Monster Hunter Tri

Okay guys let's kill this thing! "NO! Cap!" Why? "We'll get more rewards!" No, killing it will!... Has this situation ever happened to you? Which person do you think is correct? Sometimes the opposite happens as well, arguing over which is better, capturing a monster or killing it. This guide will hopefully clear any misconceptions when it comes to the probability of obtaining an item from carving a monster, or at the end of a quest from capturing it. There are pros and cons to both.

This guide will comprise most of numbers and percentages so if you don't like or care about such things then you don't really need this guide. This guide also doesn't contain the carve percentages of each monster, that can be found on the Monster Hunter Wikia site. I will try to portray the numbers in a simple way. This guide does not include tail carves and rewards from broken monster parts (except for the Wyvern Stone section) because some drop specific items and there are no alternative ways achieving them. I might include them in future revisions.

I will be explaining what Carving and Capturing is and the skills involved with each of them. What are the pros and cons to both. And there will also be an explanation to what probability is, because that is where a lot of confusion might reside in.

This guide is still in its beginning phases and any suggestions, corrections, or constructive criticism on the grammar or content is appreciated. There will most likely be mistakes and unclear explanations.

When you kill a monster you can carve them. Most boss monsters can be carved 3 times while some can be carved 4 times. Elder Dragons can be carved 6 or 8 times depending on the monster but can't be captured so they will not be included in this guide. The three skills that affect Carving are Felyne Kitchen skills which are labeled as Felyne Carver (Hi) and Felyne Carver (Lo) and the Armor Skill Carving Master. The skills work like this.

Felyne Carver (Lo): 25% Chance to carve an extra time.

Felyne Carver (Hi): 50% Chance to carve an extra time.

Carving Master: __% Chance to carve an extra time. (Looking for actual percentage)

The first two are randomly given when you eat before a quest. It isn't listed as a skill to choose from the 4 different ways of cooking, and to increase your chances of getting those two skills choose Fresh Ingredients. While the armor skill can be obtained from Ranger or Guild+ Armor, combined with Talismans and decorations.

Capturing a monster has three factors that must be met.

1. Monster's Health must be low
2. It's Tranq Status must be 100
3. It must be in a pitfall or shock trap

These three can be carried out in any order but must all be present at the same time for a monster to be captured. VioletKIRA's Quest Rewards guide has a table of what the monster's health percentage must be below for it to be capture-able. The Tranq Status can be inflicted from either a Tranq Bomb or a Tranq Shot. They both inflict 50 Tranq status so two should do the trick. The monster does recover from the status so don't throw them too far apart. If you have Status Attack Down then your Tranq bombs or shots will have less of an effect so will require three of them. 100 is the cap for the Tranq status so throwing more than 2 (or 3) in quick succession is just wasting your bombs and shots.

You can weaken a monster, throw two Tranq bombs at it then have it walk into a trap for an instant capture, or have it fall into the trap while it is weak and capture it by throwing the bombs while it is in the trap. You can even trap the monster, throw the tranqs, and if it doesn't get captured try to do a burst of damage. If that damage is enough to bring the monster's HP below its capturing threshold, then it will be captured as well. As long as all three conditions are met, you can capture a monster.

Another issue that might arise is missing your throws or shots. This can happen and is even more subtle if you are not the host. Look at the sticky on the GameFaqs forums for more information about hosting. Plainly put, if it seems like you didn't hit the monster it might be because you missed or hit a smaller mob on the host's screen, then it won't count.

The rewards you get from capturing a monster appear in the middle green section in the bottom right corner. Without any armor skills you receive 2 items from a capture and 3 if you capture two of the same monster. There are three armor skills that affect capturing.

Trap Master: Speeds up trap and bomb setting time. Raises Trap Combinations to 100%

Capture Guru: Monster icon on the map blinks when monsters are ready to be captured

Capture Expert: 100% chance of extra capture item in rewards.

