Best Kingdom Come: Deliverance Settings on the Steam Deck
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is community-measured at 45 fps on the Steam Deck. The frame cap, the CryEngine sliders to cut, upscaling, and TDP.
Short version: Kingdom Come: Deliverance sits around 45 fps on the Steam Deck at the default resolution, according to community reports. That is a good number for an open-world medieval RPG, but it is not steady everywhere — Rattay's market and the forests around Talmberg are where it sags. Cap under the average, cut the CryEngine sliders that always cost the most, and use the Deck's own upscaler to hold the line.
A note on honesty: the 45 fps above comes from a single community-reported measurement at the default resolution. It is not a benchmark we ran, so treat it as a ballpark rather than a promise for every scene. The settings below target this engine's known bottlenecks — draw distance, scene detail, and shadows — and none of them carry an fps-per-setting claim, because we have not measured one.
Start with the frame cap
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is Deck Playable, not Verified, so there is no bespoke default profile steering you toward a number. Set your own ceiling before anything else.
- Open the Quick Access menu (the … button) → Performance.
- Turn on Use per-game profile.
- Set Framerate Limit to 40 fps (45 fps on the OLED).
- Set Refresh Rate to 40 Hz — the LCD's slider runs 40–60 Hz; the OLED's starts at 45 Hz, so pair 45 with 45 there.
A locked 40 beats chasing 45. The game does not hold a true 45 in every scene, so a cap just under the average smooths out the dips instead of leaving you swinging between the high 30s and mid 40s. If you would rather ride the ceiling, cap at 45 fps on a 60 Hz screen and accept less even pacing.
In-game graphics to trim
This runs on CryEngine, and its heaviest options are the usual CryEngine suspects: draw distance, scene detail, and shadows. Open the advanced graphics menu and work through these.
- Overall quality preset: start from Medium, not High. That is the right baseline at 800p on a 15 W APU.
- Objects: Medium. This is the draw-distance and level-of-detail control, and it governs how much of Bohemia's forest and countryside gets drawn at range — the biggest single win available.
- Shadows: Medium or Low. Shadow rendering is consistently among the most expensive settings in CryEngine titles, and Rattay's dense building shadows are a known cost.
- Postprocess: Low. Volumetric fog and god rays look superb at range on a monitor and are close to invisible on a 7-inch screen.
- Lighting: Medium.
- Particles: Medium.
- Textures: High is fine. The Deck's 16 GB of unified memory handles textures cheaply compared to geometry and shadow work.
- Motion blur: Off. Sharper at a locked 40, and taste either way.
Leave Water and Physics where the preset puts them. Neither is a major factor in this game's frame time next to Objects and Shadows.
Upscaling on Deck
Rather than hunting for an in-game upscaler, use the one SteamOS gives you: drop the in-game resolution one step below native, then set Scaling Filter to FSR in Quick Access → Performance and tune the sharpness slider. The compositor reconstructs the image, which buys you real headroom in Rattay and the forest sections for a far smaller hit than cutting Shadows or Objects again.
If the town scenes still fall under your cap after that, take one more step down on the render resolution before you touch the graphics menu again.
TDP and battery
With the graphics trimmed and a 40 fps cap in place you do not need the full 15 W budget.
- TDP Limit: manual, around 10–12 W, and back off further if frames dip.
- GPU Clock: automatic first. Only set a manual clock if you are chasing the last bit of consistency in town.
- Screen brightness: lower it a notch. The day/night cycle means you spend real time outdoors, so brightness is a bigger lever here than in a darker game.
None of this rescues the CPU-bound crowd scenes — Rattay's NPC density is a CPU cost that graphics settings cannot fully touch — but it keeps the session cooler, quieter, and longer.
Want to go deeper? The Kingdom Come: Deliverance game page has the full verdict breakdown, the Steam Deck hub covers the hardware, and the RPG hub has more open-world picks.
Frequently asked
Around 45 fps at the default resolution, based on one community-measured report — not a benchmark we ran. It is an average, not a floor: expect dips in crowded towns like Rattay and better numbers out in open fields. Capping at 40 fps gives more even pacing than chasing the raw 45.
No. It carries a Playable rating rather than Verified, which means it runs and controls fine but misses part of Valve's full Verified bar — typically default text legibility or the default control scheme. It is still comfortable to play with the settings above.
Shadows. CryEngine shadow rendering is consistently one of the most expensive settings across the engine family, and this game is no exception. Objects, which controls draw distance and level of detail, is the next biggest lever — especially in the forested regions.
Yes. The graphics settings, the FSR scaling filter, and the TDP guidance apply to either model. Only the refresh pairing differs: 40 fps / 40 Hz on the LCD, 45 fps / 45 Hz on the OLED, whose slider does not go below 45.