Lords of the Fallen has some severe performance issues at launch. Players are experiencing stuttering, freezing, and FPS drops. Unfortunately, most of these are caused by poor optimization; the only real fix will be patches. However, there are a few things you can do to make the game run a bit better.
How to fix Lords of the Fallen performance issues
While playing Lords of the Fallen, I experienced a fair amount of performance issues. Before the game stopped working altogether, I regularly encountered stuttering, FPS drops, and brief freezes. This may be because of the game’s high PC hardware requirements for some players, but I’m running an i9-13900K and a RTX 4090, so that shouldn’t be an issue.
Stuttering, FPS dips, and freezing in Lords of the Fallen most often occurred for me when transitioning to a new area. In particular, the steps between where you meet the Iron Wayfarer and the arena where you fight Pietra were particularly rough.
Strangely, turning off DLSS was what helped performance the most for me. Once I did, the hitching in Lords of the Fallen dropped to a minimum, and the framerate became more consistent. For those with weaker video cards, you’ll likely have to make one of three choices:
- Turn DLSS off and run it at a lower resolution
- Turn DLSS off and run it with a lower framerate cap
- Keep DLSS on and deal with a less consistent framerate
Unfortunately, other than updating your drivers and experimenting with low, medium, and high graphics settings, there’s no definitive fix for performance issues in Lords of the Fallen. The game launched in a pretty poor state, so you’ll likely have to wait for the game to be patched.
Lords of the Fallen’s performance woes have tested many players’ patience. Although temporary solutions exist, they aren’t foolproof. We expect players will continue to see issues until the game is patched.