The first one isn't really necessary but is handy to have if you have free slots. The second allows you to efficiently capture a monster as soon as it's health drops below the capture limit. And the last, which is the most useful for someone capturing, adds an extra item slot for capturing. You get 3 items for capturing one monster and 4 for capturing two monsters of the same type.

Straight out of the dictionary: a measure of how likely it is that some event will occur. It is and isn't the same as chance. For the case in this guide, I will clarify that the chance of getting an item is fixed, while the probability of getting an item increases with more carves and captures.

Lets say you have three die. You roll two into Bowl A and the last one into Bowl B. All three die have the same chance of rolling a six, which is 1/6 but the probability of rolling a six in Bowl A (or rolling more six's over multiple trials) is higher than in Bowl B.

This guide will have percentages that will show the chance of obtaining AT LEAST one of that item. If you can carve a monster three times, that percentage will represent the sum of carving one, two, or three of the same item from that monster. This is called Binomial Distribution. You can google that if you want to understand where the numbers came from.

An easy way to calculate these numbers is to simply subtract 100 (or 1 if you are doing decimals) by the chance of getting the item so you get the percentage chance of NOT getting the item. You then multiply it by itself however many times you are carving the monster. You then subtract the product of that from 100 (or 1) again and you'll find yourself with the chance of getting at least one of that item. For example.

Deviljho Gem Carve Chance: 2%

Number of Body Carves: 4

Chance of not getting a Gem: 1 - 0.02 = 0.98

Probability of not getting a gem: 0.98^4 = 0.9223

Probability of getting a gem: 1 - 0.9223 = 0.0777

The chance of getting at least 1 Deviljho Gem per kill (4 carves) is 7.77% which is a little bit higher than 2% if you only carved once. Remember though that every time you carve the chance of getting a gem is the same.

These numbers will not add up to 100% like the carve rates

Here's how the table will look like

They are be abbreviated in the actual tables. Remember, these tables represent the probability of obtaining AT LEAST one of the item.

If a probability percentage is around 20%, that means it'll take about 5 quests/kills/captures to get that item.

The baseline carve and capture rates have been bolded to easily compare the two since some people like to keep there favorite armor sets and don't have Capture Expert gemmed or forged in.

;*-High and Low Rank Ridges are titled the same but are two separate items.

You can only obtain these from Great Baggi and Great Jaggi on High Rank quests. If you just want a straight answer, look at the bottom of this section. The table below represents the chances of getting at least one gem.

The bottom line clearly shows Great Baggi being the choice of preference for farming Bird Wyvern Gems. But is that the case? Among the High Rank Quests there are two quests one would choose from to farm Great Baggi or Jaggi. Jumping for Jaggi requires that you hunt two Great Jaggi's while Leader of the Icepack has a requirement of one. There is an obvious benefit from hunting two monsters of the same type in a quest compared to one, but is that enough to make Great Jaggi better to farm than Great Baggi? What it comes down to is time, how fast can you kill/cap two Great Jaggi compared to two Great Baggi.

There are many scenarios to compare. I shall compare all of them though and put forth the percentages obtained from each case. From there you have to look at the data and determine how fast you can complete each scenario, I will be providing a baseline scenario on what I myself can do. These are rough estimates so judge them yourself.

This table will be similar to the previous one, but the difference will be that there are two Great Jaggi now.

Cap Both for Great Baggi is just capturing one Great Baggi. The last four assume that you break the crest of the/both monster(s).

Suddenly Jumping for Jaggi looks more appealing! Remember, capturing 2 Great Jaggi only yields 3 item spaces and 4 items spaces with Capture Expert. Even though these numbers favor Great Jaggi now this is only if the times are the same. That means that if it takes the same amount of time to finish the Jumping for Jaggi Quest as it does to finish the Leader of the Icepack quest, then you should try to at least capture one Great Jaggi for it to be on par with capturing a Great Baggi with Capture Expert.

