Glavenus? Which weapon are you using?
In Iceborne you are forced to use the clutch claw to tenderize the monsters or you will do much less damage, not sure if you are using that mechanic as it can be annoying until you get used to it. If you have Agitator gems they are great in the expansion because you can keep the monster enraged for pretty much 100% of the fight by wallbanging him. Mega demondrug also gives a small damage boost, its not much but every little bit helps.
There are some things you can do like give your palico a paralyze weapon, it will usually trigger at least once every fight. Also give him the damage or buff gadgets.
Daggers right now but I alternate between them, charged blade, greatsword, hammer, lance and glaive. I do use the claw a lot. Especially useful with daggers because if you do a full claw combo you get a free red slinger drop (not sure if it's unique to the daggers but I didn't have that with other weapons), which is a lot of free damage, unless it's the dragon one. Is tenderize the effect where after the claw combo the monster's body part looks like it's covered in cum? I'm actually not sure what it does, but I noticed that if I tenderize a body part that you get grey numbers from hitting it turns into yellow numbers. Does it turn something into a weak point or just straight up reduce defense?
I've been neglecting palico gear since I didn't think it mattered all that much, I'll look into it.
Dagger/Dual Blades benefit a lot from elemental damage so its always better to match your equip to the elemental weakness of the monster you are hunting. Glavenus is weak to water for example.
Yeah, tenderizing makes the part look like its scratched or something like that, it increases your damage a lot and prevents your weapons from bouncing when you attack that part. You could say it reduces the defense of the part (
it actually increases the HZV - hitzone value and your affinity when hitting that part but the effect is the same in the end, numbers go up) so its almost always better to tenderize and focus on the weaker parts of the monsters, like heads or bellies, etc. Its not a flat increase tho, stronger areas will have a higher increase so they are still worth tenderizing if they are easier to reach but usually focusing on the parts that already are weakspots is better.
30 minutes for a first hunt against Master Rank monsters is a good-ish time. 40 minutes is a little on the long side of things but you should probably only really start worrying if you are timing out the hunts. Some monsters wil be much harder/annoying depending on the weapon you are using.
