Elden Ring is now just a few hours away—in fact, if you've pre-purchased it on PC, you can (and probably should) preload it now, so you can make with the hacking and the slashing as soon as the game is officially live. First, though, you'll want to apply the day one patch, which FromSoftware detailed earlier today.
"We have started distributing a patch to improve the stability of the gameplay," the studio said in the patch notes on Steam. "We apologize for the inconvenience, but please apply the latest patch before playing the game."
After the patch is applied, you'll see "App Ver. 1.02 - Regulation Ver. 1.02.1" in the bottom-right corner of the title screen, indicating that it's been properly applied. As for what it fixes, the patch notes on Steam are a bit vague:
- Improved player controls
- Addition and adjustment of BGM
- Text adjustments
- Balance adjustments
- NPC event fixes and adjustments
- Fixed frame rate drops under certain conditions
- Fixed text bug in some languages
Raytracing support will not be implemented in the day one patch—the timing on that "will be revealed in future announcements." Also note that the patch will not be rolled into the game download at launch: You will have to download all 13 GB of it and apply it after installing the game.
The big question, which unfortunately is not addressed in the patch notes, is whether it will address reports of significant stuttering during gameplay. "Over time, it tends to intermittently stutter and slow down for brief moments, especially as you're out in the open world," we said in our own review. "I never died to a hiccup in performance, but it made me pause and restart the game fairly often to fix the issue."
Publisher Bandai Namco has previously said that the launch day patch will fix the problem, but unfortunately our testing with the 1.02 patch indicates that while the situation is improved, some issues still persist. Hopefully FromSoftware will have that problem fully taken care of soon.
Elden Ring goes live at 3 pm PT/6 pm ET tonight. For global timings, be sure to check out the full unlock schedule.
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