With patch 1.0.5 comes some significant optimizations (Up to 38% performance improvements under certain conditions) for both gameplay, combat and cinematics. Players can expect a lot less hitching/stuttering overall, along with frame rate increases across the board. This of course comes from data from internal testing on various hardware configurations, so the team will continue to monitor player feedback to ensure the community is seeing similar results. Optimization work will continue with future updates, as needed.

• Optimized animations during cinematics and gameplay

• Optimized movement calculations during combat

• Optimized the facial animation system

• Fixed stalls that happened when switching between units during combat which got worse the more units had been moving

• View distance optimizations are now more aggressively applied to dead enemies

• Disabled facial animations for characters looking away from the camera

• Made adjustments to AI calculations to minimize framerate impact

• Animations are now synchronized when loading a save

• Pre-mission autosaves are no longer made for missions that automatically start which made saves that, when loaded, would leave the game in a bad state

• Fixed a crash that could occur during combat. Players experiencing this would receive a ‘Fatal Error’ message.

• Fixed a crash at the beginning of deployment on some maps after the first encounter

• Fixed issue where alert would fail to trigger

• Fixed alert indicator marking tiles outside the actual range diagonally, leading to ineffective tiles being indicated

• Fixed alert range sometimes not taking passive abilities into account

• Units using the Meat Shield ability now turn towards approaching enemies 

• Death animations from the meat shield ability are no longer played twice

• Fixed attack animations not playing when performed right after a missed attack or an execution animation

• Status effects now get checked for condition changes after performing actions as well as during movement

• Added fail safe when reinforcement fails to move into position, it will teleport to destination if not making any progress

• Fixed Piercing Shot ability sometimes failing to damage all units in its path and not applying bleed like it should

• Removed Shield Slam ability from allied Drengr in the first encounter

• Made changes to the level to improve character pathfinding

• Optimized collision in the level

• Set up a fade effect for all buildings that the camera may intersect with while exploring the environment

• Fixed Baldur model breaking when loading a game save made during mission

• Fixed bad spawn point placement on the reinforcement group entering the gate at final encounter

• Fixed so intro sequence doesn't play when loading a save made during the mission

• Fixed navigation being allowed too close to the climbable stone building in the final encounter

• There is now a camera pan sequence shown after completing village expansion projects

• Save Issues Fixes (Many of the in-game options would not save properly. These have been addressed):

  • The ‘Upscaler Type’ Intel XeSS is now saved correctly when selected

  • The chosen ‘Upscaler Quality’ option is now saved correctly

  • The chosen ‘Motion Blur’ option is now saved correctly

  • The chosen ‘Cover Indicator’ option is now saved correctly

  • The chosen ‘Play Audio in Background’ option is now saved correctly

  • The ‘Frame Rate Limiter’ option is now saved correctly

• Fixed an issue where the selected ‘Upscaler Quality’ option would not appear in the selection box 

• Fixed the ‘Full Screen’ option not working correctly at game startup when disabled

• The ‘Combat Animation Speed’ option has been removed, as it was never functional. The development team is reviewing whether this will make a return in a future update

• We have removed the ‘Hardware’ Ray Tracing setting for the moment as it was a source of crashes. For now, the game will utilize ‘Software’ Ray Tracing by default

• Item listings no longer gets reduced when out of action points

• Fixed unassigned skills notifier. Now, it is correctly shown on the village from the start

• Fixed an issue where highlighted ability rank would sometimes display incorrectly when switching between units on the Hirdmen screen

• Added support for scrolling while hovering over clickable items inside the scroll area

• The cursor now appears while the ‘Unit Details’ screen is open when using a controller

• The ‘Unit Details’ screen now allows for turning the character around using the right analog stick

• Removed vignette from post-process

• Added missing background elements to final cutscene

• Fixed issue where there were two sets of faces on the village workers, causing issues

• Fixed an issue where characters in cutscenes could sometimes jitter

• Added missing cutscene translations and various small fixes to translations for several languages

Save & Load System

• Fixed an issue where saving the game would be blocked after interacting with a health interactable

• Fixed wrong amount of attack hits after loading a game during a mission - the bug was present only when a unit had identical weapons in both hands

• Removed hitching when targeting enemies

PLEASE NOTE: We are actively working on improving performance in the game and will continue this going forward

• Ranged AI units now knows it has additional skill and range while in high ground and attacking targets not in high ground

• Fixed an issue where AI would not get all valid options when targeting specific targets

• Fixed an issue where AI would fail to use push abilities

• Hirdmen that join during a mission can now be injured during that same mission

• Hirdmen that join during a mission will now gain experience during that same mission

• All abilities that don't require selecting a target can now be used by double clicking the ability

• Pushing a unit within an alert area now triggers an attack of opportunity

Guardian - This ability sometimes did not negate incoming damage correctly, this is now fixed

Odin's Chosen -  This now allows you to redeploy units correctly

Whirlwind - AP cost in description of ability now reflect its correct cost

Shield Wall - Added filter to shield wall ability so it can't affect units already affected by meat shield

• Fixed some tiles being inaccessible during the battle on the bridge

• Moved boss shield wall ability to start of encounter

• The party will no longer automatically heal after finishing encounters

• Blocked area between bridges that should be possible to walk in

• Fixed rare bug with wrong behavior of Woodcarver Chisel deployment, where it sometimes started a manual deployment instead of the intended auto deployment

• Fixed an issue where some items that were crafted by the Seamstress, Blacksmith, and Huntsman were duplicated

• Added the completion sequences for Northern, Western, and Eastern Reach

• Fixed a small gap on Gunnar's armor caused by wrong armor mask settings

• Fixed a bug with the resource list occasionally getting filled with items instead of resources

• Added support for different keyboard layouts (Azerty, Dvorak, etc.). The keyboard layout is detected automatically

• Mission count and kill count now apply for hirdmen. These counts will not update retroactively

• Resolved an issue where you were unable to confirm an untargeted ability using a controller while the cursor was positioned on a different tile than the selected unit was located in

• Fixed a problem with the Overall Quality setting in the video options menu, when clicking very fast made a button caption desync from the actual game setting

• Fixed problems with changing resolution and Full Screen in the video option menu. Now when switching the screen mode the game selects the closest resolution to current scale or it will scale to current resolution

• A Land of Men and Gods - Fixed lighting glitches