Elden Ring Update 1.09 Brings Ray Tracing

[GFreeman]

FromSoftware and Bandai Namco have released a new major patch for Elden Ring, implementing ray tracing on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X, as well as adding some gameplay improvements and fixing some bugs. Unfortunately, the game still does not support any upscaling technologies, so there is no support for DLSS or FSR, meaning that those ray tracing effects will have a rather high impact on frame rates.

The ray tracing patch for Elden Ring was announced back in November last year, and it certainly took a while before it was implemented. As detailed earlier, the ray tracing update for Elden Ring adds ambient occlusion and ray traced shadows, but does not include ray traced reflections.



FromSoftware noted that enabling ray tracing "may impact resolution and performance," so it has issued new "minimum and recommended ray tracing" system requirements. The game also fixes several bugs, gameplay issues, and general PVP balance, which you can see in the full release notes below.

Ray Tracing Technical Specifications
Minimum

• OPERATING SYSTEM: WINDOWS 10
• PROCESSOR: Intel Core i5-10600K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT
• MEMORY: 16 GB RAM
• GRAPHIC CARD: 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

• OPERATING SYSTEM: WINDOWS 11
• PROCESSOR: Intel Core i7-10700K or AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT
• MEMORY: 16 GB RAM
• GRAPHIC CARD: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, 8 GB or AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, 16 GB
• RECOMMENDED GRAPHICS SETTING: 1080p - High quality - High Ray Tracing

In the meantime, FromSoftware has announced Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, which still does not have a release date. The game has also won the Game of the Year award at the Game Developers Choice Awards.

Elden Ring - Patch Notes Version 1.09

New feature
Ray Tracing support has been added for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and PC versions.
Ray Tracing can be activated in the settings menu:
PS5 / XSX: Game Options > Ray Tracing
PC: Graphics > Ray Tracing Quality
Please note that performance - such as frame rate and resolution - may be impacted while playing with Ray Tracing on.
The minimum and recommended technical specifications to use Ray Tracing can be found at the end of the 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.

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[dgianstefani]

Less of an improvement on consoles obviously.

 

[cowcatwithahat]

I have tested it last night.
In person the changes are surprisingly pleasant as everything feels more grounded.
Out in the open world, the soft shadows and the lighting on especially the character's skin and gear and immediately noticeable.
Reflections, refractors, sources of light like, torches are interacting with the environment, character and materials.
In dungeons, caves, passages, is where the RT re sculptures the game with a substantial amount, and the mobs get a passive mean vibe upgrade making them more imposing.
It might not be visible on You Tube but after playing one hour with RT ON (4k - All Max, RT Max), when turning it off, the result of not having it ON was disappointing.
The unpleasant factor is the lack of DLSS/FSR, even with the 4090, the frame rate dips below 60FPS quite often.
As of last night (March 24), there was not Nvidia driver update for Elden Ring RT, and, hopefully there is optimization that can be done because there is a massive penalty between RT ON/OFF.

 

[ZoneDymo]

cool stuff but question, could they not easily implement atleast FSR 1.0? I thought that did not ask anything from the devs basically?

 

[Vya Domus]

The unpleasant factor is the lack of DLSS/FSR, even with the 4090, the frame rate dips below 60FPS quite often.

On AMD you can enable FSR1 on a driver level and if I remember correctly there was some kind of equivalent in the Nvidia control panel too.

Dropping the resolution to something like 1800P + sharpening filter will often look indistinguishable to native resolution on a 4K display.

 

[Aretak]

Pretty underwhelming after a year of waiting. RT shadows are always the least-impressive RT effect. I suppose that's all the consoles can handle though, and From don't give a crap about PC. Not even enough to add FSR and DLSS.

 

[swirl09]

Less of an improvement on consoles obviously.

Why is GPU usage and power so low? Does the game only use 1 CPU core o.0