Want to Play Palworld on Your Steam Deck? Here Are the Most Optimized Settings!
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Palworld has been making numerous strides since its release on 19th January, quickly reaching one of Steam's highest concurrent player counts. While the game is exclusive to Xbox consoles and PC, the fact that the game is available on Valve’s platform means you can enjoy Palworld on the go, thanks to the Steam Deck.
Considering that the game is built on Unreal Engine 5, it can be pretty demanding to run, even on the powerful Zen 2 chip and RDNA graphics. Worry not, as this guide will provide you with the most optimized settings to run the game consistently on the handheld.
The Best Steam Deck Settings for Palworld
Unfortunately, Palworld seems to contain many optimization issues as it is currently in early access and we can expect the devs to smoothen things out by the time the game gets its full release. Although the Steam Deck’s hardware is far more capable than the minimum requirements, there are performance issues that cause frame drops and slight stutters on the handheld.
Considering this, here are the best settings that will help you maintain a consistent gameplay experience:
Presets: Custom
Screen Mode: Full Screen
Max FPS: No Limit
VSync: On
Motion Blur: Off
Anti Aliasing: FXAA
View Distance: Low
Grass Details: Medium
Shadows: Low
Effects Quality: Low
Texture Quality: Medium
The aforementioned presets will make sure that you can run the game at 30-40 FPS consistently. As mentioned before, the game does have a few performance issues and it will drop to the high 20s when a lot is going on your screen. The game currently does not support AMD FSR and it only contains Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling technology, which is the reason why we have to tone down the settings quite a bit.
The main dip in performance is due to the game’s Shadows, something that seems to be an FPS killer in most modern titles. If you still experience unstable frame rates, we recommend you limit it to 30 from Steam Deck’s built-in settings. If all you care about is outright performance, you can try the following steps:
Set everything to low
Drop the game’s internal resolution
Change its Screen Mode from Full Screen to Windowed
Use the Deck’s internal FSR to bump the resolution back up
While the above method does take a significant hit to quality, you can comfortably run the game at mid-40 to 50 FPS. You will also notice that the game’s fonts will be slightly difficult to read as they will be blurred out. Currently, the game does not have a scaler to bump up the font size, which would be the main disadvantage of running the game on Valve’s handheld.
Those are pretty much the best settings you can use to run Palworld on the Steam Deck. Make sure you disable the TDP limit on the handheld to maximize your hardware’s performance. Do note that the settings were provided by GamingOnLinux.
