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THE Monster Hunter Wilds Beta didn’t even start on PC, but thousands of players flocked to stare at its early start screen while excitedly grinding away at the prospect of crafting pants using the skin of the poor, poor titular monsters.

Wild Monster HuntersThe beta officially begins on November 1 and will run until November 3 – PS5 players enjoyed a brief early access period, which has now ended. That didn’t stop so many hopeful PC gamers from downloading the taste test early and jumping into… waiting? Since the servers aren’t up and running yet, all you can currently do with the beta is change the language settings and preload the game itself.

According to Steam DatabaseNearly 23,000 people are running the beta client as we speak. I had to update this issue twice while writing this same paragraph, so the already crazy crowd is expected to grow to an even more absurd size in the hours leading up to its release. Monster Hunter is, um, monstrously popular, after all.

The popularity of the hacking and looting series shouldn’t really be surprising anymore, however. Slaying big beasts in search of increasingly strong loot was already a successful formula on handheld consoles at the time, but Capcom’s action series reached new heights with Monster Hunter World and Rise , Who together contribute to nearly half of the franchise’s record 100 million sales. Even in the last six months, the series attracted three million beginners with the sweet scent of monster leather, so Monster Hunter Wilds will probably attract even more savage Numbers. I told you: monstrous.

Prepare yourself by consulting the best Monster Hunter weapons available in beta And how to change your appearance.