By Taking NTE on the Go
Neverness to Everness—or NTE, as the community is calling it—has finally launched almost everywhere. I say “almost” because, as of right now, it hasn’t made its way to Steam natively. But if you know me, you know that a missing Steam storefront page isn’t going to stop me from playing a highly anticipated game on my Steam Deck. It requires a bit of tinkering and patience, but I’ve put in the legwork, tested the settings, and figured out exactly how to get it running smoothly.
If you’ve been wondering whether it’s worth the effort to install NTE on your handheld, the short answer is absolutely. But to save you the trial and error I went through, I’m sharing my honest performance impressions, the best settings to use, and a comprehensive, step-by-step installation guide.
Honest Performance Impressions
Let’s get straight to the good stuff: how does Neverness to Everness actually run on the Steam Deck? Honestly, it performs surprisingly well, though it’s not without a few quirks.
When you first boot up the game and start exploring the town areas, you are going to notice some major jitteriness. This is entirely due to shader compilation. Because we are running a non-Steam game through a compatibility layer, the Steam Deck has to build its shader cache on the fly rather than downloading pre-compiled shaders from Valve’s servers. The good news? Once that shader cache builds up, the experience transforms.
In battles—where performance matters most—the game feels incredibly smooth. The combat is fast-paced, and once the initial assets are loaded, the Deck handles the action like a champ. You will still see the framerate dip down into the 30s here and there during heavy traversal or busy scenes, but it remains highly playable and thoroughly enjoyable. Just give the game a little grace period during your first hour of play to let those shaders sort themselves out.
My Recommended Steam Deck Settings
Before we dive into the installation process, let me save you some headaches with the optimal settings I’ve dialed in. Getting the right balance between visual fidelity and battery life is crucial here.
First, from the game’s launcher settings, make sure you turn on DirectX 11 compatibility. I found that this provides a much smoother baseline experience on SteamOS compared to the default rendering API. While you’re there, you can untick the option to show the launcher when exiting, as it just gets in the way on a handheld.
Once you are in the game, head to the graphics menu and apply these specific tweaks:
- Resolution: 720p Windowed Mode (For some reason, the game tries to default to 1080p, which the Deck’s screen doesn’t natively support, causing unnecessary performance strain).
- Graphics Quality: Smooth
- Anti-Aliasing: TSR
- Upscaling: AMD FSR 3 set to Quality Mode
- VSync: Off
- Texture Quality: Medium
This exact combination hits the sweet spot. FSR 3 on Quality mode keeps the anime-style visuals looking sharp while giving the APU enough breathing room to maintain a playable framerate.
Step-by-Step Installation Guide
Ready to get your hands dirty? Installing a third-party launcher on the Steam Deck can feel daunting, but if you follow these steps closely, you’ll be exploring NTE in no time.
Phase 1: Downloading the Launcher
First, switch your Steam Deck over to Desktop Mode and open your favorite web browser. Head directly to the official Neverness to Everness website and look for the Windows launcher download. The site was experiencing some heavy traffic when I tried, so if it loads slowly, just be patient. Click “Download Now” at the top, select the Windows launcher, and let the file download to your system.
Once the download completes, open your file manager and navigate to your Downloads directory. You’re looking for an executable file that starts with “YH”. Right-click this file (or use the left trigger/menu button) and select “Add to Steam”.
Phase 2: The Proton Puzzle
Now, open your desktop Steam library and search for that “YH” file. Right-click it, go to Properties, and under the Compatibility tab, check the box to force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool. Initially, I tried using Proton Experimental to run the installer.
However, I ran into a massive roadblock: a weird black window completely blocked my view, preventing me from clicking any installation settings. I actually had to drag the Steam window to the side just to force-close the frozen installer.
To bypass this, you need a custom Proton layer. If you don’t have an app called ProtonPlus, grab it from the Discover store. Open ProtonPlus and download the latest stable version of DWProton. Once installed, restart Steam, go back to your “YH” installer properties, and change the compatibility tool to your newly installed DWProton version.
Phase 3: Installing the Game Files
Launch the installer again. Thanks to GE-Proton, that annoying black bar will be gone! Click on “Custom Install” so you can choose your directory.
Crucial tip from my own painful experience: Do not install this game on your MicroSD card. I tried it, and the game ran absolutely horrendously due to asset streaming bottlenecks. You want this on your internal SSD.
Navigate to your local Steam Deck drive (usually found under Z: -> home -> deck). I highly recommend creating a dedicated “Games” folder here to keep things organized. Select that folder and let the installation run. It should finish the initial setup very quickly.
Phase 4: Adding the Real Game to Steam
After the installer finishes, it might try to auto-run the game and hang on a blank window. Don’t panic. I don’t trust background processes that hang, so just hit the “Stop” button in Steam to kill it.
Next, open your file manager again and head to the directory where you just installed the game (e.g., home/deck/Games/Neverness to Everness). Find the “NTE global launcher” executable, right-click it, and select “Add to Steam”.
Important note: Do not delete the original installer file from your PC just yet, as removing it sometimes breaks the directory paths for the new launcher. You can simply hide it in your Steam library later.
Find your newly added “NTE global launcher” in Steam. Go into its Properties and do two things: First, rename it to “Neverness to Everness” so it looks clean in your library. Second, go to the Compatibility tab and force it to use GE-Proton, just like you did with the installer.
Phase 5: Updates and Final Polish
Launch your newly named shortcut. From here, it’s pretty plain sailing. The launcher will open and begin downloading the massive main game files. The time this takes will depend entirely on your internet connection. Grab a coffee and let it do its thing.
Once the download finishes, the game will run through a shader compilation screen before finally presenting you with the login page. At this point, quit the game and restart your Steam Deck to return to the standard Game Mode.
If you’re someone who loves a clean library and uses Decky Loader with the SteamGridDB plugin, now is the perfect time to apply some beautiful custom artwork to your new NTE shortcut. If you aren’t using Decky Loader yet, you are missing out on some of the best customization the Deck has to offer. Check out our full guide for Decky Loader here.
Finally, boot up the game in Game Mode. I found it significantly easier to create my NTE account on my smartphone beforehand, so I could simply type in my login credentials on the Deck without fumbling through registration screens.
Final Thoughts
And there you have it! You are now ready to dive into the world of Neverness to Everness natively on your favorite handheld. While the setup process takes a bit of elbow grease, the payoff is a fantastic, portable action-RPG experience. Just remember to apply those optimized settings, forgive the early shader stutters, and enjoy the ride.