I think if there’s one thing most fans of Monster Hunter since at least Monster Hunter World can agree on, it’s that hunting large and small gold crowns is an arse-ache. And look, I know it’s always been entirely optional. A right-minded person probably wouldn’t even bother – but who’s right-minded here, really? Anyway it’s tied to a trophy, or achievement if you like, so is it even really optional? Not if you’re serious. And we’re serious. You can tell by our haircuts how serious we are. But in among Monster Hunter Wilds’ smorgasbord of quality of life improvements is the solution. And the kicker is, it’s been there for years. Only now, well, it’s actually useful.
I’m talking about the humble Binoculars, of course, a permanent item that has always been there for no reason whatsoever. Maybe some people liked to cosplay in-game as bird watchers with really poor survival instincts. Who knows?
But the Binoculars in Monster Hunter Wilds, wow. With one teeny tweak they’ve not only become invaluable, but actually elevated one of the game’s most tedious side concerns to something altogether more… well, fun. All you need to do now is get within 50 metres of a monster, look through the Binoculars, and voila! You can see immediately whether or not it has a gold crown and is worth hunting, or a silver crown, in which case it’s apparently there just to piss you about.
What I’ve found most appealing, though, is what it does to the game itself. Generally speaking the endgame in a base Monster Hunter release is a little sparse. It’s grinding endlessly for parts or decorations usually, except in Wilds getting hold of either is much easier than it was in World. There are no god-awful Rampage fights either, and at present the only thing to break up the grind is Event Quests, which are sporadic by nature. Unless, like me, you become a Crown Hunter.
Each large monster can spawn with a large or small crown except, I believe, Zoh Shia. That means you’ve got 56 Crowns to hunt down, and their spawn rate is random. You’ll see them out in the world or when fighting other monsters, and although the fights are no tougher, it gives an extra bit of spice to a hunt.
In World and Rise, the crown hunt was made much more tedious by the fact that you couldn’t see a monster’s crown until you beat it, so you’d have to intuit whether a monster looked particularly big or small when you began a quest. And there were fewer roaming monsters and no open world. Wilds is more like the Guiding Lands from Monster Hunter World Iceborne, with wandering beasts to spy and tackle. Having the Binoculars means you never have to take pot luck, or go through the rigmarole of loading into a hunt just to see a regular sized monster plodding about before smashing your head off the desk four or five times and trying again.
And just like that, there’s another level to Wilds’ open world. Hiding in a bush with a ghillie mantle on so you don’t upset the nearest monster is fun, which is sometimes necessary when mardy little madams like Ajarakan only have to smell the gentle whiff of Brylcream before kicking off, and Mrs Rathian calls in Mr Rathalos if she catches you spying on her from behind a tree.
It’s a wonder Capcom didn’t think of it before, but I’m glad they thought of it at all, as it means I’ll have a lot more fun waiting for the Master Rank expansion to drop thanks to something as simple as a pair of binoculars.
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Monster Hunter Wilds is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X.
