My favorite Elder Scrolls-like RPG ran bafflingly badly on Steam Deck, but a small, surprising tweak has doubled its performance

Dread Delusion has also added new dungeons and quests with its Cadaver Keep update.

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I make it no secret that I love Dread Delusion, a chunky, retro RPG in a stunning alien world with body horror-fueled societies clinging to life on the asteroids orbiting a small, blood-red star. Despite its throwback looks and a green “verified” badge however, it used to justtankmy Steam Deck, rarely cresting above 30fps and typically hovering around 25. A recent early access update has vastly improved those numbers, and the culprit was so simple I can still barely believe it.

Developer Lovely Hellplace outlined the changes coming in the Cadaver Keep updateearlier in the month, and one of them particularly caught my eye. “Our programmer fotocopiadora has vastly improved the way the game loads data between regions,” lead developer James Wragg explained. “This has allowed us to create super low-detail models of many of the game’s structures, which means if you’re not in a region, it’s even more low-poly than usual if you can even imagine that.

“This means that the game should run much faster now, especially on low-end systems like the Steam Deck.”

So I was expecting good things when booting up Dread Delusion on my Deck after Wednesday’s update, but was positively shocked to see it hitting 60 fps when previously 30 was out of the question. This perfect 60 didn’t last when stepping outdoors into Dread Delusion’s open world, but thanks to the option to set the Deck’s refresh rate, it’s possible to get a rock solid 40hz/40fps out of Dread Delusion now, with projected battery life between 3.5 and four hours.

Level of detail (LOD) systems are a common sight in open world games, with older favorites like Skyrim sometimes having a visible fade out and back in as you approach a landmark, with a low-detail model for distant viewing replaced with a high-detail one for examining up close. Dread Delusion has a seamless open world with no loading screens, and if I’m understanding Wragg correctly, it previously had no LOD system in place, with everything in the Oneiric Isles, or at least a significant chunk of it, rendering at full fidelity in the background no matter where you were.

This helps explain why my beefy Alder Lake desktop processor could handle Dread Delusion no sweat, while the Deck’s quad-core mobile CPU was so humbled despite the game’s retro visuals. No matter how low I set the resolution or what graphics options I chose, those four cores were creaking under the weight of an entire open world at all times.

In addition to the big performance uplift, the Cadaver Keep update has also seen another expansion of Dread Delusion’s main quest, bringing it one step closer to its full 1.0 release. That’s the best news of all for me, because no matter how much I love this game,I can’t keep playing it piecemeal. We’ve reprinted the full Cadaver Keep patch notes down below:

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Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister’s copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he’s not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch.

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