The main point of this new patch is to fix some of the known issues and bugs introduced with TU1, and solve a couple of other issues that have been lingering there for a while.
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.
The new Monster Hunter Wilds patch fixes the slightly hilarious bug that caused the game to crash when you spoke to Nata and specifically requested trading with Sekka. When the bug was first identified, Capcom asked players to just fire up the BBQ and wait before trying again. That is, thankfully, no longer necessary.
With many Wilds players now firmly in the endgame, a lot of the focus has now shifted to the newly-introduced Arena Quests. As more of those quests are played, however, an unusual bug kept popping up. The bug caused the Powercharm and Armorcharm to be added to your pouch whenever you decided to bring them to the quest, but that has now been fixed.
On the topic of Arena Quests, some require you to use specific weapons the game chooses for certain fights, but crafty players managed to break that and bring their own weapons – well, no more.
Switching over to the slightly bizarre and unusual bugs, certain cutscenes – in some cases – go rogue and decide not to respect the voice pitch settings you’ve chosen for your Hunter and Palico. So, if you’ve not been skipping cutscenes, and noticed that your pals sound different, this is why – though you thankfully won’t have to worry about that anymore.
Yes, sometimes your Palico sounds different. | Image credit: Capcom
That one might only break your immersion, but one other cutscene bug actually caused a progression block involved your Palico refusing to get on the Seikret to progress the story, which has now been fixed, too.
Patch 1.010.01.00 also brings a few other crash fixes caused by your choice of weapon and gear, alongside a fix to an issue that prevented players from being able to redo the Mizutsune assignment.
As with any new patch, however, there remains a list of known issues, which Capcom has outlined in this blog post. You should check that page if you run into any issues after installing the patch. Until then, our Monster Hunter Wilds guide remains your faithful companion.
In today’s article, I wish to discuss the context around designing A Fading Star as an ongoing conflict. The game covers a pivotal period of the Somali Civil War (2007-2014), which one could term “the golden age of Al-Shabaab.” But since I started working on the game and researching this topic, the situation that stemmed from this timeframe evolved. As the designer of a game about an ongoing topic, how do I position myself with those developments? What are some of the themes approached in the game that are still relevant today?
Let’s look at a timeline of the Civil War.
A timeline of the Somali Civil War, as covered by various different games
About a decade will have elapsed between the end of the timeframe depicted in AFS and when the game should hopefully hit the player’s table. Within that decade, the latest documentation I used to establish the model was from 2021. Simply put, there will be a 5-year “information void” where the latest expert studies and journalist investigations on the civil war will be unaccounted for in my model. And…that is all right! The first challenge in designing a modern ongoing conflict is to accept that we have to set hard bounds if we want to achieve a cohesive result, and to learn to not look back on this decision.
A less easy task is to contemplate the war’s latest developments and avoid seeing validation bias! In AFS, we ask open questions, some biased, some open-ended. How about checking some of those developments and how they relate to these game statements? Rather than a faction-per-faction analysis, let us focus on the Federal Government and how the institution operated over the years.
A “fixed” Somalia?
The Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) is comprised of six federal member states (FMS), each with its own degree of autonomy (or independence in the case of Somaliland). The biggest challenge for the internationally recognized government back in 2007 was to earn legitimacy and the trust of the FMS through state-building and interclan diplomacy. Not quite the easy fit when your seat of power is besieged by an all-mighty Islamist insurgency and your only military support at the time came in the form of an unpopular foreign occupation from eternal rival Ethiopia.
Through combined efforts with African Union forces, Al-Shaabab was ousted from all major urban centers in the country by 2012, allowing the FGS to achieve the minimal degree of legitimacy it needed for the country to start recovering from its status of failed state. The same year, delegates from most FMS would gather to approve a Provisional Constitution, setting another important milestone. A Fading Star’s timeframe closes around this period, with Al-Shabaab on the backfoot and still a looming number of tasks for the government to settle now that the country is back on track.
