Improved Visuals for KCD2 (with ReShade)

This guide shows you how to enable ReShade for Kingdom Come Deliverance II to improve your visual experience. (achievement compatible)

Introduction

Although KCD2 already looks really beautiful, I had to try if you can take it further with ReShade.
The result delivers a crisp picture with more natural colours and brightness, as well as a cinematic touch (DoF & HDR).
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The whole installation & setup process takes only up to 2 minutes, and it is completely free!
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Performance-wise you will loose some frames per second (~15%) depending on your overall system specs, ingame settings and especially your used screen resolution!
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Anyway here's how KCD2 looks like with my ReShade preset enabled:


For lots of comparison screenshots see guide index at your right ===================>


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ReShade Presets (Download)

Download Link

W33Ds KCD2+ ReShade Preset (zip archive): https://workupload.com/file/kknUGC97R7T

Worries? ...dont worry!
Just use https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/upload to check the files by yourself. :)

Installation

Extract the *.ini file (this is the preset) from the zip archive into your KCD2 game file directory:
?:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\KingdomComeDeliverance2

How to install ReShade

1. Go to https://reshade.me/ and download the latest version.
2. Now execute and install the downloaded 'ReShade_Setup_6.X.X.exe'.
3. Follow the screenshots, if you're unsure on how to install ReShade properly.
3.1 First choose the game executable and then DirectX 10/11/12.
3.2 Skip the preset selection when asked, and check all Effects Packages.

How to Setup ReShade Ingame

If ReShade is installed properly, you'll see a short notification at the top left of your screen every time you launch the game (as well as some visual artifacts can be the case).

Steps

1. Ingame press 'HOME' / 'POS1' for enabling&disabling the ReShade Overlay
2. Do the short introduction tutorial for ReShade, or
2.1 Skip the tutorial go to 'Settings' tab and set everything as shown in the screenshot.
2.2 By doing so you can control everything easily with F5 - F8.
2.3 Recommended: Enable (tick) 'Load only enabled effects', for faster loading times.
(Plz do 2.3 not before all effects have been loaded successsfully at least once on game launch!)
3. Finally you just need to choose a preset in the 'Home' tab and enable it.

Comparison Screenshots

The following screenshots were taken @5760x2400 (24:10) with ultra settings. To really see the differences view the shots in fullscreen. If you like to compare the fps (upper left corner), have in mind that the expected performance impact will be drastically lower when using lower resolutions like e.g. 2560x1440!

Vanilla:

KCD2+ (Plus):

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Vanilla:

KCD2+ (Plus):

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KCD2+ (Plus):

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KCD2+ (Plus):

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KCD2+ (Plus):

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KCD2+ (Plus):

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KCD2+ (Plus):

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KCD2+ (Plus):

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Bugs & Changelog

Known Bugs:

• compass is blurred in many scenes
  
• main menu and loading screens are blurred (but not the inventory, kodex, etc.)

Changelog:

• 2024-02-14 "Happy Valentine" preset released

[Weeddrunken]

Regarding my GUIDEs: I will never ever make a guide again thx to steam.
I wanted to free up some space and deleted thousands of screenshots from my disk via the steam screenshot manager. But when you do that, steam will also delete all your screenshots you uploaded to he steam cloud (e.g. for a steam guide) as well - and without informing you about that. WTF Valve
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/0/4416424435093622017/

[Weeddrunken]

Yes, the blurry compass is because of the "PirateDOF" filter (the depth of field).
You can either disable it, or my personal "compass" workaround:
I rarely use the compass anymore, but if I need to I do it in a scene without much depth as than the compass is sharp.
(...probably only fixable via a mod, as the compass would need to be at the bottom of the screen.)

[Gorgon]

Just a quick question about the blurry compass. That happens to me every 3 seconds or so, which is a shame, because other than that I like the effect. Is that a bug, that's not fixable by you, and has to be done in PirateDOF, or can this be done somehow? Until this is fixed, I had to turn this off, because it was messing the immersion up too much for me. Thanks!

[Richard]

nice

[Weeddrunken]

Happy Valentine