Epic boss fights with giant monsters are what drive Monster Hunter: World, and those same monsters also fuel its expansive crafting system. The scales, claws and horns of every monster can be used to forge gear that's as powerful as it is stunning. Crafting the right armor is just as important as choosing the right weapon, if not more so. Your choice of weapon determines your attacks, but the armor you wear into battle not only amplifies those attacks, it also protects you from monsters. With that in mind, we've put together a rundown on how Monster Hunter's unique armor crafting system plays out, and how it ties into hunting. 

The PC port of Monster Hunter: World has a few quirks. Luckily, many of them have already been patched out and Capcom says its working on cleaning up the rest. The modder who fixed Nier: Automata's PC port is also on the case. But one of the game's strangest habits still remains: Steam won't stop telling players their friends are playing Monster Hunter. 

While you're playing Monster Hunter: World, Steam constantly sends out notifications to your friends which are usually reserved for when you start playing a game. We're talking once a minute, if not more frequently. Players have speculated that this is due to checks run by the game's multiplayer and that some wires got crossed in Steam, causing it to repeatedly confirm you're playing. 

Whatever the reason, it sure is annoying. If you're playing Monster Hunter: World yourself, the notification spam can cover the item wheel in the corner of the screen. And if you're not playing World, or really even if you are, you probably don't want to get notifications every 30 seconds. But clearly people are: the Steam forums and Monster Hunter subreddit are stuffed with players desperately seeking a solution to the notification choir.

The ironic thing is that people were so excited to see Monster Hunter: World smash the record for biggest Japanese Steam launch. Lots of people are playing it, like plenty of your Steam friends, which means you have people to hunt with. Great! Now Steam won't shut up about it. Not great! And sure, you could just turn off your Steam notifications, but busting out the nuclear option over one game seems a little excessive. Here's hoping a tidier fix is released soon.  

Monster Hunter: World has been out for nearly a week now, so it's time to show off the product of all that strenuous wyvern murder. Share a picture of your monster hunters (and palicos, of course) in the comments, and tell us a little about them.

The best way to grab an image that really expresses why you hunt is to snap a pic of your guild card. Like most of World's features, the guild card is buried in menus and, to my knowledge, not tutorialized. If you've yet to capture your character and palico, put on your best digs, strike a pose, and take a screenshot. But if you have an excellent kill screen that also flatters your cool outfit, feel free to share that instead. 

Here's what I'm rolling with, right now. I'm grinding out the Diablos switch axe tree, and desperately looking for an Anjanath gem. I've ruined so many of those chicken-winged tyrannosaurs with no luck. I don't even need the set anymore, I just feel compelled to complete it. I must complete it. 

I based my character on my partner, because she likes to see how badly I screw up her likeness, but I've given her some corpse paint to reflect my affection for dreary metal. Chuck, my palico, is based on Chuck, my actual cat. A bit hard to see behind that Uragaan armor. 

Monster Hunter: World is a great game, but its PC port is just OK. Steam modder Kaldaien, who you may know from the 'FAR' resolution fixes he released for Nier: Automata, is working to improve the port, and recently released a mod pack containing a medley of fixes and features.

Initially, the 'Special K' mod pack focused on fixing World's habit of crashing when you alt-tab out of the game, as well as enabling HUDless screenshots and custom shading (which, Kaldaien advises, you will need to tweak because the default options look, uh, off). It has also been updated to improve CPU usage via controlled threading. 

"The mod now, by default, limits job threads to the number of logical cores on your system," Kaldaien said. "It can be configured to use physical cores or you can turn the feature off completely." 

Kaldaien says he's "working on various improvements" for World, with aspect ratio corrections on the list of "possible future features," so the mod pack may well be updated more in the future. You can find download and installation instructions in this Steam post.  

Monster Hunter: World recently set a record for the biggest Japanese game launch on Steam of all time, nearly doubling the mark set by the previous record-holder, Dark Souls 3. But it may have a tougher time ahead of it in China, where authorities have ordered the game removed from Tencent's WeGame platform. 

The reason for the game's removal isn't currently known, but a Morningstar report said Chinese regulators had received "a large number of complaints" about the game prior to the cancellation of its operating license. The site said one analyst suggested that the game's depiction of corpses could be at least partly responsible for the takedown. 

The removal is a knock against Capcom, but could have an even bigger impact on WeGame parent Tencent. The company rebranded its Tencent Gaming Platform to the more roll-off-the-tongue WeGame in 2017, and last month revealed a plan to roll the service out internationally, positioning it as a competitor to Steam. IHS Markit senior research analyst Chenyu Cui said Monster Hunter: World was the first game to release simultaneously on Steam and We Game, a particularly significant accomplishment given its popularity. But the takedown means "Tencent might lose its good timing to compete," Cui said.  

Monster Hunter: World promised to be a major hit for WeGame, which announced in July that more than one million people had preordered it on the platform. And it definitely could have used the win: The report says Tencent also has yet to make any money on another marquee title, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. It won the right to publish the game in China in 2017 and launched it early this year on mobile devices, but regulators still have not approved it for in-game purchases. 

"Investors expect Tencent to develop and launch more games at a time when the company has not generated a profit from PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds," Fullbright Securities analysti Stevan Tam told the South China Morning Press. "The gaming business is of concern for Tencent because games are the most vulnerable to policy tightening on online content."

Owners have until August 20 to apply for a refund, or they can opt to keep it, although there's no guarantee that it will remain playable. But if the speculation about corpses being the cause of the trouble is correct, I wouldn't be surprised to see it returned to WeGame fairly quickly: The Chinese government blocked access to World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King in 2009 over its portrayal of skeletons, but it got the green light shortly after, following changes to some in-game models to reduce the gore and put skins on skeletons.

A ¥30 (US$4) WeGame coupon will also be issued to owners as a "sorry for the hassle" token. I've reached out to Tencent and Capcom for more information and will update if I receive a reply.