Monster Hunter Wilds will welcome a “large-scale” expansion later this year.
Addressing fans in a video celebrating the open-world adventure game’s first anniversary, series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto teased that this expansion will be similar to Monster Hunter World‘s Iceborne add-on, but was otherwise coy about the details. He did, however, stress that this will be the “final update” for the monster hunting game.
“We are currently at work on a large-scale expansion similar to Monster Hunter World: Iceborne and Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak for Monster Hunter: Wilds,” Tsujimoto said. “We plan to share more information with you this summer.”
We also learned a little more about the update dropping on February 18, too, including details of Arch-Tempered Arkveld, 10-star Arc-Tempered monsters, a special collaboration with Monster Hunter Stories 3 — a spin-off series that releases next month — plus an anniversary event where all previous awards and quests will be “re-available.”
Players who log in during the anniversary event will receive a free item pack, and each previous seasonal event will return for a weekly rotation. “Almost all” previously released event quests will be made permanent from February 18.
“We have been implementing improvements to game stability and performance since Title Update 4,” Tsujimoto added, “and this update will introduce even further improvements.” Again, we’re told to expect more details closer to the time, so Capcom suggests you monitor its social media accounts for updates.
“While this marks the end of major content updates, the team is currently hard at work on a large-scale expansion to Monster Hunter Wilds,” the team added. “We look forward to sharing the first reveal of the expansion this summer.”
Monster Hunter Wilds has had something of a bumpy ride of late. Title Update 4 arrived at the end of last year and ushered in a long list of gameplay and balance changes, as well as CPU/GPU improvements, load reduction, and the optimization of “PC-specific processes and addition of options and presets to reduce processing load.”
A development roadmap, detailed in December, mentioned plans to address the myriad issues impacting the PC version. However, just last month, one player believed they had discovered that PC performance was dictated by the number of DLCs a user has. Capcom looked into it and concluded they were right, calling it “an unintended bug” that would be resolved with Patch 1.040.03.01.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
