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2025-02-28T05:16:41.550Z
Just Chatting doesn’t count, right?
Not bad for a nighttime launch in North America and Europe.
2025-02-28T05:14:12.226Z
(Image credit: Steam)
The Steam Points shop for Wilds is now live with 12 items, including:
- 7 profile backgrounds for 500 points each
- 5 emoticons for 100 points each
2025-02-28T05:02:17.843ZPlayer count watch begins now. How high will Wilds climb on the Steam Most Played chart?
2025-02-28T04:39:07.923Z
How hungry are people for Monster Hunter Wilds?
- It’s been among the top 100 bestselling games on Steam for 12 weeks straight
- It’s the #1 wishlisted game on Steam, beating out Hollow Knight: Silksong, Elden Ring Nightreign, Dune: Awakening and Borderlands 4
- Its predecessor Monster Hunter: World is still drawing some 50,000 simultaneous daily players more than six years later
2025-02-28T04:00:15.782ZMonster Hunter Wilds unlocks on Steam in another 59 minutes. Anyone else trying to squeeze in a full Balatro run before then? Where’s my Friends of Jimbo monster pack, anyway? I need a Meowscular Chef Joker.
2025-02-28T03:23:44.622Z
(Image credit: Capcom)
In addition to our general Monster Hunter Wilds tips, we’ve got some advice geared towards what you should do from the very start of the game when you begin your adventure. These aren’t specifically “beginner’s tips” for new hunters—they’re for everyone jumping into Wilds!
7 things to do first in Monster Hunter Wilds
2025-02-28T02:49:59.318Z
(Image credit: Ridog8, Capcom)
This game isn’t even out yet and there are 26 mods on the Nexus page. Perhaps the beta gave modders the files they needed to tinker with? A couple that immediately caught my eye:
2025-02-28T02:33:26.248ZWelcome to Monster Hunter – Presented by Daisy Ridley – YouTube 
Remember when Capcom got Star Wars’ Rey Skywalker to narrate an overview of the Monster Hunter series? That was kinda strange. Not that I’m complaining! I’m just wondering if she plays Long Sword or what. (Somewhere the one guy who hasn’t mentally suppressed the ending of Rise of Skywalker is shouting “Dual Blades!!!”).
Do you think they asked Milla Jovovich first?
2025-02-28T02:06:12.245ZThis is what we all really care about, isn’t it?
*Eric Andre rattling the gates to the Steam download servers* Let me iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnn!!!!
We’ve all still got a bit of a wait: Monster Hunter Wilds goes live on PC in just 3 hours. We’ve got a MH Wilds release times post dedicated to the full timezone breakdown, but here’s the all-important chart that makes it easy to grok at a glance.
(Image credit: Capcom)
Reminder: If you haven’t downloaded Wilds yet, it does allow preloading. Get on it before those servers get hammered!
2025-02-28T01:46:51.358ZCheck out our video tour of Monster Hunter’s journey from not-so-beloved PS2 dino-battler to Capcom’s bestselling game of all time with 2018’s World.
Speaking of 2018, when World was releasing on PC we published an even more in-depth look at Monster Hunter’s history: How Monster Hunter rose from niche import to an international sensation. Former Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine editor James Mielke was there in 2003 the first time Capcom ever showed Monster Hunter to press—call him fan #1. Here’s an excerpt from his first-hand account:
“Capcom showed us plenty of other games, but Monster Hunter was all I wanted to know about. I expected plenty of button-mashing and sword swinging, but the dev team had other ideas. The producer who took the podium said that instead of using the usual button schemes to attack, weapon moves would be mapped to the right-analog stick to simulate the heft and feel of a broadsword.
As progressive as this idea was, the execution was weak, and the game was not a hit when it came out in 2004. Whether it was the basic concept or the actual hands-on experience, the first Monster Hunter just didn’t click with the masses, and the next couple of expansions and sequels would stay in Japan. It wasn’t until Monster Hunter Freedom 2 that we’d get another taste…
Unfortunately the advent of ad-hoc multiplayer didn’t do much for me in the US, as none of my friends or co-workers were really putting much time in on their PSPs. But thanks to a tedious half-hour morning commute on San Francisco’s 38 Geary bus line, I had a lot of time on my hands. So a-hunting I would go, solo. Through the years, each expansion and sequel would add slightly better graphics, new villages, different NPCs, tougher ranks, more gear, and—once the series hit 3DS—extensive DLC. None of this changed my monster hunting fortunes, though. I was primarily a solo hunter in the U.S. wishing I was a Japanese kid in Tokyo.
