How to improve FPS in Kena: Scars of Kosmora (PC)
Kena: Scars of Kosmora is Ember Lab's sequel to the acclaimed Kena: Bridge of Spirits, an action adventure that keeps the studio's visual trademark: a Pixar-style digital animation aesthetic, with warm, artistically crafted lighting, magical forests dense with vegetation, and the endearing Rot, small furry creatures that accompany Kena and actively take part in the game's agile combat. The sequel jumps to Unreal Engine 5, leaning on Lumen for dynamic global illumination and a dedicated fur-shading system to render individual fur for dozens of Rot on screen at once, plus Nanite for the organic geometry of the forest vegetation. That combination of real-time indirect lighting, simulated fur, and dense foliage makes the game clearly GPU-oriented, following the same performance pattern as other recent Unreal Engine 5 titles.
This is what you'd gain with a NVIDIA RTX 3050
Want the RTX 3050 at the best price?
Check the current price on Amazon.
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 +50% free FPS.
Global Illumination (Lumen)
Lumen recalculates the indirect lighting that bathes the magical forests and temple interiors in real time, one of the engine's highest GPU costs. Lowering it to Medium keeps much of Ember Lab's characteristic warm atmosphere without the cost of Epic.
Fur/Hair Quality (Rot)
Individual Rot fur is rendered via a fur-shading system that becomes especially costly when several dozen of these creatures group together on screen during the game's most spectacular moments.
Shadow Quality
Dynamic shadows from vegetation, the Rot, and enemies in combat are constantly recalculated in scenes with very artistically crafted lighting, one of the game's visual trademarks.
Foliage/Vegetation Density
Kena's magical forests are built with dense layers of vegetation managed via Nanite, adding organic detail at the cost of considerable geometry load in the leafiest zones.
Motion Blur
Motion blur adds a per-frame post-processing cost and makes it harder to read attacks and dodges in Kena's agile combat against fast enemies.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Texture Quality
Ember Lab's hand-painted, Pixar-style textures already look crisp at High, which demands less VRAM than Ultra without a proportional visual difference.
Ambient Occlusion
Reinforces the visual contact between Kena, the Rot, and the surrounding vegetation, but at its highest level doubles the cost without a perceptible improvement during combat in motion.
Post-Processing / Bloom
The warm glow of magical elements and the Rot's energy orbs are processed via bloom, a key effect of the game's visual style but with non-negligible GPU cost in very bright scenes.
Screen Space Reflections
Puddles, rivers, and polished temple surfaces generate reflections that are costly to calculate on screen, especially combined with active Lumen.
Anti-Aliasing (TSR)
TSR, Unreal Engine 5's native temporal antialiasing, cleans up the engine's characteristic noise, especially noticeable on the Rot's fur, but at its highest level adds a relevant sampling cost at 1440p/4K.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
NVIDIA DLSS
+32% FPSBeing built on Unreal Engine 5, it's common for Kena: Scars of Kosmora to integrate DLSS via NVIDIA's native plugin, especially useful at 1440p/4K to absorb the combined cost of Lumen and the Rot's fur shading.
AMD FSR
+26% FPSFSR works on any GPU regardless of manufacturer and is the recommended alternative for those without a recent NVIDIA card.
Intel XeSS
+22% FPSIf the game includes Intel's upscaling plugin, XeSS is a viable option on Arc GPUs and also compatible with NVIDIA and AMD hardware.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Use DLSS in Quality or Balanced mode at 1440p/4K to offset the combined cost of Lumen and the Rot's fur shading without losing too much sharpness in the dense forests.
- •Keep Game Ready drivers updated; recent Unreal Engine 5 titles usually receive specific Lumen and Nanite optimizations shortly after launch.
- •On mid-range GPUs, prioritize lowering Fur/Hair Quality before Texture Quality: the Rot's fur weighs more on performance than environment texture resolution.
AMD
- •If your GPU is RDNA 2 or older, consider lowering Lumen to Medium instead of Epic, since these cards tend to perform somewhat worse under hardware global-illumination loads than equivalent RTX cards.
- •FSR in Quality mode is a solid alternative to DLSS to maintain stable framerate in scenes with the most Rot and vegetation on screen.
- •Check that Smart Access Memory (Resizable BAR) is enabled in the BIOS to better exploit CPU-GPU bandwidth in scenes with lots of Nanite geometry.
Sistema
- •Install the game on an NVMe SSD; streaming textures and Nanite vegetation depends on read speed and reduces visual popping when entering new forest zones.
- •Let the game precompile shaders if it offers that option on first launch; it's the most common cause of stuttering in the first few hours of recent Unreal Engine 5 games.
- •Close third-party overlays (Discord, capture software) during the busiest combat sequences, where several Rot with individual fur and magic effects coincide on screen at once.
5. Known game issues
Shader compilation stuttering
As with most recent Unreal Engine 5 games, you'll likely notice occasional hitches when entering new forest zones while the engine compiles shaders on the fly, especially in the first few hours of play and after every update.
GPU spikes when many Rot with fur group together
Scenes where dozens of Rot group around Kena, each with individually simulated fur, generate one of the game's biggest GPU load spikes, noticeable as occasional framerate drops even on rigs that have headroom the rest of the time.
High VRAM usage with Texture Quality on Ultra
Some players with 6GB of VRAM or less might notice streaming hitches when combining Texture Quality on Ultra with very vegetation-dense forest zones and active Lumen at the same time.
6. Frequently asked questions
What setting gives the most FPS with the least visual loss in Kena: Scars of Kosmora?▾
Does Kena: Scars of Kosmora have DLSS, FSR, or XeSS?▾
Why do FPS drop when many Rot appear on screen?▾
Is it more CPU- or GPU-demanding?▾
Want to know exactly how many FPS YOUR PC will get?
Enter your GPU and CPU in our calculator and measure the real impact of each setting.
Calculate FPS for Kena: Scars of Kosmora →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →