One of the more common Subquests for Monster Hunter Tri is getting Ripened Mushrooms. Unlike the two other account item shrooms (Choice Mushroom and Unique Mushroom), the Ripened Mushroom can only be acquired after completing a somewhat tedious process.

To spare you from the same frustration (I spent about 30 minutes on a couple of quests looking for all the mushroom patches in search for one that’ll give me a ripened shroom with no luck), here’s my simple guide to getting Ripened Mushrooms in Monster Hunter Tri.

Ripened Mushrooms can be acquired by killing Altaroths (the large ants roaming the area and shown on the picture to your right). Now before you unsheath your weapon and start killing hapless Altaroths, note that they’ll drop Ripened Mushrooms only if the conditions are right.

If you registered the Altaroth into your Hunter Notes, you’ll get the information that follows so you can skip it, if not please continue on reading because it’s fairly important.

Altaroths wander the land, feed on honey, shrooms, plants and then bring the extract back to their colony. You’ll be able to note returning Altaroths by their bulging bellies. The color of their abdomen indicates what’s inside (getting the clue yet). Now that the basics are done, you can proceed to the guide below:

How to get Ripened Mushrooms in Monster Hunter Tri

1. Do a quick survey of the map (skip this step if you’re already familiar with the stage you’re on). Make sure to take note of where the Altaroths are feeding and any resource patch that they can potentially feed on
2. Harvest all said resource points in the area where the Altaroths are staying except for the white patch of mushrooms (in case you haven’t found out, white patches of shrooms give you Choice Mushrooms). These are what you’ll be feeding these buggers
3. Wait until all three of the Altaroths fill up then start killing them. They’ll be dropping Ripened Mushrooms instead of Insect Husks or Altaroth Stomachs

While I’m linking to an information post on Minegarde, I was able to harvest Ripened Mushrooms before looking anything up. I did however forget how I did it so I ended up doing some google-fu :).
[info via Minegarde]