Wildlight Entertainment’s Highguard launched on Monday, and it’s been quite the topic of conversation. Despite pretty positive critical acclaim from gaming publications and content creators, it’s not landed quite so well with the general game playing public. How much of that is just the internet being the internet remains to be seen, but regardless, Wildlight have been listening to feedback and have today pushed the first patch live!
— Highguard | LIVE NOW! (@PlayHighguard) January 29, 2026
Posting an article on social media, the team shared the following, saying “Hey Wardens! We’ve just pushed out a patch with a number of improvements, including FoV sliders for consoles, toggle options for ADS and Crouch, many video settings, and more. The team is also working on optimization improvements, they just need a few more days to cook. See below to see the nitty gritty details, and we’ll see you in Highguard.”
Our own Aarsal checked out Highguard at at event earlier this month, and he had plenty positive to say – “Many, many people doubted Highguard after its reveal trailer, and I understand why. The team always planned to shadowdrop the game, and that trailer was supposed to be followed by a full match of gameplay. But just as Wildlight Studios themselves don’t regret their choice, the past is the past, and what matters now is that we have this incredible multiplayer experience polished and ready to play in our hands. So what are you waiting for? Ignore the noise and check out Highguard for yourselves.” You can read the full preview here if you’ve yet to dive in and give it a shot.
As for what’s changed, it’s clear the developers have listened to some of the more constructive feedback. We’ve got the addition of FOV (Field of View) sliders now available on consoles, the ability to toggle both crouch and ADS (Aim-Down-Sight) in addition to new graphical settings and improved performance, bug fixes and more. Here’s the Highguard 1.0.4 Patch Notes in full, for your convenience.
Highguard 1.0.4 Patch Notes
Settings Improvements
Note: in an effort to release these changes to our players as quickly as possible, a number of menu options are not yet localized in languages other than English. Properly localized settings will be prepared for a future patch.
Game Input Settings
- Added the ability to set Crouch to Hold or Toggle for all platforms.
- Added the ability to set Aim Down Sights to Hold or Toggle for PC only (for now).
Toggling into ADS then tapping Sprint (shift on PC, left stick on controller) will swap your scope. This is disorienting on controller. PC players are recommended to rebind scope swap if using Toggle ADS. We will continue to look into adding this for console players who can’t rebind buttons yet, but we will need more time.
Video Settings
- Console users can now adjust FoV to 110.
- Low scalability settings for shadows and reflections are tuned for even more performance at the cost of some image quality.
- Low shadow setting now also disables volumetric fog.
- Added a new “View Distance Quality” setting that controls skeletal mesh LODs, which can be another useful control to tune GPU and CPU usage.
Players now have the ability to toggle the following features on or off, irrespective of other quality options:
- Anisotropic Materials
- Chromatic Aberration
- Bloom
Motion Blur and Depth of Field need more testing to disable safely. Look for these options very soon.
- DLSS users now have the ability to select a DLSS preset. More presets and better descriptions are coming in the next patch.
- Players can now select Off to disable Global Illumination entirely.
- Resolved an engine bug which could inadvertently throttled laptop users to 60 FPS regardless of frame rate settings.
Crash and Bug Fixes
This patch resolves crashes that could occur in the following scenarios
- Leaving a match on PS5 with an unexpected input state.
- Loading into matches on machines with slower storage devices.
A number of other bugs related to online user presence and matchmaking were also resolved.
- Friends now appear online correctly after accepting requests, and Xbox presence updates properly. Major crash fixes have reduced crashes by 90%, significantly improving stability.
- Friend status is fixed – players now appear online correctly and Xbox presence updates reliably. Our top crash issues are gone resulting in a 90% crash reduction.
Are you still playing Highguard? Let us know in the XboxEra Forums or make some noise in the lively XboxEra Community Discord Server. If you’re looking to be a bigger part of an amazing community, then either choice is a good one!
