The Witcher 3 Remastered Update 5.01 Fixes GPU Detection

CD Projekt RED has released Title Update 5.01 for The Witcher 3 Remastered, nine days after the September 29 launch, and published the full patch notes for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Boats no longer sail off on their own, blade oils apply after a restart, two broken skills do what their descriptions promise, and the PC build stops switching on upscalers that a graphics card cannot run. Steam and GOG pull the update down the next time either client opens.

Speaking of improvements, ping stabilization through a VPN is worth a mention here, because most players never think about it. A strong, stable VPN like IceVPN can change your ping in online games like CS2 or Wardogs, and we tested that ourselves -- check our ' How To Lower FPS in CS2 ' article to make sure. Now back to Geralt.

The gameplay list goes after the bugs that were hardest to ignore. Player-controlled boats could start moving on their own and ignore terrain collision. Geralt collided with dead enemies after an Aard finisher, dodging answered late, and sprinting while dodging drained the stamina bar completely. Bombs could be thrown with the option turned off. Vesemir repeated the same line whenever Quen went up more than once. Automatic blade oils only worked if the setting had been enabled during that session, so anyone who switched it on and then restarted lost the feature until they toggled it again. Ladder animations were improved as well.

Two skills were broken outright. Synergy displayed the wrong bonus values, and Exploding Shield had no damage reflection at all, which the studio has now added. On the interface side, the ability point pop-up could stick to the screen, input hints flashed on the meditation panel, the Potions tutorial failed to appear after a visit to the Consumables tab, and several progress bars sat misaligned.

PC owners get the longest section. The GTAO Quality setting reset on every restart. Dynamic Resolution Scaling showed the wrong value after an anti-aliasing change and could produce visual artifacts in certain configurations, so it ships off by default from now on. Switching graphics presets could apply DLSS or XeSS on cards that support neither, the game sometimes picked the wrong GPU entirely, and skill tooltips refused to update until you hovered over them again. I play on a laptop with a GPU older than most of these upscalers, so a patch that stops the game from enabling options my hardware cannot handle matters more to me than the tone mapping work.

Consoles received Bloom, Light Shafts and Depth of Field as separate graphics options, plus general performance work. PlayStation 5 settings reset on every launch until now, and the base PS5 ran incorrect frame rate limits in different graphics modes. The bug that left voiceover audio much quieter than everything else after a trip through the pause menu tabs is now fixed there too. Ukrainian text localization is available in all regions rather than a handful of them.

The visual pass covers Bloom, tone mapping, character lighting, Ray Tracing and Path Tracing, and foliage reacts to collisions again. CD Projekt RED also addressed an issue that could affect save file data and added measures for saves already hit by it, which is the line to read twice if you have been playing since launch. My Rewards and Twitch or Bilibili Drops did not appear in the Vizima chest if it had been opened earlier, and the fix may duplicate a few items, which the studio says you should keep. The policy consent screen comes back after a backend problem, so everyone confirms their preferences one more time.

The remaster landed on September 29, and every owner of the base game was updated for free on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC. Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine had already gone free for base-game owners on August 25, so the Complete Edition contents now sit in libraries that only ever held the vanilla game, with no code to redeem and no edition to repurchase. I think fixes like the GPU detection pass do more for the remaster’s standing than the lighting rework, because a game that selects the wrong card on first launch loses the player long before anyone notices path tracing.

Here are the full patch notes for Title Update 5.01, as the studio published them.

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue where the “Automatically Apply Blade Oils” feature would work only if enabled during the current game session.
• Fixed an issue where, under specific circumstances, player-controlled boats could start moving uncontrollably and ignore terrain collisions.
• Improved ladder interaction animations.
• Fixed an issue where Geralt would collide with dead enemies after the Aard finisher.
• Fixed an issue where Vesemir would repeatedly say the same line if Quen was cast multiple times.
• Fixed an issue where dodging could have an unintentionally delayed response.
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to throw a bomb even if the option is disabled.
• Fixed an issue where the bonus granted by the Synergy skill displayed incorrect values.
• Added damage reflection to the Exploding Shield skill.
• Fixed an issue where Geralt’s Stamina would be fully drained when sprinting and dodging at the same time.

UI

• Fixed an issue where the “You’ve gained an ability point!” pop-up could stay stuck on the screen.
• Fixed input hints flashing for a brief moment on the meditation screen.
• Fixed an issue where the Potions tutorial didn’t appear after accessing the Consumables tab.
• Fixed some misaligned progress bars in the UI.

PC-specific

• Fixed an issue where the GTAO Quality setting would reset after restarting the game.
• Fixed an issue where Dynamic Resolution Scaling could display the wrong setting after changing the Anti-Aliasing mode.
• Fixed cases in which it was possible to enable a graphics setting when using a GPU that doesn’t support it.
• Fixed an issue where switching graphics presets could apply DLSS or XeSS on GPUs where they’re not supported.
• Changed the default Dynamic Resolution Scaling setting to OFF.
• Fixed an issue where Skill tooltips wouldn’t update until hovered over again.
• Fixed an issue where the game could sometimes select the wrong GPU.

Consoles

• Added Bloom, Light Shafts, and Depth of Field options to the graphics settings.
• Made various optimizations to improve performance.
• Fixed an issue where settings on PlayStation 5 would reset every time the game was launched.
• The fix for voiceover audio becoming significantly quieter than other in-game audio after navigating through the pause menu tabs is now also implemented on consoles.
• Fixed issues with incorrect frame rate limits in different graphics modes on the base PlayStation 5.
• Ukrainian text localization is now available in all regions.

Other

• Made various visual adjustments, including improvements to Bloom, tone mapping, character lighting, Ray Tracing, and Path Tracing.
• Due to backend issues, the policy consent screen will appear again. You’ll need to confirm your preferences once more. Choosing to opt in helps us improve the game.
• Fixed an issue where My Rewards and Twitch/Bilibili Drops wouldn’t appear in the chest in Vizima if it had been opened previously. As a result of this fix, some of the items may be duplicated. Consider them a bonus!
• Fixed an issue where foliage did not react to collisions.
• Fixed an issue that could affect save file data and added measures to address saves that may have already been affected.
• Fixed an issue where Dynamic Resolution Scaling could cause visual artifacts in certain configurations.

CD Projekt RED decided to keep working on this game well past a cleanup patch. Songs of the Past arrives next year, taking Geralt to the new region of Letten with Dandelion at the center of it, and Paweł Sasko has said the original never fully explored what the two of them share. The remaster had already broken Steam’s record for concurrent players, peaking above 110,000 against the 105,000 set in January 2020 when the Netflix series debuted, with more than 96% positive reviews. Its Metacritic score touched 94 before dropping a point into second place for the year, still above the 92 the 2015 release carries. The Witcher 4 is targeting 2028.