Having more Monster Hunter Wilds DLC installed brings a major improvement to in-game performance, it is claimed.
In their detailed Reddit post, user e_Tylmarande has claimed that the frame rate in Monster Hunter Wilds can dramatically improve simply by owning and having installed all DLC. According to them, the issue originates from how the game checks for DLC ownership. Based on extensive testing across multiple PC configurations, they claim that every piece of DLC not installed triggers a recurring check, creating unnecessary CPU overhead. The more DLC present, the fewer checks the game performs, resulting in significantly better performance. A video of their findings can be seen below.
The Reddit user made this discovery accidentally while logged into a friend’s Steam account with access to all cosmetic DLC. They noticed smooth frame rates and stable performance, even in demanding areas like hub camps. Switching back to their own account while remaining on the same hardware/settings and performing the same in-game actions caused severe drops in performance, sometimes as low as 20 to 25 fps. Repeating the test multiple times yielded the same results.
The user claims to have gone further by “emulating” DLC ownership for research purposes, without unlocking any actual content. This allegedly bypassed the DLC checks entirely, leading to what they describe as “performance going through the roof,” even without boosting CPU clocks or switching to maximum performance power modes. They clarified that this did not grant access to paid items and was only used to confirm the underlying behavior.
The Reddit user mentioned that performance increases almost in a linear manner as the number of detected DLC packs increased, especially between zero and roughly 100 DLC entries. Beyond that point, gains are diminished, likely due to GPU bottlenecks. Tests were conducted on multiple PCs with different hardware configurations, producing consistent results.
Monster Hunter Wilds is available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows PC.
