Monster Hunter World pre-release PC build crashes a lot, Capcom working on a fix
Monster Hunter World on PC is currently not very stable, but hopefully this will be adjusted before the official launch.
As you've probably seen from all the Monster Hunter World talk and footage out there, the PC version of the game has been available for several days to the press and media.
One of the more common and worrying problems I and many others have faced is the number of crashes. PC Gamer too has run into crashes, and in their cases they were as common as once per hour.
Monster Hunter World doesn't save progress within hunts, so if the game crashes during a hunt, you're going to have to start it over. You can forget time bonuses if this is a co-op hunt as well, because of the time deficit your crash will add to the hunt.
Because these crashes often happen mid-hunt, it also means that any inventory management, crafting, or customisation you did at Astera before you left for the hunt are gone. A common scenario would see players return from a mission, craft a piece of gear, stock up on necessities and maybe craft more if needed before heading back out.
All of that will be lost if you didn't save before starting the next hunt. I've ran into this issue enough that I now save every chance I get. The site reckons it has something to do with Monster Hunter World's CPU utilisation.
Although Capcom previously explained why the game uses some much CPU power to begin with, in this case, it appears Monster Hunter World is overloading any CPU you throw at it to the point that the application crashes. This is not uncommon to see in games, actually, but it doesn't always result in crashes.
In my case, crashes also happened at Astera where no fighting was going on. One crash occurred as I was customising my Poogie's costume.
Thankfully, Capcom is aware of these problems. The publisher told PC Gamer that a fix "is on the way," though it's not clear if that will happen before the game's official launch next week.
Capcom calls the current pre-release build 'beta', so these sort of problems are not shocking. That said, we're hopeful the issue will be addressed before the game's release on August 9.