FIXED: Long "Preparing Shaders.."

[Ewoke]

There are three known to me solutions:

FIRST SOLUTION (worked for me personally)
It's been said on this hub before a couple of times, I just wanna highlight it, because it fixed the issue for me, I can't guarantee it will work for everyone, but it's worth giving a shot, because it's very simple to do, although the solution is so stupid I have no idea why it's affecting the loading times.

Link your account in-game. (ESC -> Options -> Account) Yup, that's it. I have no idea why, but it made the game load much, much faster. Before it took minutes at times, now mere seconds.

My guess would be that the shader settings are being saved into NX account, and it can't do it without linking, but it's just a wild guess, it's the only explanation that makes sense to me.

If for some reason you are interested in my hardware, it's ancient and not that great, i7-3770S, installed on 870EVO, so only SATA3, 1070ti. Sharing it because I've seen some folk talking something about i7s and i9s having issues with shaders, blah, blah, but it seems like nonsense to me now that I got the game working as intended.

WARNING: People are reporting that linking accounts when you've already made some progress is resetting them back to the state as if they just started playing, HOWEVER so far from all the people that mentioned it to me, NONE were actually affected by it, they just heard it from somewhere else, and I myself linked my account after 90h+ of playing, and no progress was lost. Personally I think it's just a rumor or a case of people wiping their accounts on accident, and shifting blame. I have no proof for either case, so just be aware that it may be possible, but personally I doubt it.

SECOND SOLUTION
1. Steam Settings -> Downloads -> Shader PRE-CACHING (Disable this and then re-enable it)

2. Go to the following folder: C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\NVIDIA and then delete the files that are INSIDE the GLCache folder.

Credit for this one goes to Noirfragment on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheFirstDescendant/comments/1e1sbla/preparing_shaders_solution/

THIRD SOLUTION

Originally posted by BuBaLoM:

Go to C:\Users\blabla\AppData\Local\M1\Saved\Config\Windows
open Engine.ini , add

[SystemSettings]
r.ShaderPipelines=1
r.ShaderPipelineCache.Enabled=0
r.D3D.ForceDXC=1

Pass that info around, help folks out.

[Blackrock2318]

Accounts linked when signed up. this update just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ things up big time

[yesCold]

It`s work for me. Thank you.

[Skyper]

Link account and lose progress, thanks but no

[Nekochi]

My Account is linked since Day 1 still i got long shader loading since the hotfix. Sad :/

[Skyper]

Maybe increase shader cache to unlimited at nvidia 3d settings will help?

[Moga CMDR]

Don't listen to this "advice".

[vaan]

thank you, works for me too. now didnt see the percentage anymore and fast load. kinda weird solution but it rly works

[2Tsar]

Dot say thank you

[Ewoke]

Originally posted by Skyper:

Link account and lose progress, thanks but no

I linked mine account today after 90h+ and didn't lose anything

[Noop]

Sir you are legally required to add "ad" behind sponsored messages :)

[2Tsar]

Can you pls approv this method in this guide?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3287120545

[Ewoke]

Originally posted by Noop:

Sir you are legally required to add "ad" behind sponsored messages :)

I wish NX paid me for this, but no, I genuinely want to help some folk out because it was frustrating to me as ♥♥♥♥

[eERIe]

Originally posted by Skyper:

Link account and lose progress, thanks but no

As someone else previously mentioned, I didn't lose anything after linking my account either. I played as a "Guest" and then later made a Nexon account from their site, then linked it through the game and lost nothing

[eERIe]

Anyways, my account has been linked for a while, but after patch 1.0.2 I feel like shader preparing just takes way longer even though pretty sure this patch had a fix for it?

[Sh1kuren]

It's preparing shaders to Albion after the main menu every time.