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Patch 1.01.02
April 14, 2026 at 05:20 PM
Create patch 1.01.02 article
Field | Value |
|---|---|
Version | 1.01.02 |
Release Date | March 30, 2026, 10:05 UTC |
Platforms | Steam PC Only |
Type | Graphics Hotfix |
Patch 1.01.02 is a Steam-exclusive graphics hotfix released about ten hours after 1.01.01. It targeted a PC-specific image quality regression that had been widely reported across the community following the 1.01.00 update. Pearl Abyss isolated the fix to the Steam build because the underlying rendering issues were specific to the PC path, and other platforms were unaffected.
The hotfix's scope was narrow but high-impact: players running Crimson Desert with NVIDIA Ray Reconstruction and DLSS enabled had experienced a cluster of visual glitches that hurt the game's signature cinematic look. The short turnaround between 1.01.01 and 1.01.02 reflected Pearl Abyss's urgency around restoring PC image quality before the upcoming weekend.
Graphics quality with NVIDIA Ray Reconstruction and DLSS partially improved.
Blurry screen appearance in certain environments resolved.
Flickering where the sky and clouds meet fixed.
Flickering when chimney and stove smoke effects overlap with nearby objects corrected.
Issue | Status |
|---|---|
NVIDIA Ray Reconstruction and DLSS overall quality | Partially improved |
Blurriness in certain environments | Resolved |
Sky and cloud seam flickering | Fixed |
Chimney and stove smoke effect clipping | Corrected |
The NVIDIA Ray Reconstruction quality pass addressed ghosting and softening reported in outdoor scenes with complex lighting. Players had noticed that at certain combinations of DLSS preset and Ray Reconstruction enablement, textures appeared smeared and distant geometry lost definition. The fix partially restores clarity; Pearl Abyss noted that further work on DLSS quality was planned for subsequent patches.
The blurriness resolution targeted specific interior and foliage-heavy scenes where temporal accumulation was failing to resolve cleanly. The sky-cloud seam flickering was most visible during dawn and dusk transitions along the horizon, and the chimney and stove smoke clipping affected settlement scenes where multiple smoke plumes overlapped with rooftops and fences.
Pearl Abyss stated they would continue investigating related graphics issues in subsequent patches. Several of the underlying image-quality items were revisited in Patch 1.02.00 and again in Patch 1.03.00's broader graphics improvements, which addressed the long-tail of DLSS, FSR, and XeSS interactions that could not be resolved in a single hotfix.
The Steam-only scoping of 1.01.02 also reflected Pearl Abyss's willingness to fast-track platform-specific fixes rather than wait for the next cross-platform build. PlayStation and Xbox players did not need this hotfix because the consoles used different upscaling pipelines (PSSR on PS5, auto-selected upscalers on Xbox), neither of which was affected by the DLSS-specific regressions.
The hotfix downloaded automatically for Steam users with Crimson Desert installed. Players who had disabled DLSS or Ray Reconstruction in their settings would not have seen a visible difference from the patch, but the new build was still installed because all Steam users received the same binary. The small patch size meant most players applied the fix without noticing the download.
Platform | Status |
|---|---|
Steam (PC) | Available (March 30, 2026 at 10:05 UTC) |
Steam (Mac) | Not applicable, not affected by the DLSS-specific regression |
PlayStation 5 | Not applicable, uses PSSR rather than DLSS |
Xbox Series X|S | Not applicable, uses auto-selected upscalers |
Epic Games Store | Not included in this hotfix |
Mac App Store | Not included in this hotfix |
Limiting the hotfix to Steam PC mirrored Pearl Abyss's previous platform-scoped responses. Because the affected code path only executed when the Windows build selected NVIDIA's DLSS and Ray Reconstruction stack, shipping to other platforms would have added deployment risk with no benefit. Mac Steam users were explicitly excluded from this hotfix because the Mac build uses MetalFX upscaling rather than DLSS; they received a different small fix in a later Mac-targeted patch.
NVIDIA's Ray Reconstruction replaces the hand-tuned denoisers normally used to clean up ray-traced reflections, shadows, and global illumination with a single AI model. When it works well it produces sharper, more temporally stable images than the older denoisers, but when its input quality drops, the artifacts shift to different failure modes, most notably softening, smearing, and seam flickering at high-contrast horizon lines.
Crimson Desert's outdoor scenes are particularly demanding for Ray Reconstruction because they combine wide sky domes, dynamic weather, and complex foliage. Small configuration mismatches between the game's render pipeline and the DLSS preset could produce the exact failure modes players were reporting. The fix targeted those configuration mismatches rather than modifying the AI model itself, which is why Pearl Abyss described the improvement as partial: the underlying model still has limits that future DLSS releases or preset tuning will need to address.
Graphics improvements continued across subsequent patches. Patch 1.02.00 revisited the DLSS quality presets, adding finer-grained quality controls and a separate toggle for ray reconstruction independent of the overall DLSS mode. Patch 1.03.00 extended the improvements to FSR and XeSS, bringing the AMD and Intel upscaling paths into closer parity with the DLSS pipeline.
