Cyberpunk 2077 received a patch last week, version 1.63, a mostly bug-fixing update with several noteworthy and essential changes. Due to differences in patching between consoles and PC, the update team is expected to be roughly 30GB on consoles and a little over 1GB on PC. On PC, you only download the updated files, but console players must redownload full archives, some of which may contain files that haven't been altered. Fixes and adjustments to quests—some very substantial, such as those made to the final mission's use of particular destruction items—made up the bulk of this update.

Takemura will make a concerted attempt to remain undetected. Instead of standing naked as Arasaka warriors storm the room, you can now take cover. One nice fix is around some gigs staying in the undiscovered place as you approach them. These would get stuck. You could theoretically rush up to the gig and try to activate it, but nothing would change. There were also several cases where you would simply die while pursuing a quest. Even though there are many significant improvements, if you were trying to perform the quest as written, you would still perish suddenly.

Some minor issues also arise, such as malfunctioning mirrors at some performances. It appears that multiple strategies were employed to effectuate these improvements. Minor changes and enhancements were made, and certain quest-halting errors were fixed, along with more general spawn and illumination issues. Many quest fixes were undoubtedly released. Although quest fixes made up the bulk of today's release, they were far from the only change. I didn't realize this was a problem until today, but the indicator that appeared when an adversary attempted to hack your financial or data transfers had been removed. In this peculiar case, the message "An enemy is hacking you" would appear every time a transfer was attempted. Many players probably assumed this was just a quirk of these OSes or the game, not a bug.

Still, it appears to have been a bug or something CD Projekt RED wanted to change, as the game no longer warns you that you're being hacked when you send money to another player. One of the main fixes is for the significant flickering that occurs when using DLSS, and an issue has been corrected where you can't utilize devices after accessing your mini-map. There's a major flaw on the PC wherein turning on DLSS causes extreme flickering and occasionally artifacting. It appears you have disabled DLSS, which will result in an instant reduction of the flickering. I can confirm that the flickering has been greatly reduced upon trying this out. While implementing the new route learning system, things weren't flawless. Still, they were a significant improvement and a substantial step in the right way, and that's thanks in large part to DLSS being enabled, which is going to be huge for NVIDIA users out there in particular. However, an issue that affected those fortunate enough to use path tracing has been resolved.

This is the new supercharge setting for ray tracing. Some of these surface textures would be severely artifacted or have rough, buggy appearances when you were wearing this. If you're trying to play on the most difficult setting with the wacky new visual effects, this will pull you out of the experience. Based on my experience and what I've read elsewhere, this update appears to have resolved most of the issues. Since this update also enhanced the performance of DLSS frame generation of AMD CPUs, some of you may now be able to enable path tracing. The target audience is narrowly defined.

However, there are still a few problems with DLSS 3.0 if you have an AMD CPU but a 4000 series NVIDIA GPU. Based on my experience with the Canon EOS 49D and the Nikon D5900X, this update is not a major one. Even so, I did see a marginal increase in my average frame rate. With this upgrade with my AMD CPU, I noticed that frame rates that would dip below 100 were now holding steady at around that mark. My preliminary testing suggests a possible 5% to 10% improvement in performance. This update's far more significant effect is that it appears to have eliminated most of the stuttering I experienced when using frame generation. This is especially welcome news because I occasionally experienced problems when opening and closing the map.

However, the most significant change brought about by this update, outside of the breaking of mods, will be one exclusive to Xbox players. The Xbox One will now include 20 save slots for manual saves and 10 save slots for saves at the game's point of no return. If you have more than 20 manual saves, for example, CD Projekt RED claims you'll need to delete some saves before making new ones because you've reached the new save limit. And based on doing some digging online, what it seems like happened here was there was a bug that's been in cyberpunk for a while where if you're playing on Xbox, you were able to create over 20 manual safe slots, even though you weren't supposed to be able to. There is supposed to be a 20-save restriction, according to the official CDPR literature available online.

However, it appears that the game wasn't strictly enforcing this limit, as several players have reported being able to make hundreds of manual saves even though they weren't intended to. Many of the manual saves produced by players will need to be deleted before they can start a new game of Cyberpunk 2077. However, it appears that this isn't a coincidence, as a performance issue impacting Xbox One X and Xbox One S consoles after prolonged gameplay in Cyberpunk 2077 has also been fixed in this update. There appeared to be a direct correlation between this and the save game problem, in which a player's session performance would gradually decline the longer they played. This seems to be nothing more than CD Projekt RED rectifying an issue plaguing previous console games. Again, this could be frustrating if you have a lot of saves, but perhaps it also means improved performance during longer play sessions.

When you first start up Cyberpunk 2077, you'll get a brief advertisement for Phantom Liberty in the game's main menu. Finally, they now permit mods to be deployed from a listing file, which may excite users but is ultimately unimportant. That will be for PC's REDmod, and if you had a huge load order, the old technique of deploying mods would start to run into problems. If you have many mods installed, this patch will change it so that only one of them is red when you open the game rather than the entire list. As a result, this may be the answer to your past problems with huge load orders. I did notice some enthusiasm when talking about mods.

Still, for most players out there, I doubt you will notice any significant changes except that many of your modifications will no longer function properly. Some mods, such as cyber engine tweaks, have already been updated in preparation for the patch. If you were playing a modded version of Cyberpunk 2077 and are now unable to launch the game without receiving errors like these, the problem is likely caused by out-of-date mods. You can either conduct a completely new install, erasing all traces of the mods you previously installed or wait a day or two for the game to be updated. Many of these updates have been released rapidly as of late, but the third major choice is always to revert to an earlier version of the game.

Overall, numerous improvements were made to fix bugs and hiccups, and it's a solid patch to tide us over until Phantom Liberty arrives. We can finally tackle some key issues around progress blocking or even some of those visual difficulties. Regarding potential release windows, let's talk about Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.7 and Phantom Liberty. The release date for Phantom Liberty is September 26, 2023; however, due to differences in localization, I wouldn't be surprised if many of us started playing on September 25 rather than the 26th. The release of patch 1.7 is still planned for before Phantom Liberty, but only just. Cyberpunk 2077's next major free update, patch 1.7, will make the game tougher to run, apparently due to legal restrictions when CD Projekt RED updates the system requirements, which is happening.

After the next patch, your ability to run Cyberpunk 2077 on the minimum requirements may be severely compromised if not removed entirely. In addition, as these system requirements are evolving, CDPR must provide advance notice of at least 90 days. This appears to be a strict legal mandate, clearing the way for the release of patch 1.7 on September 11—just 90 days after the June 11 announcement of these alterations. Strangely, CD Projekt RED insists on saying that patch 1.7 will arrive before Phantom Liberty. Even if the new material isn't unavailable two weeks beforehand, most people would prefer to wait. They may want to release it a few weeks early so players can start fresh with their save games and acquire a feel for the game before jumping into the new Phantom Liberty.

Azfar Rayan (@AzfarRayan)
Editor, NoobFeed