After a shaky launch, Throne and Liberty has managed to retain players with its expansive world and complex mechanics, but to fully enjoy its immersive experience, achieving smooth gameplay is essential. Performance issues can impact your gameplay, whether you're exploring vast terrains or fighting in large-scale PvP battles. Here’s a detailed breakdown of the best settings to maximize performance without sacrificing too much on visual quality.

Understanding Key Graphics Settings

Before diving into specific settings, understanding what each setting does and its impact on performance can help you make more informed decisions.

• Resolution and Screen Mode: Higher resolutions offer clearer visuals but consume more resources. Screen Mode (Fullscreen, Borderless, Windowed) also affects performance. Borderless remains the best middle ground, as it allows you to tab out more smoothly, especially when using multiple monitors.
  
• Anti-Aliasing: This smoothens out jagged edges on textures and objects, but it can be demanding on the GPU and lowering it is generally preferred if your GPU doesn’t have a lot of VRAM.
  
• Texture Quality: Higher settings make textures appear more detailed. It is crucial for visual quality but can be adjusted based on your system’s VRAM.
  
• Shadows and Lighting: Shadows and lighting enhance realism but can be very taxing on the GPU, especially in large open-world games.
  
• Character Count: This setting controls the number of characters rendered on-screen and significantly impacts performance, particularly in PvP environments. You should have this on Low when doing PVE field bosses as the large number of players greatly lowers your FPS. However, it should be at least on high during Large Scale PvP!
  
• Depth of Field, Motion Blur, and Chromatic Aberration: These are visual effects that add to realism, but they’re often non-essential and can reduce performance.

Best Throne and Liberty Performance Settings

Screen Settings

Optimizing screen settings is one of the first steps to take. These will directly impact both the game's visuals and FPS:

• Screen Mode: Fullscreen - Running the game in Fullscreen mode reduces system overhead by allowing the GPU to dedicate resources solely to the game. Avoid Borderless and Windowed modes if maximizing FPS is your goal. However, if you are using multiple monitors, Borderless is a good choice as it allows you to smoothly tab in and out of the game.
  
• Resolution: Use your native resolution (commonly 1920x1080 for most full HD monitors) for the best experience. Reducing resolution can improve performance.
  
• Frame Rate Limit: No Limit - Setting the frame rate limit to “No Limit” allows the game to push as many frames as possible. If you experience significant frame drops, cap it to the highest stable frame rate your system can maintain.
  
• Vertical Sync: Off - Vertical Sync synchronizes the game’s FPS with your monitor’s refresh rate, reducing screen tearing but potentially introducing input lag and lower frame rates.

Quality Settings

Adjusting these settings strikes a balance between good visuals and smooth gameplay.

• Anti-Aliasing: Low - Setting anti-aliasing to low reduces strain on your GPU while keeping visuals clear enough for a smooth experience. Higher settings are resource-intensive.
  
• Ambient Occlusion: Low - This setting improves shadow details but consumes GPU power. Lowering it reduces the visual depth slightly but improves performance.
  
• Screen Space Reflection: High - Reflections can be demanding but add realism. Setting it to high maintains visuals without being overly taxing.
  
• View Distance: Low - The view distance dictates how far you can see objects. However, this also lowers FPS so keeping it on low is the best choice.
  
• Character Count: Low (PvE) / High (PvP) - Lowering character count is recommended for PvE to save resources. For PvP, set it higher to ensure that nearby players are visible.
  
• Post-Processing: High - This setting improves the game's overall look without impacting FPS.
  
• Character Quality: High - Affects the detail of character models. Keeping it on high will force the game to use high quality textures without affecting FPS.
  
• Shading Quality: High - Improves the lighting and shadow details on characters and objects, adding realism without high resource demand.
  
• Shadow Quality: Medium - Shadows add to realism but can heavily impact performance. Setting it to medium strikes a balance between visuals and performance.
  
• Distant Shadow Quality: Low - Lower distant shadow quality for improved performance. Close-range shadows will retain their quality.
  
• Texture Quality: High - For those with ample VRAM, keeping texture quality on high provides detailed visuals without impacting FPS.
  
• Anisotropic Filtering: x16 - This helps in rendering textures clearly at oblique angles, preserving detail in distant textures.
  
