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The very first thing you do in Monster Hunter Wilds is hit an Akira drift on a giant bird, which is a non-trivial part of why our Monster Hunter Wilds review is so positive. The second thing you do is fight a Chatacabra, the noob-friendly beginner monster of this game – an armored toad to Monster Hunter World's giant iguana tutorial. This hunt usually takes 3 to 10 minutes, but thanks to an immensely amusing bug, one player says they encountered some sort of Ultra Instinct Chatacabra that they fought for "over an hour."
Reddit user *checks notes* dabs_bud_bongs shared their plight with the Monster Hunter Wilds subreddit last week. "Can’t get past the first monster," they pleaded. "Read below." What follows is a Twilight Realm account of an implacable beast far removed from the plodding and predictable Chatacabra I know and love, so obviously I had to reach out to Dabs – I'm just calling 'em Dabs – to find out what exactly happened.
Their post insists it's "not skill issue or anything," and I fully believe them. "Just literally been fighting it for over an hour and it’s not dying. This first Chatacabra in the intro after selecting your weapon, rescuing the little girl's brother. The quest instructions are 'slay the Chatacabra.'"
The bug in question seems to prevent the quest to fight the Chatacabra from progressing, rather than actually giving it a zillion health. The fight is broken into a guided, move-by-move tutorial that introduces things like Focus Mode and wound destruction, and then the quest proper starts and you get to hunt the thing for real. Dabs, I gather, never made it that far at first due to this bug, and I'm not talking about a Bulaqchi.
"It literally won’t 'slay' this thing," the post continues. "I’m assuming the first fight shouldn’t be over an hour long. I haven't fainted once or anything. I've just been fighting it the whole time. I’ve had to sharpen my weapon at least 15 times now. Probably more. Is this some kind of glitch? How do I get past this. I don’t wanna just keep fighting it for 20 hours lol."
Hilarious and impressive as it would've been to see someone fight the first monster for longer than it takes to finish the campaign, Dabs did eventually restart their game, repeat the tutorial, and slay Chatacabra within five minutes. Now convinced that this isn't a hoax farming Reddit Karma – partly because my Chatacabra fight took maybe 50% longer on PC compared to PS5, though Dabs was playing on PS5 – and curious why this went on for so long, I asked at what point they began to think something might be wrong.
"I have played Monster Hunter previously," they explained. "I’ve played [Generations Ultimate], World and Rise. Probably about 10 minutes in give or take I was like, hmmm this is taking a while for early game. Probably about another 10 mins passed before I finally paused it for the first time. At this point I tried to look up how long this fight should take and couldn’t find anything. So then I was like, okay I’ve done some really long quests before, maybe this is just a part of the story for some reason.
"I played another 15 mins before pausing again. At this time I tried to look up any bugs or glitches but again couldn’t find anything. I also thought it was weird at this point the monster has not ran away or anything yet, it’s just been a steady battle, but not challenging. I played another 10 mins, paused and made my post online while I saved quit and took a break for a little lol."
Dabs says that, apart from functionally infinite health and an adamant refusal to leave the arena, this Chatacabra behaved normally throughout the fight – enrage timers, part breaks, tripping, wounds, the works. And it doesn't sound like their version of Monster Hunter Wilds is just dreadfully busted, either.
"The only other bug I experienced was yesterday actually," they added. "I do not remember the quest but way farther in the game. When the cutscenes and story part ended and the quest began and it came time to actually fight the monster, no controls worked. I couldn’t jump off my riding monster. I couldn’t pull out my weapon. I could only access the start menu and direct where to go directionally." Their lesson learned, they said, "I did not waste much time with this one and instantly saved, quit, restarted and then it worked fine the next time."
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