New Features
Changes to the difficulty.
We hear a lot of comments about the difficulty of the fights. We are introducing several changes - we introduce changes to the easier difficulty modes to enhance the player experience for those, who selected them. On the Story Mode difficulty, such mechanics as Damage Reduction, Damage Immunity, and Regeneration will be switched off, while on Easy mode their power will be reduced (less reduction or regeneration respectively). We are adding an additional warning to the Hard and Unfair modes to provide better information about upcoming challenges and the general difficulty of the game so that players can make an informed choice. We'd like to stress the Normal mode is a recommended one, especially for the people not familiar with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game system and for the first time players.

We are also making some changes to the some of the encounters in the prologue and 1st chapter of the game. To make it clear, we are not reducing general difficulty in all settings, we are fixing several places where this difficulty was not intentional. Also, we provide more information on overcoming the challenge in the place where it was:
Scare ability in the final fight in Prologue is changed to the communal Protection from Alignment: Good. There are almost no abilities to counter Scare effect in the prologue party, so this ability tends to make combat too chaotic and unnecessary random on the harder difficulty settings.
The first encounter on the road to the Oleg's Trading Post was never intended to be a great challenge, this area is still part of the tutorial, and difficulty of the fight is taking away from learning about the camp. Wolves were changed to Thylacines, their stats are close, but Thylacines have no trip ability.
Bokken will properly warn the player about the swarms in the cave and provide them with several flask of Alchemist's Fire. In addition, the tutorial about swarms and how to deal with them will be shown when entering the cave.
It should be mentioned that the 1st chapter's story is branching into the two different paths, making some of the encounters harder than desired on the first path selected.
Fangberry quest is very hard on low level. Resolution:
Bokken warns about quest difficulty and gives 6 flasks of Alchemist's Fire.
The special tutorial message is added about dealing with spider swarm.
Bear-like Treant in Temple of the Elk will now have less Damage Reduction.
Bear-like Treant fight difficulty is reduced if the player gets there earlier enough (at low levels and without previously following Tartuccio). The fix won't be applied for games saved within the area.
Some companions joined the party fatigued and damaged in Ancient Tomb and Old Sycamore areas. Resolution: fixed.
Ancient Tomb: persuaded companion now joins the party after a fight with Tartuccio's Mercenaries.
Random encounters with creatures too difficult to the current average party level could be rolled. Resolution: fixed

Quests
There may be issues with Valery romance progressing. Resolution: fixed.
Crash to the main menu when certain romance scenes are activated. Resolution: fixed.

Areas
One of the story development paths causes a wrong Capital state in Chapter 3. Resolution: fixed
50% spellcasting fail chance after entering the castle in Verdant Chambers location. Resolution: fixed.
Сut-scene may freeze at the Capital square at the beginning of the second act. Resolution: fixed.
Sycamore hall is hard to find. Resolution: marker on the local map is added.
Some monsters in random encounters gave an incorrect amount of experience. Resolution: fixed.

Items
Amulet of Mighty Fists now properly gives bonuses to attack rolls.

User Interfaces
There is no way to understand the nature of zero damage. Resolution: Information about immunities and damage reduction is added to the Battle Log (available in tooltips).
Tutorial messages about mechanics of the "damage reduction" were added before combats with the first creatures with damage reduction
Time delay for tooltip appearance after a mouse click was too big. Resolution: reduced.
An issue with male elven hairs and capes visualization while playing Ranger and Rogue classes. Resolution: fixed.
NPC Hassuf has empty lines in vendor list. Resolution: fixed.
Unlocalized loot window title. Resolution: fixed.
An issue with Chinese localization in Quest notification. Resolution: fixed.

Kingdom
An Ancient Formula quest may be reported as completed before actually completing it. Resolution: fixed.

Classes
Controlled Fireball damages allies. Resolution: fixed.
Wizard familiar bond list has Hunter's Bond available for selection. Resolution: fixed.

Misc
Missing or wrong German, French and Chinese localization. Resolution: the next batch of issues is fixed.
No text on computers with Spanish and Italian system locale. Resolution: fixed.
An issue with the backer items description in Credits. Resolution: fixed.
Several achievements were unlocking incorrectly. Resolution: fixed.

System
Loading may cause an issue with previously saved file. Resolution: fixed.
Graphics settings auto-detection may detects higher configuration on Linux. Resolution: fixed.
Crash while saving with specific path or locale. Resolution: fixed.

Another issue we hear a lot about - the problem with the custom companions - and some other stuff as well will be addressed in the next Hotfix.

Patch 3 introduces additional enhancements to graphic settings, character art, localization, as well as further addressing remaining issues like ability bugs, optimization of loading times, and stability across the game.

With Patch 3 being released, we are now focusing on our original goal of enhancing the game by adding many additional features after launch. Legacy Mode, controller support, and grid movement will only be some of them and we will talk more about those items and more in the near future. Friends of Mac and Linux will also be happy to hear that we are working on those versions as well.

For details on this patch, please check out the notes below:

Stability:
Improved how our graphics benchmarking determined the correct graphics settings for your system.
Several optimizations for improved performance.
Players who played in non-English languages and encountered issues with placing cogs into gear puzzles and had their save files corrupted should now have working save files again.
Fixed a crash related to using Jarnel’s Eyes in certain dungeons.
Fixed a crash related to skipping the post combat screen after defeating Mangar for the 1st time.
Fixed several combat placement bugs across the game.
Fixed a crash in the Cellars of Kylearan's Tower caused by defeating Mangar and then defeating any remaining fights in the dungeon.
Fixed a bug relating to how push-blocks reset themselves after being pushed into a hole multiple time. They'll now properly reset each time Stone Remembers is sung.
Fixed a crash relating to using Mangar’s Mind Jab in the fight against Mangar.
Fixed several issues relating to certain performance actors not saving properly after escaping to main menu.
Fixed an issue in which players could not access vendors after reloading a save game under some circumstances.
Fixed an issue in which hidey bides wouldn’t work correctly if you exited the game before looting the cache or the cache reset itself.

Gameplay:
Fixed several issues where certain doors and puzzles were not saving when exiting to the main menu or to desktop.
Fixed a bug that caused Sharp, Keen, and Honed puzzle weapon boons to reduce your damage to 0 when you critically hit with a dagger or a bow ability.
The description of the Wrecking Ball passive has been updated.
Fixed a bug that caused 2-handed weapons to corrupt your characters stats when equipping and unequipping that item after purchasing skills.
Fixed a bug in which the bridge to the Orkan Rookery could get stuck if you ran into it while it was assembling.
Fixed a bug that resulted in Arthur de-spawning if you defeated the ritualists around him, but save/loaded your game before speaking with him.
Fixed several instances in which waypoints were not deactivating when you switched which quest was being tracked.
The Power Rush passive and status effect have a clearer description, and now correctly work with AoE abilities.
Lute of Compulsory Cavorting no longer has question marks in its description and its Drunk effect works properly.
Fixed an issue in the Sentry Tower that resulted in buttons on the 3rd floor getting stuck in the depressed position if you exited the game before they reset themselves.
Removed extraneous waypoints in Castle Langskall.
Fixed an exploit that allowed you to dupe items inside the merchant inventory.
Fixed an exploit in which you could duplicate items via offering statues.
The Guardian passive now has a clearer description of what it's doing.
Fixed an issue with status effects, like On Fire or Rend, stacking from different sources and not correctly calculating the effect. If two status effects aren’t the same strength, they’ll no longer stack on one another, and instead create a new stack.
Fairy Powder Bombs will now play their explosion when they detonate, and will no longer harm your own team.
Lowland Park Whisky now changes your next melee attack damage type to mental damage, as intended.
Traps in the Sulfur Springs are now more lethal.
Fixed a bug in which caltrops could trigger on dead enemies, causing caltrops to not trigger properly on living enemies.

Etc.
A Sharpness post process effect and slider was added, which allows you to adjust how crisp or blurred the game appears.
Anti-Aliasing & Post Processing settings are now updated when you adjust your Effects Quality in the options menu.
Running the game in borderless window mode will now correctly match your monitor’s current resolution.
Greatly improved the user interface when playing with 4:3 aspect ratio.
Improvements to non-English localized text.
Several graphical updates in Baedish lowlands environment.
Fixed an issue where several settings in the Options menu weren’t properly saving.
Updated the mesh seen in the inspection window for staves and Lowland Park Whisky.
Street signs, offering altars, and elven altars now properly display in the correct language, based on your language settings.
You can no longer choose to not help the Selkie sisters. When destiny calls, you answer.
Fixed several backer quotes in the Main Menu.
Fixed a bug in which the music on the Main Menu would stop playing after completing screen calibration.
Fixed several typos in character dialogue.
Updated how fullscreen tutorials show text in other languages, better accounting for increases in text size after translation.
Adjusted the amount of time subtitles stay on screen.
Fixed several issues relating to localized text over-running its boundaries in the interface.
Added additional audio in a few areas where it was missing.
Updated Fairy Golf music so that it plays through the entire fairy gold arena.
The crafting menu now displays how many of a given item will result from crafting.
Additional decals, statues, and effects added to Skara Brae underground.

Known issues to watch out for until fixed:
If you escape to the main menu during the final animated scene in the game (the cinematic after defeating the final boss), your save file can get into a state in which you cannot complete the final step of the main quest. To avoid this issue, please allow all the animated scenes to play out without exiting the game.
We found that player’s have a small chance to suffer odd behaviors, including crashes, when using a practitioner’s dragon breath & conjurorer’s mark on groups of skeleton enemies.
Player’s zoning into Skyhenge for the first time have a small chance to experience a crash. This only happens on the first time transitioning into the zone.
Player’s summon creatures that last till the end of combat will create a checkerboard icon on the victory screen.
Tarjan boss fight can be completed without utilizing the hungering blade by using the melting boon from puzzle weapons.This is an exploit and not as designed.

Hello everyone,

We have just released a hotfix to solve the following issues:

• German - Fixed the issue where cogs were unintentionally stacking as a single type versus three different types. The tooltips aren't localized at the moment, however, all new German players will not be blocked. For German players with previous save games, please adventure to Boar Temple and Skyhenge to find additional cogs waiting for you so you can progress your adventures.
• Fixed players having a small chance to suffer odd behaviors, including crashes, when using a Practitioner’s Dragon Breath & Conjurorer’s Mark on groups of skeleton enemies.
• Fixed an issue with Fairy Powder Bomb that would cause hangs with multiple wave combats.
• Fixed an issue with the Zanta fight in regards to killing multiple skeletons in the first turn of combat.
• Fixed a crash during combat when stacks of ‘On Fire’ are damaging Yadis and Primeval are also on the grid.

In addition to the fixes, enemy difficulty on hard mode was increased to +60% enemy difficulty over normal mode, up from +40%.

We apologize for the inconvenience. Please keep letting us know if you are still having any issues with The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep.

Hello everyone,

We have just released a hotfix regarding the following issues:

• Loading time improvements. These improvements are targeted for people with non-Solid State Drives.
• Reported push block puzzle issues with free movement are now resolved.

We also have an additional known issue:

• If player charges characters on elevated platforms or cliffs, there is a chance that the combat will start off-grid or the player will not be aligned properly to the combat. We are working to address this in the next full patch.

Thanks for helping us to continue improving the game for everyone. Please keep letting us know if you are still having any issues with The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep.

The team at inXile