In advance, before you touch ANYTHING, I'd like to warn everyone that this guide can go incredibly wrong if not followed exactly, you should only do this after you have the settings already set to as low as possible, along with setting your preferred resolution, audio quality and volume, enabling your mods, etc. as setting the files to read-only as detailed in this guide will make you unable to change them in-game or in the launcher, the reason it's nescessary to set it to read-only is because the launcher has a pesky tendency to overwrite the changes done here, I didn't make that clear enough at first and some people were confused, so remember, set the game to lowest first, enable your mods, change your resolution, and then do the guide.

I cannot guarantee that this will entirely fix your FPS issues entirely, Vermintide 2's engine is a ♥♥♥♥, and while it's not Diesel or Unreal, it is truly evil in regards to letting you optimize the game, I did what I could with the experimentation I did in regards to the settings, and honestly, I'm not even sure if there is much else I can do, just assume that if your GPU is worse than a on-board AMD Radeon R5 Graphics with 1 GB of dedicated memory, your FPS might be LESS than mostly stable.

THIS GUIDE, CAN, AND WILL GO OUT OF DATE EVENTUALLY, no, seriously, I mean it, they forced volumetric fog, it's not unlikely they'll find another great excuse to force the settings further, and eventually, these options presented here will either be only partially functional, or not functional at all, this entire guide is dedicated to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the heavy effect overly abundant high quality shadows, lightning and volumetric fog do to a GPU, call me a pessimist, but, that's the way I see it.

Now that I've gotten all of that out of the way...

For those non-videogame ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ savvy folk, most games nowadays have this tendency to save your files in a hidden area of your PC called the app data folder, here is the easiest, and most consistent way in all of the Windows OSes to get to it, also, you'll need Notepad++, it's a free text editor program that's better than Windows' text editor, you CANNOT edit that config file with the windows text editor, it sucks, and it can do nasty things that it doesn't show once it saves, so PLEASE DON'T USE IT.

Make sure the in-game settings preset are set to Custom, if it's set to any of the base presets, the game will overwrite the settings once you launch it, even PAST all the read-only stuff, I think, so it's important you do that step before hand, should be simple enough, just turn on bloom or something, apply it, then turn it back off and apply it again, and the option for the graphical preset should be at "Custom", you can close the game after that and do the following steps:

1. Press Win+R

2. A dialog box will open with an edit box in it, type in: %appdata% and press Enter on your keyboard.

You are now in the %appdata% folder, you may or may not see your Minecraft save file folder there, ignore it, you can install your resource packs later, anyways...

3. There will be a folder titled "Fatshark" there, inside it, a folder called "Vermintide 2", THAT is your Vermintide 2 save/config file folder, enter it.

4. Open up user_settings.config with Notepad++, or your text editor of choice, as long as it's not wordpad or Windows' default text editor, it'll probably do the trick.

Done, you now have your config file open, and we can begin the crazed tweaking of the settings.

Now that we've gotten our hands on the Sigmar-blessed config file, we can begin the process, start by searching for each of these with CTRL-F, and replace them with the ones provided.



ambient_light_quality = "low"

This controls the lighting quality of ambient lights, if it doesn't look precisely like the above...make it look PRECISELY like the above, I know it's obvious, but, it's for the sake of consistency.


local_light_shadow_quality = "low"

Just like the other, make it look precisely like the above, I know it's obvious, but, it's for the sake of consistency.


particles_quality = "lowest"

Ditto, I know it's obvious, but it's for the sake of consistency.


process_priority = "high"

For some people, their PCs can just be a bit jerkish, and put on extra weight, this makes sure that it won't.


ao_enabled = false
ao_high_quality = false
ao_secondary_enabled = false

The AO is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, repeat, the AO is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, you know what else is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in regards to performance? Ambient Occlusion, turn that ♥♥♥♥ off.


cached_local_lights_shadow_atlas_size = [
128
128
]

