After a couple days of Nintendo releasing their 18.0.0 firmware update, @SciresM releases a brand new update to his Atmosphere NX custom firmware for the Nintendo Switch, with the new version being a pre-release v1.7.0, which adds basic support for firmware 18.0.0, as well as adding some improvements and bugfixes along the way.

The changelog for version pre-1.7.0 is the following:

1.7.0 is Atmosphère's seventy-eighth official release.
Please be sure to update fusee when upgrading to 1.7.0. fusee-primary no longer exists, and will not work any more.
Please note: Atmosphère 1.7.0 is currently in pre-release, and issues may be found that need to be fixed before full release.

• If any bugs are reported while Atmosphère is in pre-release, they will be fixed and the build will be updated.
• 1.7.0 will transition to release after a short amount of time has passed without pressing bug reports.

With thanks to the @switchbrew team, Atmosphère 1.7.0 is bundled with hbl 2.4.4, and hbmenu 3.6.0.
The following was changed since the last release:

• Basic support was added for 18.0.0.
  • The console should boot and atmosphère should be fully functional. However, not all modules have been fully updated to reflect the latest changes.
    • There shouldn't be anything user visible resulting from this, but it will be addressed in a future atmosphère update, once I am not traveling so much.
  • exosphère was updated to reflect the latest official secure monitor behavior.
  • mesosphère was updated to reflect the latest official kernel behavior.
  • spl was updated to reflect the latest official behavior.
• fusee no longer supports applying IPS patches to KIPs.
  • The only KIPs that are ever present are a) atmosphère modules, b) custom system modules, or c) FS.
  • The IPS subsystem was originally designed to make nogc patches work for FS, but these are now internal, and it appears the literal only kip patches that exist are for piracy.
    • I could not find any kip patches posted anywhere made for any other purpose.
  • It fundamentally does not make sense to slow down boot for every normal user for a feature that has no actual use-case, especially when fusee seeks to be a minimal bootloader.
• Minor improvements were made to atmosphere's gdbstub, including:
  • Support was added for QStartNoAckMode.
  • An issue was fixed that could cause a fatal error when creating too many breakpoints.
• A number of minor issues were fixed and improvements were made, including:
  • pt-BR (PortugueseBr) is now accepted as a valid language when overriding game locales.
  • A bug was fixed that could cause atmosphere to incorrectly serialize output object IDs over IPC when using domain objects.
  • A bug was fixed in pm's resource limit boost logic that could potentially cause legitimate boosts to fail in certain circumstances.
  • loader/ro will now throw a fatal error when using invalid IPS patches that go out of bounds, instead of corrupting memory.
  • Support was fixed for booting using a memory configuration of half of the true available memory (e.g. forcing a 4GB configuration on an 8GB board).
• General system stability improvements to enhance the user's experience.

For information on the featureset supported by 1.7, please see the official release notes.

Source
GBATemp's Atmosphere NX Discussion Thread

 

[Blythe93]

is it safe to update to 18.0.1 ....i dont wanna risk to mess it up.

Personally, I haven't seen any games that require the latest firmware, but as far as updating to the latest, I guess it should be fine since sigpatches are working.

 

[impeeza]

is it safe to update to 18.0.1 ....i dont wanna risk to mess it up.

If you have to ask, so do not update until is completely needed.

You need to upgrade Hekate, Atmosphère and homebrew before upgrade firmware

 

[Purple_Heart]

i have ...what i mean is the sigpatches. is sys-patch enough?

 

[impeeza]

i have ...what i mean is the sigpatches. is sys-patch enough?

For what?


the latest sigpatches and SYS-Patch Module are updated up to FW 18.0.1

 

[linuxares]

For what?


the latest sigpatches and SYS-Patch Module are updated up to FW 18.0.1

Oh? Sys-patch is still for fw 18 on the cat site.

 

[impeeza]

Oh? Sys-patch is still for fw 18 on the cat site.

yeah on that pussy site and on the https://gbatemp.net/threads/sys-patch-sysmod-that-patches-on-boot.633517/ thread

 

[gameboy64]

Great!

 

[Purple_Heart]

Oh? Sys-patch is still for fw 18 on the cat site.

good got everything from there so i am good ig

 

[Gamemaster1379]

For folks updating, what's everyone's recommended control flow anymore? I always forget what I need to do on each update and there's so many moving parts.

