Monster Hunter Wilds Beta test: Recommended Keyboard & Mouse Settings (GONE WILD)

First, this guide is laid out for QWERTY keyboard users, depending on where you live you might be using a different keyboard layout like QWERTZ, AZERTY or etc and will have to adjust these settings accordingly.

My keybind recommendations are very subjective, you should take, leave or adjust each of my suggestions as it best fits how the game feels to you.

I’m also not really a ranged weapon user, all these keybinds will be for the Melee Weapon Basics. Many of the keys will still carry over but you will have to use your own preferences much more.

And finally, at the time of writing this, this guide is something I whipped up real quick before enjoying the rest of what the Wilds demo has to offer, I am under no illusion that it’s perfect. If you have any additional information you think should be on here for people, alternate keybind recommendations, or just requests for how this guide could’ve been more helpful to you, please comment it and it should serve as good feedback for an updated version upon Wilds’ release.

As you’d expect, you can open your menu with ESC and get a few tabs, Options and etc are on Settings at the end.

If you press R to open the submenu, you could alter things like which tabs are displayed, set up a favourites tab to design your own menu, or show/hide the status display screen on the right, it’s worth tweaking!

Everything in this guide will be in either the Options or Keyboard Configuration (keybinds) sections.

Bear in mind that each tab in the options menu has multiple pages, you can use 1 or 3 to switch page.

Also, in Keyboard Configuration, we now have the handy option to set up specific Profiles, in case you want to use different keybinds for specific weapons.

If you’re unsure about an alternate bind I suggest, you could set up a profile for your main weapon to test it out (use R on either the melee/ranged weapon basics, then select Duplicate, that way any binds you’ve already set up will carry over to the test profile), then you can delete it once you’re done testing.

All of this is being written with Melee Weapon controls in mind because I’m not familiar enough with ranged weapons. Most of this shouldn’t change with ranged weapons, but a few things like keeping Reload as R just makes more sense, so adjust accordingly.

Dash (Press Once)/Sheathe Weapon is how Wilds handles Toggle Sprint as an option. Personally, I have left this as default, I don’t like toggle sprint in Monster Hunter, but some people might feel differently.

Switch NPC Target (Lobby/Camp): Right I have unbound. (Select it, then press Delete to unbind a key) This option is used for if you have multiple interaction targets close together in town, you can switch between them- I haven’t found a situation where this button is really necessary, and leaving this as R causes too many button conflicts.

Open Start Menu unbound from H as a secondary input. I don’t feel like this secondary input is necessary, and it frees up the key.

Guard/Special Weapon Action changed to Ctrl. My muscle memory from previous PC Monster Hunter games like World is why I’m using Ctrl, so if someone new to Wilds thinks using Ctrl for this feels unnatural, you could use a different button, such as perhaps Q or TAB, which are very easy to free up in this control scheme, or stick with R if that’s what feels best to you.

Simultaneous Action (the first one) changed to middle mouse button. You can consider this optional, as this just allows you to press the two mouse buttons simultaneously with a single button. Personally, I’m a Hunting Horn player, the new echo bubble means that being able to consistently do three of these inputs quickly with no accidents is important, so this bind is great for that.

Focus Mode/Aim Slinger With Weapon Sheathed (Press Once) I have bound to Q instead of Alt. If you have no intention to remap the Seikret controls, you can avoid doing this if you’d prefer, I find that Q feels like a good button for this (or maybe I just got too used to using it for Silkbinds in Rise?) Binding this off Alt can also help if you’re very alt-tab happy, like I am.

Equip/Unequip Mantle changed to V, I don’t think it needs to be this close, and this way (provided you rebind Display Keyboard Shortcut to free up V) the C key is now free!

Fire Slinger Ammo (While aiming in Slinger/In Focus Mode) changed to C, this feels intuitive to me. You might want to swap this with the Hook Slinger bind depending on your own preference, or use a different button if C feels weird, I think this is the least likely of my keybinds for other people to prefer.

Select Scoutfly Notification (While Aiming Slinger): Move Down unbound from Q to leave Page Down as the only bind. Not a useful enough button to keep Q hostage.

Note: This section refers to the mounting status effect on hostile monsters, not the Seikret.

Weapon Attack changed to Ctrl, or whatever other button you may have decided to put Guard/Special Weapon action on. If you left it default, you won’t need to touch this. This is only to avoid keybind conflicts.

Call Seikret (Auto/Manual): In Auto mode, your Seikret has a mind of its own, in Manual mode you control it always. Personally, I vastly prefer Manual for most situations and only intend to enable Auto sometimes, so I’ve switched Auto to Y to be out of the way and Manual to TAB to free up Q. Depending on your own tastes, this could differ a lot, though, the use I’ve put for Q isn’t massively important so you could just leave these binds default.

Check Seikret Pouch changed to H, I don’t think this is a very important function and freeing up N is nice.

Display Items(Hold)/Reset Camera changed to R. In layman’s terms, this button holds open the item bar so you can scroll through it. This is the main reason I prefer to change the special attack button from R, this button is right next to E as use item and feels intuitive to me in managing the item bar.

