The devs at Mournstead have been addressing performance issues and bugs that have plagued the game since its launch. While the game has garnered decent reviews, its Steam rating remains “Mixed” primarily due to these performance issues. They’ve set their sights on substantial performance enhancements aimed at optimizing VRAM, providing some breathing room for GPUs nearing their limits. Let’s dive in.
Stability
- Addressed a crash that could occur during NPC dialogues under specific circumstances.
- Resolved a rare crash linked to enemy actions targeting players during certain abilities.
- Fixed another rare crash related to interactions with in-game elements.
- Alleviated a crash issue tied to certain Niagara particles leaving trails behind.
- Corrected a crash scenario arising from depleting ammo during specific actions.
- Resolved a rare multiplayer crash where the host spawns the client before it’s fully ready.
- Rectified a crash when an invading player loses connection at a precise moment.
- Moved 2 parameters from local saves to settings saves to provide more configurable options in GeForce Experience.
Performance
- Adjusted Soulflay texture sizes and materials for improved GPU VRM handling.
- Reconfigured select UI elements to free up memory resources.
- Reduced memory allocation for environment interaction, freeing approximately 16MB of memory.
- Anchor images now load only during interactions with vestiges.
- Rectified several textures throughout the game to reduce VRAM consumption by approximately 10MB.
Bosses
Crimson Rector’s parasites will no longer trigger heavy reactions in players.
NPCs
Sparky has received additional lines of dialogue to enhance interactions.
Balancing
Balancing adjustments have been made for NG+ bosses and regions, especially in the almost end-game stages of NG+. We felt we were too enthusiastic, and the previous curve was too steep. Molhu has decided to reduce the price of seeds in his store from 2,500 vigor to 1,200 vigor.
Gameplay
Fixed player behavior during interactions with NPCs and vendor screens, which could lead to awkward orientations. Modified Vestige interactions to allow camera movement while interacting with the vestige.
Collisions
- Fixed a minor collision issue causing AIs to get stuck near Agatha’s vestige.
- Fixed a missing Umbral navmesh in Pilgrim’s Perch East section that prevented umbral inhabitants from pursuing players.
- Corrected a minor ground issue at Skyrest Bridge.
VFX (Visual Effects)
- Optimized the Umbral nail attack from a secret boss for AMD cards.
- Adjusted banners’ FX angle that could sometimes be rotated too much.
- Reworked both poison and Umbral mists to address pixelation issues observed on some streams.
- Optimized the Barrage of Echoes spell.
- Steps VFX now disappear when off-screen instead of freezing while still being calculated.
- Improved the Lightreaper jump attack particles for a more spectacular effect.
- Fixed skinning issues for the sword of an essential character.
- Crossbowmen now feature more noticeable and persistent arrow trails for improved visibility and directionality.
UI (User Interface)
- Modified the maximum length for online session passwords to 8 characters to accommodate typical player choices of 4-6 character words.
- Added additional sounds to the splash screen.
- When equipping ammo or a spell that cannot be used, the (X) button is now displayed in the widget.
- Rectified a bug where the character name pop-up couldn’t be closed with the gamepad when spamming (A) or (B) while opening it.
- Reverted the “any button shows (A) to skip” in cinematics, as it wasn’t functioning well on some devices.
3D Photo Mode
- Fixed an issue where the camera position in a saved 3D scene in 3D Photo Mode could be incorrect, adding safeguards to prevent this.
- Rectified a bug where the state of doors (opened/closed) and a few other interactables wasn’t being saved in the 3D photo.
