The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has been out for almost two months, but the development team at CD Projekt RED continues to add more goodies to the game in the form of free DLCs (13 of the planned 16 are already available), as well as new patches. For the week of July 5, developers are focusing on a new patch to please fans of the game.
Patch 1.07 is coming soon to the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Aside from the usual graphical and performance fixes, it has a few features that players have requested both on the game's forums as well as the r/witcher subreddit.
Geralt's inventory is a big part of the game, as it contains not only your arms and armor, but also books, crafting materials and other items needed throughout. However, there comes a point where you become overburdened due to the plethora of items that you carry. Even with additional saddlebags installed on your horse, you still have to ride to a local merchant to sell off items — not because you need the coin, but to make space for future items.
Two big changes with the new patch now affect that issue. Stash locations are finally included for players in various locations on the map, similar to The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. In the previous game, you could talk to an innkeeper and store items in a large chest, which would travel with you through each chapter of the story. It's unclear if it will be implemented in the same way in The Witcher 3 or if it will be placed in new locations.
The other method is that crafting and alchemy items no longer count towards the overall weight of your inventory. This means that you can go ahead and scavenge as many drowner tongues as you want without having to worry about it bogging down Geralt's inventory space.
Speaking of crafting and alchemy, you can now "pin" certain diagrams and formulas with importance so that when you approach an herbalist or merchant, you can clearly see which ingredients are required to make a piece of armor to wear or oil to coat your favorite blade.
The world of The Witcher 3 is full of details concerning the lore of the game, so your inventory might have a collection to rival small libraries from time to time. Some players just skim through the passages, and others read each line closely. Either way, books are thrown into the same pile as other items such as torn pages and missives found in the world. This new patch fixes that by giving books their own tab in the inventory, and it will also gray out the books you have already read to keep your reading list short and organized.
Finally, the inventory as a whole is getting a slew of sorting options. There's not much detail about it in the patch notes, but we'll check it out when it's finally implemented.
Other sections of the patch include a new, but optional, response mode for Geralt, fixes for quest-related issues, and continued improvements to your horse's behavior.
The patch will be available this week, along with the full list of changes to the game. Still, this patch is a sign that the development team is constantly listening to players. Even though there might still be a few graphical and gameplay hiccups from a few players, The Witcher 3: WildHunt seems to be sailing smoothly, so developers are taking the time not only to add new content through DLC, but also putting in features that fans believe will make Geralt's experience more enjoyable.
Update, 7/21/2015, 8:15am PDT: CD Projekt RED finally released the patch over the weekend of July 18. Just like any new improvements, it also had its share of new issues. Some users took to Twitter and told the team's community lead, Marcin Momot, that they couldn't access the game's achievements or that a few European players couldn't find the patch at all for the PlayStation 4 version. Additionally, comparison tests of the new patch versus patch 1.05 show a locked 20 frames per second in the Crookbag Bog for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 users. The PS4 version also showed some stuttering issues in a few areas compared to the Xbox One, which had a more consistent 30 fps for most of the game.
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