Patch 4.02 is now available on PC, PlayStation & Xbox. CD Projekt RED‘s story-driven action-RPG (one of the greatest games of all time, in my humble opinion) was due for some maintenance. The patch fixes the overall stability and performance of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The performance mode on next-gen consoles has been addressed as well.
So grab those 2 swords and start killing some monsters. In Henry Cavill’s absence, someone needs to keep The Continent safe, after all.
Here’s a list of the most notable changes:
PC-SPECIFIC
- Improved CPU core utilization in the DX 12 version.
- Restored horizon-based ambient occlusion. Players who had previously turned Ambient Occlusion off will need to do so again. You can find it in Options → Video → Graphics.
- Fixed an issue where the “My Rewards” section was not localized in REDlauncher.
- Fixed an issue with a flickering landscape in Toussaint that occurred when NVIDIA HairWorks was disabled.
- Fixed an issue related to particle optimization which could result in temporary stuttering.
CONSOLE-SPECIFIC
- Improved Performance Mode on next-gen consoles.
- Fixed an issue where characters could become slightly blurry during dialogues and cutscenes on PlayStation 5.
- Fixed an issue related to memory usage in Ray Tracing Mode which could result in crashes on Xbox Series X.
- Whatsoever a Man Soweth… – The game will no longer crash if Geralt runs away from Shani after starting the conversation on next-gen consoles.
- Fixed an issue where quicksaves couldn’t be loaded when using cross progression on Xbox One.
- Added two missing “Top notch swords!” on previous-gen consoles.
- Fixed an issue with overwriting manual saves where in some circumstances the oldest gamesave was deleted on PlayStation 5.
- Addressed performance issues in Beauclair and Novigrad that occurred after loading a gamesave.
VISUAL – PC and Next-Gen Exclusive
- Improved immersion of water appearance by adding refraction to SSR and ray-traced reflections.
- Fixed a visual issue with brick textures where black artifacts covered stone arches.
- Added a Motion Blur slider. It can be found in Options → Video → Graphics.
QUESTS & GAMEPLAY – Available on all platforms
- Battle Preparations – Fixed the lack of a dialogue option that would progress the quest during the objective “Let Avallac’h know everything’s ready.”
- Reason of State – Fixed an issue where the door to the warehouse could become permanently locked if the player knocked, entered and then immediately left the building.
- Scavenger Hunt: Cat School Gear Upgrade Diagrams Part 1 – Fixed an issue where the quest could stay active even after the diagrams were looted.
- Fixed an issue where trying to start a New Game+ on an incompatible save would block the player from starting the expansions in standalone mode until the game was restarted.
LOCALIZATION – Available on all platforms
- Fixed an issue with the Korean localization of Ciri’s and Geralt’s Gwent card descriptions.
- Fixed punctuation issues in Arabic localization.
- Updated Traditional Chinese font.
Please note: these are only the most notable changes. The patch contains other minor fixes that didn’t make it onto this list.
