Poketpair’s Palworld is the first big hit of 2024. The game is available via both Xbox Game Preview and Steam Early Access. This means you may well encounter some issues, such as the Palworld bug with the Memory Reset Drug. It also means that the game hasn’t been verified for Steam Deck. However, Palworld is playable on Steam Deck, and with some tweaking can deliver a decent gameplay experience.
Palworld offers the same user experience wherever you choose to play it. It remains an open world, multiplayer survival game filled with little critters to capture. Or kill, depending on your personal preference. However, there are significant differences between versions. For example, the Xbox Game Preview version has a far greater limit on the number of players that can be in a single instance of the game world. And on Steam Deck, there are additional considerations that need to be made.
If you’re just getting started with Palworld, be sure to check out our 7 Palworld Tips for Beginners.
There are different types of certification for games on Steam Deck. Palworld has been determined as ‘Playable’. What this means, by Valve’s own definition, is that Palworld is “functional on Steam Deck, but might require some extra effort to interact with or configure.”
This could mean anything from framerate drops to in-game text may be small and hard to read. Essentially, for many titles, it means that players may have to adjust some settings to get the required performance.
Best Settings for Palworld on Steam Deck
The above latter issue is prevalent in Palworld. To navigate the game world and read the in-game text, you’re going to need to adjust some settings. The game defaults to low settings, which delivers between 25-35 fps refresh rates. You can tweaking those settings for better performance without much sacrifice in visual quality. Palworld will look fine and run better, at a 30 fps frame rate which you an lock, with the following settings:
- VSync — off
- Motion Blur — off
- Max FPS — 30
- Anti-aliasing — TSR (or TAA)
- View Distance — low
- Grass — medium
- Shadows — medium
- Effects Quality — medium
- Texture Quality — medium
(Above settings refer to Steam Deck’s native 1200 x 800 resolution.)
If you choose to manually set all the above graphics options to ‘low’, you will get an inconsistent 40-50 fps. However, the visuals will lose a lot of quality.
Be sure to check out Chit Hot’s Comprehensive Palworld Guide for help with all aspects of the game!
As Palworld is still in Early Access on Steam, there’s plenty of work yet to be done. There may well be a time when Palworld becomes “Verified” on Steam Deck. But for now, the above settings will almost certainly improve your experience with the game.
Have you been playing Palworld on Steam Deck? Do you have any preferred settings? Let us know in the comments below!
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