Phasmophobia 0.9.4.0 update patch notes

It's a small but mighty one.

A skull in a red sky in Phasmophobia.
Screenshot by Dot Esports

Phasmophobia is steadily making its way to a full public release with each new update improving past features based on feedback from nearly access players. The 0.9.4.0 update launched on Jan. 9, 2024, with a small but important set of patch notes.

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Compared to some other updates and those planned for the future, this one might not seem that impressive at first. But this update fundamentally changes how everything in the game looks, so if you want to enhance your ghost-hunting experience, then this one is very important to know about.

Here are the full Phasmophobia patch notes for the 0.9.4.0 update.

Phasmophobia full 0.9.4.0 patch notes

Lighting overhaul and graphic adjustments

Most of the update is focused on an overhaul of how lighting works based on player feedback. Overall, this update has vastly enhanced and improved how the lighting looks in Phasmophobia to provide a more realistic appearance.

The moon in the sky in Phasmophobia.
Everything looks a lot better now. Screenshot by Dot Esports

A lot of the new lighting changes start turned off by default, so if you want to experience them, you need to open your journal and turn them on.

The lighting overhaul includes:

  • Eye adaptation, which is where the lighting in the game now changes to reflect how eyes adjust to different lights.
  • Screen Space Global Illumination (SSGI), which mimics bounced lightning to make shadows and lighting look overall less dark. This feature has three different quality settings which are low, medium, and high.
  • Static lighting changes, which overhauls the general lighting for all areas.
  • Ambient light changes, which means the ambient light has been increased.
  • Outside light changes, which means lights from outside like the moon or street lights will now shine in through windows for a more realistic experience.
  • Darkness changes, which means some rooms with darker materials have been adjusted to look much darker.
  • Reflection changes, which means all reflections now update quicker and more consistently as lights are turned on and off.
  • Brightness slider changes, which means the scale is now zero to 250 percent.
  • Cursor brightness changes, which means it can now be adjusted from zero to 100 percent.
  • Range and general brightness changes, which have been applied to the player and all locations to make them more realistic.

The end of the Holiday 2023 event

This update officially marks the end of the Holiday 2023 event. All of the dancing snowmen, the house lights, the snowball guns, and the lobby decorations have officially been removed.

If you participated in and fully completed the event, you should have a Holiday 2023 trophy and ID Card to commemorate the experience. Now that this event is over, the next one likely won’t arrive until around Easter, unless we end up getting the first Valentine’s Day event. But there is also a lot of other content on the Phasmophobia 2024 roadmap to look forward to.

A snowman in the Phasmophobia lobby.
Say goodbye to the snowmen. Screenshot by Dot Esports

Bug fixes and changes

The rest of this update includes an array of important bug fixes and changes. These fixes and modifications are as follows.

  • The Deja Vu weekly challenge has been adjusted to include the correct items.
  • The state of the fuse box in the Glow in the Dark weekly challenge has been changed to broken as was originally intended.
  • The ghost in the Hide and Seek: Extreme weekly challenge now grants you three pieces of evidence as was intended.
  • Motion Sensors have been fixed so they should now properly display motion detections on the truck screen once again.
  • The Poltergeist can no longer throw the Ghost Writing book when using its special throwing ability.
  • Several safe spots have been fixed including those on 13 Willow Street, Sunny Meadows Mental Institution, and Maple Lodge Campsite.
  • Some hiding spots at Grafton Farmhouse have been changed slightly. The armchair upstairs and the nursery crib can both be blocked now but the armchair has also been moved closer to the wall to make it safer.
  • The wardrobe and lights in the nursery at Grafton Farmhouse have been moved to provide better lighting.
  • You can now take a picture of the Summoning Circle at Sunny Meadows Mental Institution as was originally intended.
  • The game performance when turning the fuse box on or off has been improved.
  • The ghost can’t get stuck on the fallen-over locker at Brownstone High School anymore.
  • Campsite A and Campsite B on Maple Lodge Campsite have been fixed to work correctly.
  • Some reflections on 6 Tanglewood Drive have been adjusted to prevent glowing objects when lights are turned on in different rooms.
  • Door knobs that are supposed to be metallic and shiny are shiny once again.
Author
Image of Kacee Fay
Kacee Fay
Staff Writer at Dot Esports covering new releases and a wide array of topics including Minecraft, Disney Dreamlight Valley, Phasmophobia, general gaming, streaming, and more. She has been avidly writing and gaming her whole life and now spends her time combining the two. Kacee graduated from San Diego State University in 2021 with a Bachelor’s Degree in English and a Certificate in Creative Editing and Publishing. She then joined Dot Esports as a Freelance Writer in 2022 before transitioning to a Staff Writer in 2023. In her spare time, she enjoys buying more books than she can read, gaming alone or with friends, drinking too much tea, attending concerts, fangirling over movies and television, listening to music, and spending time with her family, friends, and pets, who are the most important parts of her world.
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