The latest patch for Bloodborne is now available, and among other things, it does away with an obstacle when attempting to play with friends.

As of yet, the patch notes for 1.04 have only been published online in Japanese; viewing the update history on a PS4 is of little help, as it lists only "improved game balance" and "various bug fixes." That sells this patch short, in large part because the game now no longer requires you to be within a certain number of levels of other players when trying to join together with a password.

It's key that this change applies only to matches with password matching, as these are instances where you're deliberately trying to play together with a friend. Trying to find other random players online without a password will still require that you're within roughly 10 levels of each other.

Other changes include a big increase in the number of Blood Vials and Quicksilver Bullets you can now keep in your storage, as you can now have up to 600 of each. The Insight store now shows up sooner, as you'll need only one Insight, not 10, for it to appear. And various balance tweaks have been made, such as reducing the stamina use of the Kirkhammer and decreasing the number of Quicksilver Bullets it takes to use certain items.

Players are attempting to document all of the tweaks in this patch over on Reddit, and we're still awaiting the full patch notes to be released in English.

Sony recently revealed that an expansion for Bloodborne is coming later this year, though we don't yet have any details about it.