Image credit: Capcom

Things have been quiet on the Monster Hunter Wilds front since the announcement of its major Ascendance expansion earlier in June. While the base game continues to receive updates, this next one makes one of its most interesting quest types - which previously required an online connection - available to play offline.

Patch 1.042 is set to arrive next week, on 4th August, and it's bringing two major features to the monster-hunting action game. First, Event Quests and Challenge Quests will now be available to play offline.

Event and Challenge Quests are essentially Monster Hunter's sole live service element. These missions rotate weekly, and task players with taking down specific monsters under certain conditions. The rewards for doing so are particularly coveted, as they help with gear and equipment upgrades.

Capcom has also used them to debut some of the more difficult and rare encounters with certain monsters, which meant that players who only play offline missed out on them. This is now being changed.

Image credit: Eurogamer/Capcom

Upon update 1.042's release, all 25 Event and Challenge Quests in the game will be available to accept without the need to be online. If you've played Wilds at any point since their introduction, you should already be familiar with a few of them.

What's not changing is that quests will continue to be available for a limited time, before a new set replaces them. Everything always comes back into rotation, so don't fret if you miss out on something. To help you see what's currently live, the Quest Counter will now show all the available ones at the top.

On the subject of Event Quests, the Just What the Doctor Ordered quest has been added to the list, too, and is likewise playable offline.

Patch 1.042's other big addition is support for save data transfers from the upcoming Prologue Demo. The demo launches a day later, and will be available across PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Capcom said more details about the demo will be announced later. If you buy the full version after playing the Prologue Demo, you'll have the option to transfer your save data - assuming none already exists.

Capcom has been working on changing the perception of Monster Hunter Wilds over the last several months. Though it was immediately a top-seller, it lost players faster than any other Monster Hunter game on Steam. Player sentiment around Wilds has been mixed to outright negative, owing to an assortment of issues that cover everything from performance problems to what many players felt was a lack of challenge in gameplay.

The game's Steam user review rating showed some positive recovery for some time, but tumbled again recently, dropping to Mixed from Mostly Positive. Seemingly as part of the same efforts to attract new players, the game is getting a permanent price reduction on 6th August, alongside new editions that consolidate its various add-ons.

Details on Ascendance, which is set for release in 2027, will be announced over the coming months.

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