In this simple guide, I’ll share my experience on how to optimize the game for great visuals on the Steam Deck OLED (and LCD model as well). By changing a few settings, you’ll get better visual quality on the Steam Deck screen compared to the default out-of-the-box configuration.

First of all, using FS3 increases power usage and should dropdown FPS from 2 or 4. It gives you a crisper image (not too much), but you’ll also notice some flickering in grass and some ghosting effects. It also puts more load on the CPU and GPU.

My recommended settings:

- Display Resolution: 1280x800 (native Steam Deck resolution)
- Render Resolution: Quality (renders the game at 1.5x lower than native resolution)
- Resolution Upscaling: TAA (offers smooth visuals with traditional upscaling and AA, uses less power than FS3)
- Sharpness: set to 1 (adds clarity when using TAA upscaling)
- V-Sync: Off
- Brightness: 0 (default)
- Motion Blur Intensity: Off
- FPS Limit: 30 FPS
- Anisotropic Texture Filtering: 4x (enhances texture quality at a distance)
- Texture Resolution: Medium (Low is too blurry; Medium is a good balance, a short freeze occurs)
- Shadows: Low (The engine render very well low shadows)
- Screen Space Ambient Occlusion: Default (adds shadow depth to static objects)
- Screen Space Reflections: Default (without this, water reflections are fake)
- Mirrors: Off (useless)
- Effects: Low
- Details: Low
- Volumetric Clouds: Medium (adds more ambient shadows on terrain but need more test)
- Volumetric Fog: Low

Try these settings to improve image quality compared to the defaults.

While playing handheld, if you like you can set the TDP to 11 Watts and see but sometimes FPS dropdown to 25. During storms or heavy scenes, effects like volumetric fog and rain particles may lower FPS, but limiting TDP to 11W helps with battery life. With TDP set to 11W your Deck can go up to 16 W of total device consumption and give you 3 hours of gaming. If you don't like the dropdown to 25 FPS on some cases try to set to 12W or 13W.

In Docked Mode or if you don't care of the battery draining, avoid using the Steam Deck TDP Settings.

Note on Docked TV Mode:

I tried running the game at 1920x1080 on my external 65" TV, but the Steam Deck couldn’t handle this resolution well with this game engine. I recommend lowering the resolution to something like 1600x... to achieve better FPS.

I’m still doing more tests and waiting for optimization updates. I taken screenshots below from first 4 maps but I need to make more test on next biomes. I might update this guide in the coming weeks or months.

[CHANGE LOG]

05 Jun 2025: Added some screenshots from Incommunicado and Sunken maps where more assets and details are present. On some high density Trees Area I noticed the FPS dropdown to 25-22 during storm but only if you are playing with TDP set to 11W. (Remember that TDP set to 11W needs an high tolerance for variable capped 30 FPS and is usefull when you want to preserve battery life on the go, otherwise turn off the TDP)

28 May 2025: Changed the "Screen Space Reflections" from High to Default due to a 1.5 patch where reflections seems to be more detailed and with less flickering.