The Blood of Dawnwalker's first big patch is out, and it's a serious one. Update 1.1 landed on 22 October, and Bandai Namco's post is clear about where: "Update 1.1 is out now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S!"
Developer Rebel Wolves had promised the patch the week before, Push Square reports, and it's the kind of update that changes how the game plays rather than just fixing bugs.
The headline changes
Here's what Bandai Namco highlights, in the order you'll probably care about:
- A respec option. The new Draught of Mind Rebirth lets you "forget all your Swordmastery, Witchcraft, and Vampirism abilities" and learn a different set. If you've built yourself into a corner, this is the fix.
- A real Story mode. The old Story difficulty has been renamed Forgiving, and there's now a new Story mode "with additional combat assist." So you can pick between the two, depending on how much help you want in fights.
- Subtitles for everything. You can "increase the font size and enable subtitles for ALL dialogue lines," which is a genuine accessibility improvement, not a footnote.
- Animal petting. It's in. Bandai Namco doesn't say more than that, and frankly, it doesn't need to.
Combat and performance tweaks
The patch also works on how the game feels in a fight. Bandai Namco lists updated FrameGen technology with its own dedicated settings, adjusted combat animations and camera movement, and improved enemy targeting and lock-on. Shadowstep and Planeshift targeting is now more responsive, which should make the game's movement abilities easier to aim when things get hectic.
Bandai Namco doesn't publish frame-rate figures for the FrameGen change, so treat it as an option to try rather than a guaranteed boost.
It's also a big download. Push Square puts the PS5 download at around 13 GB and headlines the patch with "over 1,100 improvements." Bandai Namco's own changelog is organised into sections, from General and Gameplay through Quests, Narrative, Art, Audio and Stability, and runs to a few hundred bullet points, several of which cover more than one fix. However you count it, most of the list is bug, quest and stability work. Push Square also notes that some notes are tagged PC-only or PS5-only, so not every fix applies to every version of the game.
What to do next
If you put Dawnwalker down at launch, 1.1 is a good moment to come back. Three quick steps:
- Download the update before your next session. On PS5, budget roughly 13 GB of space.
- Check your difficulty. If combat was the sticking point, try the new Story mode. If you liked the old Story setting, it's still there as Forgiving.
- Turn on full subtitles in the settings if you want every line captioned, and bump the font size while you're there.
And if your build isn't working, a Draught of Mind Rebirth means you no longer have to start a new game to try a different one.
Bandai Namco's post doesn't announce what comes after 1.1, so for now this is the version to be on.
Reporting notes