There's some exciting news for Elden Ring fans, as the new 1.09 update brings several fixes and enhancements, the most significant of which is the inclusion of ray tracing support.

Ray tracing is a technique used in rendering graphics that simulate the behaviour of light in the real world. This technique produces more realistic lighting and shadows, creating a more immersive gaming experience. However, ray tracing is a computationally expensive technique that can significantly impact the game's performance, resulting in lower frame rates.

Including ray tracing in Elden Ring is undoubtedly an exciting development, although it has a caveat: players will need a powerful graphics card to utilize it fully. The patch does not include support for Nvidia DLSS or AMD FSR either, which means that enabling ray tracing can impact the game's performance, particularly at high resolutions. FromSoftware recommends playing the game at 1080p to maintain playable frame rates.

The minimum and recommended specifications for Elden Ring's ray tracing mode also might give you pause. The recommended specs require a powerful graphics card, such as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti or the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT. Likely, players with cutting-edge graphics cards, such as the Nvidia 40-series and AMD 7000-series, will have better performance and be able to dial up the resolution a bit. However, as these cards are not yet widely available, most players must compromise on either their resolution or the ray tracing feature.

The 1.09 patch includes several balance changes and fixes besides the ray tracing support. Among these, FromSoftware has made great axes even more potent than before, which is already proving to be a popular change among the Souls community.