Patch 1.0302256: Hua grabs less, PC starts faster, two new hit-sound sliders

Hua, Deadly Betrothed grabs less on two difficulties

Hua, Deadly Betrothed, the optional bride of Weeping Creek Valley, is the one boss S-GAME names in the notes. She now uses her grab less often on Wayfarer and Pathbreaker. Hellwalker and 66 Days keep the launch behaviour.

The grab is the close-range seize that comes with her line "You heartless bastard!". Keeping your distance between her attacks still avoids it on every setting.

Other bosses and enemies also had their combat behaviour adjusted, along with some environmental mechanisms. The notes do not say which.

PC: ray tracing shaders no longer compile at startup

The PC version stops compiling ray tracing shaders by default each time the game starts, which S-GAME says cuts startup times by a wide margin.

Played with Ray Tracing off? The first launch after the patch recompiles shaders once, and it is short. Had it on already? You start straight away. Switching Ray Tracing on later compiles its shaders at the next restart.

Crashes or stutter after updating have a fix from S-GAME: clear the shader cache. In the Steam Library, right-click the game, choose Manage, then Browse local files, open PBZ\ProjectPBZ\Saved\Cache and delete what is inside. Some third-party mods also break with this version, so remove them first if trouble starts.

New audio sliders and an Interact remap on PC

The audio settings gain Hit Sound Intensity and Hit Impact Sound Intensity. Weapon hit feedback is improved, and some sound effects and lines of dialogue had their volume changed.

On PC, Interact / Talk can now be remapped on keyboard and controller. NVIDIA Reflex works when set to Auto with V-Sync on, and stutter with a Bluetooth controller is reduced.

Fixes for stalled progress and stuck spots

The fix list covers progression that could stall under certain conditions, places where Soul could get stuck in the scenery, cutscene and visual faults, several combat bugs, and hair drawn wrongly on some AMD cards with specific drivers.

Weapon descriptions, some skill descriptions and the controller button icons were rewritten too. Performance is better in some areas.