Navigating through several crises between institutions in the following years (2021 and 2024), the FGS would also see several political figures from various horizons being voted in by clan representatives, alternating between rival sides without blood being shed. After two traumatizing decades of warlord conflicts, Somali political apparel finally reached a minimum level of maturity, despite an endemic level of corruption at all levels of the state. This new state of affairs led to other important developments for the country: the lift of the weapon embargo in 2023, Somalia joining the Pan-African EAC economic alliance in 2024, and a victory at the International Court of Justice on a maritime dispute with Kenya. Without a doubt, the Somali State was back. However, this would be seeing the glass as half-full.’
With Great Power…
One important obstacle for the FGS has consistently been achieving authority and legitimacy among all member states. With foreign aid and weapons pouring into the hands of the new country’s military, a new temptation was born: bypassing interclan talks and instead coercing or corrupting the weaker states into submission.
Under President Mohamed Abdullahi “Farmaajo” Mohamed’s presidency (2017-2022), the FGS focused on large centralization efforts, using all tools available to bolster the government’s reach to the FMS, at the expense of the more autonomous Puntland and Jubaland.
In a more recent example set in 2024, an attempt by elements of the Somali National Army acting on behalf of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to oust Jubaland State President Ahmed Madobe was thwarted, ending with dozens of federal soldiers captured.
They were already prominent personalities in the” Al-Shabaab Golden Age” era portrayed in A Fading Star, and faces of the decentralization vs. federal consolidation efforts.
The same president has also been accused of focusing the counter-offensives against Al-Shabaab in his home region rather than in more militarily relevant areas. This temptation is nothing new, and interfaction violence has always been a large obstacle towards stabilizing the country and unifying the war effort against Al-Shabaab. In A Fading Star, this uneasy relation is reflected through the ability of the federal government to attack any Somali elements (unlike African Union forces), regardless of their affiliation, or to redirect foreign aid towards subjugating FMS elders (as a reminder the Pirates faction also include minor clans):
With friends like that…
Somalia’s relationship with its neighbors Ethiopia and Kenya is another important factor in the fight against Al-Shabaab and in stabilizing the state. Both countries have contributed an important number of troops that helped retake large parts of South-Central Somalia from the Islamist group, especially in the mid 2010s. Until recently they manned many of the Forward Operating Bases established to maintain a military presence in the areas reclaimed by Al-Shabaab.
It is an understatement to say that without those states, the situation would be most certainly different today. However, this assistance did not come out of pity, and it is no mystery that both Addis Ababa and Nairobi have a vested interest in stabilizing the country … up to a point, solong as it serves their national interests.
For example, with the FGS’ reach and potential increasing over the years, the relationship between Somalia and Ethiopia has been rocked from places like presidential bromance to Somaliland-related tensions, nearly bringing the countries to the brink of war.
While Mogadishu accepted the presence of Ethiopian troops in the peace-keeping process to make up for the small size of its forces, Addis Ababa was primarily seeking to secure its borders and did not hesitate to undermine any process that could have led to a strong, centralized Somalia. That is the adversity of these two actors, who need each other to achieve their short-term goals but whose long-term policies will inevitably clash and result in heightened tensions, threatening the whole region in the process.
An example of major development in this aspect came with the de facto dismantling of Ethiopian-backed Ahlu Sunna Waljama’a (ASW) after clashes with federal forces in 2015. ASW is a Suffi militia that was instrumental in fighting against the Islamist militants but also an entry tool in Somali affairs for Addis Ababa in the earlier years of the war.
This agitated relationship is nothing new in the Horn of Africa’s political landscape. In A Fading Star, it is reflected through the tumultuous link between the federal government player (TFG) and the AMISOM (African Union) faction, which includes forces from both Kenya and Ethiopia, and their respective goals.
