Ahead of next week’s launch, Niantic and Capcom have detailed the Monster Hunter Now (Free) Descent of the Azure King event and confirmed new in-app purchase bundles will be available to celebrate the event. This event was revealed in the official January 2024 events announcement post. Azure Rathalos will appear from January 15th at 9 AM until January 21st at midnight local time. Rathalos and Azure Rathalos will both have boosted appearance rates from January 19th to January 21st in forest habitats. There will be event quests from the 19th until the 21st letting you earn the Azure King medal in-game. To celebrate the event, two special packs will be available with Special Carving Knives and other items. There will be one in-game and exclusive to the web store.

If you’ve completed chapter 13 of the main story and unlocked Rathalos hunts, Azure Rathalos will start appearing normally. If you haven’t done that yet, Azure Rathalos will only be present during the appearance rate boost period. While we don’t know the new moveset yet, if Azure Rathalos is like in the console games, it will be weak to Dragon and Ice element. Azure Rathalos is much more mobile than the regular Rathalos and is more annoying to deal with as a melee weapon user in the main games. I’m curious to see how this plays out in Monster Hunter Now next week.

I’m still hoping Niantic rebalances Hunt-a-thons for solo play for those living in parts of the world without many Monster Hunter Now players. If you are planning to start playing the game, I put together some (newly updated) tips and tricks for the game, details on the weapons, special skills, the current monsters list, my wishlist for future update monsters, and more. You can grab Monster Hunter Now on the App Store for iOS here and on Google Play for Android here. The in app purchases include different sets of gems and upgrades. Check out the official website here. What do you think of Monster Hunter Now if you’ve been playing it and did you try a Hunt-a-thon yet?