Performance adjustments have been made to the user_config file to achieve better frame rates in the game. We explained all the steps in this guide.
How to Configure Performance
Getting low performance and haven’t found any config tweaks online so decided to try it myself to temporarily get better performance until I can upgrade. Here’s what I’ve found so far.
This guide is meant to be used as a resource to edit the config file yourself, experiment and report back if you find anything that helps.
In game Obvious Stuff
Set graphics preset to low.
Turn everything to lowest/off.
Fullscreen has better performance but borderless lets you seamlessly alt-tab.
Use whatever rendering quality will let you hit 60fps in combat. I use quality with sharpness at 1.00.
I like anti-aliasing on so the game isn’t jaggy but it will lower performance.
Config Tweaks
Location in file explorer;
C:UsersYourUserAppDataRoamingArrowheadHelldivers2
Appdata is a “hidden” folder by default. To make it visable click “view” and tick “hidden items”.
Open “user_settings.config” with notepad or notepad++ (free download).
The following should in theory improve performance.
Use CTRL + F to find these lines.
post_effects_enabled = true
particles_cast_shadows = true
sun_shadows = true
sun_flare_enabled = true
particles_local_lighting = true
wind_enabled = true
local_lights = true
particles_tessellation = true
color_grading_enabled = true
heathaze_enabled = true
particles_receive_shadows = true
lens_quality_enabled = true
far_scatter_enabled = true
Change all of the above to false.
Lighting may look washed out due to disabling local lights. Skip anything with lights in the name if that bothers you.
cubemap_resolution = [
64
64
]
Change 64 to 16.
sun_shadow_map_size = [
1024
512
]
Change 1024 to 128.
Change 512 to 64.
These are non-important textures you can reduce the size of if you dont mind blurry skyboxes and shadows. You can customize to your liking by continuing to half the size until desired.
So for a 512 texture you can use 256, 128, 64, 32 etc. The lowest I would go is 16, you won’t get much performance after that.
Outro and Preview
Save a copy to your desktop, sometimes updates will revert your config, you’ll know if you start the game and it gives you the initial language selection.
Delete the config and start the game to generate a fresh default one in case you don’t like how it looks or mess something up. If you have any other tips to share do so below and I may add them to the guide.
