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For smoother play in Sword of the Sea on PC, first update to Patch 1.6 or later, then use DLSS on supported NVIDIA hardware or the in-game resolution-scale slider on other systems. Keep the game output at your monitor’s native resolution, lower the internal render scale only as much as needed, and set the frame-rate cap to suit your display. For clearer scenery, fix any missing-resolution problem, avoid an unnecessarily low render scale, and use the game’s camera controls; there is no in-game field-of-view slider.
This guide covers the Windows PC settings. The game launched on Windows and PS5 on 19 August 2025, then on Xbox Series and Switch 2 on 29 October 2026. Its PC graphics guidance changed substantially with Patch 1.6 on 29 October 2026: DLSS was added, graphics settings gained more impact, and the developer announced Steam Deck Verified status.
What should you change first for smoother play?
Work from the biggest likely performance levers to the smallest. A practical sequence is to update the game, choose an upscaling method, reduce internal resolution if necessary, cap the frame rate sensibly, and only then tune individual quality settings. This avoids trading away image detail before you know whether it will help.
- Update to Patch 1.6 or later. On 29 October 2026, Giant Squid listed DLSS support, performance improvements and optimizations, additional graphics presets, and an expanded impact for graphics settings. The patch also included fish, kelp, and chain level-of-detail improvements. Older advice that treats the quality sliders as nearly irrelevant or says the game has no DLSS describes the launch-era version, not the current one.
- Choose the appropriate upscaler. If you have an NVIDIA RTX graphics card, enable the new DLSS option in the graphics settings. The Patch 1.6 notes do not name its available DLSS modes, so do not assume a particular set of Quality, Balanced, or Performance choices. On AMD or Intel hardware, use the game’s resolution-scaling option, which exposes Unreal Engine’s TSR.
- Start from native output resolution. Select the resolution that matches your display. If performance is not adequate, lower the in-game resolution percentage in small increments, checking both motion and fine detail after each change. That percentage controls internal rendering scale; it does not change the selected desktop output mode.
- Set a frame-rate cap that matches your screen. Choose 60 FPS for a 60 Hz display, or 120 FPS if you have a 120 Hz display and the 120 Hz option is available. The game also offers 30 FPS and Unlocked. Unlocked is useful only if the resulting frame pacing is acceptable; a higher fluctuating rate is not automatically smoother.
- Adjust the quality sliders only if you still need more performance. After Patch 1.6, test Waves, Fish, Fog, Shadows, and Materials rather than assuming that leaving them at Ultra has no cost. If you need another performance reduction, try Shadows, Materials, and Fog first, then judge the picture in a representative area.
Use VSync if you need it to control tearing, and consider your display’s G-Sync capability when choosing how to synchronize frames. These options solve different display problems from lowering render scale: a cap sets the rate the game aims to deliver, while synchronization affects how frames are presented.
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Why does render scale matter so much?
The launch version exposed TSR as a percentage slider from 50% to 200% in 5% increments, according to PCGamingWiki. At 100%, the game renders at the selected resolution; above 100%, the extra rendering behaves like supersampling, which can improve edge smoothness at a higher GPU cost. Below 100%, the game renders fewer pixels internally and reconstructs the image for the chosen output resolution. That can raise performance, but distant fish, dunes, and other fine features become softer as the scale falls.
Published launch-era player measurements illustrate the trade-off, but should not be treated as Patch 1.6 benchmarks. A September 2025 settings video reported a roughly 10–13 FPS gain when moving from 100% to 75% at 2K, while judging the image difference to be small in that setup. A Steam player in September 2025 described 50% as usable, and another discussion described 50% at 3440×1440 as playable but still below 60 FPS. Those are individual reports from before DLSS and the later graphics changes; results vary with hardware, scene, output resolution, and patch.
Why should you cap rather than simply choose Unlocked?
A cap close to the refresh rate you can sustain can make motion more consistent. The game’s 120 Hz option arrived in the 29 August 2025 patch; the available choices are 30, 60, 120, and Unlocked. Launch-period player reports identified water and desert sections as stutter points, so judge your choice in those kinds of scenes rather than only in a quiet opening area. There is no official Giant Squid average-FPS or 1% low figure to use as a universal target.
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Which settings preserve image quality while improving performance?
There is no universal best preset because performance depends on your graphics card, output resolution, and preferred frame rate. The most useful choice is to preserve native output resolution and reduce rendering cost only until the game meets your target.
| Situation | Starting point | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA RTX PC with performance headroom | Native output resolution, DLSS enabled, frame cap matched to the display | Find the DLSS mode that retains acceptable detail; the 1.6 notes do not specify mode names. |
| AMD or Intel PC | Native output resolution, TSR at 100%, then reduce the resolution percentage if needed | Check distant scenery and moving objects for softness as scale falls. |
| High-resolution display with insufficient frame rate | Keep the display output at its native mode; reduce internal render scale gradually | Do not mistake the internal percentage for a desktop-resolution change. |
| Steam Deck or a lower-end PC | Low quality and 50% render scale is the last documented Deck recipe | That recipe predates the 1.6 Deck Verified announcement; no new official Deck preset breakdown was published in the cited notes. |
At launch, the quality sliders seemed to offer little performance relief in one published test: average performance rose from 39 FPS on Ultra to 42 FPS on Low, a 3 FPS difference. A Steam user also reported little visible change between Low and Ultra shadows. Patch 1.6 explicitly says the impact of graphics settings has expanded, so those launch observations should not be used as a reason to leave every setting at Ultra now. Conversely, the patch notes do not provide new measurements showing exactly how much any slider affects frame rate. Change one setting at a time and inspect the result.
Do not spend time looking for FSR or XeSS in the in-game menu based on launch advice. The official Patch 1.6 bullet list adds DLSS, while TSR remains the documented resolution-scale option. Third-party approaches such as Lossless Scaling or NVIDIA App features are optional community workarounds, not equivalent to an officially documented in-game mode. Community accounts describe possible smoothness benefits, but also report stutter or visual artifacts in some situations; they are not a reliable first troubleshooting step.
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How do you fix a missing 4K or native-resolution option?
If the Options/Graphics screen does not list your monitor’s full resolution, address Windows DPI scaling and make sure the game is current before settling for a lower desktop mode. The game’s early patches addressed resolution-list problems, but Giant Squid also documented a Windows display-scaling workaround.
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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11- Update the game. The 29 August 2025 patch fixed an issue that could make higher resolutions inaccessible. The 19 September 2025 patch improved the resolution settings further, including the full range of resolutions and handling of multiple monitors.
- Check Windows display scaling. If the desired mode is still missing, set the Windows display scale to 100% and relaunch. Giant Squid listed this as a workaround for some configurations in its first post-launch patch.
- Set the game executable’s high-DPI override. Close the game. In Steam, open Library → Sword of the Sea → Manage → Browse local files. Right-click
SwordOfTheSea.exe, select Properties → Compatibility → Change high DPI settings, check Override high DPI scaling behavior, and set the scaling behavior to Application. Select OK, then relaunch and check the resolution list. - Confirm the selected output mode. In the game’s graphics options, choose the monitor’s native resolution when available. For borderless fullscreen on a Windows desktop using display scaling, PCGamingWiki also documents the Application high-DPI override.
A 20 August 2025 Prima Games report said the high-DPI override restored 3840×2160 in its case. That is an example, not a guarantee for every PC. If the list still looks incomplete, try switching to windowed mode and back, or restarting once after changing Windows scaling. These are reported workarounds rather than guaranteed fixes.
Keep the output mode and render scale distinct in your troubleshooting. For example, an 80% render scale can still output to a selected 4K display mode; it reduces the internal rendering resolution rather than switching the Windows desktop to a lower resolution. That is often preferable if the problem is performance rather than a missing display mode.
How can you make the world easier to see?
For a sharper, more readable image, prioritize the correct output resolution and a render scale high enough to retain distant detail. The game has no documented in-game FOV control, so visibility adjustments are mainly resolution, camera comfort, and improvements made in patches.
Keep the image sharp without paying for unnecessary supersampling
Set the output to your monitor’s native resolution after resolving any DPI issue. Start at 100% render scale, then reduce it only if performance requires it. Values above 100% act like supersampling and cost more to render; values below 100% trade fine detail for performance. Anisotropic filtering is listed as always on at 8x, with no separate slider, so there is no in-game anisotropic-filtering setting to raise for sharper ground textures.
Know what the camera can and cannot change
There is no documented FOV slider in the stock game settings. A Universal Unreal Engine 5.x Unlocker measurement from 27 August 2025 recorded 116° at 21:9 ultrawide, which is Hor+ presentation: the wider aspect ratio reveals more horizontal view rather than simply stretching the 16:9 image. The default 16:9 FOV was not published, so a precise numerical comparison is not established.
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The game does provide camera inversion and sensitivity controls. A 19 September 2025 update added separate horizontal and vertical inversion and camera sensitivity controls for photo mode. Steam lists Camera Comfort as an accessibility tag. These controls can make camera movement more comfortable, but they do not increase the view angle.
Account for visibility improvements already made
Patch notes matter because a problem seen at launch may no longer look the same. On 29 August 2025, Giant Squid improved snow-particle fade distance. On 19 September, it improved the visibility of some interactive objects. Patch 1.6 later improved level of detail for fish, kelp, and chains, helping those objects retain clearer silhouettes at range. The update also improved photo-mode autofocus and maximum focal distance, and changed how photo-mode effects behave during fades.
Do not assume the standard graphics menu contains separate motion-blur, chromatic-aberration, bloom, or film-grain toggles. PCGamingWiki’s settings table does not confirm those controls, and the presence of such options in a third-party mod does not make them stock settings. The available evidence does not establish whether Patch 1.6’s additional presets expose any of them.
What are the PC requirements, and could they explain poor performance?
Use the official Steam requirements as a baseline, not as a promise of a particular frame rate. Giant Squid has not published an official average-FPS or 1% low benchmark sheet, and meeting a listed minimum does not establish that every resolution and setting will run smoothly.
| Requirement | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| Operating system | Windows 10 | Windows 11 |
| Processor | Intel Core i5-9400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 with AVX2 | Intel Core i5-12600K or AMD Ryzen 7 5700X |
| Memory | 12 GB RAM | 16 GB RAM |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB, AMD Radeon RX 5600 6 GB, or Intel Arc B570 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11 GB, AMD Radeon VII 16 GB, or Intel Arc B580 |
| Graphics API | DirectX 12 | Not separately stated |
| Storage | 15 GB | Not separately stated |
These are the Steam store’s 2025 requirements. PCGamingWiki lists different VRAM figures in its table—10 GB minimum and 16 GB recommended—so for the GPU models and memory listed above, the Steam store is the stated source of record. Requirements are not FPS guarantees, and the settings guidance here does not promise a frame rate for a particular machine.
The game uses Unreal Engine 5.4.4, according to PCGamingWiki’s 26 August 2025 verification. Reports from the launch period ranged widely: one player with a Ryzen 7 5800X3D and RTX 5070 Ti described 1080p Ultra dropping to 40 FPS with stutters; another with a Ryzen 5 5600X and RTX 3070 Founders Edition reported about 45–65 FPS at 1440p; and a Ryzen 7 9800X3D with RTX 4070 Ti was reported as smooth at 3440×1440. These are anecdotal pre-1.6 player reports, not comparable controlled benchmarks or predictions for a different PC.
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What should Steam Deck players know after Patch 1.6?
Giant Squid said Patch 1.6 added Steam Deck Verified status on 29 October 2026, but the Steam store fetch from that day still displayed Unsupported. Treat those as two distinct status records: the developer’s patch announcement says Verified, while the store badge had not yet caught up at 20:49 UTC that day.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsThe last documented Deck settings recipe in the available accounts is Low quality and 50% render scale, from Deck Wizard’s 23 August 2025 report on a Deck OLED running SteamOS 3.7. That predates Patch 1.6 and its performance changes, so it is a starting point rather than a newly verified post-patch profile. The same account used Lossless Scaling frame generation at 2x–4x; that is a third-party Steam app, not a native game setting. No new official Deck preset breakdown accompanies the 1.6 announcement.
Steam’s earlier compatibility test had categorized the game as Unsupported, with a note that its graphics settings could not be configured to run well on Deck; it also listed SteamOS compatibility. The later developer announcement is significant, but the conflicting store display means the badge status visible to a player may depend on when the store updates.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How do you get the intended DualSense haptics on PC?
For the game’s full DualSense features, connect the controller by USB and disable Steam Input. The Steam requirements note says: “Full DualSense controller support- disable Steam Input”. PCGamingWiki lists DualSense light-bar and adaptive-trigger support, and says haptic feedback works wired; the game also has a haptics intensity slider from 0 to 100.
- Connect a DualSense controller to the PC over USB.
- In Steam, open the game’s controller settings and disable Steam Input for Sword of the Sea, as the game’s store instructions specify.
- Launch the game and adjust the haptics slider to a comfortable level. If the game does not recognize the controller features as expected, verify Steam Input is disabled and that the controller is wired.
PC Gamer’s Sean described the tactile difference in a review published on 18 August 2025: “Having played both with and without, one thing I will say about Sword of the Sea’s surfing is that using a DualSense controller with haptics makes ALL the difference.” Sean added: “Everything feels 100% more grounded, as you get a sense of the different textures and terrains you’re gliding over.” The review specifically mentioned gravel and rooftiles. Patch 1.6 also lists haptics improvements.
Xbox and generic controllers are supported, and developers recommend a controller on the Steam store. They are alternatives if you do not have a DualSense, but the quoted haptic impressions concern the DualSense experience. Keyboard movement remapping is limited to choosing WASD or arrow keys; the evidence does not describe broader keyboard remapping.
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Which settings changed in patches, and which old advice is outdated?
The dates explain why launch guides can disagree with current menus. The changes most relevant to image quality, visibility, and control are:
- 21–22 August 2025: the first patch added Steam Cloud saves and documented the maximum-resolution problem, with Windows display scaling at 100% as a workaround. An Intel Arc startup crash and a photo-mode invert-vertical issue were also listed among known issues.
- 29 August 2025: Giant Squid added a 120 Hz frame-rate option, fixed access to higher resolutions, improved snow-particle fade distance, and adjusted photo-mode range.
- 19 September 2025: the resolution list was expanded to the full range with better multi-monitor handling. The update also added separate photo-mode camera inversion and sensitivity controls and improved visibility of some interactive objects. An Intel Arc crash remained a known issue in those notes.
- 29 October 2026, Patch 1.6: the notes added DLSS, additional graphics presets, a greater impact from graphics settings, performance optimizations, Steam Deck Verified status, haptics improvements, and LOD improvements for fish, kelp, and chains.
That history changes three common launch-era recommendations. First, “there is no DLSS” is no longer current after Patch 1.6. Second, launch tests showing almost no difference between Ultra and Low quality sliders do not establish their post-1.6 performance impact. Third, a missing 4K mode should not be treated as an unavoidable limit: later patches widened the resolution list, and the DPI override remains a documented workaround for affected Windows configurations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Sword of the Sea support HDR on PC?
HDR is not documented as a first-class feature in the Steam or PCGamingWiki settings information cited here. Some players reported that native HDR appeared after toggling windowed mode, but that behavior is anecdotal and should not be treated as official HDR support.
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The game does not have a native color-blind mode listed in its settings. If color differentiation is a barrier, the documented camera and display controls do not provide a substitute color filter.
Does Sword of the Sea have frame generation?
The PCGamingWiki settings table lists no native frame-generation option, and Patch 1.6 specifically names DLSS support without naming DLSS Frame Generation. Third-party frame-generation tools are separate software, not confirmation of a built-in feature.
Where are my Sword of the Sea saves stored on Windows?
PCGamingWiki lists the game data under %LOCALAPPDATA%SwordOfTheSeaSaved, with save files in the SaveGames subfolder. Steam Cloud was added in the first post-launch patch.
