Expect a returning Elder Dragon and a “powered-up monster.”
The official Monster Hunter YouTube channel uploaded a video looking back the trajectory of Monster Hunter Rise, and its expansion Sunbreak, throughout 2022, and a short graphic at the end revealed that the expansion’s fourth free update is set to launch February 2023. It previously had a more nebulous Winter release window. Though it’s nice to get a firmer timeframe, fans may not be the happiest over the update coming towards the latter half of Winter.
As previously revealed, this update is set to bring a “Returning Elder Dragon” and a “Powered-up monster” and though there’s no concrete information of what these monsters will end up being, dataminers over on Reddit did the best with the information they had. It was allegedly understood that the Elder Dragon would be returning from Iceborne, the expansion of 2018’s Monster Hunter World, and that it would be flying.
Most users seem to believe it will be a variant of Velkhana, but others purport it being a completely new Elder Dragon that was planned for Iceborne and later scrapped. The powered-up monster may be a Risen Shagaru Magala, though this is more fan speculation than anything else. Sunbreak still has one final update up its sleeve, slated to release Spring 2023, though it’s unknown what new content it will bring.
Monster Hunter Rise is the latest installment in Capcom’s Monster Hunter series, and it originally released in 2021, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch. It later came to PC in January 2022. Its expansion, Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak came out in June 2022, adding new endgame content to the title, such as a new land to explore, numerous new monsters, and new quests.
Monster Hunter Rise was, for a while, the franchise’s return to Nintendo exclusivity, following Monster Hunter World, which didn’t come to any Nintendo console. Now, Rise and Sunbreak are both available on PC, and it’s also known that the game is coming to PlayStation and Xbox platforms on January 20, 2023, something Capcom confirmed following a recent leak. February is therefore a smart release date for this update, as it would give those new console players more content soon after they jump in.
