Eldritch horrors await! The Steam Deck lets you experience the grim world of Darkest Dungeon in a whole new way. In this guide, we delve into the intricate alchemy of Steam Deck settings, where visual prowess meets strategic clarity, enabling players to navigate the depths of despair with optimal performance and an atmosphere dripping with macabre ambiance.Refine your handheld adventure with the best Steam Deck settings for Darkest Dungeon.
Darkest Dungeon® Best Steam Deck Settings
| Compatibility Settings | |
|---|---|
| Proton Version | Default |
No tweaks or modifications necessary to the compatibility settings. Hit Play and start exploring!
Optimized Settings (Native@40fps | ~6h)
Darkest Dungeon runs incredibly on the Steam Deck with default settings. The visuals are crisp and the framerate is stutter-free. But with just a few tweaks, we can squeeze even more playtime out of the battery without sacrificing the visuals or degrading the gameplay experience.
We’ll only be making changes from the Steam Deck’s performance menu, as the in-game settings don’t affect performance. The first change we make is limiting the screen refresh rate and the framerate to 40Hz to get more than an hour of extra gaming time. If you don’t mind losing the shortened battery time, then you can leave this at 60Hz. We still recommend capping the framerate from the performance menu, though, as we don’t want to have the Deck wasting energy pushing unnecessary frames to the screen.
Finally, we change the TDP Limit to 7 Watts. Darkest Dungeon is a lightweight game that doesn’t pull much power, so clamping the TDP to 7 Watts gives us more than enough juice to power 40 frames per second without any energy waste. If you’ve kept the framerate at 60fps, then you may need to add a few more Watts to the TDP Limit to maintain a stable 60.
| Steam Deck Performance Menu Settings | |
|---|---|
| Refresh Rate | 40 |
| Framerate Limit | 40 |
| Allow Tearing | Off |
| Half Rate Shading | Off |
| Thermal Power (TDP) Limit | On |
| Watts | 7 |
| Manual GPU Clock Control | Off |
| Scaling Filter | Linear |