Finally, after 8 years Geralt can no longer eat chicken sandwiches, turkey legs, or pierogies underwater

The Witcher 3's next-gen version continues to receive refinements and improvements from CD Projekt Red, and while I thought the developer could never live up to the audacious excellence of fixing the grass shadows (and thus the game itself), I have been proven grievously wrong. After eight long years, the same gap as between the O.G. Witcher and The Witcher 3, Geralt can no longer get his chow on underwater. Our boy's days of noshing in the briney deep are no more. CDPR also fixed some other stuff too.

"With the exception of potions and decoctions, it's now impossible for Geralt to eat or drink underwater," the 4.03 patch notes mention at the end, further explaining that "While the team agreed it might be possible to drink liquids from a corked flask, consuming pints of ale or grilled meats underwater is too much of a stretch."

I love this to bits. I can imagine the brave, realism-focused CDPR dev refusing to give up, holding out Twelve Angry Men-style until the rest of the team finally relented and agreed that yes, it was absurd that Geralt could pause the game underwater, eat seven pierogies and slam four Viziman Champion lagers, then skewer some Drowners with his crossbow. Now he can only do that on dry land.

The other big change in 4.03 to my eye is the option to auto-apply blade oils, the little anti-monster poisons Geralt can make in the alchemy system. PC Gamer news lead Andy Chalk was indignant about this aspect of the Geralt Simulation™ getting smoothed over, but I'm more agnostic. I definitely love how tactile and impactful the first Witcher's alchemy was by comparison, but blade oils in The Witcher 3 already felt kind of vestigial, just something you have to remember to check off in the inventory screen every once in a while. Why not just flip the switch once and optimize my build?

I popped over to Crookback Bog and sure enough, taking a swing at a drowner had my blade immediately slicked with Necrophage Oil. The game will automatically select the ideal poison for any situation as long as you have it crafted.

This feature did seem to bork my mods though, going by the compilation error I received on launch. I'm pretty sure the culprit was the quite good Friendly HUD mod, and I would guess that other projects may also be affected. Usually mod creators just have to sort these things out in the days and weeks after a major patch, and I would expect to see a 4.03 edition of FHUD shortly. I've included the full patch notes (sans console-specific entries) below:

PC specific

• Fixed an issue with ray-traced vegetation shadows “popping”, depending on Geralt’s proximity and angle.
• Fixed an issue where repeatedly disabling and enabling ray-traced reflections and shadows could cause black shadows to appear at the edge of objects.
• Addressed the issue where the DirectX 11 version of the game could crash on launch or after loading a save on certain AMD GPUs.
• Added support for Intel Xe Super Sampling, an upscaling technology that uses machine learning to improve performance and image quality.
• Fixed some lighting issues with Screen Space Reflections when ray-traced global illumination is off.
• Performance improvements to ray-traced global illumination and ray-traced reflections.
• Fixed an issue where purple splashes could appear on the screen when riding Roach through puddles of water.

Visual

• Fixed an issue where a grid of light spots could appear on the ground and walls in certain weather conditions with Ray Tracing enabled.
• Spider webs will no longer change color when moving the camera with Ray Tracing enabled.
• Fixed an issue where some textures on characters during cutscenes would appear as not fully rendered.
• Through Time and Space - Fixed an issue where the mist in the Poisoned Valley was pink instead of white.

Quests and gameplay

• Added the community-made mod Next Gen Script Fixes by Sergeanur.
• Fixed an issue where a grid of light spots could appear on the ground and walls in certain weather conditions with Ray Tracing enabled.
• Spider webs will no longer change color when moving the camera with Ray Tracing enabled.
• Fixed an issue where some textures on characters during cutscenes would appear as not fully rendered.
• Through Time and Space - Fixed an issue where the mist in the Poisoned Valley was pink instead of white.