Dragon’s Dogma 2 – Optimization Tips & Known Fixes

This article includes an easier way to optimization and the ideal settings for a seamless experience, along with a list of known problems and their cures in Dragon’s Dogma II, such as speed loss.

Optimized Quality Settings

Dragon’s Dogma II is a new game, so these settings might change and may not suit your setup. I aim for graphics that work well on any system meeting Capcom’s specifications. This section reflects community input and my own testing. The settings below are what I’ve found to be the best, but if you disagree, please comment respectfully, and I’ll consider further testing.

As this game is new, some information might change with updates. I’ll try to update periodically, but I might miss things. If you notice a fix I missed, a correction, or have insights on settings, please leave a comment.

  • Graphics Quality – Custom
  • Display Mode – Leave this on “Fullscreen” unless you have a reason to use Borderless
  • Screen Resolution – Personal preference
  • Frame Rate – I would leave this on “Variable”
  • V-Sync – My advice is to leave it on and if you notice screen tearing to turn it off
  • Dynamic Resolution – Off
  • FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 – If you have a GPU that doesn’t support DLSS, play around with this. I personally have it off but I also have a beefy PC. IMO it doesn’t look that bad turned up but quality degrades at Performance and higher
  • DLSS SUPER RESOLUTION – I do not have a Nvidia GPU so can’t speak on this
  • Upscale Sharpness – I’d leave this be personally
  • Rendering Mode – If you’re not using FSR I’d leave this on “Interlaced”
  • Image Quality – i would also leave this if you aren’t using FSR
  • Ray Tracing – Off
  • Ambient Occlusion – SDFAO
  • Anti-Aliasing – TAA
  • Screen Space Reflections – On
  • Mesh Quality – Mid
  • Texture Filtering – High (ANISO x4)
  • Texture Quality – High (2 GB)
  • Grass/Tree Quality – High
  • Resource-Intense Effects Quality – High
  • Shadow Quality – Mid
  • Shadow Cache – On
  • Contact Shadows – On
  • Motion Blur – Personal preference
  • Bloom – Personal preference
  • Depth of Field – Personal preference
  • Lens Flare – Personal preference
  • Lens Distortion – Personal preference
  • Subsurface Scattering – On
  • Motion Quality – High

Performance Fixes

I’ll go over community improvements in this section, which are fixes that the community has suggested that could or might not work.

Task Manager Fix

This fix actually worked for me personally so I’ll list it first.

  1. Right click your taskbar and click “Task Manager”
  2. Click “Details” and right click DD2.exe
  3. Set priority -> High

You will need to do this every single time you launch the game but it worked wonderfully for me.

Nvidia Stutter Solution

Since I use AMD, I haven’t been able to try this myself, however the community appears to support it, and several people have reported success.

  1. Open Nvidia Control Panel
  2. Click “Manage 3D Settings” and navigate to “Program Settings”
  3. Find or add DD2. Open “Shader Cache Size”
  4. Change the option to “Unlimited”

Note: some people found the option for Unlimited under Global Settings.

Shader Cache Reset

One fix that seems to work for some is forcing the game to recompile the shaders

  1. Close the game if it is open.
  2. Open your File Explorer.
  3. Navigate to your install location:
    • Normally – C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Dragons Dogma 2
  4. Delete the “shader.cache2” file.
  5. Open the game and let it install shaders.

Crashing on Startup Solution

  1. Open your File Explorer
  2. Navigate to your install location:
    • Normally – C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Dragons Dogma 2
  3. Delete all DLC “.pak” files
  4. (Optional) Delete CrashReport.exe

Simple Solutions That May Work

Assuming the prior solutions did not work for you, I’m going to provide a few quick fixes below on the off chance they resolve your problem.

  1. Update your GPU Drivers and restart your PC.
  2. Make sure it’s not hardware related (eg. Heavy CPU Bottleneck)
  3. Turn off DLSS. Right now apparently DLSS is causing problems. Try FSR.
  4. Validate your game files on Steam.
  5. Make sure your shader installation was completed properly when you first opened the game. If it ended early I’d reinstall the game.

Optimization with ParkControl

Setting up the program and creating a power mode:

  1. Download and install ParkControl.
  2. Create your own power mode in Windows: Go to power supply settings and create a power management scheme, selecting either balanced or high performance. Even if you already have one, it’s recommended to create a separate scheme with a different name to apply the program settings to it. You can always switch back to the previous scheme if needed.
  3. Choose the newly created power supply scheme from the top line and click “Make active.”
  4. Turn off the “Parking” setting.
  5. Enable the conversion frequency and set it to 20%. This value represents the minimum processor frequency. For example, at 100%, the processor will always operate at the maximum frequency.

For optimal performance on a laptop with PTX 2080 and I9-9880H, with all settings set to maximum (DLSS quality, dynamic resolution off, 4K resolution), the FPS in the open world improved from 31 to 49-52 after tuning the processor.

Deleting Saves

For anyone looking to restart the game, you need to manually delete the save from your PC (stored in steams userdata folder), then disable steams cloud save. Make your new save, then turn back on cloud saves:

  1. Right-click “Dragon’s Dogma 2” in your Steam library and select “Properties.”
  2. Under “General,” disable “Cloud Saves.”
  3. Navigate to your userdata folder (usually located at (x86)\Steam\userdata(user id)\2054970\remote\win64_save).
  4. Delete the files “data000.bin” and “data00-1.bin.”
  5. Launch the game and create a new character.
  6. Close the game and repeat Step 1, but this time enable cloud saves.
  7. You may encounter a warning about file conflicts on the game page; choose “Local File” to overwrite the save file in the cloud and restore it as a backup.

