No Rest For The Wicked’s First Major Patch Improves Performance So Much It Lowers The System Requirements

No Rest for the Wicked, the new dark fantasy action-RPG from the makers of Ori and the Blind Forest, just received its first major early access update, bringing such big performance improvements to Moon Studio’s latest that it actually lowered the game’s recommended system requirements.

Though the game currently sports “Mostly Positive” reviews on Steam, some fans had taken issue with its performance issues following its early access launch on April 18 . Many of those issues look to have now been addressed, with Moon noting in its patch notes that the update brings “significant CPU and GPU performance improvements.” Moon Studios lists improvements to content loading and unloading to “reduce drop frames and improve baseline performance,” optimizations made to some of the game’s cinematics, improvements in certain problem areas like the Mountain Pass Gate, and much more.

As such, Moon has updated the game’s recommended PC specs.

For Performance Graphics setting (30 fps at 1080p):

• GPU Nvidia Geforce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon RX Vega 56
• GPU Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600

For Quality Graphics setting: (60 fps at 1080p):

• GPU Nvidia Geforce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT
• CPU Intel Core i7-11700K or AMD Ryzen 7 5800X

But the improved performance is far from the only major addition in No Rest for the Wicked’s first major patch. It also adds a long list of quality-of-life improvements, ranging from the ability to acquire a house sooner (alongside more storage slots within said house) to the much-requested ability to rebind controls when playing on mouse-and-keyboard, with the ability to remap controllers coming soon. Players will now be able to access resources in their storage directly when using vendors or crafting tables, and the update has added improved item sorting across all of the game’s various item categories.

There are even a few gameplay balance changes, with bows now using Stamina instead of Focus, the rebalancing of enemy levels in the Nameless Pass area, and nerfs to a few different enemies. Some attack animations have also been updated for a handful of enemies, which should make reading their attacks a little easier. You can check out the full patch notes below.

Moon Studio CEO and creative director Thomas Mahler recently took to X to share more details on its future plans for No Rest for the Wicked, describing the RPG as the studio’s “Magnum Opus” and something it plans to work on for another 5-10 years. We called No Rest for the Wicked “brutal and ambitious, but a little confused” from our time spent playing it in its current state, but eager to see how the game continues to grow and evolve over the course of early access.

No Rest for the Wicked Early Access Patch 1 Notes

Performance:

• Optimized Prologue Outro, Ship Attack, Phalen Armada, and Sacrament Intro Cinematics
• Mountain Pass Gate area optimizations
• Significant optimizations to content loading and unloading in order to reduce dropped frames and improve baseline performance while traversing through environments
• Improved performance for Ice and Frost enchantment and combat effects
• Optimized enemies making them faster to instantiate across the board
• Improved GPU visibility culling and general handling of off-screen content
• Optimized micro physics objects across the entire game
• Various cumulative improvements to baseline CPU performance
• Fixed various cases where internal errors were firing rapidly and constantly, leading to potential performance degradations
• Added preloading for frequently used objects to further reduce performance drops during gameplay
• Additional timeslicing systems for streaming performance improvements
• Optimization of the Pooling System to further reduce performance spikes
• Optimized vast amount of meshes and textures
• Optimized numerous Visual Effects
• Optimized pre-placed and dynamic enemy ragdolls
• Optimized Character Rendering across the board
• Rendering performance optimizations for better GPU performance across the board
• Cleaned up and archived duplicated content for decreased memory usage
• Cleaned up legacy content in all areas across the game to reduce memory usage

Quality of Life:

• Vendors and Crafting Tables/Refineries can now access resources directly from storage
• Housing is now available sooner right after completing the “Sacrament” quest instead of after completing the “Of Rats and Raiders” quest
• Updated sorting for inventory to these categories:
  • Gear – weapons, armor, rings, offhands, tools, runes, housing items and item blueprints
  • Food – ingredients, food, and recipes
  • Combat Consumables – Bombs, Vials, Oils, and Embers
  • Resources – Resources, Gems, Components
  • Realm – Ream and Key items
• Last equipped food/quick item will be saved when leaving and rejoining realm
• Deprioritized ingredients being the next auto selected food when the last currently selected food is eaten.
• Cinematic Skip prompt will appear upon pressing the button instead of holding it
• Improved legibility of some controller icons on the Steam Deck

Settings:

• Added custom key rebinding options for Keyboard (controller rebinding coming soon!)
  • Menu key rebinding currently not available
  • Localization in progress
• Added an additional Mouse and WASD Keyboard control layout (on by default)

Content Additions:

• New house “The Knot” for purchase near Sacrament Cemetery for 8 silver
• Tier 3 Armor Sets: “False Ones”
  • False Guardian
  • False Harbinger
  • False Oathkeeper
  • False Remnant
• New Character animations to Main Menu and Customization Screens

Loot:

• Increased number of slots of all chests and cupboards
  • Engraved Hearthside Chest raised from 35 to 40
  • Medium Chest raised from 20 to 30
  • Small Chest raised from 10 to 20
  • Large (and Large Noble) Cupboard raised from 30 to 40
  • Medium (and Medium Noble) raised Cupboard from 20 to 30
  • Small (and Small Noble) raised Cupboard from 10 to 20
• Nerfed Focus grant on all Focus Vials
  • Large Focus Vial decreased from 300 to 150
  • Medium Focus Vials decreased from 200 to 100
  • Small Focus Vial decreased from 100 to 50
• Cupboards can now also store ingredients
• Increased Armor and Weapon Shard stack size to 25
• Increased buy/sell value of all Tools and Rings at Vendors
• Removed Refined Resources from Vendors
• All Weapon Oil Recipes are now Tier 1
• Dracaena Dumpling now requires 2 Potatoes and 1 Dracaena Herb instead of 1 Potato and 2 Dracaena Herbs
• Improved shinies visual effects

