Capcom announced that on August 4, Monster Hunter Wilds is getting Ver. 1.042 update along with one of its biggest additions yet. No, it’s not the arrival of Arch Tempered Yian Kut-Ku — instead, it will make all Event and Challenge Quests in Monster Hunter Wilds playable offline. Yes, that means it’s a return to the series’ handheld roots, where you don’t need internet to take on special missions and monsters.
According to MonsterHunterHQ’s Event Quest guide, the game currently features 54 Event Quests, with 12 of them unavailable to be played offline. Most of those are the brutal ★9 and ★10 endgame hunts, although the Fender guitar collab is also stuck behind the always-online wall.
With Version 1.042, however, Capcom promises that all Event and Challenge Quests that previously required an online connection can now be played offline. That includes the brutally difficult ‘Special Assignment: Slay Gogmazios,’ ‘Freedom from Solitude,’ and ‘The Dreamer’s Stairway.’ The delightfully devilish festival-exclusive ‘Just What the Doctor Ordered’ is also becoming a permanent addition to the game.
That’s not all, though, as the Version 1.042 update also lays the groundwork for the renewed Monster Hunter Wilds Prologue Demo, which launches on August 5 for PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC. Those who haven’t played the full game will be able to transfer their save data from the demo. The original demo build itself was removed from storefronts after Capcom started cleaning up the base game’s stutters and framedrops with Title Update 4.
Beyond those noteworthy additions, the patch also reorganizes the Event Quest list to be more user-friendly. It also fixes some bugs affecting monsters, like the minor but very noticeable Guardian Fulgur Anjanath’s nose texture glitch. Best of all, of course, another performance improvement. Capcom said it’s putting in ‘measures’ to reduce stuttering when using NVIDIA DLSS with a frame-rate cap.
Funny enough, this isn’t the first time Monster Hunter has locked Event Quests behind always-online requirements. The original Monster Hunter on PS2 made Kirin available only during special event periods and required players to connect online to access the hunt. But Hunters eventually found ways around the restriction using GameShark and Action Replay cheat codes. Monster Hunter Tri on Wii also featured online-only and rotating Event Quests before 3 Ultimate made them permanently available. Then there’s World, which unfortunately still locks the Black Dragon hunts — Alatreon and Fatalis — behind online rooms.
It’s definitely not the most significant update Monster Hunter Wilds has ever received. But for Hunters who hate FOMO and content disappearing into the shadow realm, this might be one of the game’s most important patches yet.
