Darktide crashing during startup

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Technical Support
1

Issue Type (Required):

Crash - After Building Shader Cache

Issue Description (Required):

My screen is completely black then crashes after I hear the shark hit the glass

[PC] Do You Use Mods? (Optional):

No, I don’t use mods

Reproduction Rate (Required):

Constant (100%)

Platform (Required):

PC - Steam

Player ID (Optional):

[PC] Crash Report (Optional):

GUID: 83302ea9-b92b-493a-baca-63dad12faefc
Log File:
Info Type:

[PC] Upload Console Log & darktide_launcher.log (Optional):

console-2026-06-29-05.20.58-a1a66ee4-5ea2-449a-9fa3-e9a1a261ccff.log (9.23 KB)darktide_launcher.log (222 KB)

2

Sorry to hear this @Boofie

As you have a dual laptop GPU and integrated graphics it’s possible that a conflict may be occurring.

Some things you can try:

  • Uninstall your current GPU drivers using a dedicated driver removal tool e.g. DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller), and then reinstall clean GPU drivers

  • For NVIDIA GPUs: Ensure both Steam and Darktide are set to use your dedicated GPU within the NVIDIA Control Panel by:

  1. Right-click the desktop and select the ‘NVIDIA Control Panel’
  2. Navigate to ‘Manage 3D Settings’ > ‘Program Settings’
  3. Locate Steam within the list of programs
  4. Within the ‘Select the preferred graphics processor for this program:’ dropdown, choose the NVIDIA GPU
  5. Then locate Darktide within the list of programs, and repeat the above step

If the above doesn’t help, next please try:

  1. Press the Windows key + R
  2. Enter %appdata% within the search input and select ‘OK’
  3. Navigate to AppData\Roaming\Fatshark\Darktide
  4. Open your user_settings.config file
  5. Find the setting named adapter_index
  6. Change this setting value to adapter_index = 1
    (If the adapter_index value is already set to 1, please try changing this to 0 instead)
  7. Save your user_settings.config file
  8. Launch Darktide as usual

Failing all of the above, I’d recommend trying a clean reinstallation of Darktide which involves deleting your AppData. Please see:

https://support.fatshark.se/hc/en-us/articles/360034118394--PC-How-to-Perform-a-Clean-Re-Installation-of-Vermintide-2-or-Darktide

Please let me know how you get on.

4

I am now able to get into the game however even on all performance settings I am getting 3-5 fps

5

@Boofie hm okay, that sounds like changing your adapter_index may have set the integrated GPU instead. Please can you revert this to adapter_index = 0 and then check again?

6

yup that worked, thank you!