Guide to Improving Performance in Pillars of Eternity 2 Deadfire

Improving the performance of "Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire" can enhance your gaming experience by increasing FPS, reducing load times, and ensuring smoother gameplay. Follow these three steps to optimize your game settings for maximum performance. This guide includes screenshots to illustrate each step.

### 1. Disable Hard Drive Indexing (Especially for SSDs)
Pillars of Eternity 2 relies heavily on disk access, so disabling indexing can improve level load times and increase FPS.


**Steps:**
- Open "This PC" on your computer.
- Right-click on your SSD or HDD where the game is installed.
- Select "Properties."
- Uncheck the box that says "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties."
- Click "Apply" and choose "Apply changes to drive X:\, subfolders and files."
- Click "OK" and wait for the process to complete.

**Screenshot:**



### 2. Add Commands to the Game Shortcut
To unlock more memory and video memory for the game and apply Direct3D 11, add the following commands to the game shortcut.


**Steps:**
- Right-click on the game's shortcut on your desktop.
- Select "Properties."
- In the "Target" field, add the following commands after the quotation marks:
  ```
  -force-d3d11 -nomemrestrict -norestriction -availablevidmem 1.1 -percentvidmem 100
  ```
- Your "Target" field should look like this:
  ```
  "C:\Games\Pillars of Eternity II Deadfire\PillarsOfEternityII.exe" -force-d3d11 -nomemrestrict -norestriction -availablevidmem 1.1 -percentvidmem 100
  ```
- Click "Apply" and then "OK."
**Screenshot:**


### 3. Install Special K and Optimize CPU Core Count
Special K is a powerful tool that can help optimize game performance. Follow these steps to install it and adjust CPU core settings.

**Steps:**
- Download the Special K archive from [this link]
https://github.com/Kaldaien/SpecialK/releases/download/sk_special_projects/SK_MHW.7z
.
- Extract the archive into your game folder (e.g., `C:\Games\Pillars of Eternity II Deadfire`).
- Launch the game.
- Press `Ctrl + Shift + Backspace` to open the Special K menu.
- Navigate to "Framerate Limiter/Advanced" and select "Spoof CPU Core Count."
- Reduce the number of CPU cores by half (experiment with different values to find the best setting).
**Screenshot:**


By following these steps, you should see a noticeable improvement in the performance of "Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire." Enjoy smoother gameplay and faster lo
ad times!

---
Please let me know if you need any further assistance or additional screenshots!

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Pilzprinz

3 comments

  1. bori8585
    bori8585
    • supporter
    • 0 kudos
    Unable to even launch the game with this version of Special K.. seems the old version I found elsewhere is outdated and causes it to crash as well. Verified integrity of files, still no, will only launch when I delete all the stuff from the special K rar here. Bummer none of these work anymore I really hate how this game handles my CPU
  2. NexusIsCool12345
    NexusIsCool12345
    • member
    • 2 kudos
    Hello. What if game folder is on disk D, but app/save data in on the disk C. Where should I disable indexing? Thanks
    1. Pilzprinz
      Pilzprinz
      • member
      • 1 kudos
      I think it would be disk D:, because all textures and geometry are there, so they should load faster (in theory)