So, uh, how high were those numbers by default? Pretty big, right? Yeah, most games don't tend to give you the option to set your shadows to incredibly low levels, this game also doesn't, the lowest you can go with it is 128x128 pixels in regards to shadowmaps, but, it's better than 2048x2048 or whatever the ♥♥♥♥.


local_lights = false

Ok, so I was...hesitant to include this, as this can severely impact the game in Hunger in the Dark, and makes The Blightreaper almost entirely unplayable, but, it felt right to include this, as some people may be just planning to ignore those maps, if you're desperate, do this, otherwise, leave it as it is, to reverse this change, in case you want to play those maps, just do:

local_lights = true


local_lights_shadow_atlas_size = [
128
128
]

Now in the possibility you were scared by the above option, you can set the shadow maps to be really small like this, so you can continue using the dynamic lighting without blinding yourself in specific maps.


max_shadow_casting_lights = 0

The name is self-explanatory, and it's effect is too, and as you can guess, it's CPU and GPU heavy, so screw it.


lod_decoration_density = 0.75

Affects the level of detail of small objects and decorations, this will cause some SERIOUS pop in, but, it saves up a ton of performance, too!


lod_object_multiplier = 0.75

Affects the level of detail of bigger things, setting this too low could cause the insides of certain buildings to be completely unnavigable, so make sure not to do that.


mixed_resolution_rendering_size = [
800
600
]

I can't exactly vouch for what this does, but heck it, we're changing it, it works for me? Try reversing this step if it somehow crashes your game, I dunno what it does.


particles_capacity_multiplier = 0.05

Generally reduces the amount of particles generated by the game to as low as it would go, surprisingly very little graphical or readability loss, as far as I can tell, the poison smoke from Hagbane Bow and other sorts of flame effects will not appear, however, but, it's not that big of a deal.


particles_cast_shadows = false

No, no extra shadows being cast in my christian game by friggin' particles of all things.


static_sun_shadow_map_size = [
128
128
]

Since we can't entirely turn off all the game's lighting and have it on one set brightness, we'll do this instead, since this should at least reduce most of the performance impact.


sun_shadows = false

Make sure you have this off, you should.


volumetric_data_size = [
2
1
3
]

More ♥♥♥♥ that I just legitimately don't understand, gents, doing this made my game just run so much krutting better for some reason, I know it's related to volumetric lighting and fog somehow, but just not EXACTLY how.


volumetric_extrapolation_high_quality = false
volumetric_extrapolation_volumetric_shadows = false
volumetric_lighting_local_lights = false
volumetric_lighting_local_shadows = false
volumetric_reprojection_amount = 0
volumetric_volumes_enabled = false

Make sure these are all like this, I admit, I can't vouch to how much it matters, but my game RUNS with the settings like this, so I'd assume changing this could have possibly negative effects like crashing.


world_interaction_size = [
320
240
]

I don't know what this does, buff the two-handed Great Sword and Battle Wizard Sienna? Thanks.


use_baked_enemy_meshes = true

I don't know what this does, can we please nerf the Chaos Spawn's regen, mute the elf and remove Natural Bond from the game? Thanks.


volumetric_fog_quality = "lowest"

Just make sure it's like this, if it's not, MAKE IT LIKE THIS.

Once you save your file, DO NOT LAUNCH YOUR GAME, DO NOT DO THAT, OR YOU WILL HAVE TO START ALL OVER AGAIN, MOSTLY.

1. Right-click the config file you have now modified.

2. Click properties.

3. Check the "Read-Only" box in the bottom of the new window that opened up.

4. Click "Apply" at the bottom right of that window.

5. Click "OK" to close the window.

Launch the game, and hope to god it doesn't crash, do not try changing your resolution through the launcher, or changing your settings in game, it can be kinda hazardous, and cause stability issues, otherwise, your game should run just right, and better, at that, here is how it SHOULD look.

Note: I had LOD Ground Clutter at 100%, whoops, I forgot about that when I took them, I like maximizing both overall shader effects and performance while sacrificing lighting and shadow quality, so that's probably why, when I went to turn off bloom, motion blur, and a few others, I just sorta ended up forgetting about it, overall, it should look SIMILAR enough.