Hefty Hogwarts Legacy Patch Conjures Dozens Of Bug Fixes On PC, Xbox And PS5
Fortunately, developer Avalanche Software is on top of things, as we now have the second major game patch with a list of fixes over four pages long for just the PC version. Unlike the first big patch, this update is also coming to the PlayStation 5 version of the game, which means it is the first major update for that platform. Of course, it's also available for the Xbox consoles, and you'll want to grab it there immediately.
Of course, we're primarily PC gamers at HotHardware, and the list of PC bugfixes is big indeed. It seems like a lot of the performance issues with the game, particularly in ray-tracing mode, may have been addressed, as the developer says it has "improved VRAM usage, especially for video cards with reduced memory." There are also numerous other notes about improved performance including the well-known drop during longer game sessions as well as myriad optimizations to do with shader caching, animation instancing, and occlusion culling.
There's a whole patch notes section for ray-tracing specifically. The patch notes say that stability and performance of the game while using ray-tracing have both been improved. Along with the quality improvements in the last patch, this should make playing Hogwarts Legacy with ray-tracing significantly less pointless than it was at launch, where the RTAO effect was barely visible and the ray-traced reflections were reduced to blurs. It seems like blackened wall decals and whited-out trees should be resolved now, too.
There are more changes than just those related to performance, of course. A major bug where most female characters had their faces rendered incorrectly in-game due to an improper bone weight in the facial animation has been fixed. If you're playing Hogwarts Legacy as a girl and your character's face has looked really strange and jarring during gameplay, this is probably the bug you were experiencing. Waterfall sound effects should properly fall off with distance, and you can finally land on the viaduct bridge of Hogwarts with your broom.
If you've already finished Hogwarts Legacy, I can tell you that it's worth a second play-through as a different house, because the events and characters involved change a little more than you might expect. This post barely scratches the surface of Hogwarts Legacy bugfixes, so you can check out the patch notes if you want to read the rest of fixed issues to see if your particular pet peeve was addressed.
