Elden Ring just got ray tracing, but you might not want to use it

Elden Ring got an update today, and things are getting downright illuminated in The Lands Between. The 1.09 patch brings a slate of bug fixes and makes all sorts of tweaks to Elden Ring's weapons and combat, but the headline item here is that the game is finally getting ray tracing support. There's just one problem: You probably won't want to actually use it.

You can go switch ray tracing on in Elden Ring's graphics menu, but what you won't find there is a toggle for Nvidia DLSS or AMD FSR support, the miraculous frame generation tech that lets you maintain a playable framerate even with taxing graphical gewgaws turned on. That means actually activating ray tracing has the potential to slow your game to a slideshow, especially at high resolutions.

That's probably why FromSoft's minimum and recommended specs for Elden Ring's new ray tracing mode both suggest you play the game at 1080p: Any higher and you'd begin to sacrifice too many frames. 

To be fair, that's FromSoft's recommendation for builds based around Nvidia 30-series and AMD 6000-series GPUs. I suspect players using bleeding edge 40- and 7000-series graphics cards could probably get away with dialling their resolution up a bit. But considering that barely anyone is using those cards yet, most of us are gonna have to settle one way or another. Here are those minimum and recommended specs in full:

Minimum specs

• OS: WINDOWS 10
• CPU: Intel Core i5-10600K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, 8 GB or AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT, 12 GB
• Recommended graphics setting: 1080p - Low quality – Low Ray Tracing

Recommended specs

• OS: WINDOWS 11
• CPU: Intel Core i7-10700K or AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, 8 GB or AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, 16 GB
• Recommended graphics setting: 1080p - High quality – High Ray Tracing

So, I guess be prepared to sacrifice either your resolution or your delicious traced rays, at least for now. With any luck, a future update will chuck in DLSS and FSR support and we can really head off to the races.

Apart from the ray tracing stuff, the patch also brings a bunch of balance changes and fixes, which I'll list below in full. To give you a quick taste, though, I'll tell you that—joy of joys—FromSoft has made great axes even more powerful than they were before, and the community is pretty stoked.

Elden Ring 1.09 patch notes

PvP-exclusive balance adjustments
The adjustments in this section do not affect single-player or cooperative play.

• The Inescapable Frenzy incantation power and grab angle have been increased.
• The Lifesteal Fist skill power, range and grab angle have been increased.
• Decreased the power of two-handed jumping attacks.
• Decreased the power of heavy and heavy running attacks of Fist and Claw weapon types.
• Decreased the power of the Founding Rain of Stars spell.
• Decreased the spell enhancement effect of the Terra Magica spell.
• Decreased the damage and poise damage of the Wave of Gold skill when hitting an opponent over a certain distance.
• Decreased the effectiveness of the Determination and Royal Knight's Resolve skills.
• Decreased the effects of the Contagious Fury skill of the Jellyfish Shield.
• Decreased the effectiveness of the Claw Talisman.
• Decreased the effectiveness of the Lord of Blood’s Exultation Talisman.
• Decreased the attack power buff granted by the White Mask head armor.
• Decreased the jumping attack damage buff granted by the Raptor's Black Feathers armor.
• Decreased the damage buff granted by Magic-Shrouding Cracked Tear, Flame-Shrouding Cracked Tear, Lightning-Shrouding Cracked Tear, and Holy-Shrouding Cracked Tear when activated with the Flask of Wondrous Physick.

