Monster Hunter Wilds is rounding out its one-month anniversary with a major patch later this week. It’ll add new features and monsters to the game, as well as some urgent stability improvements on PC where performance has remained pretty abysmal since launch.
“The team is continuing to identify stability issues and make improvements where possible, especially on the Steam version,” Capcom director Yuya Tokuda wrote in a letter to fans. “This will be an ongoing process, where we’ll aim to make continual steps forward in this area and respond to critical issues.”
Specific fixes called out for the update arriving April 4 include “a reduction in VRAM usage and an upgrade to the DirectStorage version,” with more stability improvements in future patches. Reading between the lines, it sounds like things will be better on PC following the update but there’s still a lot more work to be done.
Monster Hunter Wilds was loudly criticized at launch on PC for being poorly optimized, with players facing lots of framerate stuttering and even frequent crashes in the worst cases. Digital Foundry’s analysis concluded there were major performance issues that needed to be addressed, and players even started trying to tinker with typos in configuration files to see if they could magically get better framerates as a result.
Despite the issues and flood of negative Steam reviews, which still sit below 70 percent positive, the game surged in popularity on PC. It’s now gone on to sell over 10 million copies in its first month. All of those players will have more than just PC fixes to look forward to in this week’s Title 1 update. Mizutsune, a High-Rank version of Zoh Shia, and Arch-tempered monsters will be added alongside a Grand Hub for easier player socializing and quality-of-life and balance adjustments (hammers are in for a buff).
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