MHW - Sound Modding Guide

Introduction

This wiki goes through the steps needed to extract and replace sound assets in Monster Hunter:
World. This page is still very much a work in progress, and will be updated over time.

By following the instructions below, you can extract or replace in-game background music,
sound effects (environmental, monsters, weapons, etc.) and voice lines.
The primary containers of sound assets in MHW are SoundBanks(.nbnk) and File
Packages(.npck). The actual sound assets within these containers are .wem(s) (Wwise
Encoded Media)

If you need help during any step of this guide, don’t be shy to ask in the MHW Modding Discord
Please read the entire step first, before asking questions though.

Prerequisites

● Stracker’s Loader (Read Mod Description on how to install correctly)

● Jodo’s MHWNoChunk Tool
● oo2core_8_win64.dll (acquired via games like Warframe, Star Wars/ ask in Discord)
● wwiseutil (also gui)
● Foobar 2000 with vgmstream plugin
● Wwise from Audiokinetic
Recommended but not needed
● Automated Wav→Wem conversion

First Step: Unchunking

1. Download the NoChunk Tool and the oo2core_8_win64.dll

2. Extract NoChunk Tool and put it in a folder of your choice with oo2core_8_win64.dll
3. Run MHWNoChunk.exe and drag and drop the “chunkG0.bin” found in your MHW
installation folder \chunk, onto the tool
4. Select only the files you want to work with, in our case most of the audio files are found
under sound\wwise\Windows\ and should be quick to extract
5. Select the folder you want to extract the SoundBanks to, they get saved with the same
file structure as the chunk and same name (files only need to be extracted once, unless
they change and you should keep the unedited extracted Files somewhere as backup)
Info: The whole chunk is about 62gb right now with the sound taking up 20gb of that
Extracting In-Game Audio Assets:

After downloading your SoundBanks you can open and extract them with wwiseutil-gui or use
a command prompt with wwiseutil to extract them.
Information about the command line for wwiseutil can be found here and at the end of the next
step.

After extracting, you want to close the program, for the files to update correctly.
You then want to start Foobar 2000. Navigate to “File” and then click on “Preferences”. In the
bottom of that screen you find “Get more components”, which opens a list that contains the
vgmstream plugin, that you want to download and install.
After that the program is able to play wem(s).
There is no need to convert them anymore

If you want to
just use
Foobar2000
and right click
the audio files
selecting quick
convert →
Replacing In-Game Audio Assets:

Tip: If the actual wem(s) sound is not mapped anywhere you can replace them with sounds of
counting numbers, which tells you exactly which wem(s) is currently played in game.
After you have figured out which wem(s) to replace and got your files (.wav) ready (keep original
file length in mind) you need to convert them into wem(s), replace them in the initial SoundBank
and save it as a new one. This allows you to keep the standard SoundBank as backup. Saving
over the same old SoundBank after replacing it’s wem(s) can cause issues.
For this process we need Wwise from Audiokinetic. (You might need to create an account for
the launcher, but don’t need it for the actual program)
Now we have 2 options to convert .wav to .wem

First, you can create a project in Wwise, click “Project” in the top left and select “Project
Settings”, after that “Source Settings”, then click the Box with 3 dots and select “Vorbis Quality
High”
Then click “Project again”, “Import Audio Files”, click “Add Files” in the new window and “Import”
once all the files are selected. You then want to click on “Project” and “Convert All Audio Files”.
Make sure Windows is selected.
The output of those can be found in
Documents\WwiseProjects\YOURPROJECT\.cache\Windows\SFX
You can also find a tutorial for this whole process again here.

Second and this is the recommended way you can follow the instructions on the Automated
Wav→Wem conversion and use one of two methods explained there.

After you have your converted wem(s) you want to open wwiseutil-gui or use the command
prompt with wwiseutil to replace them and then save them.
The command prompt with wwiseutil can replace them all at once (recommended if there are
a lot of wem(s). An example for that can be found further below
If you use the command prompt, make sure you follow the instructions and name all the wem(s)
correctly and run it from the right path. (aka you want to navigate to the folder that contains
wwiseutil.exe)

Example:

cd/d [Location of wwiseutil.exe]

wwiseutil.exe -replace -filepath [Path to SoundBank] -target [folder with new wem(s)]
-output [location for new Soundbank]\NewSoundBank.nbnk

This command will first need to be navigated to the directory where the wwiseutil.exe is
located.
Then it runs:
● wwiseutil.exe
● -replace - basic command for replacing wem
● -filepath to the SoundBank the wem(s) will be replaced in
● -target to the folder containing new wem(s)
● -output to the new SoundBank path with the new name of that SoundBank, which is
NewSoundBank.nbnk in this case

A basic folder structure for the command could look like this

You Have the wwiseutil.exe, the Old sound file that will have its wem(s) replaced from the “new
wem” folder which contains them ↓

And it will create the NewSoundBank.nbnk once it has replaced all the wem(s)
Don’t forget you can just click into an empty spot in the file path line (shown in the screenshot),
to show the exact path and just copy it into the command line cd/d [insert path] for easy
navigation to the files.
Now that you have acquired your finished SoundBank, make sure it has the exact name as the
file you initially extracted. You then want to navigate to your MHW installation folder and create
a folder called “nativePC” (if it doesn’t exist already).
You want to keep the file structure from the extracted chunk, which should be
sound\wwise\Windows and put your file in that folder.
The game will then load the file on startup and everything should be working fine.

Info: You can’t just rename existing game sound files to another - even if they would contain the
same order of wem(s) - because of their file structure.

Troubleshooting

● all characters used for files must be supported by your windows operating language
● make sure all file paths and files are named correctly
● close wwiseutil after saving a file, to update the actual file size
● don’t save over your currently used SoundBank with wwiseutil
● very old wav are not compatible with modern wem converting and must first be
converted into wav again (use foobar)
● check wem(s) in foobar, to make sure they are actually working
● don’t forget to restart the game after adding your SoundBank (weapon sounds should
load after switching weapons)