Monster Hunter Wilds is a solid entry for the long-running Capcom series, but its performance on Steam Deck has been underwhelming to say the least. Still, you may want to grind some gear on lunch break or play a quick sesh while family and friends use the TV.
While still far from ideal, we have compiled the most optimal Steam Deck settings for Monster Hunter Wilds.
Is Monster Hunter Wilds Steam Deck verified?
Optimization is currently the greatest flaw of Monster Hunter Wilds. Even players with the most powerful RX 7900 XTX graphics cards are running into frame stutter and graphics bugs. On Steam Deck, it’s much worse, but it’s still playable… marginally.
According to Valve’s own internal optimization standards, Monster Hunter Wilds isn’t Steam Deck Verified.
But before you get disappointed, this doesn’t mean it cannot be played on Steam Deck; of course it can be. Valve just can’t promise a smooth experience to the players.
Despite Steam Deck optimization woes, Monster Hunter Wilds currently sits as the seventh most-played game on Steam Deck, down from the fifth spot just a week ago. So, clearly, many players continue to enjoy the satisfying grind and sense of fulfillment that monster hunting can give on a handheld device like Steam Deck.
Monster Hunter Wilds: Best Steam Deck settings
In general, it’s a good rule of thumb to toggle everything to its lowest possible setting to ensure the framerate doesn’t succumb to the dreaded single digits. However, we still recommend you keep Frame Generation enabled due to the DLSS 3 artificially adding frames when things get overburdened.
Additionally, keeping the texture quality at medium instead of its lowest setting doesn’t destroy the framerate too much while keeping the graphics somewhat presentable. Here are our recommended settings for Monster Hunter Wilds on Steam Deck:
- Upscaling: AMD FSR
- Frame Generation: Enable
- Upscaling Mode: Ultra Performance
- Upscaling Sharpness: .50
- Texture Quality: Medium
- Texture Filtering Quality: Lowest
- Fur Quality: Medium
- Sky/Cloud Quality: Low
- Grass/Tree Quality: Low
- Grass/Tree Sway: Disable
- Wind Simulation Quality: Low
- Surface Quality: Low
- Sand/Snow Quality: Low
- Water Effects: Disable
- Render Distance: Low
- Shadow Quality: Lowest
- Distant Shadow Quality: Low
- Shadow Distance: Near
- Ambient Light Quality: Low
- Contact Shadows: Disable
- Ambient Occlusion: Off
- Bloom: Low
- Motion Blur: Off
- Vignette Effect: On
- Screen Space Reflection: Off
- Scattering: Off
- Depth of Field: Off
- Volumetric Fog: Low
- Variable Rate Shading: Performance
One last setting we recommend is located under the Performance tab of your Steam Deck options. Setting the Frame Limit to 30 will ensure that performance isn’t radically jumping around and crashing the game. Frames very rarely go above 30 for Monster Hunter Wilds on Steam Deck anyway, so it’s best to cap it there to better optimize it together with the graphics.
If the built-in Steam Deck settings aren’t making things any better for you, there’s a new optimization mod out now called “The Little Engine That Couldn’t.” This mod provides a comprehensive configuration setup for Monster Hunter Wilds on Steam Deck, covering both OLED and LCD models. If you don’t want to manually configure the settings, check it out and it’ll input them automatically for you based on preference. Here’s a link to the mod.
That does it for our recommended Steam Deck settings for Monster Hunter Wilds. Unless you’re in a situation that demands handheld play, or you don’t mind framerates averaging around 20 or so, we don’t recommend playing Monster Hunter Wilds on Steam Deck. Check out our recommended PC settings for Monster Hunter Wilds if you want a more optimized, though still not ideal, experience.
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