How to improve FPS in The First Descendant (PC)
The First Descendant is a free-to-play looter shooter built on Unreal Engine 5, with Lumen lighting and Nanite geometry in its environments. It's a demanding engine even at mid-range: co-op missions with several Descendants firing off abilities at once and fights against giant bosses spike particle and post-processing load well above normal exploration. This guide covers the settings with the biggest FPS impact without sacrificing combat readability.
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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 +48% free FPS.
Ray Tracing / Lumen
Lumen handles global illumination and reflections via software ray tracing even without "real" ray tracing explicitly enabled in the menu. Disabling it entirely is the setting with the biggest FPS impact in the game, especially indoors and during fights with lots of light effects.
Shadow Quality
Dynamic shadows on Ultra constantly recalculate during boss fights with multiple animated limbs, hurting frametime. Medium keeps a clear read of the environment without the cost of higher-resolution shadows.
Post-Processing (Bloom, motion blur, vignette)
Bloom and motion blur add extra rendering cost without any competitive advantage; in fights with lots of luminous ability effects, bloom exaggerates the glow and makes it harder to see enemy projectiles.
Vegetation and Foliage Density
Outdoor maps have dense, procedurally generated vegetation that hurts performance on mid-range GPUs. Reducing it frees up consistent FPS in open areas without affecting melee combat with bosses.
Texture Resolution
Unlike other settings, texture quality barely affects FPS if you have enough VRAM (8GB or more), but it does determine a lot of the game's overall look. Not worth lowering unless VRAM is very limited.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Effects Quality (skill particles)
This is the setting that shows up most in boss fights: Descendant abilities generate particle explosions, auras, and trails that saturate rendering on Ultra when four players attack at once. Lowering to Medium reduces frametime spikes in the most chaotic phases without making combat unreadable.
Object Quality and Distance Detail (LOD)
Controls the distance at which models load at full detail. In open maps with distant enemies, lowering it to Medium reduces Nanite geometry load without losing detail on nearby targets.
Antialiasing (TSR / TAA)
Unreal Engine 5's native Temporal Super Resolution has a considerable rendering cost on Ultra. Lowering to Medium smooths edges enough while recovering FPS, especially combined with upscaling.
Reflection Quality (SSR)
Full-screen reflections (Screen Space Reflections) have a high cost on wet and metallic surfaces, very present in the game's industrial maps. Lowering to Low is barely noticeable outside of puddles and polished armor.
Dynamic Character Global Illumination
Every Descendant and enemy receives dynamic lighting recalculated in real time. In fights with multiple players and large bosses this becomes a combined CPU/GPU bottleneck.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
NVIDIA DLSS (Quality/Balanced)
+25% FPSDLSS offers the game's best sharpness-to-performance ratio. In Quality the FPS increase is moderate (20-25%) but the image stays very clean; in Balanced you gain a bit more in exchange for slight softening. Compatible with RTX 20 series and up.
AMD FSR 3 (Quality/Balanced)
+20% FPSFSR 3 works on any GPU, including AMD, Intel, and older NVIDIA generations. Image quality is somewhat below DLSS, with more artifacts during fast dodges, but it's still a solid option for GPUs without DLSS support.
DLSS Frame Generation / Multi Frame Gen (DLSS 4)
+90% FPSFrame generation practically doubles or multiplies framerate on RTX 40 and 50 GPUs, exceeding 150-180 FPS in many configurations. HEADS UP: there are recurring reports of severe stuttering when entering new zones with Frame Generation enabled until the zone reloads or it's disabled; if you experience it, first check whether your driver/game build already fixed it.
XeSS (Intel Arc and compatible GPUs)
+18% FPSXeSS support is available for Intel Arc GPUs and as an alternative on cards without DLSS. Performance is similar to FSR 3 in Quality mode, with somewhat more stable image quality in high-motion scenes.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Enable Reflex in the graphics menu to reduce input latency in boss fights with fast dodges.
- •RTX 40/50 cards can take advantage of DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation to multiply framerate at 1440p and 4K; on RTX 30 or below, use DLSS 3 without frame generation to avoid the reported zone-change stuttering.
- •Update to the latest Game Ready drivers: Nexon publishes frequent patches that usually require recompiled shaders, and an outdated driver worsens shader-compilation stutter on login.
AMD
- •Enable Anti-Lag to offset the latency added by FSR 3 Frame Generation, especially in boss fights with fast attack patterns.
- •FSR 3 Frame Generation on AMD GPUs (RX 6000/7000) tends to run more stably than DLSS Frame Generation on NVIDIA according to community comparisons, so it's the preferred option if you have a Radeon card.
- •With ray tracing enabled, Radeons fall well below equivalent RTX cards (barely 30 FPS at 4K); keep Lumen disabled and rely on software rendering for stable performance.
Sistema
- •Enable Resizable BAR in the BIOS: the game benefits measurably, especially combined with NVIDIA 30/40 series GPUs.
- •Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) in Windows and turn on Game Mode to reduce micro-stutter in co-op missions.
- •Install the game on an SSD (NVMe preferably): texture streaming loads in open missions cause noticeable pop-in and frametime drops on mechanical or slow SATA drives.
5. Known game issues
Unreal Engine 5 shader compilation stutter
As with most UE5 games, the first time certain effects or enemies appear, the engine compiles shaders on the fly, causing micro-stutter. It's more noticeable after each major content patch, when new Descendants or bosses are added. Playing a few matches after each update "pre-warms" the shader cache and reduces the issue.
FPS spikes in boss enrage phases with multiple effects
In raid boss enrage phases and special operation incursions, the overlap of ability particles from all four Descendants alongside the boss's own effects can halve framerate for several seconds. Lowering effects quality and Lumen noticeably mitigates the problem.
Stuttering with DLSS Frame Generation on zone change
Several players report sharp FPS drops (from over 150 to 10-30 FPS) entering a new zone with DLSS Frame Generation enabled, which persist until disabling the option or reloading the area. If you experience it, try playing with Frame Generation disabled or switch to FSR 3 Frame Generation as a more stable alternative.
6. Frequently asked questions
Why do my FPS drop only in boss fights and not the rest of the game?▾
Is it worth enabling ray tracing / Lumen in this game?▾
Which upscaling is better, DLSS or FSR 3?▾
How do I avoid stuttering on login or after an update?▾
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Calculate FPS for The First Descendant →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →