The Blood of Dawnwalker, a title known for its challenging gameplay and significant performance demands, requires careful optimization to achieve smooth frame rates. Rebel Wolves' latest offering can strain PC hardware, making it necessary to adjust graphical settings even for those meeting the recommended system requirements.
Understanding the Performance Challenge
Testing with a mid-range system, including an Nvidia RTX 4060 graphics card and an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X CPU, aiming for 60 fps at 1440p with the High preset proved difficult. Dense forest environments, common in the early game, particularly impact performance, often dropping average frame rates to around 50 fps even with DLSS set to Balanced. Adjusting DLSS to Performance mode, effectively lowering the internal rendering resolution to 720p, yielded only a minor 6 fps increase, while introducing noticeable visual artifacts, especially around foliage.
Similar issues were observed with AMD GPUs using FSR. The Ultra Performance mode introduced significant shimmering on rock textures and fringing around the player character, even at higher DLSS settings. This suggests that while upscaling technologies can help, they introduce their own visual compromises.
Recommended Settings Tweaks
To reclaim performance without drastically sacrificing visual quality, PC Gamer identified four key settings to adjust: Shadow Quality, Light Quality, Foliage Quality, and Detail Quality. Reducing each of these from High to Medium provided a substantial performance boost. Specifically, lowering Shadow Quality to Low further improved frame rates, achieving an average of 62 fps in a repeatable benchmark run through the Briar Sloughs area.
Shadows are a common performance bottleneck in Unreal Engine 5 games, and the abundance of foliage in The Blood of Dawnwalker exacerbates this. While setting Shadow Quality to Low may result in more noticeable pop-in during motion, it remains visually acceptable for many players. Reducing Foliage Quality decreases the density of environmental assets like scattered hay, a compromise that many may find worthwhile for increased performance.
Even with these adjustments, demanding scenarios, such as multi-character fights at night, can still cause average frame rates to dip to around 53 fps. However, the recommended tweaks offer a significant improvement for general gameplay.
Leveraging Frame Generation
Rebel Wolves recently introduced an experimental Frame Generation feature, compatible with both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards. This technology, available as a 2x Frame Gen option, can enhance perceived smoothness by interpolating frames. While not true performance gains, Frame Generation can make lower base frame rates feel more comfortable.
For systems capable of running the game, particularly modern AMD or Nvidia cards from the last two generations, Frame Generation is worth exploring. Even with a base average of 50 fps, enabling Frame Generation with DLSS Balanced on the High preset pushed the average to approximately 73 fps. This represents a notable increase in fluidity, although the interpolated frames can introduce some visual artifacts, such as increased fringing around the player character and occasional artifacting when panning the camera quickly in complex scenes.
The added latency from Frame Generation is a primary concern, but testing showed only a 4 ms increase in PC latency with an RTX 4060. This marginal increase is generally considered a worthwhile trade-off for the enhanced smoothness, especially when aiming for higher graphical presets. While players already achieving a consistent 60 fps or higher might choose to disable Frame Generation for absolute clarity, it remains a valuable tool for those seeking that extra bit of polish and smoother gameplay on hardware like the RTX 4060.