Hogwarts Legacy Patch Adds An Arachnophobia Mode For Gamers Spooked By Spiders
by
Zak Killian
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Monday, May 08, 2023, 04:37 PM EDT
Did you pass on Hogwarts Legacy at launch due to middling or minimal interest? Your author is no particular fan of the Harry Potter series or the Wizarding World, yet was still quite taken with the game's gorgeous graphics, expansive environments, and tricky skill-based combat. While it wasn't in as sad a state as Redfall or Star Wars Jedi: Survivor on release, it certainly had its bugs.
Thankfully, PortKey Games is still working on the title. The latest update is for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, and it comes with "over 500" bugfixes, performance optimizations, and changes. The big-ticket item, is of course the new Arachnophobia Mode.
If you haven't played Hogwarts Legacy, you may not be aware that giant spiders comprise about a third of the enemies in the game by volume. They're grotesque, and they make all kinds of horrible skittering and screeching noises. If you're a legitimate arachnophobe who can't stand the sight of spiders, the new mode changes all enemy spiders into frankly sort-of adorable automaton creatures.
You'll find the new toggle in the accessibility options.
The toggle also removes static spider corpses in the game world, and disables the harmless-but-still-gross regular-sized spider swarms from various surfaces. In fact, the only spiders it doesn't remove are the pictures of the enemies in the game's Field Guide, but those are pretty easily avoided by simply... not looking at the bestiary.
The jovial Professor Ronen gets a player clothing set modeled after him.
Of course, that's only one of the myriad changes in the new update. There's a new cosmetic set themed after Professor Ronen that you apparently have to earn as a Twitch drop. There's also been some changes to robe textures after players pointed out that everyone was walking around with dirty robes. Multiple issues that could cause the player to fall through the world have been resolved, and a major progression stop with the Helm of Urtkot quest has been fixed, too.
The game's ray-traced effects are absolutely stunning.
Specifically on PC, there's a ton of performance fixes and improved support for low-spec platforms, including the Steam Deck. All of the upscalers—that's DLSS, XeSS, and FSR—have been updated to their latest versions, and there's new support for the PS5 DualSense controller on PC. Multiple adjustments to the game's RT effects come along with this patch, and they should work properly even on AMD and Arc now.
Obviously, even this information barely scratches the surface of this update. If you're really curious about all the changes, or to see if your pet bug was fixed, you can head over to the full release notes on the WB Games site.
