Crimson Moon Performance Guide: How to Fix Low FPS and Micro Stuttering on PC (2026 Guide)

There are few things more frustrating than finally getting your hands on a game you have been waiting for, only to discover that your PC seems to struggle with it every few minutes. That is exactly the kind of experience some players are having with Crimson Moon.

ProbablyMonsters has built a seriously ambitious action RPG here. The corrupted streets of Gildenarch look fantastic, combat is fast and aggressive, and the combination of melee abilities, physics effects, lighting, and cooperative gameplay can make even ordinary encounters look spectacular. Unfortunately, all of that visual ambition comes with a price on PC.

Instead of simply complaining about the optimization, I decided to approach Crimson Moon the way I normally approach a demanding PC game: turn off the settings that provide little visual benefit, stabilize the frame rate, and eliminate as many potential sources of background interference as possible.

The good news is that you do not necessarily need an expensive hardware upgrade to make Crimson Moon feel considerably better. In many cases, better frame pacing is more important than chasing the highest possible average FPS.

This Crimson Moon performance guide focuses on low FPS, micro-stuttering, inconsistent 1% lows, hitching during combat, and general frame-time problems. These are the settings and system changes I would try before spending money on new hardware.

Before Changing Graphics Settings, Fix the PC-Side Problems

When a game stutters, the natural reaction is to immediately lower everything to Medium. I have never been a big fan of that approach. You can often make a game look dramatically worse without actually solving the underlying problem.

Crimson Moon can be particularly sensitive to shader compilation, background applications, display modes, and frame pacing. So I recommend dealing with those factors first.

Increase the NVIDIA Shader Cache

If you are using an NVIDIA graphics card, the shader cache is one of the first things worth checking. Modern games constantly encounter new visual effects, materials, particles, and lighting combinations. When those shaders have to be compiled during gameplay, you can get a brief but extremely noticeable hitch.

Open the NVIDIA Control Panel, go to Manage 3D Settings, and locate Shader Cache Size. If it is still using the driver default, try increasing it to 10 GB or Unlimited.

This is not a magical “double your FPS” switch. It is more about giving the game enough room to store compiled shaders so that the same work does not have to be repeated unnecessarily. If your biggest problem is a short stutter when entering a new area or encountering a new effect, this is absolutely worth trying.

Use Fullscreen Instead of Borderless

I generally prefer borderless windowed mode because it makes multitasking easier. However, when troubleshooting Crimson Moon, I would start with Exclusive Fullscreen.

Some PC configurations appear to behave better when the game has direct control over the display output. If you are seeing inconsistent frame delivery, tearing, or strange behavior after switching between applications, fullscreen is a sensible baseline.

There is also a useful workaround for systems using unusual ultrawide resolutions. If Crimson Moon starts stuttering heavily after launch, temporarily switch to 1920×1080 in Windowed mode. Then switch back to fullscreen and gradually increase the resolution until you reach your monitor’s native setting.

It sounds unnecessarily complicated, but display initialization can sometimes behave strangely. If your game suddenly becomes smooth after performing this sequence, you have at least identified that the problem is related to the display configuration rather than raw GPU performance.

The Crimson Moon Graphics Settings I Would Actually Change

This is where I think players can gain the most practical performance. You do not need to destroy the game’s visual quality. Instead, concentrate on the settings that consume a lot of GPU or CPU resources without providing an equally impressive improvement to image quality.

Lighting Quality Is Where I Would Start

If I had to pick only one graphics option to reduce first, it would be Lighting Quality.

Crimson Moon relies heavily on atmosphere. The dark streets, reflective surfaces, environmental effects, and combat lighting are a huge part of the game’s visual identity. Unfortunately, that also means lighting can become extremely expensive at the highest setting.

Try dropping Lighting Quality from Max to Ultra. If that still does not give you enough headroom, Medium is the next step.

Personally, I would rather play at a stable 80 FPS with slightly reduced lighting than have the game bounce between 90 and 45 FPS because the engine is struggling with an unnecessarily expensive lighting configuration.

Reduce Shadows and Volumetric Fog

Shadows are another classic performance killer, especially in scenes containing lots of dynamic objects and light sources. Moving Shadow Quality from Max to Medium can provide a surprisingly useful performance improvement without making the game look terrible.

Volumetric Fog is another setting I would not hesitate to reduce. Atmospheric fog can look beautiful when sunlight, weather, and particle effects interact with it, but it is one of those features I notice far less during actual gameplay than I notice a bad frame-time spike.

Set Volumetric Fog to Low and see how your 1% lows respond. If the game suddenly feels more consistent, leave it there.

Foliage and Environment Detail

Large outdoor areas can put significant pressure on the CPU because of object density, environmental geometry, and asset management. If you are using an older processor, Foliage Density and Environment Detail deserve special attention.

I would start with Medium rather than immediately dropping everything to Low. In my experience, Medium settings usually preserve enough environmental detail that the world still feels rich while removing some of the unnecessary workload.

Do Not Chase Average FPS — Fix Frame Pacing

This is probably the most important advice in the entire guide.

