Countdown
Published
gamemoderun %command%
3 Cutscenes did not play their audio. Played the game for the first time, so that was pretty unfortunate. If you want to fully experience them for the story, you could watch them on Youtube.
For the most part it works flawlessly. Had one crash in 38 hrs of Playtime. Since it's just one crash, I would still say the game runs stable. The missing cutscene audio is unfortunate, but not gamebreaking. All the in-engine cutscenes work, but the pre-rendered ones have the missing audio.
VKD3D_CONFIG=no_upload_hvv DXVK_ASYNC=1 gamemoderun %command%
Could not enter borderless windowed. When selecting no prompt to keep the settings appeared and the game became unresponsive until it auto reverted to fullscreen.
In certain areas like the Stomhill, the performance was really bad. But the gpu utilization was low. Adding VKD3D_CONFIG=no_upload_hvv to the launch options fixes this. With the workaround in place the performance seems still to be a bit lower than windows, but very much playable at max settings.
The game has issues starting with EAC. It sometimes worked, but launching the game was very inconsistent. Sometimes it would start, sometimes it would hang on a white screen and other times it would hang on a black screen. Since I play the game offline anyway, I just disabled EAC. Others have already detailed this, but in a nutshell you have remove or rename start_protected_game.exe and rename eldenring.exe to start_protected_game.exe.
-vulkan
Game crashed on startup under wayland. Launch option to use vulkan fixes that. After that the game works perfectly.
DXVK_ASYNC=1 gamemoderun %command%
Had issues starting the game. The game only started after deleting the easyanticheat folder in the game directory. In the past I had severe issues with stuttering in the remastered graphics of Halo 2. After a while it would get better, but it would never fully go away. DXVK_ASYNC=1 finally fixes this. Did not try multiplayer, as I am not very interested in that, but as others are saying EAC is preventing it to properly work. But I also heard that private games with everybody using the EAC disabled launch option should work.
The singleplayer campaign aspect of the game seems to be working perfectly. Mods such as Ruby's REBALANCED Halo Combat Evolved are also working.
It's only the Demo version, so things could change for the final release.
gamemodrun %command%
The game seems to be somewhat bottlenecked by the CPU. On Windows and Linux. In some areas the game struggled to keep a stable 60 fps, while the GPU was hanging around 50-60% utilization. This can be improved by disabling Dynamic Shadows. Turning on Model Swapping and VRS can also help, but I am not sure how they impact visuals. Just try it out if you are having trouble.
Even with the changes to the settings, it still doesn't seem like I am getting the most out of the GPU, but the game runs at 60+ fps now. That is good enough for me, and certainly playable. But this isn't a Linux specific issue anyway, in Windows the GPU was sometimes only 20-30% utilized.
Otherwise the game runs perfectly fine.
gamemoderun %command% -vulkan
Running under wayland the game gives just a black screen. The game seems to be running since I can hear it. The launch option to use vulkan instead of opengl fixes this. Local Co op worked just fine and correctly picked up m+kb and my Controller.
Make sure the audio settings are correct, since it defaults to 5.1 surround sound.
Used to install Ubisoft Connect
This game has two Issues that make it unplayable out of the box.
- The game forces you to use Uplay, Ubisofts old launcher. But it does not work, you can't sign in. The Solution: use Protontricks (https://flathub.org/de/apps/com.github.Matoking.protontricks) to uninstall Uplay, Download Ubisoft Connect, use the file browser in Protontricks to launch the Ubisoft Connect installer and install it.
- Now the game should launch the Ubisoft Connect launcher instead of uplay. But you might run into the issue, that Ubisoft Connect can't connect to the internet. To "fix" this issue you have to enable MTU (max transfer unit) Probing in your network config. On my system the following workaround did not work with systemd-networkd, only with networkmanager. Create /etc/sysctl.d/90.override.conf, and write "net.ipv4.tcp_mtu_probing = 1" in to the file. Reboot and the login to Ubisoft Connect should work.
THANKS UBISOFT!
The Games runs perfectly with Proton 6.3 or 6.12-GE.
Proton Experimental has slowdown issues for me. But 6.3-5 or 6.12-GE-1 run just fine.
DXVK_ASYNC=1 PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 %command%
Riftbreaker/conf/initial_config_win.cfg: change "set render_system" to "dx11"
Kwin didn't seem to disable composition in fullscreen. This could have impacts on latency and performance. If needed composition can be forced off with a keyboard shortcut (default: Alt+Shift+F12). But I didn't encounter any negative effects because of this.
Stuttering, use DXVK_ASYNC=1 to fix this.
The game is very unstable when set to dx12.
The built in configuration tool/launcher didn't work, instead just launching the game regularly. Because of this you have to change the rendering API in the config files.
Given the mentioned tweaks the game Runs well. GPU benchmark gave me [Avg: 137 fps] [Low 1%: 98 fps] [Low 0.1%: 74 fps]. Unfortunately dx11 prevents some graphics settings. For example ray tracing, even on the unstable dx12 it didn't let me enable it. But the game still looks good, so not a huge loss.
When clicking on settlements/armies the game would often falsely detect a double click, causing the detailed setllement/army view to open. The Proton version does not seem to suffer from this issue.
The above issue is minor and the game runs just fine, no matter if you use the native port or the Proton version. But the detailed settlement/army view takes up alot of space in the middle of the screen, obstructing your view of the map. It is not a game breaking issue by any means, but it is inconsistent and over time very annoying. So I personally prefer playing the game through Proton.
