How to change appearance in Monster Hunter Wilds beta

The Monster Hunter Wilds change appearance option is free-to-use in the MH Wilds Beta, but if history is any indicator, that's unlikely to be the case when the full game comes around in February. That means it's all the more important to understand how to edit your character and change the appearance of both your hunter and your palico pal now, as this feature is probably going to be paywalled once the beta is over. With that in mind, we'll explain how it's done.

How to change your character appearance in Monster Hunter Wilds

To change appearance in Monster Hunter Wilds beta, you do so from the main menu when you start the game, as follows.

1. Select "start game".
2. Select the character/save file you wish to change the appearance of.
3. Press "Edit Character" (Square on PS5 controller).
4. Choose whether you want to edit your Hunter or your Palico's appearance.
5. You'll then be brought to the character creation screen to redo the experience as you did at the start of the game.

The beta gives players infinite "Character Edit Vouchers" and "Palico Edit Vouchers" as a default, and mentions that "Edits can be made at any time during the beta test period". 

This seems to confirm the same system as last time: in Monster Hunter Rise, changing character appearance in any meaningful way required one of these vouchers, which were consumable microtransactions and used up each time. It seems as though the full release of MH Wilds will have the same paid system, but the beta gives players free reign to tweak and customise at their leisure - and considering that players can import their characters from the beta to the main game, that makes it all the more important that you make sure your playable hunter and Palico are just right, perhaps even more so than mastering all the best Monster Hunter Wilds weapons.

How to change appearance without vouchers

If you want to change the appearance of your character in Monster Hunter Wilds beyond swapping out armor, and without spending money on vouchers, this is how you do so:

1. Go inside the Main Tent in the Hunter's Base Camp
2. Scroll to the right-most tab in the menu
3. There'll be an option to "change appearance."

While this technically does what it says, it is nonetheless an inferior - but free - version of character creation that does not require a voucher. Here players can't edit facial or body features, instead tweaking certain cosmetic elements such as:

• Hair, Eyebrows and Facial hair
• Voice pitch
• Eye Color
• Bearing (aka walking animations)
• Voice Pitch (but not the voice itself)
• Clothing and Underclothes
• Makeup and face paint
• Palico cosmetics and fur

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