Suppose Crimson Moon reports an average of 90 FPS. That sounds excellent. But if your frame rate repeatedly jumps from 90 to 45 and back again during combat, the game will not feel like a smooth 90 FPS experience.

What you are actually feeling is inconsistent frame pacing.

This is why I prefer a stable frame-rate target over an uncapped frame rate that constantly changes. If your PC can produce anywhere between 85 and 120 FPS, locking the game to a sensible target can make the entire experience feel much more consistent.

Using RTSS to Set a Stable FPS Limit

RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS) is one of my favorite tools for this kind of troubleshooting. It allows you to create a frame-rate limit specifically for Crimson Moon rather than changing your entire system configuration.

After installing RTSS, add the Crimson Moon executable to the application list. Depending on the installation, the executable may be located inside a bin64 directory.

For a 144Hz monitor, I would start around 140 FPS. With a 120Hz display, try approximately 116 FPS. The exact number is not sacred. The goal is simply to keep the GPU from constantly running into the refresh-rate ceiling.

Make sure the game’s internal VSync option is disabled while testing this configuration. Then play for 15–20 minutes and pay attention to how the game feels rather than simply staring at the FPS counter.

If your PC cannot consistently reach your monitor’s refresh rate, do not force it. A stable 75 or 90 FPS can feel substantially better than an unstable 120 FPS.

Background Applications Can Cause More Trouble Than You Think

This is the boring part of PC optimization, but it is also one of the easiest things to test.

Before launching Crimson Moon, close unnecessary browser tabs, Spotify, Discord windows, recording software, RGB utilities, hardware monitoring applications you do not need, and anything else that constantly runs in the background.

You do not have to turn your PC into a completely sterile gaming machine. I would simply eliminate unnecessary variables while diagnosing the problem.

Overlays deserve particular attention. Discord Overlay, NVIDIA App Overlay, and Xbox Game Bar can all introduce additional hooks into the rendering pipeline. In a demanding DirectX 12 game, removing those hooks can sometimes improve consistency even when the average FPS barely changes.

Try Disabling Steam Input

If you are playing with a controller and experiencing unusual stutters, Steam Input is another thing worth testing.

Open Crimson Moon’s Steam properties, go to the Controller section, and temporarily disable Steam Input. This is especially useful if the game already provides native support for your Xbox or PlayStation controller.

Again, this is not guaranteed to fix everyone’s system. PC gaming is full of combinations of hardware and software that behave differently. The important thing is that disabling Steam Input is quick, reversible, and easy to test.

My Recommended Crimson Moon Performance Preset

If you simply want a starting point rather than spending an hour changing every option individually, this is the configuration I would personally test first:

• Display Mode: Exclusive Fullscreen
• Resolution: Native monitor resolution
• Lighting: Ultra
• Foliage: Medium
• Environment Detail: Medium
• Shadows: Medium
• Volumetric Fog: Low
• Advanced Work Submit: Off
• VSync: Off
• Frame Rate Limit: Approximately 3–4 FPS below monitor refresh rate

From there, I would raise individual settings one at a time. Do not change five options simultaneously and then try to guess which one helped. Test a setting, play for a few minutes in the same type of demanding area, and compare the result.

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What About Steam Launch Options?

You may also come across recommendations to add launch commands such as -high -maxMem=16384 to Crimson Moon’s Steam launch options.

I would treat these as optional experiments rather than guaranteed performance fixes.

The idea behind such commands is to influence process priority or memory allocation, but modern Windows systems and game engines do not always respond to these tweaks in the way older PC games did. If you want to test them, do so one change at a time and remove them if you notice instability.

For example, a system with 32 GB of RAM does not automatically need to be forced into a specific memory value simply because someone on a forum recommended it. More allocated memory does not automatically equal more FPS.

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Final Thoughts: Make Crimson Moon Feel Smooth, Not Just Fast

Crimson Moon is exactly the kind of game that can tempt PC players into obsessing over graphics presets and benchmark numbers. I understand the temptation. When you have a powerful GPU, you naturally want every slider pushed as far as it can go.

But when an action RPG is built around fast combat, dodging, counters, explosions, and constant movement, smooth frame delivery matters more than maximum graphical settings.

If I were optimizing Crimson Moon on my own PC, I would start with the shader cache, switch to fullscreen, reduce Lighting Quality, lower shadows and volumetric fog, disable unnecessary overlays, and then establish a sensible FPS cap through RTSS. Only after doing all of that would I start experimenting with more aggressive tweaks.

And I would not judge the result solely by the average FPS number. Watch the frame-time behavior, especially during boss fights and when entering new areas. If the game feels consistently responsive and those ugly little hitches disappear, the optimization has worked.

Hopefully, future patches from ProbablyMonsters will address some of these issues directly. A game as visually ambitious as Crimson Moon deserves to run smoothly without players having to spend their first evening inside NVIDIA Control Panel and RTSS.

Until then, these tweaks should give PC players a much better starting point for getting stable FPS and cleaner frame pacing without turning Gildenarch into a blurry mess.

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