New Phasmophobia Update Makes Big Changes to Custom Difficulty Rewards

By Marc Deschamps

Developer Kinetic Games has dropped a new update for Phasmophobia, bringing the horror game up to version 0.8.0.3. The hotfix includes several changes, including lessened sanity reductions for Ouija board questions, as well as adjustments for Custom Difficulty rewards. Kinetic Games will work on rebalancing those reward multipliers overall, but today's fix is meant to make things fairer for players that aren't trying to just farm for easy rewards; hopefully, players will be happy with the results! Full patch notes from the game's official page on Steam can be found below:

REWARD CHANGES

Firstly we'd like to apologize. In our haste to remove money and XP farmers from the game, we penalized our Custom Difficulty goers way too harshly and bypassed the core concept of what custom was originally advertised as "Play your way".

In the long term, we will be rebalancing the entirety of Custom Difficulty's reward multipliers, to make sure that they are fairer, not overly rewarding when lower risk is taken, and stop cheesy tactics to farm easy rewards.
Today, we're removing the -60% reduction for Custom games, and adding the following until the rebalancing is finalized, early next year with 0.8.1:

  • Custom Reward Multipliers will now have a maximum cap of x15, displayed with the actual multiplier beside it in brackets.
  • Incorrectly identifying the ghost type will lower your multiplier to the next default difficulty (rounding down). E.g. 5x > 4x or 3.7x > 3x

CHANGES

  • Some Ouija board questions have had their sanity reductions increased, as they were much too powerful for the sanity trade-off: Ghost location – 50% (Previously 40%), Bone location – 50% (Previously 20%)
  • The Haunted Mirror's sanity drain has been adjusted, so that you can't entirely avoid the sanity drain with a ~1-second peek and still reap the reward. This should also encourage slightly longer peers into the paranormal realm. The Mirror will now drain a minimum of 20% sanity per use.
  • Adjusted player freezing breath visuals so it will no longer block your view when walking too close to it
  • Smudge Sticks will now visually animate much more accurately with the timing of their gameplay effect
  • Improved Smudge Sticks' smoke effect
  • Adjusted several inconsistent text capitalizations in English
  • Rebaked Sunny Meadows

FIXES

  • Removed several sky light leaks in the following locations:
    • Willow
    • Tanglewood
    • Edgefield
    • Ridgeview
    • Grafton
    • Sunny Meadows
  • The DOTS and death room ghost will no longer be the wrong ghost model
  • The reset save button will now work
  • Sanity will now stop draining when you are in a lit area
  • Snow will no longer fall inside the Bleasdale attic
  • Willow front room window fingerprints will now be photographable

    • Overall, this looks like a pretty solid little update! There isn't anything significant as far as new content is concerned, but hopefully these changes will result in a better overall game. Phasmophobia has a passionate following, and anything that makes the game more enjoyable is certainly a good thing!

    Phasmophobia is currently available on PC via Steam. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the game right here.

    Have you been enjoying Phasmophobia so far? What do you think of this update? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!

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