The Witcher - Patch 1.2 Now Available

The official site for CDProjekt's cRPG The Witcher has announced the release of patch 1.2, before Christmas as promised. The patch is designed primarily to decrease save/load times and tweak in-game bugs:

After long and impatient awaiting, the time has come - we encourage you to download the latest version of patch (1.2) for The Witcher. We have made a lot of effort to ensure that patch 1.2 has been tested in the best possible way, and at the same time to present it to you before Christmas, as we have promised. Patch 1.2 fixes, among all, the issues of older versions that were most commented on, such as long loading and saving times, loading/saving mechanism, removes many possible random crashes, as well as several minor bugs. Patch 1.2 works with older versions of the game, starting from 1.0.

You can download the patch from the official webpage, and it's also available at the following mirrors: FileShack, Gamer'sHell, and The Patches Scrolls.

Thanks to kalniel, for posting the news on the Witcher subforum.

More information.

It says 1.02 twice, it's 1.2. Fix plz.

The dialog fix by 1eyedking seems to be working fine, however you will need to reset your English Registry setting back to Short or 3, to be able to install the 1.2 patch.

How much shorter are the loading times?

Originally Posted by Brother None
It says 1.02 twice, it's 1.2. Fix plz.

Are you by any chance a CPA in RL?

Thanks for the heads up.

doctor_kaz I would say the 50% they claimed is correct., so YAY!
The only caveat would be the initial load which is only about 15% faster, afai can see.

Finally I can get around to play this game.

I caved and purchased this (simply: amazing) game yesterday. Load times were a little bit of a pain, but nothing I could not tollerate.

Any Speed increase is surely appriciated though

The patch is really helpful, load times are down to much more acceptable levels now. Subjectively it feels like more than 50% decrease in load times. Too bad they hadn't fixed that on release, that would have probably netted them some better scores in reviews.

More than halfway through the game with the original patch and was hoping someone could confirm that there are no (official or anecdotal) issues with save game compatibility.

I seriously doubt there are and I always take backup steps just in case, but always a bit nervous applying a new patch this far through a game.

I've found that loading a savegame is a little faster, but where the patch shines is when entering and exiting buildings. Gone is the 1 minute loadtime for each domicile. I'd say it takes about 6 seconds now.

Before the patch -

Big outside areas were about 60 seconds, 90 with auto-save
now they are about 5-15, including auto-save

Small areas, like a house, were 30 seconds, 60 with auto-save.
now they are 2-5 seconds, including auto-save

I uninstalled, reinstalled, applied the 1.2 patch, then defragged my hard drive.

This has got to be the most impressive patch ever for a game.

Sounds like it's a great patch!

I'm glad they have not disapointed us. I thought they would improve slightly the load time… but it looks like it's much more than I expected.

I posted this in another thread, but I did patch a game already in progress and so far I have not found any problems it caused.

In regards to loading and saving, I am seeing an increase in times at each new chapter due to the larger files and more detailed graphics, from chapter 1 to chapter 2.

The Autosave is out of control still saving WAY to often in chapter 2 and they promised iirc to be able to switch off Autosave, but so far I can not find this setting, anyone?

Also, naming your savegames is still impossible. Which is a pain because me and my gf play on the same PC.

^ Have you tried agreeing on some convention, based on the little screenshot, such as "in my saves, Geralt should stare at his feet"?

Elwro: Create a second Windows user.

I think you can go into your save games folder and manually rename saves --you might check the Witcher forums for the details, but I know someone had figured out a way even before the patch.

edit: Here's the thread--I haven't tried it myself, though.

Magerette: thanks for this really simple suggestion, I'll try it when I get back to my gaming PC.

Whoknows: I don't want to do this in order not to deform my well-groomed directory structure :-)