What are the best Monster Hunter Wilds settings? Capcom’s latest is a demanding game that will put your GPU and CPU to the test. Many will need to use a mix of DLSS and frame generation to hit acceptable performance and visual fidelity on PC, so it’s perhaps no surprise that it’s a total non-starter on Steam Deck.
While Monster Hunter Wilds doesn’t demand the best graphics card on the market to achieve sound performance, many with older kit are sure to suffer issues unless you opt for the lowest graphical settings. This is especially true when exploring densely packed areas or during intense combat situations. The Monster Hunter Wilds system requirements also highlight that older rigs will have to rely on aggressive upscaling to hit 60fps even at 1080p with low settings.
What are the best Monster Hunter Wilds settings for PC?
Here are the best Monster Hunter Wilds settings for PC users:
- Upscaling: Nvidia DLSS
- Frame Generation: Enable (if possible)
- Upscaling Mode: Quality
- Ray Tracing: Off
- Texture Quality: High
- Texture Filtering Quality: High (ANISO x8)
- Fur Quality: High
- Sky/Cloud Quality: High
- Grass/Tree Quality: High
- Grass/Tree Sway: Enable
- Wind Simulation Quality: High
- Surface Quality: High
- Sand/Snow Quality: High
- Water Effects: Enable
- Render Distance: High
- Shadow Quality: High
- Distant Shadow Quality: High
- Shadow Distance: Medium
- Ambient Light Quality: High
- Contact Shadows: Enable
- Ambient Occlusion: Medium
- Bloom: High
- Motion Blur: On
- Vignette Effect: On
- Screen Space Reflection: On
- Scattering: On
- Depth of Field: On
- Volumetric Fog: High
- Variable Rate Shading: Off
With the above settings, I was able to play Monster Hunter Wilds at an average frame rate of 99fps with 1% lows of 51fps at 2,560 x 1,440. At face value, these numbers suggest the game is quite performant, but there’s more to this than meets the eye.
Without frame generation, average performance is almost halved to just 53fps, with the 1% lows dropping to 32fps. I was constantly at odds with whether to keep frame generation enabled because the screen tearing would become intolerable in densely packed areas with multiple NPCs or during intense combat situations. Without frame gen enabled, these scenes are more visually stable, but you’re losing a good deal of performance.
It may be worth dropping the settings to the medium preset with DLSS and no frame generation and then capping the frame rate to reduce visual instability and input delay issues.
Monster Hunter Wilds reminds me of another Capcom game, Dragon’s Dogma 2, in that it suffers from challenging optimization issues at launch. Capcom eventually worked to improve the CPU-bottlenecked DD2, but it took months.
What are the best Monster Hunter Wilds Steam Deck settings?
Here are the best Monster Hunter Wilds settings for Steam Deck users:
- Upscaling: AMD FSR
- Frame Generation: Off
- Upscaling Mode: Ultra Performance
- Ray Tracing: Off
- Texture Quality: Low
- Texture Filtering Quality: Low
- Fur Quality: Low
- Sky/Cloud Quality: Low
- Grass/Tree Quality: Low
- Grass/Tree Sway: Off
- Wind Simulation Quality: Low
- Surface Quality: Low
- Sand/Snow Quality: Low
- Water Effects: Enable
- Render Distance: Low
- Shadow Quality: Low
- Distant Shadow Quality: Low
- Shadow Distance: Low
- Ambient Light Quality: Low
- Contact Shadows: Off
- Ambient Occlusion: Low
- Bloom: Low
- Motion Blur: Off
- Vignette Effect: On
- Screen Space Reflection: Off
- Scattering: Off
- Depth of Field: Off
- Volumetric Fog: Low
- Variable Rate Shading: Off
I would not advise trying to play Monster Hunter Wilds on Steam Deck unless Capcom releases an optimization patch or a Proton hotfix arrives to improve performance.
At the time of launch, even with all of the above settings turned down to their lowest, and AMD FSR on Ultra Performance mode, you will rarely climb above 20fps. Given the issues I’ve already talked about for PC users, I wouldn’t expect this game to receive a ‘Playable’ rating for Valve’s handheld, and I’ve already outlined this in my Monster Hunter Steam Deck compatibility guide.
Monster Hunter Wilds accessibility settings
Monster Hunter Wilds lacks accessibility features right now with no colorblind mode and limited key or controller rebinding. Expected features such as subtitles (with extended customization options for text size, speaker names, and backgrounds) are available.
I do appreciate the motion sickness setting. This allows you to change the camera sway, lateral camera movement, auto-centering, motion blur, and camera distance. It will be useful for players who suffer from even light motion sickness as the game can be harsh on your eyes, especially in extended combat sequences or during fast-moving cinematics.
How we test Monster Hunter Wilds
At PCGamesN, we use dedicated gaming rigs to test the best settings for performance and gameplay in the latest releases. The test rig used for Monster Hunter Wilds includes the following components: Intel Core i7 11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 12GB, 32GB of DDR4 3200MHz RAM, and MSI B560 motherboard. We also test using Widows 11 64-bit.
We always run our testing first at 1,920 x 1,080 to identify the best settings, then again at 2,560 x 1,440 using the same setup to gauge the difference in performance. We use CapFrameX to capture frame data and compare testing sessions. Due to the issues I’ve highlighted with PC performance, there isn’t much to be gained from dropping the native resolution.
Does Monster Hunter Wilds need an SSD?
Yes, Monster Hunter Wilds does require an SSD, which is mentioned in the game’s official system requirements. As such, you may need to upgrade to one of the best gaming SSD options to ensure you’re not left with long loading times.
How to monitor performance in Monster Hunter Wilds
If you want to keep an eye on performance in Monster Hunter Wilds on PC, we have an easy method that works whether you’re using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.
For Nvidia cards, ensure you have GeForce Experience or the Nvidia App installed and the in-game overlay enabled. Then hit Alt + R in-game to bring up your performance monitor. With AMD cards, you can enable performance monitoring via the Radeon overlay using the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + O.
Alternatively, you can download free software such as CapFrameX or Nvidia FrameView to get a cleaner, more simplified benchmarking tool that works with any graphics card.
For Steam Deck or other handhelds, you can enable performance monitoring in your quick menu and cycle through various levels of detail, from frame rates to GPU and CPU usage as well as power draw.
AMD is offering Monster Hunter Wilds for free with select purchases if you’re in the market for a gaming PC upgrade. You can also check out our best Monster Hunter Wilds builds for each MH Wilds weapon if you’re struggling to optimize your gear.