Avowed's new patch just gave you 6 more talent points to muck around with, along with a heap of fixes and improvements

Avowed Kai holding out his hand toward camera while explaining something to the player.
(Image credit: Obsidian)

Avowed, which I've temporarily put down while I grind for drip in Monster Hunter Wilds, is slowly-but-surely summoning me back to the Living Lands with some incremental improvements. It's nice to see that Obsidian's keen to make what's already a dang solid action RPG into the best version of its focused self—like with that 60+ gig update that sorted out its resource economy.

This time, Obsidian's taken aim at its talent system. Namely, you'll get more talent points to spread across your trees, as the patch notes read: "The player will now receive an additional talent point at levels five, 10, 15, 20, 25, [and] 30. Players with save files past those levels will receive the additional points."

It's honestly a welcome change—even as a fledgling spellblade, I sort of felt torn between getting more interesting bits of my kit online and, well, ranking said talent points up. Six points might not sound like a lot, but that's either a few more ranks in your abilities, or it's a whole new ability bumped up to its max rank, with two points left over for treats.

There are also some nice quality-of-life touches. Keyboard and mouse users can now toggle between walking and running, the UI's opacity can be fiddled with, high-contrast accessibility options are now present, and there's a third-person FoV slider now.

Elsewhere, there's been a ton of fixes, performance improvements, and tweaks to enemy AI, graphical fidelity, and quests. For instance, essence reductions to your spells and abilities should work more reliably, and there've been a few instances of softlocking/getting stuck that have been nixed.

Generally speaking, there are fewer places in the game's various zones where you can hop out of bounds, get stuck, or otherwise doom your envoy to a life in glitched-out purgatory. Specific graphics elements have been tweaked for performance gains, too, so the game should ideally run faster now—bonus, it'll stop setting itself to DLSS every time you open it.

One neat QoL feature that's also quietly made its way into the patch notes is the removal of buyback timers: "Shopkeepers will no longer get rid of items you have sold to them." Super useful, in case you happened to be one of those players who accidentally sold a bunch of your crafting materials early on.

It's a meaty update—totalling around 4,600-ish words total. You can have a gander at the full patch notes yourself.

Avowed unique weaponsTotem of Rightful RulershipIntimidating Feline CodpieceKai romanceAvowed Ygwulf

Avowed unique weapons: Grab these early
Totem of Rightful Rulership: Find all the pieces
Intimidating Feline Codpiece: Treasure map solution
Kai romance: Soldier through together
Avowed Ygwulf: How to handle the assassin

Harvey Randall
Staff Writer

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.

Read more
The hero battling a Xaurip - a kind of lizardman - in Avowed.
Avowed's huge 66GB update includes major improvements for the game's whole progression system, along with key bug fixes and buffs for companions
Casting a fireball at a mushroom creature in Avowed.
My respec in Avowed turned the combat from Skyrim into Dishonored, and now I'm having a blast as an invisible parkour sword-mage
An Oathbreaker Paladin restoring their Oath in Baldur's Gate 3.
Baldur's Gate 3's Patch 8 is so big, it needed its own patch before it even released, and we're one step closer to a Permanent Booming Blade Economy
Hades 2 key art
Need to relax? Grab a coffee, kick back and submerge yourself in the sound of Hades 2's narrator reading the patch notes for its latest massive update
Baldur's Gate 3 Gale romance - Gale sacrificing himself
Baldur's Gate 3's accidental PS5 release of Patch 8 has the theorycrafters in a flurry—though I'm just glad D&D's blade cantrips are officially here
Avowed character Yatzli speaks on a platform near the sea
Avowed review
Latest in RPG
Avowed Kai holding out his hand toward camera while explaining something to the player.
Avowed's new patch just gave you 6 more talent points to muck around with, along with a heap of fixes and improvements
Olivia, a hunter from Monster Hunter Wilds, looks perplexed in an icy blue environment.
Monster Hunter Wilds players wonder if frenzied monsters are a little undercooked, as one slaps a sickly bird into a fine paste in just 25 seconds
Sans, from the hit 2015 RPG undertale, folds his arms in a dashing suit as stonks rise in the background.
You can grab Undertale for less than $1, as the genre-defining indie RPG beats its all-time player peak for the first time in 10 years
KOTOR remake returns for annual tradition of reminding you it's still alive, but no you can't hear anything more about it until it comes back next year to say it again
Alligator skull with glowing eyes on human body and cords coming out sitting at piano with "The Norwood Etudes" ready to play
My new most anticipated RPG let me be a kleptomaniac gourmand set loose in a noir city on a quest to make 'the perfect sandwich'
Rise of the Ronin review
Rise of the Ronin review
Latest in News
Assassin's Creed Shadows promo image
Ubisoft reportedly has an anti-harassment plan in place for Assassin's Creed Shadows developers
Avowed Kai holding out his hand toward camera while explaining something to the player.
Avowed's new patch just gave you 6 more talent points to muck around with, along with a heap of fixes and improvements
In-game recreation of iconic Indiana Jones stealing the idol in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Silent Hill 2 remake and Indiana Jones are at historically low prices this Steam Spring Sale—so long as you don't buy them directly from Steam
MSI RTX 5070 Ti Gaming Trio OC Plus graphics card under a red light
This MSI Afterburner file unlocks 36 Gbps RTX 50-series memory overclocks for, y'know, the few people that actually own a card
A Steam Deck with SteamOS running in desktop mode.
A new and improved desktop experience just landed on Steam Deck and SteamOS is readying 'support for non-Steam Deck handhelds'
Olivia, a hunter from Monster Hunter Wilds, looks perplexed in an icy blue environment.
Monster Hunter Wilds players wonder if frenzied monsters are a little undercooked, as one slaps a sickly bird into a fine paste in just 25 seconds