The majority of Japanese school kids live in densely populated urban environments. During my trips to Japan it was common to see four or more kids gathered under a tree by their school, outside a ‘conbini’ (convenience store), or even on a train playing Monster Hunter together. While I was running around solo on my PSP, rank 3, slowly grinding out quests, these 12 year-olds were probably taking down an HR9 Rajang like it was nothing…
Eventually I moved to Japan for about five years—not to play Monster Hunter, but to work for game developer Q Entertainment, though I can’t deny it was a pretty sweet perk. I suddenly and miraculously had no shortage of access to skilled Monster Hunter players. One thing you can rely on with Japanese gamers is that when something’s hot, everyone is playing it.”
2025-02-28T00:53:41.515Z
(Image credit: Capcom)
PC Gamer hardware writer Nick Evanson put Monster Hunter Wilds through an intense battery of tests on four different hardware configurations to pin down just how demanding the game is on both CPUs and graphics cards. How does Wilds compare to last year’s Dragon’s Dogma 2, an open world RPG that also ran on Capcom’s proprietary RE Engine? In his Dragon’s Dogma 2 performance analysis Nick wrote that the game will “take everything your PC has and still want more,” and not too much has changed in the past year.
There is a spot of good news, though: Wilds “is far less of a CPU hog than Dragon’s Dogma 2,” Nick wrote in his Monster Hunter Wilds best settings guide.
Here’s a quick overview:
“I can say right now that frame generation isn’t a must, as one can get a reasonable enough level of performance without using it. However, upscaling certainly is… There is an enormous array of graphics settings one can tweak but Monster Hunter Wilds doesn’t run super fast, even on high-end PC hardware, and many of the settings barely make any difference to the frame rate.
…given how much resolution affects the game’s performance, I strongly suggest using upscaling at all times, unless you happen to have a Ryzen 7 9800X3D paired with an RTX 4090 or 5090. With upscaling and where possible, frame generation, Monster Hunter Wilds does run pretty well but the fact that these graphics features are required for decent performance won’t be pleasing to many a PC gamer.”
For a budget PC, running hardware comparable to an RTX 3060 Ti and a Ryzen 7 5700X3D, we recommend the settings outlined here for smoother performance around 90 frames per second (with Frame Generation enabled). Note that on some of our systems Frame Generation has caused issues with crashing, however, so if you run into the same problem you may have to disable it until a patch arrives.
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(Image credit: Capcom)
(Image credit: Capcom)
(Image credit: Capcom)
2025-02-28T00:12:39.202ZCapcom’s designed more than 250 monsters(!!) for the series over 20 years, with many of its creatures returning game after game with updated designs or new moves. That legacy means longtime fans may well have a favorite monster that they’ve been fighting for literal decades.
I didn’t get into Monster Hunter until the series arrived on PC with World, so my list of favorites skews newer. Here are the beasties with my favorite designs, or that are my favorite to fight:
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Nergigante(Image credit: Capcom)
Paolumu(Image credit: Capcom)
Arkveld(Image credit: Capcom)
Rey Dau(Image credit: Capcom)
Vaal Hazak(Image credit: Capcom)
Rompopolo(Image credit: Capcom)
Odogaron(Image credit: Capcom)
2025-02-27T23:46:24.158Z
(Image credit: Capcom)
In 2004, Capcom established the core of the Monster Hunter arsenal which remains to this day:
- Great Sword
- Hammer
- Lance
- Sword and Shield
- Dual Blades
- Light Bowgun
- Heavy Bowgun
Those weapons have unsurprisingly evolved quite a bit over the years, and seven more weapons have made their way into the series and stayed there ever since. Only a few others have been exclusive to particular sequels or spin-offs.
Now what about new weapons? The youngest monster-skinners are the Insect Glaive and Charge Blade, which were introduced in Monster Hunter 4 in 2013. Will we ever see a 15th join the roster? According to Capcom, it’s a topic of heavy internal discussion, but they’ve given themselves a hard act to follow.
2025-02-27T23:00:06.199Z
(Image credit: Capcom)
Without looking it up, which of Monster Hunter Wilds’ 14 weapons do you think debuted in the original PlayStation 2 game released in 2004?
