Dragon Age: Inquisition Patch 11 Notes

Before Patch 2, released December 9, shader quality for all PC users was being forced to run at Ultra. This impacted the performance of low-end machines and caused some unintended visual artifacts for users whose mesh quality was set lower than Ultra. As a result, users with Low or Medium mesh settings saw hair that was shinier than expected.

We attempted to address this in Patch 2 by binding the two settings so that mesh and shader quality were always the same. However, this fix wasn't properly implemented, and it forced shader quality to Low. We provided a command-line workaround Tuesday, but that still required players to ensure that the new shader quality matched their mesh settings.

This hotfix will correctly bind the mesh and shader settings and eliminate this issue. However, now that shader quality is being set correctly for everyone, players using lower settings will notice a decrease in the quality of visuals. This includes the removal of some features such as scars and freckles.

Most notably, the lower settings do not support blending of the age layer, so some users may notice that their Inquisitor (or custom Hawke) has aged considerably. And while this change is how it was originally intended to work, it could be understandably frustrating for people who created their characters before Patch 2.

If you would like to correct this change, you can set your mesh quality to High or Ultra. This will enable features that are disabled on lower settings, but may impact your framerate and performance.

We're sorry for any stress or confusion this may have caused, and we thank the community for helping us quickly identify and address this issue.

To start, make sure the quality setting you choose is equal to the setting set for Mesh Quality inside Options>Graphics

You will need to add a new command line parameter. To do this:

Through Origin:

1. Right click on the Dragon Age Inquisition title
2. Go to game properties
3. Type the command line parameter in the Command Line Properties box.

Through shortcut:

1. Right Click Shortcut
2. Go to Properties
3. Under target go to the end of the field and type the command line parameter into the box

Once there, add the following command line parameter: -ShaderSystem.ShaderQualityLevel <quality setting>

In this instance, <quality setting> should be one of the following:

• Ultra
• High
• Medium
• Low

An example of how to set your quality to high would be: -ShaderSystem.ShaderQualityLevel High

Please note that once the hot fix is out, you will need to go back in and remove this workaround from your command line.

It’s also important to note that pre-patch 2, all users on PC were being forced to use the Ultra shader quality. This means that those of you playing on lower settings will notice a decrease in quality, particularly players using low or medium settings.

To achieve the same visuals as pre-patch, users on lower settings will need to change their settings to Ultra, which should likewise be used in conjunction with Ultra mesh quality. Mismatching the mesh and shader settings will result in other visual artifacts like overly shiny hair.

Please be aware that changing settings to Ultra may impact performance on some machines.

Sorry about any frustration this may have caused.