I’ve lost count of how many Void Intercept boss runs I’ve messed up because my game stuttered right as I was supposed to dodge a one-shot area attack. If you’ve spent money on the game’s battle pass, grinded for rare weapon skins, and still can’t enjoy a single match without constant frame drops or input lag, you’re probably wondering why does The First Descendant run so bad even on hardware that runs other modern games smoothly. It’s an incredibly common complaint across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox communities, and the good news is that most performance issues have simple, easy to implement fixes. We’re going to break down the most common causes of poor performance, plus step-by-step tweaks you can apply in 10 minutes or less to get a smoother, more responsive gaming experience.
Why Does The First Descendant Run So Bad? Common Root Causes
First, it’s important to understand that The First Descendant is built on Unreal Engine 5, and it packs a lot of visually intensive features into every match. You’ve got dynamic lighting, 4-player co-op with dozens of enemies on screen at once, hundreds of particle effects from weapons and abilities, and massive open map areas that load assets in real time as you move. Unlike many other looter shooters, the game’s default settings prioritize visual quality over performance right out of the box, so even mid-range and high-end setups can struggle if you don’t adjust them first. I tested this last week on my RTX 3060 desktop, and default high settings only gave me a 34 FPS average during co-op matches, which is way too low for fast-paced combat. Other common causes include outdated GPU drivers, background apps eating up system resources, corrupted game files, or even playing the game off of a traditional hard drive instead of an SSD.
Easy In-Game Setting Tweaks to Fix Performance Issues
The fastest way to fix most performance problems is to adjust your in-game settings first, since these changes take effect immediately and don’t require you to exit the game. You don’t have to drop every setting to the lowest possible value to get good FPS, either. Focus on the tweaks below, which give the biggest performance boost with the least noticeable drop in visual quality:
- Disable Lumen and Dynamic Global Illumination: These Unreal Engine 5 lighting features look incredible in cutscenes, but they eat up 30-40% of your GPU’s processing power and make almost no difference during fast-paced combat.
- Drop Shadow Quality to Medium or Low: Shadows are one of the biggest performance hogs in the game, and most players won’t be able to tell the difference between High and Medium settings when they’re focused on dodging attacks and firing at enemies.
- Turn off Motion Blur and VSync: Motion blur makes fast movement feel choppy and disorienting, while VSync adds noticeable input lag and can cause stutters if you use a variable refresh rate monitor.
- Set your Texture Streaming Pool Size to match your GPU’s VRAM: If you have an 8GB GPU, set it to 7GB; if you have 12GB, set it to 11GB. This prevents annoying texture pop-in that causes random frame drops mid-fight.
- Disable extra HUD elements like floating damage numbers: When you’re in a 4-player co-op match with dozens of enemies spawning at once, hundreds of floating damage numbers can tank your FPS by 10-15 points without you even realizing it.
I usually keep Texture Quality set to High, since that makes character skins and weapon designs look sharp, and it barely impacts FPS compared to the settings listed above. If you play on console, make sure you have Performance Mode enabled instead of Quality Mode in your system settings. That simple change bumps your FPS cap from 30 to 60 on PS5 and Xbox Series X, with only a minor drop in visual quality that’s barely noticeable during gameplay. If you’re still wondering why does The First Descendant run so bad after adjusting these settings, you’ll want to check for system-level issues next.
System-Level Fixes for Persistent Lag and Stutters
If you adjusted your in-game settings and still have performance issues, the problem is likely related to your system setup instead of the game itself. These fixes take a little more time to apply, but they fix most persistent performance problems that in-game tweaks can’t touch. First, make sure your GPU drivers are fully up to date. Both NVIDIA and AMD have released game-specific optimizations for The First Descendant, and I’ve seen driver updates fix up to 80% of random stutter issues for players with mid-range setups. Many players who report why does The First Descendant run so bad find that outdated drivers are the main culprit. I forgot to update my drivers before playing the new Water Realm update last month, and I was getting constant stutters during boss fights until I installed the latest NVIDIA game ready driver.
Next, close all unused background apps before launching the game. Apps like Chrome, Discord, streaming software, and even other game launchers can eat up a lot of RAM and CPU resources. If you have 16GB of RAM or less, this is especially important, since The First Descendant uses around 10GB of RAM on its own during co-op matches. You should also disable in-game overlays for Steam, Discord, and NVIDIA GeForce Experience, since these overlays are known to cause conflicts with Unreal Engine 5 games and lead to random crashes or stutters. Finally, make sure the game is installed on an SSD instead of a traditional hard drive. HDDs have much slower read speeds, so you’ll get long load times, constant texture pop-in, and random stutters when the game tries to load new assets mid-match.
What to Do If Performance Issues Are Still Present
If you’ve tried all the tweaks listed above and still have poor performance, there are a few less common fixes you can test out. First, check if there are any pending game updates. The devs regularly release patches to fix performance bugs, especially right after new content drops. For example, the update that added the new character Lupina last month caused widespread frame drop issues for PC players, and the devs released a hotfix 2 days later that resolved 90% of those reported issues. If you’ve gone through all these steps and still can’t figure out why does The First Descendant run so bad on your setup, it might be a known bug that the devs are already working on.
Next, verify your game files to make sure none of them are corrupted. Corrupted game files can cause all sorts of weird issues, from random crashes to constant stutters that don’t have any obvious cause. You can verify files through Steam by right clicking The First Descendant in your library, selecting Properties, going to the Local Files tab, and clicking Verify Integrity of Game Files. This process takes 5-10 minutes, and it often fixes issues you wouldn’t even guess were related to corrupted files. If you play on a laptop, make sure it’s plugged in and set to High Performance power mode. Laptops default to power saving mode when running on battery, which cuts your CPU and GPU performance by 50% or more to extend battery life. You should also check if your CPU or GPU is overheating, since overheating components will throttle their performance to prevent damage, leading to sudden, unexpected frame drops.
At the end of the day, you don’t need a $2000 gaming PC to run The First Descendant smoothly. Most players who are asking why does The First Descendant run so bad can fix their issues in 10 minutes or less with the simple tweaks we covered. Start with the in-game setting adjustments first, since those are the fastest to implement, then move on to system-level fixes if you still have performance problems. If none of these fixes work, you can report the bug to the devs through their official support page or community Discord, since they regularly collect player feedback to fix performance issues in future patches.