How to improve FPS in Lost Ark (PC)
Lost Ark is Smilegate's free-to-play isometric ARPG that still runs on Unreal Engine 3, an already-veteran technical base for an MMO in active service. The engine handles normal dungeons with ease, but it gets pushed hard in Legion Raids and Guardian Raids, where eight players unleash skill effects, boss telegraphs, and status overlays all at once. That volume of simultaneous particles is the game's real bottleneck, not resolution or the graphics hardware itself. Main cities like Vern or Punika also generate extra load from the sheer number of cosmetics and characters rendered on screen. Tuning effects and character quality carefully makes far more difference than raising resolution.
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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 +70% free FPS.
Effects Quality
This is the setting with the most direct impact in raids: it reduces the amount and complexity of skill particles, auras, and boss telegraphs. In Legion Raids with eight active players, dropping it from Ultra to Low can be the difference between 30 and 60 FPS at the peak of a mechanic.
Other Players Skill Effects
This toggle hides the ability effects cast by other players, which are exactly what saturates the GPU and CPU in groups of eight. Disabling it doesn't affect your own gameplay or reading boss mechanics, it just clears away other players' visual noise.
Shadow Quality
Dynamic shadows in Unreal Engine 3 keep recalculating in zones with lots of players and objects, like social hubs. Dropping them to Low frees up frame time with barely any noticeable difference from this fixed isometric camera.
Anti-Aliasing
The default TAA smooths edges better but adds a notable processing cost in scenes with lots of particle movement. FXAA offers lighter smoothing that's more than enough given the distant isometric view.
Character Quality
This controls model detail and, above all, the number of cosmetic and transmog overlays from other players rendered simultaneously. In cities like Vern with dozens of visible characters, dropping it from Ultra to Medium eases CPU load considerably.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Post Processing
Includes bloom, vignette, and color effects that pile up on screens already saturated with particles during boss fights. Dropping it to Medium reduces the cost without making the game look visually flat.
View Distance
Being an isometric game with a fixed camera, view distance is rarely decisive for performance except in large open zones. It can be left high at no real cost, prioritizing other settings first.
Resolution Scale
With no native DLSS, FSR, or XeSS in Unreal Engine 3, manually lowering the resolution scale is the only real way to ease render load on modest GPUs. A 90% setting is barely noticeable in sharpness from the distant isometric camera.
Texture Quality
With 6GB of VRAM or more, the impact of lowering textures is minimal, since Lost Ark's bottleneck is rarely video memory. Only worth reducing on cards very limited in VRAM.
Motion Blur
Adds a small but constant processing cost, and many players also disable it out of visual preference in fast fights with lots of camera movement.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Enable Low Latency Mode set to "Ultra" from the NVIDIA control panel to reduce input lag during reactive dodge mechanics in raids.
- •Force the power mode to "Prefer Maximum Performance" in the control panel to avoid downclocks during the most demanding particle scenes.
- •Update to the latest Game Ready drivers, since Lost Ark receives targeted optimizations for CPU spikes in social zones.
AMD
- •Enable Radeon Anti-Lag to offset input lag in boss fights with heavy particle load on screen.
- •Check that Radeon Chill is disabled, since it can introduce annoying FPS swings in fights with sudden intensity spikes.
- •Keep Adrenalin drivers updated; AMD has polished Unreal Engine 3 performance in recent releases.
Sistema
- •Install the game on an SSD to reduce hitching when loading dungeons, raids, and open-world zone transitions.
- •Close third-party overlays (Discord, recorders, launchers) during raids, since Lost Ark already demands plenty of CPU by itself at those moments.
- •A processor with good single-thread performance helps more than extra cores, because Unreal Engine 3 relies heavily on a single thread to manage skill and player logic.
5. Known game issues
Severe FPS drops in Legion Raids with a full party
With eight players triggering abilities and boss telegraphs simultaneously, even powerful rigs can drop below 40 FPS at the peak of a mechanic. It's a structural limitation of Unreal Engine 3's particle system, not a one-off configuration issue.
Stuttering when entering main cities
Zones like Vern or the Punika hub load dozens of characters with custom cosmetics all at once, causing one- or two-second microcuts when entering. Lowering Character Quality and Effects Quality noticeably reduces how often this happens.
No native upscaling support
Being built on Unreal Engine 3, Lost Ark offers no DLSS, FSR, or XeSS. The only real way to gain FPS on modest GPUs is to manually lower the Resolution Scale or reduce Effects Quality.
6. Frequently asked questions
Why do my FPS only drop in raids and not the rest of the game?▾
Does Lost Ark have DLSS or FSR?▾
Is it worth lowering character quality if I don't care about other players' visuals?▾
Which setting gives the best ratio of FPS gained to visual loss?▾
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 Lost Ark →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →