5 days ago
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It's no secret Monster Hunter Wilds' optimisation, especially in its PC version, has been a bit cheeks even if updates have slowly tried to bite through its many technical issues. The game has been good fun otherwise, but even at 11m copies sold, its momentum slowed quite a bit following a huge launch.
January is now almost over and the game's first anniversary is near. True to its word, the Monster Hunter developer has now deployed a Steam-exclusive patch which marks the second chapter in the performance improvements roadmap set in late 2025 by Capcom.
The patch notes for Ver.1.040.03.01 were shared on 28th January alongside the big update, which also targets the unintended FPS drops in the Base Camp and Grand Hub oddly tied to unclaimed content discovered by a Reddit user a couple of weeks ago. "To further improve stability and performance across all platforms, additional improvements will be implemented in the Ver. 1.041 update on February 18," the post added.
The major additions and changes target the CPU/GPU load, with shader processes outside the initial one now reduced to lower CPU load during normal play, improved streaming of textures to reduce VRAM usage, and a reworked High Resolution Texture Pack (optional download) which uses less VRAM and takes up less space.
Players will now also find a chunky CPU tab if they go to the crowded Options menu, with extra non-graphical settings tied to CPU load now available; these include frame skips and limited numbers of smaller creatures, among other things. They might not make much of a difference for beefy builds, but those with slower CPUs could claw some performance back.
Graphic settings have also gained a few new categories and extra quality levels. Moreover, the typically heavy Volumetric Fog setting has received three lower options and renamed its "High" setting to "Highest" in case you don't need top-notch fog rendering.
In my own post-patch experience, performance has seen improvements across the board even if RE Engine's limitations when it comes to open levels (something Dragon's Dogma 2 also suffered from) are still there. Two particularly taxing locations, the main camp located at the Windward Plains and the more watery Scarlet Forest area, have seen a welcome bump of up to 20 FPS on average. Mind you, my PC rig isn't a low-tier one, but without using the Frame Generation option (on top of DLSS), those zones usually were sub-60 FPS. Now they're well above that mark and much higher with the FG x2 boost enabled. Overall, the game seems more stable and less stuttery to boot.
On the game's Steam forums, the early sentiment is positive so far, with players reporting FPS gains and a less hiccup-y experience overall. A few users are even pushing for more positive reviews following the update (the game currently sits at Mixed), but it'll take a while before the community's thoughts coalesce. On the other hand, some veterans are remaining unimpressed by the tweaks.
As a reminder, this is just the second phase of Capcom's ongoing efforts to improve the game's health ahead of a rumoured Switch 2 port and a potential large expansion which adds to the game's free endgame content updates, which appear to be done now. Hunters on consoles needn't download this PC-only patch.
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