Last week it came to light that Red Dead Redemption 2 might have a 'Dark Souls 2 problem.' Basically, some games have an issue that arises where running it with a framerate over 60 fps results in time passing more quickly in the game world, which means that systems like weapon degradation can happen more quickly than they should (as was the case in Dark Souls 2). Other games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 have had similar issues, where higher framerates speed up physics for the player.

When Red Dead Redemption 2 arrived on PC it appeared something similar was happening, though it was tied to Arthur's health along with the weather and the day-night cycle.

Arthur's health core slowly degrades if you don't feed him often enough, but some players able to achieve higher framerates felt that Arthur needed to be fed far too often. At the same time, eating a lot still left the grizzled cowboy underweight, as if the poor guy had an Old West tapeworm. Weather patterns were also changing more quickly than seemed normal and the sun seemed to rise and set faster than it should.

Looks like we weren't just imagining it. A patch for Red Dead Redemption 2 arrived today and it address this specific issue, not just for Arthur but also for your Red Dead Online characters. Now your health core should decay at a normal speed and eating regularly will put some meat on your bones. Hopefully it will also fix any other issues with the passage of time.

(Image credit: Rockstar)

There's also some new stuff in the patch for Red Dead Online. A new legendary bounty challenges you to take down 'infamous grizzly bear-baiter "Yukon" Nikoli Borodin.' Yukon Nik is a burly Russian trapper with a big posse that includes several pet grizzly bears, so watch your step and bring some friends.

There are some new clothing items added to the catalog too, including bandannas, hats, and shirts, and a few limited-time bonuses and discounts for traders. There's a 50-percent bonus on goods delivery using small or medium wagons (but oddly none for large wagons), a 50-percent discount on resupply orders, plus a 25-percent discount on trader and hunter wagon purchases. Wilderness Outfitters is also having a 40-percent off sale.

(Image credit: Rockstar)

I tried out the patch earlier, and along with it changing all my settings to Ultra (again, sigh) it seems to have lowered my fps a bit in general. I also got a crash to desktop with a ERR_GFX_STATE message—the first time I've seen that happen in RDR2, even though there are mentions in the notes that indicate the patch is supposed to fix several types of crashes players have been experiencing. Hopefully it was just a fluke as it didn't happen again during another 90 minutes or so of play.

You can read the full patch notes here or below.

Improvements to address an issue that resulted in stalls on 4-core and 6-core CPUs

Players with NVIDIA graphics cards and 4-core or 6-core CPUs should install the GeForce Hotfix Driver Version 441.34 from NVIDIA and remove any launch arguments to resolve this issue: For more information, please see this support page: https://support.rockstargames.com/articles/360038940333

Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a permanent mouse cursor being displayed at all times when launching the game via the Epic Games Store

Improvements to address an issue that resulted in the player’s cores draining at a faster rate than intended in Story Mode when running at high frame rates

Improvements to address an issue that resulted in player weight decreasing at a faster rate than intended in Red Dead Online when running at high frame rates

Improvements to address an issue that resulted in players not being able to place Waypoints on the Pause Menu Map in the correct location

Improvements to address an issue with matchmaking in Red Dead Online that resulted in players with incompatible control settings joining the same session. We recommend that players using mouse and keyboard controls should switch to ‘Free Aim’ targeting mode before entering Red Dead Online.

Improvements to address an issue that resulted in all custom graphical settings reverting to a low preset when the game was updated

Improvements to address an issue that resulted in an ‘Activation Required’ error when loading the game after system hardware or device changes were made

Improvements to address issues that resulted in a crash and displayed the ‘Failed to initialize graphics device’ or ‘Unable to initialize graphics driver ’errors when launching the game. If this issue still occurs, please make sure you have the latest graphics card drivers installed for your system.

Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a crash when launching the game in Fullscreen display mode while using Vulkan

Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a crash when launching the game with some graphics-related launch arguments active

Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a crash during loading screens when entering Story Mode or Red Dead Online

Improvements to address an issue that resulted in a crash while modifying weapons at the Gunsmith in Red Dead Online

Improvements to address issues that resulted in random crashes and the error “Red Dead Redemption 2 exited unexpectedly” during gameplay

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