I give up on AT Nergigante.
When AT Nergigante first came out I'd run attempt after attempt after attempt. My closest attempt was one where I got him to where he was limping and his minimap icon had the little skull over it. I fought him for a long while in his den, with the game constanly reminding me of how much time I had left.
"10 minutes left."
"5 minutes left."
This timer caused me to panic slightly, I started taking risks to do more damage hoping that I could get the kill in before the timer ran out.
Those risks caused me to die. 47 minutes engaged with the strongest enemy in the game (besides maybe EX Behemoth?) and I got nothing from it.
Now, that was months. With this whole 5-week event thing, I was hoping I could get more gamma armor pieces, more Kjärr weapons, and more augmentation materials so that I could get a better build to use against this thing.
And that's exactly what I did. I've farmed AT Kushala, AT Teostra, AT Zorah, and AT Kulve Taroth to the point that I have full sets of all their gamma armor (all of which I have gotten to 96 defense per piece) and as any Kjarr weapons as I could care to have.
And today I did a single run against AT Nergigante.
It happened again. The exact same scenario played out. Got him to low health with only one faint, fought him for a while in his den, time started to run out, I played more aggressive and died twice in relatively short succession. Another 45+ minutes wasted.
At this point I figure I've probably spent at least 15 cumulative hours of my life just fighting AT Nergigante, and I have absolutely nothing to show for it.
I wanted to do it now because I didn't want to cheese the fight with G Rank gear once Iceborne comes out, and also before the Iceborne patch nerfs the Temporal mantle. I wanted beat him solo with skill alone using only the materials I could in the game up to that point.
But my morale's just destroyed at this point. I don't care about it anymore.
/rant