The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt News

It's All About You – Episode 11: Back on the Path

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's next-gen update is now available! Welcome to all returning and new Witchers alike! Hopefully, you enjoyed the awesome creations of our talented community in our 11th episode of “It’s All About You”.

https://youtu.be/sokrgt-9CEw

If you'd like to be featured in the future episodes – submit your creations here: https://cdprojektred.com/AAY

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s 4.01 patch improves ray tracing, but tanks non-RT performance

While the patch notes for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s 4.01 update claim it "improves the overall stability and performance of the game", if you’re not using the recently added ray tracing settings, it might well do the opposite. I gave the patch a whirl to try out its PC-specific changes – namely a new 'Performance' setting for RT global illumination and a fix for the broken screen space reflections setting – only to find that non-ray-traced, DirectX 12 performance has been utterly knackered. Again.

If you've been struggling to get ray-tracing effects to work without tanking your framerate in The Witcher 3 since the launch of the RPG game's new Enhanced Edition, then the latest update has some potentially good news. The Witcher 3 patch 4.01 includes some stability improvements and performance enhancements, including a new setting for ray-tracing that trades a bit of precision for better framerates.

Read the rest of the story...

Patch 4.01 — list of changes

Patch 4.01 for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is now available! It improves the overall stability and performance of the game and brings various fixes.

Here's the list of changes for this update:

[h2]PC-SPECIFIC[/h2]

Fixed an issue where the Screen Space Reflections setting wasn't working on PC despite being turned on. Players who had previously set their SSR setting to high may notice a performance impact.
Added a new performance mode for ray-traced global illumination, which can be toggled by players with compatible hardware. It improves frame rate by prioritizing performance over range and precision.

[h2]QUESTS & GAMEPLAY[/h2]

Battle Preparations - Fixed an issue where it could be impossible to interact with Avallac'h during the objective "Let Avallac'h know everything's ready."
Family Matters - Fixed an issue that could cause the game to crash during the transition to Ciri's Story: Out of the Shadows when speaking to the Bloody Baron.
King's Gambit - Fixed an issue where it could be impossible to participate in the fistfight with the second Vildkaarl due to an invisible obstacle.
Wine Wars: Belgaard - Added a retrofix for the issue we fixed in 4.00, where the quest couldn't be completed if the player destroyed one of the required monster nests during exploration.
A Dangerous Game - The armor in Caesar's room should now change its appearance when the Alternate Nilfgaardian Armor is turned on.
Axii Puppet - Increased the health and damage dealt by the puppet.
Adrenaline Rush mutation should now work according to its description.
Various small fixes to quests and cutscenes.

[h2]LOCALIZATION[/h2]

Fixed various issues with Arabic localization.
Added the localized versions of Orianna's song "Lullaby of Woe" in Korean and Simplified Chinese.
Adjusted Priscilla's lip-sync animation to match her voice-over in Simplified Chinese during the song "The Wolven Storm".

Please note: these are only the most notable changes. The patch contains other minor fixes that didn't make it into this list.

The Witcher 3's wandering merchants carried quest fixes around the game without players realising

One dev who worked on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt had a good think about their most useless piece of video game knowledge in response to a Twitter stumper, but still came up with something interesting anyway. Patrick Mills was a quest designer on The Witcher 3 and senior quest designer on Cyberpunk 2077 for CD Projekt RED, and shared a neat bit of trivia about The Witcher 3’s wandering merchants on his own account this week. Mills revealed that the script for these lads would dish out fixes whatever stage you were at in the game.