I’ll give you a hint: There were seven weapons in the original, and two of them were ranged.
Answers in the next post!
2025-02-27T22:04:40.077Z
(Image credit: Capcom)
Wilds makes some interesting (and overall good!) changes to cooking: It’s quicker and more convenient than ever, letting you whip up a meal while you’re out in the world looking for your next prey. The new ingredient system also makes you think a bit more about what items you’re using to get specific buffs, and when.
But as Morgan wrote about this week, having to cook his own meals left a Meowscular Chef-shaped hole in his heart:
“The magic of the Meowscular Chef was the ritual: He was the last stop before starting a quest, dutifully feeding his hunters like a parent waiting by the front door with a lunchbox. The solo cooking of Wilds is practical, convenient, and serves Wilds’ new sandbox approach to hunting. But it’s not warm, fun, or social.”
2025-02-27T21:38:10.673ZCapcom has clearly noticed people debating whether Wilds is too easy, because today’s announcement that the first title update is coming in early April included this tidbit:
“A New Level of Challenge! Prepare your gear, and resolve, hunters! TU1 will bring with it a monster of formidable strength at a level above Tempered! Another challenging monster will also await you!”
As we noted on our Monster Hunter Wilds roadmap, Capcom had already promised to deliver the new monster Mitzutsune in the first free update. Could the wording above mean there’s another new monster on the way, too, or should we just expect a powered-up version of one of the existing Wilds fights? Sounds like it’ll be a punishing beast, whatever it is.
2025-02-27T20:54:03.436Z
(Image credit: Capcom, Nvidia)
Would you look at that: Nvidia released a new Game Ready driver today, and called out Monster Hunter Wilds launching with “DLSS Frame Generation, DLSS Super Resolution, and ray-traced reflections.” Unfortunately we don’t get any details on whether this driver release includes any optimizations or fixes specific to Wilds, but you’re probably better off installing it than not.
If you wait until after launch to update drivers you’ll end up sitting through shader recompilation all over again, and those are precious minutes you could spend hunting instead.
2025-02-27T20:24:59.580Z
(Image credit: Capcom)
Capcom’s latest makes some big changes from its predecessors—and most of them pay off, as reviewer Lincoln Carpenter dives into in loads of detail in his 85% Monster Hunter Wilds review. With a decade of experience with the series under his belt, Lincoln came into Wilds ready to feel out how it’s evolved from past games. Here’s the topline takeaway:
“If there’s a word for Wilds, it’s streamlined. Sword fighting with tyrannosaurs and stitching their bits into belts is no longer chopped up between quest-sized chunks. Following a more straightforward, cinematic story, Wilds gives way to a seamless wilderness of rotating seasons and roaming beasts, where any hunting prep can be done in the moment and on the fly. It can feel like a wonder, but it’s not a wonder without a cost. In providing as much monster hunting as possible, Wilds has given up some of Monster Hunter’s charm.
But god, it feels good to fight those lizards. Throughout my almost 70 hours with Wilds, I could feel the 20 years of iteration behind its combat design. Hunting, as a rule, is a well fed occupation, but the latest round of tinkering with Monster Hunter’s 14 weapon types is a feast for every style of wyvern-slayer. Next to the flashy new attacks, fundamental bow and bowgun revisions, and Focus Strike finishers, there’s a subtler artistry in design here that’s easy to overlook. Small, considered tweaks—like new windows for adjusting your footing at the tail end of attack animations—make Wilds the smoothest Monster Hunter fighting has ever felt without sacrificing its meaty texture.”
The rest of our review breaks down where Wilds’ streamlining helps and hinders it, the impressive strides Capcom’s made in its storytelling, and what we make of the new environmental systems. Lincoln couldn’t tear himself away from Monster Hunter over the last couple weeks—except when the game forced him to take a break by crashing, an issue he encountered disappointingly often (seemingly due to DLSS Multi Frame Generation). Fortunately for other members of the team crashes were much less common, and disabling Frame Gen seemed to clear up his issue.
2025-02-27T20:11:11.673Z*taps mic* Is this thing on?
As I write this we’re exactly nine hours away from Monster Hunter Wilds’ release time on PC. A few lucky console players in futuristic timezones like “New Zealand”—questionably a real place—are already playing while the rest of us stare at Steam waiting for that beautiful green Play button to light up.
As consolation, I offer up a picture of some Palicos. And meat.
(Image credit: Capcom)
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