Crimson Desert Steam Deck performance has taken a step backwards with the game’s big new update, and I’m afraid that’s the headline. Pearl Abyss released version 2.04 on 29 October alongside the Charting the Unknown DLC, so I went back to Pywel on the Deck to see how it holds up now. On the default settings and the built-in upscalers, it runs worse than before. The good news is that with the right plugin setup it’s still playable, and it can even look better than it ever did out of the box.
For anyone catching up, Crimson Desert is Pearl Abyss’s open-world action-adventure, following Kliff as he rebuilds the Greymane faction across the continent of Pywel. It’s a heavy game: Steam lists a GTX 1060 or RX 5500 XT, 16GB of RAM and 180GB of SSD space as the minimum, and Valve rates it Unsupported on Steam Deck because of graphics performance. I don’t have the new DLC myself, so everything here is the base game on the latest version.
What the 2.04 update added
According to Pearl Abyss’s patch notes, 2.04 is a big one. It opens up the ocean, so you can take command of a ship, sail out to new islands off Pywel’s coast and dive for underwater treasure and sunken ruins. It also adds a new individual quest each for Kliff, Oongka and Damiane, which unlock from the Journal once you’ve finished Journey’s End. Several follow-up hotfixes have landed since, mostly fixing quests, companions and ships.
Default settings: sub-30fps and soft
I started on XeSS 3 set to Balanced, with pretty much the lowest graphics settings available. Performance sits below 30fps, and the image isn’t looking its best either. You could just about call it playable, but I wouldn’t really want to play it like this.
Turning on the game’s own frame generation makes things nastier. It has to use AMD FSR for the upscaling, and even on Balanced with FSR frame generation enabled, it barely manages 50fps. The bigger problem is input latency. Crimson Desert already has some lag in the way Kliff turns, and on top of that I could feel a delay every time I took a swing, which made some of the abilities very difficult to pull off. FSR also looks a bit worse in this game than the other upscalers.
Switching back to plain FSR upscaling with no frame generation isn’t much better. It’s really fuzzy, it drops under 30fps again, and while combat is just about playable, it isn’t enjoyable.
Best Crimson Desert Steam Deck performance: HelixSR and MAKO
This is where my Decky MultiFrameGen plugin makes a real difference. I went with my favourite combination: HelixSR for upscaling plus MAKO frame generation, the same pairing that rescued Phantom Blade Zero on the Deck.
HelixSR uses its own built-in version of OptiScaler, so bind the Insert key to one of the back buttons so you can open its menu in game. Make sure FSR is selected as the upscaler in the game’s own settings too. It can also work from XeSS, but using the HLX DLSS option through HelixSR made the game look pretty decent: much less washed out than FSR, with no graininess.
On its own, HelixSR doesn’t improve the frame rate at all. It’s still under 30fps, especially with a lot of terrain in the background, but it looks so much better. If you can stomach that frame rate, it’s a valid way to play.
Adding MAKO frame generation on top is what makes it work. It pushes the game up to 60fps when it can, with nowhere near the input latency of the in-game frame generation. The latency was barely noticeable, which matters in a game whose interactions are already fairly slow. I’d rather not have to rely on frame generation, but if this is your only way to play, it’s a pretty decent one.
The FSR 4.1 option: sharper, but heavier
The other route is the FSR4 Injector, which also lives in the plugin. You can get it from the plugins page on this site or straight from GitHub. This time, AMD FSR upscaling has to be turned on in the game’s settings so the injector can swap in its DLL, and that gives you FSR 4.1.
It gives the game a very different look. Trees and terrain get far more clarity and sharpness, though it’s a bit oversharpened for my taste, and for some reason it handles waterfalls badly, leaving them very grainy. It doesn’t gain any frames on its own either.
With MAKO frame generation added, just as with HelixSR, it also felt pretty decent. FSR 4 still takes a noticeable performance hit overall, though, so it doesn’t get as close to 60fps as the HelixSR DLSS setup does.
My pick for Crimson Desert on Steam Deck
For me, HelixSR with HLX DLSS plus MAKO frame generation is the way to play Crimson Desert on the Deck after this update. It’s the smoothest option, with a cleaner image than any of the built-in upscalers and far less lag than the in-game frame generation. FSR 4.1 through the injector is a fine alternative if you prefer a sharper look and can live with the extra performance cost. If you want to compare with how it ran earlier in the year, my patch 1.06 impressions cover the older version.
It’s a shame the update has made the default experience worse, but it’s still playable on the Deck if you’re happy to lean on frame generation. Crimson Desert Enhanced is £54.99 on Steam, and it’s also available at a discount on Instant Gaming. Let me know where you’re playing it.