• Effect Quality: High - Controls the quality of visual effects in the game, which enhances immersion without heavy performance costs.
  
• Vegetation Quality: Low - Lower vegetation quality if you’re aiming for performance; it reduces detail in foliage but makes minimal difference in core gameplay and sometimes even makes it easier for you to see the action, offering an advantage.

Advanced Settings

These settings deal with more subtle effects that enhance visuals at the cost of performance but some of them remain very important to tweak for improved FPS.

• Depth of Field: Off - Depth of Field simulates focus, often used to blur distant objects. Turning it off maintains a clearer view of the environment and improves performance.
  
• Motion Blur: Off - Motion blur is a stylistic effect that can hinder clarity and uses resources, so it’s best to disable it.
  
• Chromatic Aberration: Off - Disabling this effect gives a crisper, clearer image.
  
• Lens Flare: Off - Lens flare can add cinematic visuals but is unnecessary for gameplay. Turning it off saves performance.
  
• Level of Detail: High - Reducing the level of detail on distant objects doesn’t have a real impact on the FPS in Throne and Liberty.
  
• Character Shadow Quality: Medium - Reduces shadow quality on characters to save GPU power without affecting in-game performance.
  
• Lighting Quality: Medium - Adequate lighting detail without consuming excessive GPU power.
  
• Terrain Quality: Medium - Reducing terrain quality improves performance in large outdoor environments but even on High it doesn’t impact FPS all that much, this can be considered a personal choice.
  
• Volumetric Clouds: Low - Volumetric clouds add depth but are very demanding. Lowering this saves resources as its very rare that you will be looking up to the sky during regular gameplay.
  
• Volumetric Fog: Low - Similarly, fog effects add atmosphere but drain performance. Keep this setting on low for better FPS.
  
• Shader Preloading: Epic - Enables preloading of shaders for smoother gameplay, reducing stutter during gameplay. This is one of the most important setting to tweak as it offers the largest gain in FPS.
  
• Hair Strands: Off - Hair rendering is very GPU-intensive. Disabling this saves performance.
  
• Optimize Large-Scale Combat: On - This setting is specifically beneficial for large PvP encounters, optimizing performance during high player-density combat like Archbosses or Field Bosses.
  
• Use DirectX 12: On - DirectX 12 enables better multi-core utilization, improving overall game performance.

Additional Tips for Maximizing Performance

Beyond in-game settings, here are a few other tricks that can improve performance based on your graphics cards:

1. Enable NVIDIA DLSS or AMD FSR: For NVIDIA RTX users, enabling DLSS and setting it to “Balanced” provides a significant performance boost. AMD users can use FSR, set to “Balanced” for the best mix of visuals and FPS. It is highly recommended to use each setting on Ultra Performance during mass PvP encounters like Field Bosses.
   
2. Update Graphics Drivers: Ensure you’re running the latest graphics drivers, as updates often include optimizations for new games and follow-up updates often happen even after the initial release, often boosting performance even further.
   
3. Lower Background Processes: Close any unnecessary applications running in the background to free up resources.
   
4. Adjust Windows Performance Settings: Go to “Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows” and select “Adjust for best performance” to minimize visual effects on your operating system.

FPS Improving Software

Beyond all the above tweaks you can make, you should also consider a frame generating software like Lossless Scaling to improve FPS using the new frame generation technology. While it isn’t free, it can often double the FPS you get, especially in Large Scale PvP!

You can find Lossless Scaling on Steam, and it can be ran alongside most modern games.

Run Lossless Scaling after starting Throne and Liberty and make sure it runs as Administrator. These are the settings you should be using with Lossless Scaling but depending on your GPU, you might have to tweak them a bit to find the best performance for your machine.

Once you’ve tweaked the settings, all you have to do is press “Scale” and tab back into Throne and Liberty.

Conclusion

Optimizing Throne and Liberty for performance can significantly enhance your gaming experience, allowing smoother gameplay and reducing lag, especially in high-stakes PvP or detailed PvE fights like Peace Archbosses or Field Bosses. By adjusting these settings to your system’s capabilities, you can get a balance that lets you enjoy the game's visuals without sacrificing FPS. Whether you’re exploring the vast world of Throne and Liberty or engaging in large-scale battles, these settings should help with having a stable, enjoyable experience.