I suffered with an unruly Seikret in Monster Hunter Wilds for 50 hours before tweaking these control settings changed my hunter’s life

Ah, Monster Hunter Wilds’ chocobo. Uh, I mean Seikret. These adorable feathered creatures are a new addition to the series, letting me hop on and travel across maps at lighting speed, store a secondary weapon I can swap out mid-fight, and access hard-to-reach areas tucked away across the Forbidden Lands.

They sure are handy, but boy are they a total pain in the ass to control. As the hours ticked by I found myself becoming increasingly annoyed with how unruly my Seikret was being. Attempting to stop beside a resource node saw my chicken lad fly past it instead as I rapidly mashed R2 to try and get it to skid to a halt, and opening my map to check something would often lead to him straight-up wandering off. Where you going, bird!?

By default, the Seikret’s movement prioritises its auto-pathing system. Pin a waypoint on the map—be it a monster, gathering node, or Pop-Up Camp—and your Seikret will charge off towards it automatically. It’s a convenient change from Monster Hunter: World—no more getting lost in the forest (bar the occasional time where my Seikret got very confused and ran in a loop) and no more having to endure a treacherous, self-controlled journey to my target.

But that also means when I try to stray off the pre-determined path it feels like I’m wading through mud. That damn Seikret wants to stay the course, and going manual mode doesn’t feel all that manual at times. It got to the point where I was so annoyed I began to dig through the menus looking for a solution. And thank goodness, there is one.

How to change to Monster Hunter Wilds’ better Seikret controls

It turns out there are two different Seikret movement control types tucked away in the settings, and in my opinion the default one Monster Hunter Wilds’ gives you is the infinitely worse option.

If you head into Settings and then tab over to Controls, you’ll find a handful of Seikret settings on the second page. For me, the biggest change was switching over Seikret Manual Controls from Type 1 to Type 2.

Type 2 means that instead of Seikrets running along even after you’ve taken your hands off the reins, instead you control your mount more akin to how you control your own hunter. Pushing forward will make the Seikret go forward, and letting go of forward will make the Seikret stop, the way god intended.

But wait, there’s more. You can swap things out so that calling your Seikret will put you into manual movement when you mount it, rather than the default auto-move. You can even tweak how much control you need to exert before your Seikret stops following its determined route, or add an additional input to whistle out for it.

On top of all this, there’s one final, secret Seikret setting that made me so much happier with my mount. Okay, I really just wanted to type “secret Seikret”—this one’s simply on another menu. The third page of Game Settings has the Seikret Auto-explore setting, which you can turn off to make that damn bird stop wandering off every time you dare to take more than three seconds to ponder your orb.

For the quick rundown, here are all the settings you need for your Seikret movement:

• Seikret Auto-explore – Options menu: Turn off
• Seikret Manual Controls – Controls menu: Type 2
• Seikret-only Route Controls – Controls menu: Type 1
• Call Seikret Controls – Controls menu: Type 2 or 3, depending on your preferences
• Call Seikret Controls (Radial Menu) – Controls menu: Auto-move or Manual Movement, depending on your preferences

Between that setting and changing the manual controls, I’m finally not gritting my teeth every time I need to go somewhere that isn’t straight into a hunt or head-first into a bonepile. Admittedly, taking more direct charge of my bird does have the small trade-off that I now need to hold R1 to make my Seikret go full pelt rather than hitting the button a few times and then walking off to make a coffee, but hey, it stops me getting distracted by my second monitor. Which was definitely happening before I swapped it over, sorry.