Following Free Title Update 2, Monster Hunter Wilds’ 1.021 update focuses on increasing the difficulty for endgame players. New quests featuring 9-star Tempered monsters (Gore Magala, Arkveld, Rey Dau, Mizutsune, Lagiacrus, Seregios, Nu Udra, Uth Duna, and Jin Dahaad) have been included, providing bigger challenges and more valuable rewards. These higher Tempered monsters should still behave like their lower difficulty counterparts, but have more health and deal more damage.
As a reward for hunting or capturing these new 9-star Tempered monsters, players will be rewarded with new Glowing Stone appraisal items. These Glowing Stones transform into Appraised Talismans with randomly assigned attributes that include armor and weapon skills. While Gemma cannot upgrade these talismans at the Smithy, Appraised Talismans feature additional decoration slots for both armor and weapons skills – allowing for more build options and customization that players so desperately crave.
To help players deal with these stronger beasts, the duration of meal effects has been lengthened so that buffs applied before starting a quest will have a lesser chance of running out. Armors with a rarity of 5 or higher have also had their upgrade limits increased, providing a slight increase in defense.
11 weapon types have also been buffed, including the Great Sword, Long Sword, Sword & Shield, Dual Blades, Hunting Horn, Lance, Switch Axe, Charge Blade, Insect Glaive, Light Bowgun, and Heavy Bowgun. In addition to damage improvements, the developers have improved the accessibility and expanded the movesets for several weapons, making them easier to use and allowing for more playstyle creativity.
Capcom is aware that endgame content during the early months of Monster Hunter Wilds’ release leaned too heavily on hunting a Tempered Arkveld. To prevent scenarios like this from happening again, the developers have adjusted the 9-star Tempered monsters so that the difficulty, average hunting time, and rewards for hunting each one are balanced. Free Title Update 3, which is set to arrive in late September, will include more 9-star Tempered monsters for players to hunt.
Patch 1.021 is now live for Monster Hunter Wilds, which is available on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam).