The former tries to achieve a greater centralization of power through territorial control and the establishment of allegiances with local clans and embezzlement of FMS funds. The latter pursues the decentralization of Somalia through the ”4.5 formula” seeking more autonomous (some would say easy to manipulate) member states.
This political rift and manipulation of the Somali civil canvas are modeled through game elements such as the Support level in an area, the Patronage accumulated by the government, and the inescapable Clan Trouble that will appear when those factions try to contain one another (sometimes at the expense of the minor clans).
Some of the Events that reflect Nairobi and Addis Ababa’s long-standing policy of containing the influence of Mogadishu in its own country
A problem: Al-Shabaab is still (very) relevant today
I would like to clos0e this article with an important statement: as mentioned in the timeline above, the military situation on the ground to this day was close to a stalemate with none of the factions involved making breaking progress. The Somali National Army was being retroceded by many of the countryside FOBs as African Union peacekeeping troops were rolling out of the country. The Somali were now in charge of their own security, with the backing of many countries such as Kenya, Turkey, Egypt or the US still contributing essential logistics, troops, or trainers.
ATMIS is the transition mission that succeeded to AMISOM, with a role focused on support rather than kinetic operations against Al-Shabaab. Source : ACLED
However, at the time I am writing these lines, the situation in South Somalia is degrading as Al-Shabaab is making important progress towards the capital, Mogadishu, in a trend not far akin to the existential threat they posed back in 2007-2011. This situation could be the very consequence of the interclan fighting and political instability that the federal government has been navigating in recent years and described in this article.
This is a good reminder that modeling an ongoing conflict is about providing the tools to understand its underlying trends and dynamics, rather than “forecasting” an outcome. I hope the game will help you understand why past and future events transpire a certain way and what we can learn about matters such as small-state diplomacy, terrorism, state-building, and counter-piracy. But ultimately, when A Fading Star hits your table, please take this product as a modest take on the Horn’s affairs, during a precise time frame of the Somali civil war (2007-2014). Nothing else.
Despite the signs of progress made in securing Somalia’s future, the White Star is still not safe from fading away. As the country is especially sensitive to humanitarian crises amid conflict and climate-related disasters, please consider donating to NGOs that help on the ground, such as Action Against Hunger or the Danish Refugee Council.
You can use Trickbind with Flubs or Song of Creation to make it very difficult for your opponent to stop you from winning with Laboratory Maniac.
Once Laboratory Maniac resolves, any card draw instruction allows you to win the game. If you have Flubs, the Fool or Song of Creation and you cast Trickbind or another spell with Split Second, the card draw triggered ability will trigger from casting that spell, and go on top of the stack over the Trickbind. That means that it will resolve while Trickbind is still on the stack, so it will be protected from all of the types of interaction that Trickbind prevents.
Depending on what exactly you cast the Trickbind in response to, the opponent may have the chance to cast a spell before you cast the Trickbind. But that doesn’t help your opponent, because you can just cast the Trickbind in response to their spell and win while their spell is still on the stack. If they have their own Split Second
removal spell and a chance to cast it, you would have a problem.
I said this makes it “difficult” for your opponent to stop you, not “impossible”, because Split Second does allow for some interaction. Split Second does not prevent players from activating mana abilities or taking special actions, and doing that can in turn trigger abilities that may be able to interfere with the combo. For example, your opponent could sacrifice Perilous Myr to activate Ashnod’s Altar‘s abiltiy, and have Perilous Myr’s triggered ability deal 2 damage to Laboratory Maniac.
I also want to address a common misconception with using Split Second to protect combos like this: you cannot use Split Second to protect spells and abilities that are already on the stack. Spells and abilities on the stack resolve one at a time. After the top spell or ability on the stack resolves, each player has an opportunity to play spells or activate abilities before the next object on the stack resolves. This means that if you try to use Trickbind to stop an opponent from interacting with a spell or ability that would win the game that is already on the stack, the opponent can simply wait for Trickbind to resolve before using their interaction.
