Latest Elden Ring Update Tweaks Difficulty To Be More Enjoyable, And PC Performance

FromSoft has published patch notes for the latest update for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.

Since the notes aren’t too long, we’ll just share them below:

“Attack and damage negation curve scaling of the Shadow Realm Blessings have been revised.

• The attack and damage negation has been increased for the first half of the maximum amount of Blessing enhancements, and the second half will now be more gradual.
• The attack and damage negation granted by the final level of Blessing enhancements has been slightly increased.

The calibration update can be applied by logging into the multiplayer server.

If the Calibration Ver. listed at the bottom right of the title menu is not “1.12.2”, then select LOGIN and apply the latest regulations before enjoying the game.

We have confirmed a bug where the raytracing settings are automatically enabled if you have previously loaded saved data from previous game versions.

If your framerate is unstable, please check in the ‘SYSTEM’ > ‘Graphics Settings’ > ‘Raytracing Quality’ settings from the title menu or in-game menu to check if it has been unintentionally set to ‘ON’. Once set to ‘OFF’, Ray Tracing will no longer be automatically enabled.

Other balance adjustments as well as bug fixes are also planned for a future patch.”

As we had reported yesterday, Steam user reviews for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree called out performance issues, but also had constructive criticism for how the game played.

While a lot of games media reported these reviews as being complaints about the game difficulty, if you had read the reviews, the players were actually pointing out the game was designed in such a way that it’s not enjoyable to play.

We should credit FromSoftware for listening to the critics, over their ardent defenders. It may have been the case that they always intended that Shadow Realm Blessings were supposed to have higher effects for players. If that was the case, they may have been too close to the game’s production to see the issues, and were only able to act on it because their players spoke out on it.

Masahiro Sakurai recently made a new video advising game developers to avoid falling into echo chambers from their loyal fanbase. We believe FromSoftware already learned this lesson before Sakurai made the video for even less experienced developers. No one questions that they are a fine game studio, so why would we hold them back from improving their games even further? That’s why we need to take our role as the developer’s strictest, but most fair, critics, more seriously.