Note: Deleting saves carries a risk of temporary bans. This method is shared for educational purposes and to assist desperate players. Capcom is expected to introduce an in-game solution in the future.

Useful Tips

If you are getting screen tearing and stutters with DLSS Frame Gen; go to control panel set max frame rate to 58 (I know weird) and enable v-sync on; on the nvidia control panel > program settings > select DD2.exe. Gets rid of pretty much all stutters. and frame rate and frame times are improved (smoother).

Bonus Tips for Performance

Here’s what I did:

  1. Rename CrashReport.exe to CrashReport.backup (weird solution but somehow I got fewer crashes from this).
  2. Increase my system paging file to 16gigs (previously 8gigs).
  3. Limit my FPS to 60.
  4. Run the game exclusively full-screen (don’t know if this contributes to anything though).
Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 7928 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices. My first official job in the game industry started back in 2005, and I'm still doing what I love to do.

12 Comments

  1. For those who actually want to use raytracing: RT is set to 40% resolution by default which looks awful. Get the mod from Nexusmods which sets it to 100% or turn it off for gpu performance boost.

  2. The game is designed around ray traced global illumination btw. This is strictly not for reflections, even the console versions use ray traced GI. Upside is when using ray traced GI all the ambient occlusion stuff turns redundant.

  3. Fluid Motion Frames actually made things worse with the fake framerates. One of the reasons is that FMF requires stable native 60fps to actually increase the smoothness of the motion, anything under that will actually increase the stutters.
    So Aiming for stable native 60fps first before turning it on… which is very unlikely at this moment

    Source: myself with 7900XTX & 7950X3D

    • “AFMF is recommended to be enabled while the game is running at minimum fps of 60.” – 20.12.1 release note.

      60 is the minimum fps AMD recommends when it first came out.

      Safe to say is that the frames that got generated by FMF are taking samples from native frame rate. If there is any stutter happens in native (lower than 60), the end result just make stuttering more visible with the generated framerates.
      i.e. FPS counter showing 90,120 or more, but with clear stuttering in visual.

  4. could add to this: i had major issues in the vocation skill menu: freezing, stutter, crashing.. increased my page file size and its FINE ! for whatever reason my page file was something like 2000-4000MB, i bumped it up to 8000-32000MB and i can actually buy multiple skills at once!

    idk if windows managed page file or no page file would also work, but increasing it worked for me.

    (i get confused reading about what page file is for vs RAM, some say windows managed is fine, some say no page file is fine if you have plenty of ram, i have 32GB ram for the record, but the game needed more page file for those skill previews i guess)

  5. Remote Play FPS Fix: Switch game from Fullscreen to Windowed.
    I went from 12 FPS in city to solid 60FPS.

  6. For people using a AMD graphics card it might be worth enabling AMD Fluid Motion Frames. I went from 40fps in the starting encampments, 60-80fps in the forest to 70-120fps in the encampments and 120+ in the forest area.

    My specs are
    CPU: Ryzen 5700x
    GPU: RX 6700 XT
    RAM: 32GB

    Display Mode –Borderless
    Screen Resolution –1080p
    Frame Rate –120fps
    V-Sync –Off, AFMF recommends you do this
    Dynamic Resolution –Off
    FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 -Off
    Rendering Mode –Interlaced
    Image Quality –Three ticks right
    Ray Tracing –Off
    Ambient Occlusion –SDFAO
    Anti-Aliasing –FXAA+TAA
    Screen Space Reflections –On
    Mesh Quality –High
    Texture Filtering –High (ANISO x16)
    Texture Quality –High (2 GB)
    Grass/Tree Quality –High
    Resource-Intense Effects Quality –High
    Shadow Quality –High
    Shadow Cache –On
    Contact Shadows –On
    Motion Blur –Off
    Bloom –On
    Depth of Field –Off
    Lens Flare –On
    Lens Distortion – On
    Subsurface Scattering – On
    Motion Quality – High

  7. Will try when I get home thanks for the info
    I have
    3060 12gb
    Ryzen 7 5800x
    16gb ram
    Win 11
    -a tip tho the game feels smoother with a controller.
    Also I’ve locked my game to 40fps Going to try 30 next.
    I don’t mind playing on max settings in 2k with rtx on actually.
    Tho maby this tip will help me achieve more stable 60fps

  8. I could not get through pawn character creation without a crash. Adding -dx11 to steam game properties startup options was able to get me through it. Might be a 2000 series nvidia card issue but maybe not. It is worth trying for people crashing on character creation. You can always remove it after.

  9. So deleting your save can result in a ban? That’s kind of wild. What about using DD2 Save Manager, on the Nexus, that creates separate backups for you?

    It probably too late for people who already started the game, but I did see it make a save state before I even got into the game. Regardless, it would probably help for people who get stuck or bugged out on a save.

    • I have no idea if the Save Manager works personally, but I’ve seen people posting about being banned as a result of deleting their save unfortunately. Capcom is working on a New Game option atm at least.

  10. Deleting shader.cache2 from the game install folder will force it to recompile the shaders and avoid reinstalling I think.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*