Starfield: How to Increase Performance on Steam Deck

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If you chose to play Starfield on the handheld Steam Deck, you may have run into many performance problems. So, in this guide, we’ll show you the optimal settings and mods to increase Starfield’s performance on Steam Deck.

As many players have claimed, Starfield's performance on the Steam Deck is quite terrible. But, there are ways to make it run slightly better. Let's take a look at the optimal in-game settings first.

Starfield Steam Deck: Optimal Settings

Firstly, before even touching the in-game settings, you’ll have to make sure that you’ve installed Starfield on the Steam Deck’s internal SSD as opposed to an external SSD as that will already drastically improve the game’s performance.

To get the best possible frame rate without mods, you will unfortunately need to decrease most graphical settings. Here’s a list of the optimal graphical settings:

• Turn off Dynamic Resolution.
• Set the Graphics Preset to Custom.
• Set Render Resolution Scale to 50%.
• Set Sharpening to 85%
• Indirect Lighting: Medium to Low.
• Grass and Particle Quality, Reflections: Low.
• Disable VRS.
• Enable Depth of Field.
• Turn off Motion Blur.
• Set Shadow Quality to Low.
• Crowd Density: Low.
• Turn off the film grain.
• Try enabling and disabling FSR, and see what works better.
• GTAO Quality, Contact Shadows and Volumetric Lighting: Low

Now that we’ve gone over the in-game settings, let’s take a look at a mod called Steam Deck Essentials to improve Starfield’s Steam Deck performance further.

Read more: Starfield: Improve Performance with 4 Settings + Performance Patch & DLSS-Mod

Steam Deck Essentials for Starfield

Steam Deck Essentials lets you tune the graphic settings more, which allows you to squeeze a few extra frames out of your game by lowering the settings. For example, it lets you set the quality of shadows way lower than vanilla Starfield does, or just remove shadows altogether.

Here’s how to install SD Essentials:

• First, download Steam Deck Essentials from NexusMods. Find the ini Tweaks file and click on manual download.
• Open your Dolphin File Explorer and go to Downloads.
• Click LT on the ini Tweaks file, click RT on Extract in the sub-menu, and click RT again on Extract archive here.
• Make sure the Show Hidden Files setting is enabled.
• Open the ini Tweaks folder. There, you’ll see two folders - “Documents” and “Starfield Directory”.
• Open the “Starfield Directory” folder and copy all the files inside.
• Paste the files into the Starfield Directory, here’s how to get there: Home > .steam > steam > steamapps > common > Starfield.
• Go back to the ini Tweaks folder in Downloads, open the Documents folder, and copy the files.
• Paste the files from the Documents folder in the Starfield folder, follow this path to get there: Home > .steam > steam > steamapps > compatdata > 1716740 > pfx > drive_C > user > steamuser > Documents > My Games > Starfield.
• Delete the Starfield Shader Cache. Follow this path: Home > .steam > steam > steamapps > shadercache > 1716740, and delete all the files inside the 1716740 folder.

And there you have it, you now have SD Essentials installed and can tweak the settings with no limitations.

As you can probably tell, the game still doesn’t look pretty. But, since this is an AAA new gen game, it should come as no surprise that it won’t run well without mods and with graphical settings above minimal.

The developers have announced that there’s a patch coming soon, though. The patch will hopefully increase the performance, letting Steam Deck players get a more visually enjoyable Starfield experience.

By the way, if you are looking for more content like this, feel free to read our guide on how to view your FPS in Starfield.

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