch the ground, trigger an explosion, and leap over your head to attack from behind. Once you’ve seen this a few times, you can easily keep track of Garangolm’s jump and avoid getting caught off guard.

Swap to faster Switch skills to avoid shockwaves

Garangolm has a few slow moves but is otherwise quick despite its heavy appearance. You can still find openings for slow attacks like Hammer’s Impact Crater, but this gets trickier as the fight drags on. Once Garangolm starts triggering shockwaves more frequently, consider using your Switch Skill Swap Scroll to swap to faster, safer skills. High-commitment attacks will get newer players killed in the later portions of this fight.

Break the magma off of Garangolm's arm

As your Hunter’s Notes mention, you can actually break the magma off of Garangolm’s arm when it powers up. Doing this will take away some of Garangolm’s most dangerous attacks and trigger a stagger. When Garangolm enrages and activates the magma arm, try to focus your attacks on that arm. Just be aware that sticking close to the magma also presents extra danger.

That's everything you need to know to hunt Garangolm for the first time! This is one of the coolest new monsters in the Sunbreak expansion, so enjoy the show as you battle. If you're looking for sub-camp locations throughout Monster Hunter Rise, our list of sub-camp locations has the entire base game covered, with updates coming for new map camps as we find them. The old maps are heavily featured in Sunbreak, so make sure to track these camps down. If you dove into the game recently and aren't sure how to start Sunbreak content, our guide on how to start Sunbreak will get you there.