LogFAQs > #891922113

So the best way to understand mounting is to think of it almost like a status effect. Any attack you do while jumping inflicts mounting damage. The monster has what you could call a mounting damage threshold and once you've done enough mounting damage to hit that threshold you will successfully mount the monster. Afterwards their mounting damage goes back down to zero, and their threshold for the next mount increases so it will take more jumping attacks to be able to do it again.

As I mentioned this is almost identical to how status effects work against monsters in this game too. The only difference there is that accumulated status damage slowly goes away on its own. So for example, say a monster needed 500 poison damage to actually become poisoned. You couldn't deal 499, wait ten minutes, and then deal 1 more and get them poisoned, because a lot of that status damage would have been healed. But mounting damage doesn't work this way, it remains accumulated regardless.
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