Hello everyone!

The second patch for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep is live, and it is a big one. Once again, thank you for all the feedback you provided. We really appreciate it.

In this patch, our team's main focus was continuing to improve optimization of the game across both the GPU and the CPU. We have made some great gains in this area across all quality settings and we will continue to improve it in the upcoming next patch.

We also continued our improvements to loading times. Additional notable fixes in this patch include a resolution to a problem some people experienced during launch where non-ASCII characters in Windows usernames would cause a game crash, UI support for widescreen and non 16-9 aspect ratios, large localization updates across all languages, clean-up pass to the mini-map (including adding save totems to it), lots of ability clean-up and description work, and various balance tweaks.

Moving forward, we are already working on the third patch that will have additional optimization and load time fixes. We expect this to be out in approximately 10 days when this work has been completed.

Beyond that, we will be focusing on additional optimization, fixes, and Legacy Mode. Unfortunately, Legacy Mode will not be part of the third patch as we originally suggested, as this feature is a larger project, and we did not want that feature to reduce the cadence of our updates in the meantime..

For details on this patch, please check out the notes below.

Patch Notes:

• Fixed a crash on launch issue for Windows accounts that contained non-ASCII characters
• Optimized lighting and baked lightmaps in Baedish Lowlands, Skara Brae, Inshriach, Castle Langskaal, Mangar’s Tower, Boar Temple, Necromancers Spire, Orkan Rookery, Barrows, and Einaar
• Optimized combat lighting to make it less taxing on the GPU
• Large optimization pass to reduce unnecessary ticks happening to reduce load on the CPU
• Large pass to LOD additional static and skeletal meshes all over the game
• Various spelling fixes for typos
• Optimization to animation process system
• Large group of fixes for combat actions among a variety of enemies that were timing out, creating unnecessary delays. Also sped up attack animations on some slower attacks to improve pacing of combat
• Fix to hallowed passive of the Blessed boons line and Red Boots passive to work as the descriptions state
• Updated some save totems that weren’t operating correctly and added save totems to the mini-map
• Fixed a crash when obtaining a party passive that grants opportunity award during character creation when you had another member in your party that granted an opportunity award already
• Fixed a crash with skeletons using Woodsman Chop on someone with counter strike when they would die because of the counter strike
• Fixed a random crash that was due to multi-threading
• Fix to ensure proper resolution is displayed in windowed fullscreen
• Fix for gear puzzles not saving correctly in some languages
• Optimization to Unreal blueprint continuation
• Fix to unequipping offhand when equipping a 2 handed weapon if Vanguard isn’t active
• Fix to Granny Maurag conversation
• Consolidated map legend to remove some unnecessary icons
• Adjustment to various enemy voicepacks
• Fix so players won’t be able to save masteries from one adventurer on another adventurer
• Fix for item meshes that weren’t previously showing up when inspected
• Fix for end game scenario where Anvil Fist would no longer be a store as his conversation option wasn’t showing up
• Fix to prevent arrow keys from selecting disabled dropdown widgets
• Fix to a few animations that weren’t looping properly and had a hitch
• Fix to subtitles not showing up properly in some instances for human male and female variants
• Updated Thomas Hoff mesh so he no longer clips
• Fix to Gerund conversation to not auto-trigger at such a large distance
• Updated skill tree icons that weren’t unique
• Updated Songs of Exploration ability usage so the party HUD will hide after using the ability
• Fix for gold sense continuing to trigger on chests that have already been opened
• Fix where Tarjan and Zanta camera sequences were missing subtitles
• Added effect and sound when Shadow of Mangar spawns in
• Fixed a level streaming issue in Iwon Reg where player could see through the world
• Fixed an issue where, in rare instances, game could softlock upon interaction with a secret door button in Castle Langskaal
• Fix an issue where a UI softlock could occur in rare instances in a cutscene in Castle Langskaal
• Fix for Dragonsbile Bomb puddle audio that could persist after combat had ended
• Various audio improvements to characters and levels
• Fix to Arcane Barrage muzzle flash not cleaning up properly where the particle would stay in the world after combat
• Fix to various abilities where All Out Assault wasn’t applying to the entire ability, Storm of Blades damage preview wasn’t working well with multiplicative effects, Razor Strop tooltips displaying incorrect info
• Fix where archer’s beat VFX were staying around after an enemy was killed
• Various VFX optimizations
• Fix for songs of exploration tooltips no longer showing range diagrams that were unnecessary
• Fix where Compass of MACO did not, in fact, point north
• Updated to setting of view distance for NPCs based on user settings
• Updated materials on Ham in Fettercairn
• Reduced clutter on mini-map icons
• Fix for some enemies like floating wizards and giants when hit by specific damage types freezing their animation
• Fixed a performance hang that would happen when certain enemies would trigger caltrops
• Updated weapon, item, and armor tooltips to reduce redundant text.
• Updated tooltip text (where applicable) to explain that an item can be equipped from an ability
• Fix for crash where the player could inspect an item in the character sheet while an item was on the cursor
• Moved stat plate locations on giant and wraith enemies
• Fix to an issue where it wouldn’t save the location of your masteries after trying to rearrange them.
• Fixed an issue with 16:9 monitors that have a greater resolution than 1920x1080
• Fix on materials on Father Rythe in Fichti
• Added missing audio to various UI elements
• Reduced Falkentyne’s Fury damage by 35%
• Large amount of fixes to localized text that was showing in an incorrect language
• Updated Russian font assignments for handwritten notes
• Fixed spot in Castle Langskaal where a player could fall through the world when triggering a combat
• Fix for wrecking ball incorrectly showing it would deal 0 damage if the boots weren’t yet equipped
• Fix for Dragonsbile Bomb text incorrectly showing amount of turns the effect will last for
• Rebuilt lighting in character creation
• Fix for a softlock that could occur if your last alive character kills the last alive enemy and themselves with Blood for Blood at the same time
• Fixed Sinister Street fog showing incorrectly in quality settings lower than Ultra
• Fixed issue where some normal abilities were always showing the range diagram, even if they do not need it
• Updated cinematic UI to handle different aspect ratios
• Updated UI layouts based on various aspect ratios, including widescreen
• Reordered PAK files to help increase loading times across all scenes
• Fix for What The River Takes Ghost spawned from combat not saving their state and staying in the world
• Fix to notification for when the Wraith is killed to notify the owner to go back to Gate ability from Banish Wraith
• Slightly increased difficulty on skeletons and charn skeleton health and power level
• Turned of mipmapping for hair alpha cards to prevent beards and hair from disappearing when texture resolution changes
• Added some status effect types to determine how a status effect stacks when another status of the same class is added to the combatant
• Added internal setting to adjust type of fog being used based on quality settings
• Adjusted optimization settings for texture streaming and various texture qualities
• Optimizations to animals and ultra dynamic sky to reduce amount of ticks
• Updated AI for Cultist Sorcerers to be more active on the combat grid and reduce them not having an action on their turn due to cooldowns
• Added ravenous null audio to Duke Kingston’s lair

The team at inXile