Mario Kart World is being patched to 1.3.0, and with the rounder number comes a more significant update. It introduces a new way to play online with friends, a bunch of improvements in Free Roam, and yet again halfway suggests it will boost the frequency with which you’ll encounter three-lap races, but still in frustratingly ambiguous language.
Nintendo’s update notes for game patches are notoriously sparse. The most recent system update for the Switch 2 came with the legend, “General system stability improvements to enhance the user’s experience,” offering not a single extra detail. Mario Kart World‘s 1.1.2 patch notes were similarly a single sentence long. So 1.3.0’s detailed list is of some significance.
So the headline here is you can now join your friends online when playing Knockout Tour, alongside regular Race and Battle modes. There’s another nice touch: if, when you try to join friends for Knockout Tour, Race or Battle online, the game is full, you and one other person can play Free Roam together while you wait. That’s a lot better than staring at a queue.
Talking of Free Roam, the new patch improves the map so that it will finally show you the locations of P Switches you’ve already found, and the Peach Medallions you’ve previously claimed. Given how ubiquitous these are, and how (annoyingly) similar they can be, this’ll make it far easier to know if you’re just repeating yourself. Also, all those previously discovered P Switches will act as quick travel points, if a little unspecific—the notes say you’ll “move to a location near the P Switch.”
When it comes to the actual racing itself, one key improvement is a slight speeding up of the replenishment rate of item boxes, meaning a new one will spawn in more quickly after the previous is nabbed by an opponent, along with an increase in your time spent invincible after being spun out or crashing.
But most importantly, when playing “wireless” races, three-lap courses will appear more frequently. There was a common lament about their infrequency when the game was first released, which was supposedly addressed in a patch at the end of July, although this didn’t do much to ease people’s frustration, and many suspected it actually affect online racing at all. Hopefully this latest tweak will make a more noticeable improvement, although it’s worth noting that yet again the patch notes speak only of “wireless” and not “online,” and no one knows if this is a deliberate distinction. God knows why Nintendo won’t just let it be a fixed toggle we can flip on—clearly World‘s new contiguous races have so enamored Nintendo that it isn’t able to let go of them properly, much to the ongoing frustration of players.
The notes also come with changes to UFOs in Free Roam, and a bunch of fixes for some niche issues. You can read all the patch notes below:
General
- You can now join friends playing “Knockout Tour” by selecting “Friends” from “Online Play” “1p.”
- Up to 2 players can now play “Free Roam” while waiting if the game was full when trying to join friends playing “Race,” “Knockout Tour” or “Battle” in “Online Play.”
- The “Free Roam” map now displays the locations of P Switches you’ve run over and Peach Medallions you’ve obtained.
- You can now select a P Switch from the map and move to a location near the P Switch.
- In “Free Roam”, you can now transform into the character pulled into the UFO.
- If “Dash Food” in “Settings/Controller” is set to “Doesn’t transform” then you will not transform.
- It is now easier to encounter UFOs in “Free Roam.”
- The conditions for the appearance of some Peach Medallions in “Free Roam” have been adjusted.
- When spectating in “Knockout Tour” or “Balloon Battle” in “Online Play” or “Wireless Play”, you can now choose who to watch, even if you are holding the Joy-Con 2 or Joy-Con horizontally.
- Decreased the time between when an item box is taken by someone and the next time it is revived.
- Increased the invincible time after spinning or crashing during a race.
- Reduced the force of jumps when landing on a rival from above.
- Decreased the amount of time between when you finish and when spectating begins in “Knockout Tour” or “Balloon Battle” in “Online Play” or “Wireless Play.”
- Decreased the amount of time between passing through the checkpoint and when the ranking is displayed in “Knockout Tour” in “Wireless Play” and “LAN Play.”
- Further increased the frequency of lap-type courses appearing in the selection when choosing the next course in “VS Race” and wireless races.
Fixed Issues
- Fixed an issue in “Online Play” and “Wireless Play” where the ranking would sometimes become incorrect if a player went off course at the same time as reaching the finish line.
- Fixed an issue in “Grand Prix”, “Knockout Tour”, and “VS Race”, where the CPU’s ranking would sometimes drop after reaching the finish line.
- Fixed an issue in “Knockout Tour” in “Online Play” where other players’ ratings would sometimes appear as “0” on the results screen.
- Fixed an issue where a Spiny Shell would sometimes pass the first place player in “Wireless Play” or “Online Play.”
- Fixed an issue where players would sometimes be sent flying backwards a great distance when hit by a Spiny Shell.
- Fixed an issue where the second item in an item slot would sometimes not disappear when hit by Lightning.
- Fixed an issue where hitting the base of a pillar in mid-air would sometimes cause a large jump.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused movement to become unstable when doing a wall ride on water.
- Fixed an issue where players would sometimes be swept away strongly after landing when doing a mini jump while going up a river.
- Fixed an issue where players would sometimes pass through the ground when hit by a car driving on the road.
- Fixed an issue in “Free Roam” where players would sometimes be unable to enter pipes correctly after exiting a trailer.
- Fixed an issue where the results screen would sometimes become distorted after spectating “Balloon Battle” in “Online Play.”
- Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes not proceed to the course selection screen after exiting a pipe during “Free Roam” in “Online Play.”
- Fixed an issue where Bullet Bill would sometimes slip through walls when used in “Sky-High Sundae.”
- Fixed an issue where players would sometimes get stuck on a wall at the start of the race heading from “Airship Fortress” to “Shy Guy Bazaar.”
- Fixed an issue where players would sometimes get stuck in walls when using a Bullet Bill in “Bowser’s Castle.”
- Fixed an issue in “Cheep Cheep Falls” where item boxes were sometimes difficult to pick up when Smart Steering was turned on.
- Fixed an issue in “Knockout Tour” “Spiny Rally” where sometimes there was an item box buried in the ground.
- Several other issues have been addressed to improve the gameplay experience.
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