Hogwarts Legacy update brings much-needed optimisations and bug fixes

Hogwarts Legacy has received a much-awaited patch tackling many issues causing the game to become unplayable. However, PlayStation owners will have to wait a couple of days before getting theirs due to unforeseen issues.

Starting with the most important portion: fixes regarding crashes. From those caused by NPC spawning to those triggered around certain locations where in-game events spawn or by playing cinematics/cutscenes, all should be gone. The flickering due to transparent head when hair is still present alongside texture stretching and distortion caused by wind should also be fixed.

The second welcome change is regarding the Owl Mail. Previously, some players were stuck/unable to continue the storyline, especially on sequential quests because they didn’t receive the mail allowing them to continue the adventure. Before the patch, the solution was to speed up time to the next day, or in some cases as simple as opening the mailbox and opening any unread ones. There was also a save bug, locking vendors, thus blocking players from buying items. Worse still for some this stopped story progression.

Next, we have performance and stability, about which the developers indicate that several improvements are present, especially on consoles’ Fidelity Mode and Nvidia’s GPUs that had unexpectedly low frame rates. Not to forget, shader compilation optimisations. Those rocking Nvidia’s RTX 40 Series cards can now activate frame generation while DLSS is disabled.

Some players have reported that the update did reset their game settings, so if performance is unusually low, check out the game options.

Finally, the developer discourages any modifications meant to run the game using DirectX 11 instead of DX12 since it would cause stability issues, obviously. That’s a heck of a lot of problems for a highly anticipated game.

The full list of changes can be found below:

Developer Note – This patch addresses overall gameplay performance and stability as well as online connection improvements.

Bug Fixes:

• General
  • Online
    • Fixed issues with achievement data being properly pushed to Wizarding World portal after linking.
  • Gameplay
    • Owl Mail
      • Fixed an issue with mail not properly triggering sequential mission.
    • World Events
      • Fixed rare crash around certain locations where in-game World Events spawning.
    • NPC
      • Fixed a rare crash when respawning NPCs in the world.
      • Fixed crash with some NPC schedules.
    • Characters
      • Fixed issues with flickering occurring with a transparent head while hair is still present.
  • UI
    • Updated localization text for additional content items.
    • Added Build version to first time EULA.
    • Fixed rare occurrence of mission descriptions not being displayed correctly.
  • Cinematics
    • Corrected VFX presentation of robe transformation.
    • Fixed a stability issue when skipping cutscenes.
    • Fixed a crash when playing cutscenes and cinematics.
  • Save Game
    • Fixed error of rewriting last autosave slot.
    • Fixed an issue when restarting from last save around not being able to talk to a vendor after initial conversation. Resolves the following reported issues: HL-412, HL-494, HL-246, HL-1063, HL-590, HL-542, HL-976, HL-965, HL-1158, HL-1184, HL-1089, HL-1240, HL-1031, HL-1490, HL-1433, HL-89, HL-1930, HL-1086, HL-1636, HL-1585, HL-1028, HL-1933, HL-2606, HL-2062, HL-1587, HL-488, HL-498, HL-162, HL-1706, HL-2626, HL-2865, HL-2888, HL-2804, HL-2910, HL-2944, HL-3000, HL-3043, HL-3024.
  • Performance and Stability
    • Improved performance on Fidelity mode.
    • Fixed rare crash around hovering over the map.
    • Fixed issue with wind causing distortion and stretching of world assets.
    • Fixed a rare occurrence with material swapping.
    • Fixed a rare crash with map assets state.
    • Fixed Rare crash occurring with in-game world events.
    • Fixed a memory leak with global lighting system HL-313.
• XSX
  • Performance and Stability
    • Improved crash collection to help chase rare crashes.
• PC Steam/PC Epic Games
  • Cinematics
    • Fixed audio issues missing or not properly playing.
  • Upscalers
    • Enable frame generation while DLSS is disabled.
    • Anti-Aliasing and Screen resolution settings disabled when using DLSS and not Super Resolution.
  • Raytracing
    • Fixed issue with RTAO looking worse than SSAO.
    • Adjusted default setting to Medium Quality.
  • Performance and Stability
    • Shader type compilation optimization.
    • Shader compilation performance updates and functionality enhancements.
    • Fixed a crash affecting Text2Speech usability.
    • Resolved issues with world assets abruptly being stretched which resolves the following reported issues: HL-305, HL-265.
    • Resolved an issue with Nvidia GPUs having lower frame rate compared to AMD.
  • DirectX Version 12
    • Please note DirectX Version 12 is required to run Hogwarts Legacy on PC. We do not suggest attempting workarounds to run the game with DirectX Version 11 as this can cause stability issues with launching the game and the player experience.