Nearly two weeks after it hit beta, the Starfield DLSS update — dubbed 1.8.86 on Steam — is now available for the masses. Not only should it help with performance, but the update also lets you snarf food off any surface.
You may not have eaten food right off the ground since you were a toddler, but there is no judgment for such behavior in space. Well, unless you brought one of those Constellation companions who complain about everything. Wait, no. That’s all of them.
What DLSS update 1.8.86 brings to Starfield
The standout of update 1.8.86 is that it brings Nvidia’s DLSS to Starfield at last. Bethesda’s big space RPG has been without the useful tech since it launched in September, leaving many PC players to twist knobs and adjust sliders in order to get the game running relatively well on their rigs. It’s been a bit touch-and-go. The update adds DLSS support along with DLAA (deep learning anti-aliasing), Nvidia Reflex Low Latency, and DLSS frame generation.
And you get to eat food off the floor like a low-health character from a beat ’em up. Indeed, Bethesda has proudly included a highly requested feature that allows you to eat any food found in the environment. Will 76 Chunks Beef satisfy you? Probably not, since the only thing closer to the void that is a Bethesda character’s stomach is a black hole. And food items heal for very little in Starfield. But it may save your life to slurp some alien tea you stepped on while in a heated fight with space pirates.
The update does bring plenty of other changes, including bug fixes. One of the bugs tied to the ‘Eye of the Storm’ mission seems to be fixed, and the game received some polish to its visuals.
Hopefully, it’s enough to make some players happy. But it may be too late for some. Starfield has dropped hard in popularity, and, for a moment, had fewer players than 2011’s Skyrim. The Steam score has also started to slide, with the game sitting at a ‘Mixed’ rating. We’ll have to wait and see if a better-performing Starfield can start, well, performing better soon.
