Stuttering player animations and delayed actions

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Bugs
1

Issue Type (Required):

Animation

Issue Description (Required):

I began having this issue on 14/03/2026. During normal gameplay, I started noticing my character animations lagging, even though my system performance and connection remained stable. Continuous play only worsened the bug to the point where attacks were delayed, gunshots didn’t register, parries became impossible, abilities wouldn’t activate, and guns took twice as long to reload. Squad Player Models, Enemy Models, and Environment all perform within expectations. This is present in all game modes, except the meat grinder. Two updates to the game have since been released, and the issue has persisted through the patches. Here is a long-form video of the issue in action (https://youtu.be/vzd4ovptBMc).

A temporary fix was found: when couching, moving, and alternate fire are used simultaneously, the animations play normally. This only works temporarily before the issue returns, and the action needs to be repeated.

Troubleshooting steps taken to try to correct the issue:
•Restart Game
•Restart System
•Disable Background Applications
•Clean Install of Graphics Drivers
•Update Windows Drivers
•Changed Disk Drive Game Is Stored On
•Wiped Game Appdata
•Changed Internal Game Graphic Setting (Frame Gen, Resolution, DLSS, Quality, Vsync, all of it)
•Edited user_settings.config To Disable All Ray Tracing
•Verified Game Files Through Steam
•Reinstalled
•Changed Server Region
•Restarted Local Network

System Specs
•Windows 11 25H2
•MSI MEG X570 UNIFY
•Ryzen 9 5900X
•G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4 64GB (16x4) 3600MHz
•MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 3060 12GB
•Samsung 990 PRO SSD NVMe M.2 PCIe Gen4 M.2 2280 2TB x2 (game originally stored on secondary drive, moved to primary drive as part of troubleshooting)

Any help with this issue would be much appreciated, as the game feels virtually unplayable in this state.

Kindly, Violet Vos Jouska

Steps to Reproduce (Required):

Unable to reproduce with friends. Sole user/system affected.

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

No, I don’t use mods

Reproduction Rate (Required):

Constant (100%)

Platform (Required):

PC - Steam

Player ID (Optional):

Upload Supporting Evidence (Optional):

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

console-2026-03-19-20.14.31-906ce328-ee94-45e4-8b2d-2897a2b31404.log (3.16 MB)
darktide_launcher.log (139 KB)

1 Like
2

There was a microsoft update a while back, specifically when they introduced 25h2, that caused issues with shader caches across a multitude of games, this could be related. I had similar issues with stuttering and action delay. Here’s a couple steps to try that I don’t see listed above.

  1. On your video card control panel, disable shader cache
  2. Run Disk Cleanup for the drive Darktide is installed on
  3. Only select DirectX Shader Cache and clean up system. This will completely clear the shader cache on that drive.
  4. Restart computer
  5. On video card control panel, set shader cache back to default or previous setting
  6. profit? At least worked for me. Darktide will take a while to launch the next time around as it will have to rebuild the shader cache fresh.