Steam Deck

Don't Starve Together Best Steam Deck Settings

Get the most out of this whimsical cooperative adventure with these optimized settings.

Step into the whimsical yet treacherous wilderness of Don't Starve Together with your Steam Deck. This guide brings you optimized settings to take full advantage of the portable prowess of Valve's gaming machine. These settings are fine-tuned to give you the best experience as you brave the wilderness, gather resources, and fend off the bizarre inhabitants of this quirky yet perilous world.

Don't Starve Together Best Steam Deck Settings

Compatibility Settings
Proton VersionDefault

No tweaks, mods, or changes to the compatibility settings are necessary. It works perfectly out of the box.

There is one annoying quirk, though: no mouse and keyboard support on the Steam Deck. The default gamepad controls are fine, but without the ability to emulate the mouse and keyboard, you lose out on the minute control tuning that is one of the Steam Deck's greatest strengths. This also affects the usability of many Workshop mods. It's nothing game-breaking, but worth keeping in mind before playing.

Recommended — Quality Settings (Native@60fps | ~2h45m)

Don't Starve Together has a highly stylized art style that looks great without demanding too much of the Steam Deck's APU, allowing for super-smooth framerates with all the bells and whistles turned on. Additionally, we can keep the TDP Limit at 11 Watts for longer playtime on a single charge.

In-game Options
HUD Size 10
Screen Shake Enabled*
Distortion Enabled*
Bloom Enabled*
Fullscreen Enabled
Resolution 1280x800
Refresh Rate 60
Small Textures Disabled
Netbook Mode Disabled
Lag Compensation Predictive
*Set to personal preference.
Steam Deck Performance Menu Settings
Refresh Rate60
Framerate Limit60
Allow TearingOn
Half Rate ShadingOff
Thermal Power (TDP) LimitOn
Watts11
Manual GPU Clock ControlOff
Scaling FilterLinear

Battery-saving Settings (Native@40fps | ~4h)

Looking to get your gothic survival gaming fix while you're away from home? These settings will get you four hours of playtime on a single charge.

To do this, disable any visual extras (it's just Bloom and Distortion anyway) in the in-game options. Disable Fullscreen in the settings and set the resolution to 960x720. The last in-game change we make is enabling Netbook Mode.

Then, go into the Steam Performance settings and set the TDP Limit to 8 Watts and the Refresh Rate and Framerate Limiter to 40. Enable Allow Tearing. Finally, set the Scaling Filter to FSR and the Sharpening to 2.

In-game Options
HUD Size 10
Screen Shake Disabled
Distortion Disabled
Bloom Disabled
Fullscreen Disabled
Resolution 960x720
Refresh Rate 60
Small Textures Enabled
Netbook Mode Enabled
Lag Compensation Predictive
*Set to personal preference.
Steam Deck Performance Menu Settings
Refresh Rate40
Framerate Limit40
Allow TearingOn
Half Rate ShadingOff
Thermal Power (TDP) LimitOn
Watts8
Manual GPU Clock ControlOff
Scaling FilterFSR
Sharpening2