Helldivers 2 Optimization & Known Fixes

This guide lists known issues and fixes in Helldivers 2 such as performance loss, as well as a streamlined guide to optimization and the best settings for a fluid experience.

Introduction

My goal is to make this guide as simple to follow and as accurate as possible, it's good to remember that we all make mistakes, even those who push to be perfect.

If this guide helped you it would be heavily appreciated if you liked, favorited or commented on it!

If you're feeling charitable feel free to give me some steam points ~ check below to learn how!

Optimized Quality Settings

Helldivers 2 runs generally well for most people, but even on my expensive rig I had to play around with the settings to get it running at a consistent framerate. These settings worked best for me, but you may need to tune here or there depending on your system. As always please leave a comment if you have recommendations for changes!

Display

UI Brightness - Personal preference
High Dynamic Range - Off unless your monitor supports this
Camera Shake Strength - Personal preference
Vertical Field of View - Personal preference
Graphics Device - Your GPU here
Screen Device - Whichever monitor you want here
Resolution - Depends on your monitor
Render Scale - Native or Ultra Quality
Display Mode - Fullscreen
V-Sync - Off

Graphics

Graphics Preset - Custom
Motion Blur - Personal preference
Depth of Field - Personal preference
Bloom - Personal preference
Sharpness - Personal preference
Texture Quality - Medium or High depending on VRAM
Object Detail Quality - High
Render Distance - Ultra
Shadow Quality - Medium or High
Particle Quality - Medium or Low
Reflection Quality - Low
Space Quality - Low
Ambient Occlusion - On
Screen-Space Global Illumination - Off
Vegetation and Rubble Density - High
Terrain Quality - Medium or High
Volumetric Fog Quality - Low
Volumetric Clouds Quality - Lowest
Lighting Quality - Medium
Anti-Aliasing - On

Steam Deck Settings

I've recently decided to add Steam Deck performance settings to my guides since it seems many guidemakers disregard Deck players, below are the best settings that I've tried on my own Steam Deck that work wonderfully.

Display

UI Brightness - Personal preference
High Dynamic Range - Off
Camera Shake Strength - Personal preference
Vertical Field of View - Personal preference
Graphics Device - Your GPU here
Screen Device - Whichever monitor you want here
Resolution - 1280x800
Render Scale - Ultra Quality for 30 fps, change it for higher
Display Mode - Fullscreen
V-Sync - Off

Graphics

Graphics Preset - Custom
Motion Blur - Personal preference
Depth of Field - Personal preference
Bloom - Personal preference
Sharpness - Personal preference
Texture Quality - Medium
Object Detail Quality - Low
Render Distance - High
Shadow Quality - Low
Particle Quality - Medium
Reflection Quality - Lowest
Space Quality - Low
Ambient Occlusion - Off
Screen-Space Global Illumination - Off
Vegetation and Rubble Density - Medium
Terrain Quality - Medium
Volumetric Fog Quality - Lowest
Volumetric Clouds Quality - Lowest
Lighting Quality - Low
Anti-Aliasing - On

Crashing on Boot with Music

Some people have reported crashing when they load up the game, they can hear the starting music but can't seem to get any display. This may fix that issue for some of you.

Notice: This could cause career progression to be lost, please be careful!

1. Click Windows + R and type %appdata%
2. Copy the contents of %AppData%\Arrowhead\%
3. Put them in a safe location, I'd create a folder on your Desktop and store them there for now
4. Open a Command Prompt or PowerShell as Administrator and run:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
4a. If there are errors, run: DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
5. Download Steam and install it over your Steam installation just in case Steam is corrupted
6. Disable Steam Cloud saves

This information was pulled from the Helldivers 2 Constant Crashing Root Cause Fixes Megathread.

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[Kuni]

Hi. Your Deck settings work for me. But i have performance issues running the game on the deck in "docked" mode (connected to a 32" Samsung 4K/60 monitor). It fells much slower and i get input delay with my xbox elite controller, with the same settings. Only the second game with this strange kind of issue on deck. Any tipps for me?

[d e x]

I have an issue, I cant hear shooting of alies, I only hear my guy, my guns, also I can hear other players, but I dont hear their guns or explosions , any suggestions?

[Gizmo]

CloudLeFei, yes it does, i have a gtx 1650 with a ryzen 5 3550h and 8gb ram and it does at 50 fps so dont worry it will run perfectly

[CloudLeFei]

Hi i have a short question do you think the game would run on a GTX 1650 with a i5 9400F CPU and 16GB ram?

[Panavision]

Hi, yes it should work for a 3060.

[John Yakuza]

does this work on rtx 3060 laptops?