The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep Patch #1 Available

A few days back, the inXile team promised to put together a number of patches for their recently released first-person dungeon crawler The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep in order to fix many of the game’s technical issues. The first of the promised patches is now here and you can find the changelog below:

Hello everyone!

Today we are releasing the first patch for The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep.

Once more, thank you for your patience and understanding while we continue to resolve all issues you may encounter as quickly as we can. In addition to that, we are also very grateful for all the feedback we have received from you since launch. Please keep sending us your reports and thoughts, it means a lot to us and helps us to hunt down all remaining problems (as well as considering other revisions).

Let’s take a more detailed look at Patch 1:

Our primary focus has been to address the topics which most impact your gaming experience, based on your feedback and what we’ve seen pop up during the last few days:

• Crashes
• Dropping framerates
• Non-functional widescreen support
• Unusual loading times on HDDs
• FOV slider
• Localization concerns

As already stated in the road map we released earlier this week, some of these points are not easy to resolve and require in-depth changes to the game (and subsequent testing). This applies especially to stabilizing framerates, improving loading times, and taking care of resolution issues. Today’s patch lays the overall groundwork for fixing these, and you will see more improvements with patch 2, currently targeting Friday 9/28.

While we continue building on that, a number of issues have been fixed in today’s patch. We added a FOV slider, solved some pesky crashes, overhauled some funky skills, and many other things. Please take a look at the complete list of changes to get the full picture:

• Added FOV slider to the options menu
• Added ability to delete each save independently
• Updated ordering of PAK files to improve loading times up through Skyhenge
• Tweaks to volumetric fog in many areas to reduce load on the GPU
• Optimization of Kael’s Rudiment VFX to improve performance issues in combat
• Fix for puzzle weapons not saving their puzzle state if they were equipped when solved
• Fix to puzzle weapon crafting icons to remove stretching issues
• Updated materials on some puzzle weapons handles not displaying properly on high, medium, low quality settings
• Increased speed of Rain of Arrows enemy animations to reduce slowdown
• Fix to a crash when pressing End Turn when the player has an exploding arrow on that would kill them after the turn
• Added skill tree icons in subterfuge for lockpick and mastery
• Raised FPS cap on smoothing to 260
• Fixes to Inner Peace, Mindful, and Quick Thinking to not activate only once
• Added windowed mode drop down to replace checkbox
• Fix for game softlocking if a tutorial popped up right as a note was read
• Fix for electric boon line crash with certain abilities proccing out of combat
• Fix for a combatants kill action that could be triggered multiple times and after the end of combat screen which could cause a soft lock, notably with conjurers mark
• Fix for activating a standing stone right as combat starts causing a soft lock
• Fix for 2 handed weapons with 2 skills that were losing the first skill when level loading or training skills
• Fix for issue where combat statuses weren’t being removed after combat
• Removed the ability to destroy ink recipes in Mangar’s Tower
• Updated Mangar’s horde fight in Mangar’s Tower so traps go away when defeated after save/load
• Fix for a fairy golf collision issue in Baedish Lowlands
• Audio improvements to final game scene
• Removed code that auto sets controller functionality if a gamepad is connected. Gamepad functionality will be added in patch 3
• Updated Blessing of Mathan VFX to remove untextured squares
• Drunk tutorial should no longer fire off when stepping into a trap
• Added aspect ratio adjustments when resolution is changed
• Fix for changing between resolution, language, and fullscreen in the options menu causing the game resolution to revert to 1 x 1
• Switched Sybale’s background VFX to the rogues set instead of the bards set
• Fix for issue where pausing the game in certain (spoilers removed) cutscenes could cause the game to be unresponsive
• Updates to floating damage text for readability
• Fix for Rabbie’s FaceFX for Snow in Summer song.
• Fix for issue where level transitions while dual wielding two main hand weapons would destroy the main hand weapon and dupe the offhand weapon
• Fix for Elven wine tooltip to show amount of spell points you generate on use
• Small walkability fix in Fichti forest
• Fighter’s mana bar shows up now if they have the Veteran passive
• Updated traps in base of Song of the Sentry to deal damage to the whole party
• Updated text on skill points tutorials
• Fix to Harkyn’s Castle and logic puzzle quests to properly complete
• Fix to secret doors in Iwon Reg that became impassable after save/load
• Fix for an issue where an equipped trinket would duplicate if a consumable trinket was swapped with it
• Made the Torr Fion key a quest item
• Can no longer spam a lever in Mangar’s tower that would restrict the skulls
• Fix for Show North so it’s not useable in combat
• Fix for bug where mana was using the current mana value and not the max mana value with certain items
• Fix for wraith sub-abilities not respecting mana costs
• Update to a combat space in Iwon Reg that was on top of spikes
• Fix for an issue in Baedish Forest where there was a chance to get stuck in a combat space

Hotfix:

• Fix for a possible sequence break in the Isle of Stronsea where the player could speak with the selkie sisters before they should be able to.