General balance adjustments

• Added an invincibility window when respawning in the colosseum.
• Increased the scaling of the following attributes when infusing weapons with certain Ashes of War: Magic / Fire / Flame Art / Lightning / Sacred
• Increased the attribute scaling of the following weapon types: Colossal Sword / Great Axe / Hammer / Flail / Great Hammer / Colossal Weapon
• Increased the speed, range and recovery time of some attacks for the following weapon types: Great Hammer / Great Axe / Great Sword / Curved Greatsword
• Flail weapons changes:
• Increased the speed of some attacks.
• Reduced attack recovery time.
• Increased poise when using two-handed attacks.
• Increased running attacks speed and reduced attack recovery time for the following weapon types: Straight Sword / Curved Sword / Katana / Twinblade Sword / Axe / Hammer / Halberd
• Increased the first attack speed for the following weapon types: Straight Sword / Curved Sword / Whip
• Increased the speed of guard counters for the following weapon types: Straight Sword / Great Sword / Colossal Sword / Great Curved Sword / Katana / Twinblade Sword / Axe / Great Axe / Flail / Great Hammer / Spear / Great Spear / Halberd
• Reduced the attack recovery time for Whip weapons.
• Increased the damage of Claw weapons.
• Added Holy damage and Faith scaling to the Great Club.
• Increased damage negation when blocking Holy damage and decreased damage negation when blocking damage from other affinities.
• Increased the effectiveness of the Twinblade Talisman.
• Slightly reduced rolling travel distance for light equipment weights.
• Decreased the hitbox size for some attacks of the following weapon types: Thrusting Sword / Heavy thrusting Sword / Spear / Great Spear / Halberd

Ashes of War adjustments

• Lifesteal Fist: Increased target grab range.
• Surge of Faith: Increased projectile generation speed.
• Flame Spit: Increased the guard speed and blocking amount of the skill + Adjusted the angle of the fireball.
• Tongues of Fire: Increased the guard speed and blocking amount of the skill.
• Great Oracular Bubble: Increased projectile generation speed and reduced the recovery time.
• Viper Bite: Reduced the time before rolling is possible after using the skill.
• Shriek of Milos: Increased close range poise damage.
• Spearcall Ritual: Increased projectile generation speed.
• Cursed-Blood Slash: Increased projectile generation speed and reduced the recovery time.
• Gold Breaker: Reduced the recovery time.
• I Command Thee, Kneel: Increased attack generation speed.
• Starcaller Cry: Increased the speed of follow-up attacks.
• Spinning Wheel: Increased attack generation speed + Added a roll & heavy attack cancel timing while using the skill.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where the Scarlet rot status buildup was not properly reflected when giving the Antspur Rapier a Cold affinity.
• Fixed a bug where the Scarlet rot status buildup was not properly reflected when giving the Rotten Greataxe a Blood affinity.
• Fixed a bug where some attacks of the Partisan, Death Ritual Spear, and Lucerne had unexpected Physical attack scaling.
• Fixed a bug where the Nightrider Glaive did not increase the damage of horseback attacks.
• Fixed a bug where the Duelist Greataxe and Rotten Greataxe did not increase the damage of charged attacks.
• Fixed a bug where the Roar Medallion Talisman effect didn’t increase the power of some incantations. 
• Fixed a bug that reduced the power of some skills while under the Golden Vow effect.
• Fixed a bug that caused the effects the Determination and Royal Knight's Resolve skills when casted from a left-handed weapon to be added to other skills casted with a right-handed weapon.
• Fixed a bug that reduced the critical hit power of right-handed weapons while having Determination or Royal Knight's Resolve active on a left-handed weapon.
• Fixed a bug where status build-ups were unintentionally added to some Weapon Skills
• Fixed a bug where the power and special effects of a left-handed weapon could be added to a skill cast with a right-handed weapon.
• Fixed a bug that caused an equipped Sacrificial Twig to be consumed when a player died in the Colosseum.
• Fixed the camera positioning when respawning in the Colosseum.
• Fixed a bug where a player could receive credit for a kill in the Colosseum when dying due to the Death status effect, instead of the player who inflicted that status effect.
• Improved stability in Colosseum matchmaking.
• Fixed a bug related to level correction when an invader used the Phantom Bloody Finger.
• Fixed a bug that could cause disconnections with other players in certain locations during multiplayer.
• Improved online multiplayer stability.
• [PS4] Fixed a bug that occurred when using the Finger Severer on summoned NPCs while offline that could cause the game to crash.
• Fixed a bug related to some enemies not rendering or behaving as expected.
• Several performance improvements and other bug fixes.