How to improve FPS in Enshrouded (PC)
Enshrouded is Keen Games' open-world cooperative survival game built on their proprietary Holistic Engine, a voxel engine that lets you dig, mine, and build at practically any point of the terrain without the limits of a fixed block grid. The game combines exploration of a fully destructible map with action combat, deep crafting, and large-scale base building, all wrapped in the Shroud, a corrosive volumetric fog that covers much of the map and has to be cleared bit by bit to explore safely. After more than two years in early access since January 2024, the 1.0 launch on October 15, 2026 arrives with the engine polishing precisely its most expensive points: the Shroud fog itself, voxel-based global illumination, and terrain streaming when several players dig and build at once in co-op with up to 16 people.
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Calculations based on our FPS model combined with the % gain of each setting (measured in public benchmarks).
1. Quick wins (no visual loss)
Start here. Each one adds a little, but together they give +52% free FPS.
Fog Quality
The Shroud is genuine volumetric fog, not a simple semi-transparent plane, and the engine constantly recalculates its light scattering as the player moves through it. Lowering this setting to Low drastically reduces that cost without removing the sense of oppression that defines the mechanic.
Global Illumination Quality
The Holistic Engine's global illumination propagates light through terrain voxels and player-built structures, a calculation that spikes in large bases with lots of placed torches and light sources. Medium keeps interiors looking believable without the cost of recalculating light bounces on High.
Shadow Quality
Dynamic shadows from vegetation, structures, and characters have a high cost outdoors due to the amount of voxel geometry casting shadow at once. Lowering to Medium keeps the landscape's visual depth without hurting framerate as much in forested areas.
Vegetation Density
Grass, bush, and small tree density renders by instances across wide areas, and Enshrouded's open world is especially dense with vegetation in the map's lower zones. Reducing it to Medium frees up CPU and GPU without leaving the terrain visibly bare.
Motion Blur
Motion blur adds a small per-frame post-processing cost and makes it harder to aim with bow or spells at range during combat, where cursor precision matters more than the cinematic effect.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Render Resolution
Lowering render resolution a few points below 100% reduces pixel load across the whole graphics pipeline, especially noticeable inside the Shroud where the volumetric fog is calculated per screen fragment. With a good sharpening filter the loss of definition is hard to notice in motion.
Water Quality
The map's rivers and lakes use real-time reflection and refraction calculations, a cost that's especially noticeable in coastal and swampy areas. Medium keeps the water's transparency without the full reflection calculation on High.
Object Draw Distance
Controls how far away the player's structures, rocks, and interactive world objects load with full detail; on High the engine keeps a lot more voxel geometry active at once, which is especially costly near large bases, whether your own or someone else's.
Ambient Occlusion
Reinforces the visual contact between vegetation, rocks, and voxel structures, but at its highest level the cost doesn't pay off, since the improvement is barely noticeable while exploring on the move.
Screen Space Reflections
Full-screen reflections mainly affect wet surfaces, polished metal, and water, elements that don't dominate the game's overall look outside specific areas like damp caves or the coast.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
NVIDIA DLSS
+28% FPSEnshrouded supports DLSS with added frame generation during early access, and it's especially useful for absorbing the cost spikes from the Shroud and global illumination at 1440p and 4K without sacrificing image sharpness.
AMD FSR
+22% FPSFSR works on any GPU, NVIDIA or AMD, and is the recommended option for those playing on older cards or without DLSS support, with good quality in Quality mode inside the Shroud.
Intel XeSS
+19% FPSXeSS is available as a third scaling route, with better performance on Intel Arc GPUs and a solid result on NVIDIA and AMD hardware too, as an alternative to FSR.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Enable DLSS in Quality or Balanced mode if you notice drops inside the Shroud or in large bases before touching more fog or global illumination settings.
- •If your GPU supports frame generation, turn it on for co-op sessions where the bottleneck is usually the CPU rather than the GPU, since that's where it gives more real headroom.
- •Keep Game Ready drivers updated; Keen Games keeps releasing frequent performance patches during the final stretch of early access on the way to 1.0.
AMD
- •FSR in Quality mode is a good option at 1440p if your CPU has headroom, since Enshrouded puts a fair amount of load on the main thread from voxel simulation.
- •Enable Radeon Anti-Lag to reduce input latency when fighting with bow or spells at range, where aiming precision matters.
- •Check that Smart Access Memory (Resizable BAR) is enabled in the BIOS; it helps voxel terrain streaming while digging or building fast.
Sistema
- •The voxel engine pulls hard on the CPU in large bases and in co-op with up to 16 players, so a processor with good per-core performance makes more difference than adding extra cores.
- •Install the game on an SSD; it noticeably reduces hitches while digging terrain or exploring fast, moments when the engine continuously generates and unloads voxels.
- •Have at least 16 GB of RAM, the game's real minimum to avoid forced streaming from disk, and keep in mind that whoever hosts the co-op session carries more simulation weight than the rest of the connected players.
5. Known game issues
FPS drops inside the Shroud
The volumetric fog that gives the game its name recalculates light scattering every frame while the player remains inside it, and in areas with dense Shroud or several nearby light sources, framerate can drop noticeably compared to the rest of the cleared map.
Poor performance in massive bases
Very large player builds, with hundreds of voxel pieces and lots of placed torches or light sources, accumulate a global illumination and geometry cost that can tank framerate even on powerful rigs, especially when looking at the base from inside.
Stuttering while digging or exploring fast
When digging terrain or traveling fast on horseback or flying, the engine has to generate and stream new terrain voxels in real time, which can cause occasional micro-stutters, especially on mechanical hard drives or when crossing region boundaries on the map.
6. Frequently asked questions
Why does FPS drop so much inside the Shroud in Enshrouded?▾
Which settings should I lower if my base has a lot of buildings and lights?▾
Does Enshrouded depend more on the CPU or the GPU?▾
Does Enshrouded have DLSS, FSR, or XeSS?▾
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Calculate FPS for Enshrouded →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →