Monster Hunter World guide: How to beat the Barroth

The Barroth is one of Monster Hunter: World’s biggest early game beasts. This hard as rocks monster will easily charge through you without even noticing you’re there. The Barroth also introduces two new mechanics. It’s is covered in a hard shell that requires extra, low-damage prying to remove. The Barroth will also cover itself in mud and sling it at you. If you aren’t careful, you’ll find yourself stuck in one of this great beast’s mud traps.

In this guide, we’ll teach you how to rid the Barroth of its muddy coat and hunt it down.

When you’ll fight the Barroth

The Barroth will be your fourth encounter with a monster through assigned quests. This mission, The Best Kind of Quest, sees you escort some friendly researchers through a new area, the Wildspire Waste. While you’ll briefly encounter a Rathian, all you need to do is distract it with your slinger to get by. By quest’s end though, you’ll be tasked with taking down a Barroth. You have 50 minutes to do all of this and will be rewarded with 2,520 zenny.

Where you’ll find the Barroth

Finding the Barroth is easy. Whether in the quest or just out on an expedition, the Barroth hangs out almost exclusively in sector 8. It should be moseying around the great sand pit.

The Barroth will come pre-soaked in mud. This will change how it fights and how you should fight against it. Once you’ve removed the mud with successive strikes (or your slingshot and some watermoss) and dealt enough damage, the Barroth will retreat. This is common behavior in most monsters, but this is far less appealing when facing down this rock behemoth. The Barroth will run down between sectors 12, 11 and 9. These all have mud puddles for the Barroth to reapply its coat.

The best way to prevent a Barroth from reaching one of these spots is to attempt to reengage the fight immediately. Breaking off a piece while the Barroth is in transit works great here, so hit it hard and fast whenever you can. Traps are also great for turning the beast’s rage back toward you.

The Barroth’s weak spots

Grid View

• Capcom
• Capcom
• Capcom

The Barroth isn’t really known for its weaknesses. Instead, it’s Monster Hunter: World’s equivalent to a tank. While the Barroth can’t really deal massive damage in a big burst, it can make your attacks bounce off and trap you in mud.

The first thing to remember about the Barroth is that you should try and stay away from attacking its head. Putting yourself in front of the beast’s beady little eyes is a great way to get a swift head-butt from a very large monster. Instead, you should attack the Barroth from behind or to its side.

Although they’re a weak spot, a Barroth’s arms are hard to hit unless you have a vertical striking weapon like the hammer. The tail is a much easier to hit weak spot. Focus on it. Attacking the Barroth’s thighs is also great, although the damage will be fairly low until you break off its armor plating and clear it of mud.

Preparing to fight the Barroth

When it comes time to eat your pre-Barroth meal, look for something to boost your attack and stamina. If you’re armor is old or you haven’t upgraded it, you’ll have trouble staying healthy. But if you’ve crafted yourself something like the bone set, you should be able to stay alive.

An attack boost will help you remove pieces of the Barroth’s armor faster, making you deal more damage and kill it before it can get more mud. Stamina will help you stay moving. Since dodge rolling is a great way to avoid the Barroth’s slow attacks, this can be very helpful.

Weapons

You can’t go wrong with the hammer for this fight. It can pummel the Barroth’s armor, breaking it down to almost nothing and popping it off.

Elements

The Barroth’s elemental weaknesses are odd. Ice (two stars) and dragon (️one star) work all the time. However, fire and water behave strangely. If the Barroth is covered in mud, fire is ineffective. But fire is extremely effective (three stars) against a bare Barroth. Water is the exact opposite (three stars when covered in mud and ineffective without mud). Thunder is never effective, so stay away from it completely.

Ailments

If you’ve killed the Pukei-Pukei a few times, you may be able to build a poison weapon. Poison, blast and paralysis, are extremely potent against the Barroth (three stars each). Sleep (two stars) and stun (one star) are less effective.

Items

In terms of item preparation, traps are what you really want to take with you. Being able to pit fall (trap tool and net) a Barroth or shock trap (trap tool and thunderbug) one will keep it from running away.

Capcom

The Barroth fight

Fighting a Barroth is only tough if it’s attempting to trample you or slinging mud everywhere. Most of the Barroth’s attacks are charges or head-butts. However, when covered in mud, it can start shaking rapidly, tossing mud piles everywhere. If you get stuck in one, you’ll have to keep dodge rolling until you make it out. If you can avoid the clumps while the beast is shaking, this is actually a great time to go for the Barroth’s tiny arms.

Once you’ve beaten the Barroth half to hell, its mud coating will begin to chip away. The Barroth will now take different damage and lose its mud-based attacks (which we detailed above). This is also when the Barroth may start thinking of running away. Note that blast and water weapons (like watermoss in your slinger) tend to remove mud very quickly.

If you’re dealing with a mudless Barroth, then the head is all you have to worry about avoiding (beyond the usual tail swipe and trample). At this point, the goal should be to attack the Barroth from its back until it dies.

The great thing about the Barroth fight is how many hills are in sector 8. Sliding and jumping off hills is a great way to either mount the Barroth or do serious damage to it with an aerial combo. To do these moves, keep your weapon out and run down a hill before tapping your attack button.

After some patience and a short mud bath, the great Barroth will go down. Time to carve yourself a new set of armor.