Lag spike / freeze when spawning large number of enemies at a time

Issue Type (Required):

Performance

Issue Description (Required):

I know this has been reported before, but has only started occuring to me recently (past 2 weeks or so).

There was a slight performance improvement with the release of “No Man’s Land”, but has been steadily declining since. This includes serverside performance (from my experience).

Now with recent weeks, when large amounts of enemies spawn (>50) at once, my game either freezes or drops to single digit frame rate.

I have tried a large number of performance improvements options:

  • lowering all graphics settings
  • using FSR and frame generation
  • running in lower resolution
  • running in lower resolution and using FSR
  • rebuilding shader cache
  • verify integrity of game files
  • community suggestions for [application_settings] by Vizra
  • replacing direct storage version
  • VFX reducing or replacement mods
  • Zipit mod (did not appear to work)

While there may have been gains elsewhere in FPS, the issue with freeze or single digit frames with enemy spawning still persists.

While I do seek a solution, it is not terribly important and I just want to raise awareness of the issue.
Also perhaps I had done something wrong somewhere so advice is appericated anyway

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

Yes, and I’ve tried disabling them

Reproduction Rate (Required):

Constant (100%)

Platform (Required):

PC - Steam

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

console-2026-01-17-10.27.05-258ff4a8-6793-4cf3-8225-89bea1015e16.log (424 KB)
darktide_launcher.log (194 KB)

1 Like

https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/1moslpc/amd_gpu_stutter_fix_clarity_improvement_may_also/

To take it further. Vizra has his own “personal” streaming assets settings

In above link. Scroll past until you see this part, just below it. “Last edited 13th January”

His “Personal” settings has done wonders for AMD 7/9 series for friends and even some bonus to my couple of my friends using Nvidia 40/50 series.

Someone in that reddit thread said the “Personal” setting worked better for them.

Thanks for the tip.
I have indeed tried those settings too, with minimal changes.

I wonder what setting allows me to allocate more VRAM?
My GPU RAM seems under utilised compared to the CPU’s.