Does Crimson Desert work on Steam Deck? We’ve been asking this question ourselves since its specs were revealed. Now, the game is finally out, and we’ve been able to take a good look at how Pearl Abyss’ massive adventure performs on Valve’s little big handheld PC.
On top of our investigation into Crimson Desert performance on Steam Deck, we’ll be exploring more of Pywel for the next few weeks, so you can check out all our guides and more via our Crimson Desert game hub.
Of course, if you haven’t purchased Pearl Abyss’ first big single-player fantasy game yet, you can do so through the Humble Store here should you want to support our continued work at Game Watcher.
Crimson Desert Steam Deck Performance & Best Settings
The good news is that, yes, Crimson Desert runs on Steam Deck. The bad news is that… it’s mostly a very rough way to experience a gorgeous action-adventure game.
Based on our testing, even at the lowest possible in-game settings, Crimson Desert struggles to maintain a 30 FPS target even if it can occasionally reach higher framerates. Moreover, these are the results I got on my Steam Deck after activating very aggressive FSR 3 upscaling which completely murders the image quality even on the handheld’s smaller screen.
- Recommended Crimson Desert Steam Deck settings: Low preset. FSR 3 set to Performance. Native resolution.
For a deeper look at how the game runs and looks during normal play on Steam Deck, check out Steam Deck HQ’s excellent in-depth analysis:
Crimson Desert Steam Deck Performance Mods
So, knowing the base unmodded Crimson Deck experience on Steam Deck is bad, are there any options to make it more palatable? Well… yes and no. There are ways to boost your framerates for sure, but there are caveats, and even then, it still struggles with stuttering at times and long load screens.
There are two options to attempt to make things better at the time of writing:
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Lossless Scaling for Steam Deck: You can combine the regular Lossless Scaling release with the Decky plugin in order to make it work on SteamOS/Linux. This will require some tinkering and will add noticeable input lag to the game since Frame Generation can’t use a higher base FPS, but you’ll be squeezing more frames out of the handheld.
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FSR 4 for Steam Deck: Modders have also managed to make FSR 4 work on the Deck, and the visual clarity results are immediately apparent. This might reduce the base FPS a bit further in the case of Crimson Desert, but there are image quality gains to be had here if you’re looking for that.
Related Crimson Desert Articles:
- Crimson Desert - Everything You Need to Know
- Crimson Desert System Requirements and Performance Specs
- Crimson Desert Twitch Drops
- Crimson Desert GeForce Now Support
- Crimson Desert Mods Hub
- Crimson Desert Best PC Settings
If we’ve missed important Steam Deck tweaks or settings, please reach out via the Contact Us page. You can find us on socials too.
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