Hogwarts Legacy's first major patch doesn't fix stuttering issues on PC

^{Image: WB Games}

Hogwarts Legacy’s stuttering issues on PC still haven’t been fixed after its first major patch. 

Warner Bros. Games has dropped Hogwarts Legacy’s first major patch today, aimed to address, “overall gameplay performance and stability.” Unfortunately, the patch doesn’t address the main problem most PC players are currently facing: constant stuttering and FPS drops. 

While the game seems to run fine on consoles, Hogwarts Legacy players on PC have been plagued with stuttering issues in certain areas of the game - namely Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. Whenever players enter these environments, the game’s FPS tanks, which is not ideal during combat sections. Some players on the game’s subreddit even report that this week’s patch has made PC performance worse, not better. 

Here is one user's example of how the game ran on PC prior to this update:

This week’s patchnotes seem to be targeted at shader compilation performance and NVIDIA GPUs having a lower framerate compared to AMD. Other fixes address many complaints from the game’s official bug reporting site, except issue HL-14, which brings up the game’s stuttering and frame drop issues. HL-14 also happens to be one of the most popular issues on the site right now, suggesting that no small minority of PC players are experiencing this. 

Hogwarts Legacy has been suffering from performance issues on PC since launch, and that might not change for players anytime soon. Some PC players report that the game runs smoothly on their gaming rigs, while others have issues running the game even on its lowest settings. The issue seems to be tied with how the game loads in shaders, which remains a problem despite this week’s patch specifically addressing shader performance.

Some rather more universal problems that players have reported go a little deeper than performance woes: mythical monsters become inaccessible if you do certain quests in the wrong order, female protagonists created in the character creator look far worse than their male counterparts, and the protagonist’s voice sounds robotic if the player uses anything other than the default voice pitch. 

It should also be noted that this week’s patch is only available for Xbox Series X|S and PC players right now, with the PlayStation 5 update delayed to later in the week due to, “some unforeseen issues.”

Here are the full patchnotes: 

Developer Note - This patch addresses overall gameplay performance and stability as well as online connection improvements.

Bug Fixes:

• General
  • Online
    • Fixed issues with achievement data being properly pushed to Wizarding World portal after linking.
  • Gameplay
    • Owl Mail
      • Fixed an issue with mail not properly triggering sequential mission.
    • World Events
      • Fixed rare crash around certain locations where in-game World Events spawning.
    • NPC
      • Fixed a rare crash when respawning NPCs in the world.
      • Fixed crash with some NPC schedules.
    • Characters
      • Fixed issues with flickering occurring with a transparent head while hair is still present.
  • UI
    • Updated localization text for additional content items.
    • Added Build version to first time EULA.
    • Fixed rare occurrence of mission descriptions not being displayed correctly.
  • Cinematics
    • Corrected VFX presentation of robe transformation.
    • Fixed a stability issue when skipping cutscenes.
    • Fixed a crash when playing cutscenes and cinematics.
  • Save Game
    • Fixed error of rewriting last autosave slot.
    • Fixed an issue when restarting from last save around not being able to talk to a vendor after initial conversation. Resolves the following reported issues: HL-412, HL-494, HL-246, HL-1063, HL-590, HL-542, HL-976, HL-965, HL-1158, HL-1184, HL-1089, HL-1240, HL-1031, HL-1490, HL-1433, HL-89, HL-1930, HL-1086, HL-1636, HL-1585, HL-1028, HL-1933, HL-2606, HL-2062, HL-1587, HL-488, HL-498, HL-162, HL-1706, HL-2626, HL-2865, HL-2888, HL-2804, HL-2910, HL-2944, HL-3000, HL-3043, HL-3024.
  • Performance and Stability
    • Improved performance on Fidelity mode.
    • Fixed rare crash around hovering over the map.
    • Fixed issue with wind causing distortion and stretching of world assets.
    • Fixed a rare occurrence with material swapping.
    • Fixed a rare crash with map assets state.
    • Fixed Rare crash occurring with in-game world events.
    • Fixed a memory leak with global lighting system HL-313.
• XSX
  • Performance and Stability
    • Improved crash collection to help chase rare crashes.
• PC Steam/PC Epic Games
  • Cinematics
    • Fixed audio issues missing or not properly playing.
  • Controllers
    • Switch Pro controller support updates HL-346.
  • Upscalers
    • Enable frame generation while DLSS is disabled.
    • Anti-Aliasing and Screen resolution settings disabled when using DLSS and not Super Resolution.
  • Raytracing
    • Fixed issue with RTAO looking worse than SSAO.
    • Adjusted default setting to Medium Quality.
  • Performance and Stability
    • Shader type compilation optimization.
    • Shader compilation performance updates and functionality enhancements.
    • Fixed a crash affecting Text2Speech usability.
    • Resolved issues with world assets abruptly being stretched which resolves the following reported issues: HL-305, HL-265.
    • Resolved an issue with Nvidia GPUs having lower frame rate compared to AMD.
  • DirectX Version 12
    • Please note DirectX Version 12 is required to run Hogwarts Legacy on PC. We do not suggest attempting workarounds to run the game with DirectX Version 11 as this can cause stability issues with launching the game and the player experience.