 

[mlemm]

For folks updating, what's everyone's recommended control flow anymore? I always forget what I need to do on each update and there's so many moving parts.

Boot Switch into Hekate,
Open USB file transfer,
Copy over new folders for atmosphere, sigpatches, and also put the modified fusee (required for fw18 and going forward) in the "payloads" folder.
Copy and paste the new firmware files to newly created (or newly emptied out) "/firmware" folder on your SD cards root.
Leave USB transfer mode.
Touch Reboot at the bottom menu of Hekate,
Then when Hekate restarts click "Payloads", and from the pop-up window select "fusee.bin".
When your Switch loads up go to "Album" and choose "Daybreak", select "Install".
You now have the new firmware installed and are ready to play any titles that were walled behind the new firmware.

 

[Blythe93]

For folks updating, what's everyone's recommended control flow anymore? I always forget what I need to do on each update and there's so many moving parts.

Here's everything you need to know.

If you have a custom theme installed, make sure to uninstall it (via NXThemesInstaller) before you proceed to update.

Whenever you're about to update your firmware and before you do so, make sure that both Hekate and Atmosphere support the latest firmware or the firmware you're currently updating to. If they do, check if the sigpatches are updated to support the latest firmware and Atmosphere version. Sigpatches also work retroactively, meaning that if you're on a lower versions of firmware and Atmosphere, it should still work properly.

While sigpatches should be enough for game backups to work, you can install sys-patch module as well. Optionally, you can install Tesla + nx-ovlloader as that will allow you to see whether sys-patch is working properly, after you press L + D-pad Down + R (Stick) combo, select sys-patch, followed by Log. If it says:

1. Patched = the pattern it's searching for is already patched by sigpatches, so there's no need to patch it again;
2. Patched = the pattern is patched by sys-patch (i.e. sigpatches are not present or haven't been applied on boot);
3. Unpatched = the pattern wasn't found by sys-patch on the current system so there's no need to patch them (only present if you turn off the Version skip in the Options).

Having both sigpatches and sys-patch at the same time should cause no conflict at all, but it's recommended to stick to one that works for you in order to reduce the clutter on your SD card since they are doing the same thing.

Atmosphere 1.7.0 no longer supports ips kip patches (check the release notes here) which are usually used for piracy reasons. Therefore you can:
1) Load Atmosphere's package3 via Hekate's FSS0 - You'll need to reboot to Hekate, go to Launch and select emuNAND CFW or sysNAND CFW (depending on which one you use). If you've downloaded the sigpatches from here. your bootloader/hekate_ipl.bin will already have everything you need to have configured.
2) Use sys-patch instead of sigpatches.
3) Use modified Atmosphere's fusee.bin payload with ips kip patches support.

If everything seems okay, update Hekate and Atmosphere first, followed by sigpatches. You can do that the way @mlemm explained, via Hekate's USB tools as it allows you to update files on your SD card without ejecting it.

Once you do that, update firmware via Daybreak as well. Daybreak comes bundled with Atmosphere. You can find firmware files on that certain site we aren't allowed to link to (that's what I usually do) or you can dump the latest firmware after you update your OFW. I personally like to keep my OFW firmware version the lowest possible just in case a future exploit is found and supports the firmware I have (unlikely to happen, but one can never know). Once you download the files, just extract them to the folder (e.g. firmware) on the root of your SD card, just to make it easier to be found once in Daybreak.

If you used either Haku33, TegraExplorer, EmmcHaccGen or ChoiDujour in the past, you might run into a save issue after updating to 17.0.0 or newer. To fix it, make sure to boot at least once into sysNAND CFW with Atmosphere 1.6.1 or newer.

If you've ever used Incognito_RCM or similar in the past in order to blank your prodinfo, Atmosphere will crash as soon as your console connects to the Internet and tries to connect to the Nintendo servers due to your console not having valid prod keys.

You won't run into this issue if you are always in airplane mode or if you're using 90DNS or DNS MITM. Blanking your prodinfo via Exosphere is possible, but it's usefulness is questionable. DBI, for example, can guess your serial number through "creative coding". You can see whether it's true or not by going into its system info option.

There's also this patch which fixes the prodinfo blanking issue.
If you plan on connecting your console to the Internet, 90DNS or DNS MITM at the very least must be set up prior to connecting to the Internet.