How to improve FPS in Wuchang: Fallen Feathers (PC)
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is Leenzee's semi-open-world soulslike set in a Ming dynasty China ravaged by a plague that turns people into monsters. Built on Unreal Engine 5 with Lumen for dynamic global illumination and Nanite for high-detail geometry, it combines demanding parry-and-dodge combat, large interconnected areas, and an exploration loop filled with dense vegetation and plague and fog ambient effects. The July 2025 launch drew harsh criticism precisely for its PC performance: shader compilation stuttering, long loading times, and a Lumen cost disproportionate to what it delivers visually, to the point that Leenzee's own "recommended" requirements already assume DLSS or FSR enabled out of the box.
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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 +54% free FPS.
Global Illumination Quality
Lumen recalculates indirect light propagation in real time in every area, and inside Wuchang's temples and caves that cost spikes because there are many reflective surfaces and simultaneous light sources. Lowering it to Medium noticeably reduces GPU load without hurting readability in combat areas.
Reflection Quality
Lumen-based reflections on wet floors, metal armor, and plague puddles have a cost that grows much faster than their visual payoff, especially on RTX 2070/3060 and equivalent mid-range AMD cards.
Shadow Quality
Dynamic shadows from enemies, foliage, and structures are constantly recalculated, and in Wuchang's forest areas and ruined temples their cost rises noticeably compared to more enclosed interiors.
Effects Quality
Controls the plague particles, smoke, and boss skill effects, which in the game's most chaotic fights can stack up several at once on screen.
Motion Blur
Motion blur makes it harder to read parry and dodge windows during fast boss fights, on top of adding a small per-frame post-processing cost.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Texture Quality
Armor, environment, and foliage textures weigh mostly on VRAM rather than compute power, so High is usually safe on cards with 10 GB or more, but it's worth lowering to Medium on 8 GB GPUs to avoid aggressive streaming.
Foliage Quality
Vegetation density in forest areas and ruined gardens uses Nanite intensively, and lowering it to Medium reduces the amount of geometry to process per frame without leaving areas visibly bare.
View Distance
Determines how much structure and enemy detail renders at a distance in the semi-open areas; on High the cost rises in panoramic views without adding much to on-foot exploration.
Post Processing Quality
Groups bloom, vignetting, and color corrections for the plague atmosphere; at its highest level it adds a full-screen cost that competes with Lumen for the same GPU budget.
Anti-Aliasing
Unreal Engine 5's native TSR offers a better sharpness/cost ratio than the engine's classic TAA in scenes with lots of foliage and fine armor detail.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
NVIDIA DLSS
+30% FPSDLSS is the scaling option with the best image quality in the game and the one Leenzee assumes in its own "recommended" requirements; in Quality mode at 1440p/4K it absorbs much of Lumen's cost with no noticeable loss of sharpness.
AMD FSR
+22% FPSFSR works on any GPU, NVIDIA or AMD, and is the default option for those without a DLSS-compatible card; in Quality mode it keeps an acceptable image at 1080p/1440p.
Intel XeSS
+20% FPSXeSS is available as a third scaling route, with better performance on Intel Arc GPUs but also usable on NVIDIA and AMD hardware as an alternative to FSR.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Enable DLSS in Quality mode from the start, not as a last resort: Leenzee's own recommended requirements already assume it's on, so playing without scaling leaves FPS on the table unnecessarily.
- •Try DLSS Frame Generation if you have an RTX 40 series or higher and your base framerate already sits around 50-60 FPS; it helps smooth out exploration areas but it's worth avoiding in boss fights because of the added input lag.
- •Keep Game Ready drivers updated, since NVIDIA has released specific optimization profiles for Wuchang after the launch performance complaints.
AMD
- •Use FSR in Quality mode instead of raising native resolution; with Lumen on, the game is clearly GPU-bound and scaling gives more headroom than any single graphics setting.
- •Enable Radeon Anti-Lag to offset the extra latency from scaling and possible frame generation during the most demanding parry fights.
- •Check that Smart Access Memory (Resizable BAR) is enabled in the BIOS; on mid-range cards it especially helps in areas with more Nanite geometry.
Sistema
- •Let the game precompile shaders on first launch and avoid alt-tabbing during that process; it's the main cause of the initial stuttering the early reviews criticized.
- •Install the game on an SSD, preferably NVMe: it reduces traversal stutter when crossing large areas of the semi-open map, a typical issue in Unreal Engine 5 games.
- •If you have an 8 GB VRAM GPU, lower Texture Quality to Medium before any other setting; it's the scenario with the most reported stuttering from video memory exhaustion.
5. Known game issues
Shader compilation stuttering and traversal stutter
As with most recent Unreal Engine 5 games, Wuchang suffers hitches from compiling new shaders on the fly and micro-stutters when crossing from one area of the semi-open map to another, especially noticeable in the first hours of play before the local cache has fully built up. Post-launch patches partially improved the frequency of these hitches, but didn't eliminate them entirely.
Disproportionate Lumen cost on mid-range hardware
Lumen's global illumination and reflections consume a share of the GPU budget far greater than what they add visually in many scenes, a mismatch especially noticeable on cards like the RTX 2070 or equivalent AMD ones, where lowering Global Illumination and Reflection Quality frees up more FPS than any other single setting.
High VRAM usage with textures on High/Ultra
With Texture Quality on High or Ultra, the game can go past 8 GB of VRAM at 1440p, causing streaming hitches and occasional framerate drops on cards with that amount of memory, even when raw compute load wouldn't justify those drops.
6. Frequently asked questions
Why does Wuchang: Fallen Feathers run poorly on PC despite moderate requirements?▾
Which setting gives the most FPS with the least visual loss?▾
Is it more limited by CPU or GPU?▾
Has Wuchang's stuttering been fixed with patches?▾
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Calculate FPS for Wuchang: Fallen Feathers →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →