Let's face it, for most of you who has purchased and played the game for more than a week, you can definitely tell that the 2GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, Intel HD 4000 requirements are for only running the base game with a medium-sized bot pool without any mods.

Nobody plays without mods, nor do they play without exuberant bot counts, let's be blunt.

Mods eat up tons of space, and depending on their contents, can be incredibly taxing for performance. Bots also are very heavy once their populations grows beyond 60 individuals.

Why, you may ask?


It has no support for it (nor would it ever have it in the foreseeable future). The most incriminating evidence of this are these so called "bot frames", viewable when you toggle the FPS counter in-game.

Since Ravenfield does not utilise more than one processor core, it needs to evenly distribute bot logic each tick in the game on a single core alongside everything else while playing, this works well for most of the time. However, things start to fall apart when you either have a really slow CPU, or you start to have 100+ bot matches, they become stupid. Why? Because it has less dedication to each bot and less time to compute logic, and thus, dumber bots. They either become practically blind, drive into walls, or have the reaction time of a hardwood plant.

But that's not the only thing that bogs down RF.


For every mod and mutator you load into the game, whether it's from the \Mods folder in the game's directory, or from the workshop, they all get loaded straight into memory. Visual assets are loaded directly to your GPU's VRAM (video memory). When any of these gets full, game performance will suffer heavily, and may even lead to a game or a systems crash.

Be wary of weapon packs and big maps, they're the worst offender of the VRAM situation as they usually contain a lot of highly detailed, uncompressed, or poorly-optimised textures that will bog your PC down.

Mutators that run on every frame or is executing logic on a lot of things are also guilty culprits of CPU gobbling, they will compete with other mutators for resource and bring your processor to its knees if left unchecked.

With all these in mind, what can you do, really?

The recommended system requirements for RF underestimate mods by a mile, the more accurate requirements (taking mods into account) would probably be:

• Processor: 2GHz or faster (4GHz for some leeway for other programs running on the machine), and modern CPU instruction sets
  • Intel: i5 8th Gen and above
    
  • AMD: I haven't used any AMD CPUs yet, but make sure it follows the general processor requirement
• Memory: 12GB RAM DDR4 or more, 24GB for more freedom
  
• Graphics: 4GB of VRAM or more
  • NVIDIA: Anything after Pascal (beyond 2014), discrete GPU, NOT graphics chip (see below)
    
  • AMD: I haven't used any AMD GPUs yet, but choosing the discrete GPU rather than the onboard graphics is critical
• Storage: 10GB available space

For my setup, I have an ass laptop with an Intel i5-8265U CPU running in 1.8GHz rocking 2400MHz 20GB of DDR4 memory with an NVIDIA GeForce MX230 chip (yes, graphics CHIP, not CARD. Laptops cannot have a graphics card inside of them, so they put weakened GPU chips in there) with 2GB of usable VRAM.

Yes, I suffer with those specs, but I am still happy enough with them.

But remember to address these common problems with your computer as well.

PS. I highly recommend you to see this other guide for increasing FPS in Ravenfield since it is much more mature and detailed than this one
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328865216

1. Close background and unnecessary programs
   • Yes, I know this has been mentioned a million times before, but it is especially true with Ravenfield. Even running the Windows 11 Media Player for me makes the game lose 10FPS. So shut your programs down because the game is going to consume all the available resources
2. Update your graphics drivers
   
   • Same canned checklist as above. Having outdated drivers might break some visual effects on some mods, or have less performance compared to newer ones
3. Set the right graphics setting for your rig
   Click to expand the images. They alternate from worst-to-best
   • 
     
     Quality Level: Simple, would give you the best compromise between looks and performance, change to Fastest if you really need it
     
   • 
     
     
     Resolution: Native resolution, pick the one that's 1:1 to your physical screen's resolution, lower resolutions reduces graphics overhead by a ton but it makes the game look especially bad, and may break some custom HUDs
     
   • Full Screen: ✅ Tick
     
   • V Sync: ❌ Untick, the game engine's implementation of vertical sync (preventing your screen from tearing and artifacting) reduces performance too much. Use your driver settings to force-enable Vsync, it probably has more options to reduce latency and increase quality as well
     
   • High Dynamic Range: ❓ Preference, I usually don't enable this since some maps get really dark if it gets enabled, but if your screen is specifically tuned for HDR, enable it, or not
     
   • These might be imperceptible in picture, try the setting out for yourself in different resolutions!
     
     
     
     Antialiasing: Off, if you are running the game on native resolution, turn this off since the benefits aren't all that great. Antialiasing is a term used for every technique to reduce "aliasing" (a.k.a jaggies, stair-steps), rough edges that appear on all physical surface in a 3D environment. FXAA is a relatively fast shader-based antialiasing solution at the cost of having your screen looking like it was smeared with Vaseline. SMAA detects and upscales visible edges before they reach the screen, slower than FXAA but with crisper results
     
   • Draw Distance: Full, don't turn this down, maps will look bad without any noticeable performance benefits, other than giving you myopia
     
   • Terrain Quality: Full, please do not turn this down, it will break most custom maps and doesn't give you much performance gains
     
   • Vegetation Quality: High, affects the texture quality of foliage in maps. Performance may differ from each custom map. But for vanilla maps specifically, it wouldn't hurt turning this up to the fullest
     
   • 
     
     
     Vegetation Density: Low, gives you more sight on bushy maps, while still keeping some grass intact. Turn off if you don't like grass, and for a huge performance boost on older/lower-end graphics
     
   • Notice how the grass doesn't extend beyond a few feet off the player on the lowest setting:
     
     
     Vegetation Draw Distance: Long, affects LOD and despawn range of foliage. I suggest turning this to the lowest when using the highest density, and the opposite when using the lowest density. Don't turn down at all if you value your already-fragile immersion
     
   • Muzzle Flash Light: On, cosmetic. Reduce or disable if you don't like or don't want muzzle flashes
     
   • 
     
     
     Weather Effects: ✅ Tick, most noticeable on the Temple map, disable for higher visibility and slightly more performance. Gives weather effects like fog, snowfall, wind gushes, etc. This does not affect mutator-added weather effects
     
   • Cloth Physics: ✅ Tick, gives capture flags physics
     
   • 
     
     
     Color Correction: ✅ Tick, enables color correction on many maps, giving them the exact aesthetic the mapper intended. Disable if unfavourable
     
   • 
     
     
     Ambient Occlusion: ❌ Untick, gives more prominent shadows on corners and intersecting objects. Will dramatically increase VRAM usage on larger maps, enable if you're playing on smaller ones or have VRAM to spare
     
   • Bloom: ❓ Preference, from my own testing, bloom doesn't impact performance much at all. I suggest keeping it at Low if you don't want to get flashbanged
4. Use a lower resolution
   • Good on you if you have an FSR mod that can work with Ravenfield and not have your graphics fidelity compromised. If not, then lowering the resolution will lighten the GPU load a lot. My bottom limit personally is one-half of my native resolution (it's 1920*1080, so one-half of that would be 1280*720), but if you want, you can go lower
5. Use less demanding mods
   • Some mods, maps, and mutators are really taxing on performance. LeMieux's stuff (gore and suppression), Sofa's bigger and more detailed maps, LowQualitySoarin's bodycam camera, and those 100+ weapon overhauls are the biggest culprit
6. Selectively disable unused mods
   • Using Steam's built-in mod manager accessible through the gear icon in the Workshop tab, you can disable mods that you don't need or want in your playthrough. Doing so will prevent them from loading at all and lighten the load and emancipate resources that Ravenfield might not even use (but still uselessly allocate resources for them) at your playthrough session

These optimizations may or may not apply nor work in your case

1. Deal with heating/stuttering issues
   (if you have it)
   • Before I realised it, my CPU was running on 3.70GHz, that's more than double the base clock speed for my CPU, and it caused a whole hell lot of stutters on all of my games. I found that by limiting it to its base clock speed of 1.80GHz eliminated all heat throttling-based stutters of my laptop.
     To do this without downloading external software, just head over to your Windows power settings control panel, edit the currently-selected plan, Change advanced power settings, then at the bottom, expand Processor power management, and turn any 100% to 99%. Note that this will disable CPU boosting by Windows, so make sure to either duplicate the power plan and have one at 100%, or remember to switch it to 99%/100% each time you need the extra clocks.
     
     If your PC has official manufacturer software or BIOS option to limit or control the clock speed of your CPU, use that instead, and find the sweet spot between just enough speed without going over the capability of your cooling
2. Use DXVK
   • On some systems (definitely not ones with older NVIDIA GPUs), using Vulkan instead of DirectX will yield better performance. Use doitsujin's DXVK[github.com] translation layer to convert the game from using DirectX to the Vulkan rendering API. And no, Ravenfield does not natively offer a Vulkan render pipeline, the game will crash if you try to force it using Unity launch flags.
     
     May or may not increase performance. For my case (with an older NVIDIA GPU), I got worse performance on average with more stutters, even though inbetween them I get more FPS
3. Overclock
   • Without upgrading your PC, you can probably get away with overclocking (instead of underclocking like stated above) your CPU to its highest TDP-up limit or half of its maximum turbo speed. Be wary of core temperatures.
4. Increase process priority in Task Manager
   • I don't know if this works for everyone, since it doesn't for me. But in some cases, increasing the process priority of Ravenfield in task manager will increase its performance by a bit. Do note that increasing it too much will make Windows prioritise the game instead of itself, and may cause system crashes

Ravenfield is both the beauty and the beast of a game, from both a technical and aesthetic point of view, and we all love it and hate it for it.

Hope this guide helps you a bit, let me know if I missed something!