Balance:

• Attacking with Bows now costs Stamina instead of Focus
• Rebalanced enemy levels in Nameless Pass
  • If neither “Of Rats and Raiders” or “Servant of God” quests were completed, entry of Nameless Pass is Level 8 and the rest of Nameless Pass is Level 15
  • If only “Of Rats and Raiders” quest was completed, all of Nameless Pass is Level 15
  • If both “Of Rats and Raiders” and “Servant of God” quests were completed, entry of Nameless Pass is Level 15 and the rest of Nameless Pass is Level 20
• Nerfed attribute scaling on all Staves
• Nerfed Focus Gain for Focus On Damage Dealt enchantment
• Nerfed Health Gain for Health On Damage Dealt enchantment
• Increased Focus cost on Elemental Throw runes to 75

Enemies and Bosses:

• Nerfed damage for Grab attack on Riven Twins and Nith Brute
• Updated timings for Breaker archetype and slightly changed behavior so now after some of attacks they will try to land additional attack
• Updated Risen Armored Great Axe patrol animation
• Polished backstab animation on Nith Screamers and Shackled Brutes
• Polished jump attack animation for Plague Boomer
• Polished heavy combo attack on Risen Axe Bruiser

NPCs:

• Polished multiple NPC portraits

Housing:

• “The Roost” house price reduced from 20 silver to 14 silver

Areas:

• Improved collision, faders and set dressing in Mariner’s Keep, Orban Glades, Black Trench Nameless Pass, Sacrament, Cerim Crucible and Potion Seller Cave
• Improved lighting and volumetrics for the ship in Prologue
• Improved lighting in the interior of Whittacker’s building
• Updated models and textures for pipes in the Black Trench
• Removed sidle from multiple locations where it was not needed

Audio:

• Updated ambience at Cerim Gate
• Updated audio for Sacrament Cemetery
• Updated audio zone for Sacrament Slums to include the river
• Improved audio for lanterns in Sacrament
• Improved female bandit voices
• Polished Nameless Pass Prisoner audio

Bounties and Challenges:

• Plague ichor for Duo Bruiser Bounty now drops when the second Bruiser is killed instead of given for the Bounty reward

Tutorialization:

• Large sidebar tutorial screen increased in size, now adjusts width based on content with added scrollbar

Localization:

• Added and updated localized text in many places across multiple languages
• Added support for multiple missing localized elements
• Fixed text overlapping for tutorials in multiple languages
• Fixed Russian font sizing

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed exploit where after removing a furnace/tanning rack, all resources used to refine are returned
• Fixed enemies t-posing when leaving camera view and coming back
• Fixed Danos stealing resources and putting them towards other upgrades
• Fixed being unable to activate a new bounty while there is an existing completed unclaimed bounty
• Fixed wrong prompts used for abandoning and replacing bounties and challenges
• Fixed attribute requirements on Ripper, Tongue Splitter, Coral Piercer, Falstead’s Fury and Brutish Cudgel weapons
• Fixed hitbox on Plagued Boomer’s worm lunge attack being too big
• Fixed players not getting a Rested bonus when sleeping in beds (literally No Rest for the Wicked)
• Fixed Old Leather Tome quest item failing to be added to inventory if Misc section is full. Item is now a realm key item.
• Fixed Character Avatar still showing the last worn helmet
• Fixed spots inside the ship in Prologue where you can dodge through collision and get stuck
• Fixed broken ladders in Orban Glades
• Fixed Focus Regeneration enchantment to regen correctly
• Fixed Plagued Boomer hitboxes
• Fixed Plagued Rat’s ability to see and react to the player
• Fixed Huntsman falling when using roll back
• Fixed Caged Exile being unable to path toward player correctly
• Fixed Health on Damage Dealt enchant on Wind of Death Katana
• Fixed arrows visually hitting player despite successfully dodging them
• Fixed Fire Bomb explosion radius not matching visual effects
• Fixed Kill Challenges that require a specific weapon type counting non-weapon kills (such as explosions, falls, parries, blocks, etc)
• Fixed Character Rim Light using incorrect color and intensity indoors
• Fixed dropped items bag black artifacts
• Fixed Rattigan appearing in Nameless Pass when he shouldn’t
• Fixed Finley getting targeted by enemies
• Fixed part of Heavy Bruiser Bandit armor set pants being invisible
• Fixed chest trying to hide in the ground in Nameless Pass
• Fixed chest trying to hide in another chest in Orban Glades
• Fixed marker sub labels on the map showing on markers that don’t have a sub label
• Fixed being able to see out of world at Filmore’s Level 3 area
• Fixed missing character lighting in Gordon interior
• Fixed interior candles not applying light
• Fixed burning sails clipping in Risen Attack cinematic in the Prologue
• Fixed sky cutting out in Ship Crash cinematic in Prologue
• Fixed Fallen Ones overlapping their own VO
• Fixed Return rune audio loop not ending
• Fixed dancing flowers outside Caroline’s Inn
• Fixed rain audio appearing in Cerim Crucible and War Room
• Fixed Wretched and Crestfallen Archer Tunic clipping into character
• Fixed broken rigging on Noble Leather Cloak
• Fixed Riven Twins intro cinematic using cut-to-black instead of fading
• Fixed Rusty Skewer Straight Sword using the Blood Rusted Straight Sword icon
• Fixed missing icon for Collect Mushroom Soup challenge
• Fixed typo in “equippable” for Inventory tutorial
• Reduced locations where Caroline spawns to just one for before Inquisition Arrival and one for after
• Removed duplicate lantern and torch in Sacrament
• Fixed small texture artifact on cloth in the Phalen Church cinematic