Here's a mod that promises to help Darktide run better on your low-end PC

screenshot from an extremely low graphics version of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide
Yeah, that's not great looking. Mission accomplished. (Image credit: Fatshark via yakuzadeso)

Did you buy Darktide even though your PC can barely or not even make the system requirements? Are you the kind of person who likes to live dangerously even though I don't recommend buying and playing games your PC can't/shouldn't run? Perhaps you're just a doofus and forgot to check the specs and now you're past the refund period? 

Or are you just some kind of enlightened gamer for whom merely concept, not graphics that resemble anything at all, is the key to true happiness?

Either way, modder yakuzadeso has you covered: Performance Boost for Potato PC, now on Nexusmods, will enable you to make Warhammer 40,000: Darktide look just... not great. But maybe it'll run great, and that's enough sometimes!

The mod comes with three presets: Potato full, Potato lite, and Potato shadows. The full version lowers LODs, disables shadows, global illumination, volumetric fog, particles, effects, smoke, geometry detail decals, and on-screen effects. The other two presets disable, well, fewer things.

The real magic is in the notes.txt file included alongside, which gives you some info about what each setting does and how to tweak it. That'll be nice for those who've got a specific problem to solve on their particular potato PC, like an underpowered processor or graphics card or weak RAM.

It's worth saying before you rush out and buy this game for your Pentium II that the PC yakuzadeso cites creating the mod for is actually above Darktide's minimum recommended hardware, at a 3200g processor, 16GB RAM, and a Nvidia 1060 3GB. Still, it'll probably help a few of you along.

Cooperative shooter Warhammer 40,000: Darktide has been out for a few days now, and is a delight for those who love the Warhammer world and/or cooperative zombie and demon shooting. We've got a Darktide review-in-progress for those who're curious, and we'll update that with a final score and conclusions when we feel confident.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.