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The latest Monster Hunter Wilds Director's Letter addresses upcoming content for it's May update, including more Tempered monsters, weapon balance changes, and playing as Akuma from Street Fighter 6
Yuya Tokuda, the director for Monster Hunter Wilds, has uploaded a Director's Letter recapping all the new content that will be added to the game in its next update, launching on May 28, 2025.
The May Update will include all kinds of new activities for players to indulge in, like a Street Fighter 6 Collaboration quest, new Tempered Monsters to slay, balance adjustments to weapons, and more.
Here are the biggest highlights for Monster Hunter Wilds' May Update (as taken from Monster Hunter Wilds' official website).
Monster Hunter Wilds May Update - Street Fighter 6 Collab
The first major content highlight (and undoubtedly the star of the update), is a collaboration with Street Fighter 6, the latest entry in Capcom's flagship fighting game series.
In this collab, players will embark on several new quests where they will get to interact with Akuma, one of the deadliest fighters in the entire Street Fighter universe. Upon completing these quests, you will get to unlock a special armor set and cosmetic layered armor that transform you into Akuma himself.
Unlike the Akuma armor set previously featured in Monster Hunter Rise, Monster Hunter Wilds' version will grant you special items that grant you the ability to perform Akuma's moves and combos lifted directly from Street Fighter 6.
If you wear the regular armor set and layered set together, it will power up these moves to the point where they could deal significant damage to even the toughest monsters in the game.
Monster Hunter Wilds May Update - More Tempered Monsters
8* Tempered Rey Dau is just one of the many new Endgame threats you will face in Monster Hunter Wilds.
(Image credit: Capcom)
As Capcom stated back in March when they were going to make the game harder, Monster Hunter Wilds' May Update will feature several new 8★ Tempered Monsters to hunt when players reach Hunter Rank 41.
These new 8* Tempered Monsters are Gore Magala, Rey Dau, Uth Duna, Nu Udra, and Jin Dahaad. These buffed up beasties will have more health, better resistence to the wounding mechanics, and have increased stats for multiplayer scaling.
In addition, the spawn rate of higher-difficulty level quests (with multiple monsters and Tempered Monsters with higher strength ratings) will now be increased based on your Hunter Rank.
Monster Hunter Wilds May Update - Weapon Balance changes
It's Hammer time thanks to the new weapon balance changes.
(Image credit: Capcom)
Next up is that the May Update will implement a ton of balance changes to weapons and the game systems, as well as various bug fixes.
While there are too many changes to list here (you can read full patch notes on Monster Hunter Wilds' website for more details), we can say that the Hammer, Hunting Horn, Gunlance, Light Bowgun, and Heavy Bowgun received the biggest improvements.
The aforementioned weapons received massive buffs to their damage output and various tweaks so that each weapon type's moves are easier to pull off.
Monster Hunter Wilds May Update - Miscellaneous
The May Update will give players more reason to stay in the Grand Hub.
(Image credit: Capcom)
Lastly, Capcom listed several quality-of-life improvements and other minor new features that will be added in Monster Hunter Wilds' May Update. These changes (as taken on the official Monster Hunter Wilds website) includes:
- Hunters will be able to rest in the Grand Hub and Suja, Peaks of Accord. Resting restores all destroyed Pop-up Camps.
- A confirmation window will no longer appear after obtaining an item when your item pouch is full. The obtained item will automatically be sent to your item box.
- The visibility of the remaining time of meal effects is improved. The countdown will display 10 minutes before expiration.
- Notifications have also been adjusted in Ver. 1.011. Notification frequency in locales has been lowered, and only high-priority targets will be displayed in the Environment Overview.
- Improvements to Camera behavior during hunts, and joining multiplayer quests for private lobbies and squad lobbies.
- Being able to view the individual endemic life you have captured.
- Optimizations to VRAM usage and fixes to crashes due to insufficient VRAM. (Steam only).
- The rewards for 8★ investigations and field surveys have been increased.
- Guild Point rewards for fishing have been rebalanced.
- Certain whoppers and rare fish have had their rewards increased, while others have had their rewards decreased.
More changes will be coming in Title Update 2, but will they be enough to make Monster Hunter challenging again?
All the new content coming to Monster Hunter Wilds in this update sounds pretty cool, especially if you're a fan of both Street Fighter and Monster Hunter.
Monster Hunter has had crossovers with Street Fighter ever since Monster Hunter 4, but this is probably the craziest one yet, as I've never seen an armor set flat give you an additional move-set on top of your equipped weapon type. I'm curious to see how it will play out and if it will influence the abilities of other collaboration gear in the future.
However, what I'm most interested in is the new batch of 8★ Tempered Monsters. I have gone on record multiple times that Monster Hunter Wilds' difficulty was extremely disappointing for hardcore fans like me.
One of the many major issues I had was that a majority of the monsters (except for 8★ Tempered Arkveld), just felt so weak to fight due to relatively low HP and getting constantly get stun-locked by this game's Wound and Focus Strike mechanics to the point where they couldn't fight back half the time.
Arch-Tempered Rey Dau was the first true challenge for hardcore Monster Hunter fans in Monster Hunter Wilds.
(Image credit: Capcom)
When Arch-Tempered Rey Dau and High Rank Zoh Shia arrived in the First Title Update, I was excited because they were the first monsters I fought in the whole game that posed a real challenge.
They had tons of health, hit like trucks, and they weren't being tripped constantly by attacking their Wounded parts. It was one of the few times I had to put in effort and use the game's combat mechanics to their fullest to achieve victory, and it was a breath of fresh air.
Seeing that resiliency is being applied to the new batch 8★ Tempered Monsters in the May update is a step in the right direction to help make the endgame content more appealing for players.
I want all the monsters (even the Low Rank ones) to be just as scary to fight in-game as they are portrayed in the story cutscenes.
(Image credit: Windows Central | Alex Cope)
However, I would much rather see this sort of balance tweaking be applied to all of Monster Hunter Wilds' monsters (both Low Rank and High Rank), not just the Tempered Monsters.
That way, the Low Rank Story campaign won't feel like a cakewalk tutorial for endgame content anymore as you will be constantly challenged throughout the whole game, be forced to utilize the combat mechanics and armor sets to their fullest potential, and be rewarded with the immense satisfaction of overcoming the odds like the in older games.
Capcom has said that it is planning to make more balance changes in future updates. So hopefully my wishes for Monster Hunter Wilds to be a more challenging game from beginning to end will eventually come to pass, but we'll have to wait to find out.
In the meantime, we'll have Akuma teaching us how to beat monsters with only our fists to busy when the May Update launches for Monster Hunter Wilds on May 28, 2025, for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam.
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