Phantom Blade Zero Gets Day One Patch Boosting Ray Tracing and Fixing Bugs

Day One Patch Arrives for Phantom Blade Zero

Phantom Blade Zero has officially launched, and like many major releases, it comes with a substantial day one update. The patch weighs in at around 5GB and focuses on boosting ray tracing and path tracing performance, along with a handful of bug fixes. Players who pre-loaded the game are advised to download the update before jumping in, while new downloads will include it automatically.

Visual and Performance Tweaks

The developers have emphasized that they've put considerable effort into the game's rasterized visuals, ensuring that environments remain faithful to the art direction even without ray tracing enabled. This should help the game run smoothly on mid-range and lower-end PCs, as well as handheld devices, though some community reports suggest not everyone is having a flawless experience.

Driver Warning for NVIDIA Users

One notable point from the team's Steam post is a specific driver recommendation. They've observed performance instability with NVIDIA's latest 621.01 driver. Based on their testing, version 617.42 currently delivers the best experience. If you've already updated to a newer driver, the advice is to roll back to 617.42 using a clean installation and stay on that version until NVIDIA releases a fix.

Why This Matters

Day one patches are common, but the driver issue could trip up unsuspecting players. Rolling back drivers isn't always straightforward, so this heads-up is valuable. Additionally, the game's install process demands 300GB of free space temporarily, despite its final size of 145GB, which might catch some off guard. The patch's focus on ray tracing improvements suggests that the developers are prioritizing high-end visual features while still supporting a range of hardware.

Have you noticed any performance hiccups with the latest NVIDIA driver, or has the day one patch made your journey through Phantom Blade Zero smoother? Share your experience in the comments.