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Coral Pukei Pukei is a subspecies of Pukei Pukei exclusive to Monster Hunter World Iceborne that uses strong jets of water instead of poison to attack. As such, it poses a big challenge to the unaware hunter. But don’t worry, because this guide will give you everything you need to beat Coral Pukei Pukei.
Before You Hunt: Best Armor Skills & Equipment
Before you fight Coral Pukei Pukei, you need to wear armor or decorations with the Water Resistance and Partbreaker Armor Skills. As most of Coral Pukei Pukei’s attacks are water-based, wearing armor with enough resistance to water is a must. Partbreaker will allow you to cut off Coral Pukei Pukei’s tail sooner, shutting down most of its attacks. Since you should be cutting off its tail as soon as possible, you should use a slicing weapon (pretty much any weapon not named Hammer or Hunting Horn). We recommend the long sword for its reach and damaging combos or the sword & shield for its slicing and guarding.
Coral Pukei Pukei is weakest to the ice element as well as poison, so bring weapons with those attributes.
Coral Pukei Pukei can inflict waterblight, which slows the rate at which players recover stamina. According to the Monster Hunter World wiki, you will be immune to waterblight if you have at least 20 water resistance from your armor pieces and the Water Resistance skill. You can wear armor and decorations that raise the Blight Resistance skill to level three, also completely preventing the status effect to happen, but you also take up space that can be better used for Armor Skills like Weakness Exploit or Partbreaker. You can also remove the status effect by using a Nulberry, Cleanser Booster or Waterproof Mantle.
How to Beat Coral Pukei Pukei
Coral Pukei Pukei attacks by shooting jets of water from its mouth and its tail. All of these attacks have tons of range and deal plenty of damage if you don’t have enough water resistance.
Depending on the attack, the jets of water can go in different directions. Coral Pukei Pukei can shoot water straight ahead from its front before splitting the stream and fanning it out with its tongue. If it points straight down to the ground with its tail, it will shoot out the stream from there and then shoot it out from behind so be sure to roll out of the way to its sides. One of its favorite moves is flying in the air and shooting out the stream at the ground in a wide spiral from the center. Shoot it with Slinger ammo to negate the attack or dodge into the stream so that you can avoid it as it fans out. By far its deadliest attack is where it flips into the air and shoots out a stream that moves from the back to the front; it comes out quickly and can catch you off-guard if you’re busy hitting it with melee weapons.
It can also shoot out globs of water similar to the globs of poison spat out by regular Pukei Pukei, only Coral Pukei Pukei spits out multiple globs in one go. Coral Pukei Pukei tends to follow up its flip attack with this move, which can make you faint quickly. It also shares many physical attacks with its regular counterpart, from its tail swipe (which can easily be identified by how it looks over its shoulder before it uses it) and its tongue attacks.
Your top priority is cutting Coral Pukei Pukei’s tail off as soon as possible because most of its attacks seem to come from the tail. Coral Pukei Pukei is much less of a threat without its tail. Be sure to carve its tail for its valuable Lash, which you’ll need for some top notch gear.
If you fight the Pukei Pukei in the Coral Highlands, it will occasionally come to the blue platforms in area four to drink the water from them. It will shoots water all around while doing this, but this is still a good opportunity to pile on some damage or trap it.
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