Display Keyboard Shortcut changed to B. This feels like “backpack” so it’s sorta intuitive to me? I want to free up V for other binds and this isn’t a very important button, as you can always just press the actual keyboard shortcut buttons to do the same thing. You could also unbind this entirely, if you’d prefer.

Enable Focus/Target Camera changed to N. Targeting the camera on a monster in Monster Hunter is not really my style anyway, so I just put this one out of the way. You could also use T for “target” if you’d prefer, but you would have to figure out how to remap push to talk, that is T by default- If you aren’t intending to use voicechat anyway, you could just dump push to talk somewhere.

I don’t think there’s anything in here I’m interested in changing personally, but if you never intend to use Push To Talk as mentioned above, it’s here to rebind. I don’t think the game will accept unbinding it outright, though.

Fire SOS Flare unbound, I’d rather not do this on accident.

I won’t mention every option, but I will highlight some important stuff inside this giant options menu you might not initially be aware of, or might want to know where to find.

There’s a filter you can activate with X- Setting this to “Shared + Keyboard + Mouse” will hide any options that only work for controllers, if you never intend to use a controller for Wilds (or vice versa for not intending to use a keyboard) this is handy!

Damage Numbers: You could set these to Display With Decimals (Wilds tracks damage decimal points instead of round numbers now!) if you want precision, or Does Not Display if you don’t like damage numbers.

HUD: Press this to enter a full blown menu where you can review HUD elements and if you’d like to hide, shrink or enlarge them. Personally, I’ve shrunk down a lot of this stuff because I’m playing close to a screen, and hidden Name Display for characters/palicoes as that results in a LOT of clutter in online camps.

On the second page, you can set the Health/Stamina/Sharpness Gauge displays to if you want them seen at all times, or only in combat.

Subtitle Text Size is IMO a bit too big by default for people who don’t need to rely on the subtitles to understand the game- But if you do need the subtitles, you should probably leave it default or as large if you need it.

Ally Hit Effects/Critical Effects can be disabled, if multiplayer hunting is too visually cluttered for your tastes.

On the third page, you can check out the Weapon/Head Armor Visibility settings to adjust your cosmetic appearance a bit, if you’d rather not have the giant weapons or a visible headpiece.

Obscured Hunter Visibility is partially on by default, to make sure you don’t lose yourself if a monster’s in front of the camera. You can adjust the outline’s colour if you don’t want it pure white, or turn it off. (though I recommend leaving it on)

Hide Other Players’ Seikret is off by default, and I recommend leaving it off to avoid confusion/visual clutter.

Seikret Auto-Explore is on by default and personally, I’d turn it off, I don’t really like the automatic navigation.

Support Hunter Settings lets you adjust how NPC Hunters behave. (these guys show up in scenarios like using an SOS flare while you’re offline) If you’d prefer, you can stop them doing potentially disruptive behaviours like mounting the monster. This stuff is overall more helpful than harmful, but if you want support hunters to just be passive DPS without affecting the monster, you can turn all this off.

NOTE: In the demo version, there appears to be a big oversight in how Capcom set up Seikret controls for Keyboard & Mouse. The Seikret Manual Controls options are mistakenly Controller exclusive, so they won’t appear if you have filtered the options to Keyboard only. (This is what lets you change the controls from a traditional videogame horseback style of raising/lowering the speed and steering, to simply holding a direction) I personally recommend Type 2 manual controls.

Auto Sheathe: I HIGHLY recommend disabling this, automatic sheathing can seriously get you killed.

Directional Controls: I personally leave this on Type 2 as that’s what makes sense to my brain (eg. if you are looking to your hunter’s left while attacking, evade while holding W, your hunter evades forward instead of left) but this is personal preference, I recommend testing both settings.

Expanded Item Bar: This is a neat function that lets you display the Item Bar’s full contents at once with an extra button press. You can adjust how it works or disable it.

Slinger Auto Load: With this option, having a slinger ammotype selected in the item bar will have your hunter automatically load it after a moment. Manually loading is faster than auto loading, and I can confirm the slinger loading animation is not freely evade-cancellable, so I personally have turned this off.

Start Menu Cursor Position: I think someone at Capcom bungled this, it doesn’t save your cursor, it saves your selected tab on the start menu. If you leave this on Don’t Save, the menu will reset to the first tab every time you open it, which might be convenient if you have a Favourites menu set up.

Key Bindings: No, not that kind of key bindings, this is for people who want to use the keyboard as a secondary control input like for chat or keyboard shortcuts, while using a controller to primarily control the game.

Shortcut Display: The keyboard shortcut button can be used either to display one set of keyboard shortcuts, or to display most of them at once and let you use the scroll wheel to dash through them. This can be really powerful for letting you select items quickly if you master it, but you should set it to Fixed Four-Row Mode if you want to master that forbidden art. If you’d rather not have the giant popup menu, leave it.

Reverse left and right mouse buttons: Left handed players should give this consideration!

What graphics settings you’re using all depends on your setup of course, I’d just like to highlight that Motion Blur is on the second page, four options from the bottom, so strike that OFF button with the righteous fury of a thousand suns

You can change the Palico Language here back to meows in case you’re regretting your choice.

You can also set various sounds to not play while the game window is inactive, in case you’re literally me and alt-tabbing all the time.