But you can try the native port, and if you encounter this issue (and it annoys you too) just switch to the Proton version. Unlike other games the update to Proton was under 150mb for me. So you don't need to redownload the entire game.
Longer load times than native port.
My previous report statet that I prefered the Proton version to the Native port. After some more time playing, I think both of them have their downsides. Both are good but not perfect.
In the Native port I experienced a issue with falsely detected double click, when clicking on armies/settlements, resulting in a additional menu opening.
The Proton version seems to have a bit lower performance and the loading times take longer. Some times they seem to be stuck, but eventually they will complete.
Both are perfectly playable, just not flawless. Switching between them only requires a ~120mb update, so try both and see which one you prefer.
Segmentation Fault
After playing some more, I would recommend just playing the Proton version. Like the other Total War ports from feral interactive (e.g. Warhammer 2/3 Total War) seems to suffer from the Segmentation Fault crash. In the other games it tends to corrupt save data (if I remember correctly). In this game I experienced one crash, but could resume playing normaly after restarting. But now 100 or so turns into the game, I can't finish the turn since the game crashes randomly before I can do everything. When playing the Proton version I recommend turning off "minimizing on focus loss" in the launcher, since minimizing can be a source of instability in my experience.
Severe performance degradation compared to Windows.
I have tried different Proton Versions (e.g. Proton GE), older Nvidia driver versions and different Distros. But regardless, the performance of the game is very bad compared to Windows (at 1080p resolution). Around 60 fps in the battle benchmark and about 35-45 fps on campaign map on the medium preset. I saw a Benchmark with same Hardware on Windows that got about 120 fps in battle. Even on low preset the campaign benchmark struggles to get 60 fps. But for whatever reason the game uses Ultra Texture Quality on every preset, which maxes out the 6 GB vram of the rtx 2060. But turning that down doesn't help much either. Not unplayable, but much worse than Windows. Other people are reporting that the game runs perfectly fine for them, don't know why it runs so bad for me.
Medium Preset (except Ultra Unit Size, Medium Texture Quality):
Proton = 45 - 60 FPS (Campaign Map) | 70 - 88 FPS (Battle)
Windows = 70 - 80 FPS (Campaign Map) | 100 - 120 FPS (Battle)
Got some Performance Improvements compared to my previous report. The latest Proton GE version (7.3) seems to have caused the improvement. Dropping down to Proton GE 7.2, I loose ~10 FPS on the campaign map. Not a huge difference and still significantly slower than Windows. But I would say it runs good enough to be enjoyable.
Everytime I tried playing the game through Proton, I had severe Performance issues compared to playing on WIndows. The Native version from Feral Interactive released and I would recommend playing the game that way. The Native version gave me playable framerates even on Ultra Preset. And it supports AMD FSR 1.0. Haven't tried that yet, but it could be usefull for people with higher resolutions.
Tried Proton GE aswell.
Terrible Performance. Needed to drop to the low preset. And that still didn't result in a stable 60 fps.
Starting a new campaign does not work if I am using Wayland. After a relatively long loading time I can hear the campaign starting. But the Image does not change from the loading screen. I can control the game, but since I can't see what I am doing it is practically unplayable. X11 seems to work.
Under Wayland the game doesn't work. Overall the performance is very bad. With an RTX 2060 I would expect better, and in fact I can get much better Performance on Windows. An alternative would be the native linux port. But that lacks behind with updates severely. Two months since the very essential Immortal Empires Update, only the Mac Port got updated. But even that is one patch behind.
Compared to Windows this is a pretty bad experience.
Noticed the faces of some soldiers weirdly warping. Only visible from up close, not a big Issue. Kinda funny actually.
Performance a little lower than Windows. Overall still good performance.
I had very big performance issues with the game in the past. Since I switched to a AMD GPU the performance is much better. My previous RTX 2060 performed unreasonably bad. Not even stable 60 fps on the campaign map, at the lowest graphics preset. This GPU is capable of much better performance under windows. Some Issue with DXVK or the Nvidia Driver. The AMD GPU performs about as expected. Although this is only the case when playing the game through Proton. The native port performs much better on nvidia. But I don't recommend the native version if you can avoid it. Updates and DLC are not available right at launch, it can take a few weaks until Feral has ported it to linux. There is also a segmentation fault bug that can corrupt your save file, which has been around for a while.
WINE_CPU_TOPOLOGY=6:0,1,2,3,4,5 gamemoderun %command%
Fights with a lot of enemies made the frame rate go below 60 fps. There seemed to be some weird stuff going on with cpu cores, with one core at 100%. Setting the cpu topology manually seems to have improved the performance. Some times the performance still drops, but overall better. Could have something to do with all the particle effects of gore and attacks (like multiple flamers of tzeentch firing at once).
You might have to change the WINE_CPU_TOPOLOGY line. I set it to 6 threads and then specified which threads. In my case all the threads of one of the chiplets of my ryzen cpu. You can check the topology of your cpu with the "lstopo" command in the terminal.
Like others have mentioned, broken cutscenes. Proton GE does not fix it either.
Besides the two issues I descriped, the game works.
gamemoderun %command%
In large areas with many enemies the game slows down significantly.
Broken Cutscenes
In my previous report I said that setting the cpu topology helps with the performance issues. But I don't think that anymore. I still run into pretty bad performance. Everytime the performance gets bad, a single core is at 100% usage, with all others at ~30-40%. Game is still enjoyable but it is annoying.
