Iceborne’s developers say that players who have really explored Monster Hunter: World in-depth should have no problems with the expansion’s higher difficulty.
We know a lot about Monster Hunter World’s upcoming expansion, Iceborne, including the fact that you won’t be able to access Iceborne’s content until you finish the main campaign in the base game. This might lead some players who have been lagging behind to zip through the main game’s content in order to catch up with friends and see what’s new in Iceborne.
However, hunters might want to think twice about that plan. According to the developers, Iceborne’s difficulty may come as a bit of a shock to those who haven’t gotten a real handle on Monster Hunter: World’s mechanics.
“I think for players who are going straight from the end of the story from World it’s going to feel a little more difficult when they’re transitioning into the new master rank for Iceborne,” art director Kaname Fujioka told Game Informer in a recent interview. “If it’s players who have been going in-depth into the content for Monster Hunter World and the updates, then they’ll feel a much smoother transition for difficulty than other players will.”
Game Director Daisuke Ichihara reiterated that feeling and stressed that MHW veterans won’t have anything to fear with the leap to Mastery Rank in Iceborne. “We’ve taken great care to make sure that players who are just transitioning straight from World have no fear and have an easy time of getting into the game and enjoying themselves,”
For those still slogging through the main campaign, Iceborne will still be an expansion worth getting. New features, such as a streamlined tracking system, will make finding monsters a less time-consuming task. The Clutch-Claw will also make defeating certain monsters a lot easier.
Iceborne will also drop at the same time as a massive update for Monster Hunter: World which will include a more nuanced difficulty system. Currently, one more than one player is on the same hunt, the game uses a “multiplayer” difficulty setting to give monsters more health and power. However, this difficulty doesn’t take into account the number of players, so having four in a party is always easier than having just two. After Iceborne, difficulty will scale based on the number of players.
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne arrives on September 6th for Xbox One and PS4, with PC to follow later.