People say that capturing takes more time, others say killing does. I personally prefer capturing. On average I got 2:15~2:30 minutes doing Jumping for Jaggi. The fastest was around 1:30 but I can guarantee that it can be done faster because it was a Cap 1/Kill 1 scenario and we were positioned in groups of 3 and 1.

For Leader of the Icepack, it was closer to the 3:00 mark that it took to capture the Great Baggi. The fastest I got was around 2:15, again these were not speed runs and were with randoms, so if you coordinate your efforts you can see the time go down. But over all it does seem that you can finish Jumping for Jaggi faster than Leader of the Icepack.

Below is a simple graph that has the times on the y coordinate plane. What you do is you identify how long it takes for you to do each quest, you then find where the line is on the graph according to that time. Which ever part is lower, is the quest you should do. If it takes longer than 15 minutes to do either quest, then you are not yet at the stage to worry about which is faster than the other.

Bird Wyvern Gem v2 chart here

Using Great Jaggi as a base, Great Baggi is calculated based on the probability difference and how many times you have to repeat a GJ quest to equal a GB one.

Most people can complete Jumping for Jaggi Quest faster than the Leader of the Icepack quest. It also takes longer for the crest of the Great Baggi to break, at least an extra 15 seconds is sometimes wasted waiting for the crest to break. Furthermore, Great Baggi are bigger than Great Jaggi, so they are harder to hit as well, and have more HP than Great Jaggi. Since it is a dual quest, the Great Jaggi are weaker than normal. The only benefits from choosing to farm Great Baggi over Great Jaggi is if you need Great Baggi parts, ore from Tundra, or want a chance for timeworn charms, unless you can kill/capture a Great Baggi while breaking its crest faster than the two Great Jaggi.

Final Conclusion (TL;DR):

If you break both of crests of the Great Jaggi, that alone gives you a better percentage of obtaining Bird Wyvern Gems than killing a Great Baggi or just capturing one. If you want to farm for Bird Wyvern Gems, do Jumping for Jaggi.

Wyvern Stones are something similar to plates, rubies, and sapphires. They can only be obtained from the tail or from capturing a monster, they can never be carved off the body. These are your chances of getting at least one Wyvern Stone. Here's the table.

• Some are carves, some are break rewards, easy to figure it out.
• The Capture percentages doesn't include the skill Capture Expert.

This is one of those items that you have a bunch lying around but none when you need them.

The most common monsters that are farmed for Wyvern Stones are Barioth and Diablos. The reason being that there are dual quests for both Barioth and Diablos which allow for a higher chance of recieving those items. There is also an event called Hot Deal that has two Agnaktor as well as Double Diablos, which requires you to capture two Diablos. Many also like to believe that you get rarer items more frequently on the HR51+ quests compared to the single HR40~50 cousins.

The chances don't increase (alledgedly) but here's the probability for capturing and cutting the tail of both Diablos and Barioth without Capture Expert.

The graph below is similar to the one above with the Bird Wyvern Gem, just identify how long it takes you to do a certain quest and find the corresponding line. Which ever spot is the farthest/closer to the left, is the quest that will best yeild your Wyvern Stones that you are searching for.

Wyvern Stone Close v2 pic

Using the Dual Diablos/Barioth as a base, all other numbers were calculated by finding out the difference in probabilities and then calculating that difference on hoe many times you must repeat another quest to equal a Dual Diablos/Barioth quest.

So ultimately doing the Princess's Pride and Tragedy of the Tundra will yield the best probability of obtaining a Wyvern Stone the fastest, but not all people have access to these quests yet. Which can you kill faster?

I'd like to thank Capcom for making the game. Also the many people that troll, help, flame, and keep the GFAQs board interesting, it was the constant debates over numerous topics, and when I saw the one about probability my interest was sparked. The original carve and capture percentages were gathered from the Monster Hunter Wikia which was translated from the Japanese Guide by Bobofango. If I missed anyone please let me know. I only did compiled the math and made it in a readable manner.

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Copyright 2010 Dean Stensrud

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