Valheim has taken Steam by storm, selling millions of copies since it was released. Players have been enjoying their time learning how to survive, crafting equipment, taking on bosses, and building their own homes and settlements. What has been a little less enjoyable are the framerate issues that some players are experiencing.
Some players struggle to maintain playable frame rates while taking on bosses or moving through dense forest areas. The good news is that there is a simple solution discovered by Redditor RustyB3ans. This method involves making some minor alterations to a config file but is easy to do.
As always when making these types of changes, be sure to make a copy of the config file before starting to make any alterations, as it can then simply be replaced if anything is amiss.
- Navigate to the following folder, (C:) > Program Files (x86) > Steam > steamapps > common > Valheim > valheim_Data, or whichever drive the game is installed on.
- Righ-click on the file called "boot", and open it with Notepad or any other simple text editor.
- Add these two lines to the very start of the "boot" file.
- Line 1 - "gfx-enable-gfx-jobs=1"
- Line 2 - "gfx-enable-native-gfx-jobs=1"
- Save the changes and close the file.
Now players will need to go into Steam and right-click on Valheim in their Library, then select Properties. On the General tab, type "-window-mode-exclusive" into the Launch Options box. Finally, when starting Valheim, open the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del, then find Valheim in the process list, right-click on it, and select Go to Details. Right-click on valheim.exe and set the priority to high. This step will need to be repeated every time the game is launched.
Players have reported increases in framerate up to 20-40 FPS, although it should be noted that not everyone will see this level of improvement. As an early access game, the performance of Valheim will undoubtedly improve over time, so this solution will not be required by the time the game launches, hopefully. It is advisable to run some kind of monitoring program to check CPU and GPU performance and framerates before and after making these changes, to track any increases in framerate that might be gained.
With these small changes, players should see a significant jump in performance, making their next attempt to take on the Bonemass a smoother experience. It may be necessary to repeat these steps after future updates, depending on whether the altered config file is overwritten. If players notice decreased performance after installing an update or patch, making the same changes to the config file should once again boost their framerates.
Valheim is available in Steam Early Access on PC.
Source: Reddit