Hogwarts Legacy has been a dream come true for fans of Harry Potter and the Wizarding World. However, it’s being praised and loved by those who are new to the genre as well. The highly detailed and picturesque depiction of 19th century England and the Hogwarts castle is naturally quite graphics intensive. While most players have been able to enjoy the game, there is a sizable minority who have been struggling to get the game running on their rigs.
For a game as popular as this, it makes up for quite a large number of players. As of now, WB (Warner Bros) Games have addressed the performance concerns of the game. They’ve also launched a few patches to polish out the technical issues. Despite this, many players are still unable to play the game without facing major lags, severe stuttering, or frequent crashes. As a result, the community has come up with several tweaks and fixes that allegedly fix the performance issues.
Hogwarts Legacy Tweaks for Improving Performance
Things to Note Before Making Any Tweaks
It has to be noted that these user-made tweaks and patches may not work on everyone’s system. Hence, you might have to experiment with all of them to check which of them works. Meanwhile, some of these fixes are reported to be working in tandem with each other. So, without further ado, here are the possible ways you can make Hogwarts Legacy run better on your PC.
Disclaimer: Any modifications you make to their game or system are done at your own risk. Always create a backup copy of any files you intend to change. Make a restore point first if you’re making system changes.
Control Flow Guard
How to Tweak
The first thing you need to do is to go type ‘Exploit’ in the Windows Search box and open the relevant settings menu that pops up on top. This is “Exploit Protection” under System Settings. After opening this up, go to Program Settings, and click on the plus button next to ‘Add programs to customize’. Next, select ‘Choose exact file path’ and find the Hogwarts Legacy executable files. There are two files to add here, and their paths are “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Hogwarts Legacy\HogwartsLegacy.exe” and “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Binaries\Win64\HogwartsLegacy.exe.”
Video by Joker Productions
What is Control Flow Guard?
Control Flow Guard is essentially a security feature for PCs running Windows 10 and 11. It is a feature that makes it more difficult for exploits to execute arbitrary code via vulnerabilities such as buffer overflows. Giving a running program improbable, extraordinary, or extreme data is a common method of exploiting software flaws.
By inputting more data than necessary into a program, for instance, an attacker can take advantage of a buffer overflow vulnerability and overflow the space set aside by the program to hold responses. This scheme might damage nearby memory that contains a function pointer. The program may then jump into an unindented location specified by the attacker when it calls through this function.
Is This Safe?
Yes, turning CFG off for a video game, especially one that is single-player, is perfectly safe. However, if you’re really worried about this, rest assured that having a basic Anti-Virus program should be enough to quell your fears. Although the probability of your PC getting attacked via CFG is astronomically low.
Mods
What Mods Are There?
The popularity of Hogwarts Legacy has spawned a large number of mods for the game, and players can find these by visiting the dedicated Nexusmods page for the game. While many of these mods deal with game features and alterations, some attempt to fix the performance instead. The two most effective ones are ‘Ascendio‘ and ‘SLPF – Stuttering and Low Performance Fix’.
Ascendio is the most popular Hogwarts Legacy mod on Nexus, with over 450,000 downloads. It has changed drastically with the subsequent release of patches for the game. Hogwarts Legacy has had a few patches out by now, and they seem to have fixed the performance issues for most users. SLPF is a lighter tweak compared to Ascendio, however, and it’s suggested mostly for players who have an issue with stuttering instead of lagging.
How to Install?
Just head over to the relevant pages for the mods over on Nexusmods, download the given files, and follow the instructions. Both these mods are quite simple and contain step-by-step installation guides. Ascendio comes with an .exe file for an extremely easy installation procedure that doesn’t require you to have any experience with modding.
Meanwhile, SLPF has a small set of instructions that will guide you to tweak some settings in your config files. Before installing any mods, however, it is recommended to make a backup of the files that the particular mod aims to tweak.
Video by Nalloc
Are They Safe?
As long as you make backups of the files that a mod needs to modify or replace, you should be totally fine. Both mods can be used simultaneously, but you should try both separately at first to check which one works for you and if there are any improvements at all.
Manually Tweaking Config Files
What Does This Involve?
This is an outdated method especially if you’re using any of the above mods, as it basically does the same thing but manually. However, if you wish to optimize your experience according to your own liking, you’ll need to learn how to tweak the files by yourself. While there are many possible combinations you can achieve through this method, this article will only discuss the most important settings that needed to be changed.
How to Change?
Locate and open the Engine.ini file, which is usually found in “%LOCALAPPDATA%\Hogwarts Legacy\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor,” or “%LOCALAPPDATA%\Hogwarts\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor.” Find the following settings and tweak them according to your needs.
- r.VolumetricFog=1 — As the name implies, this setting is for turning Volumetric Fog on or off. Turning it on obviously makes the game look better at the cost of performance. It is usually recommended to leave this setting on, however, as the following two options can be tweaked to better adjust its performance impact.
- r.VolumetricFog.GridPixelSize=16 — This setting accepts values in multiples of 4 where the minimum is 4 and the maximum is 16. The lower the value is, the better the quality, at the cost of performance.
- r.VolumetricFog.GridSizeZ=64 — For this setting, the lower the value (which ranges from 64 to 128) is, the better the performance, at the cost of quality.
- foliage.DensityScale=0.6 — This setting, as expected, changes foliage density where 1.0 is the highest value and 0.0 turns it off.
- grass.DensityScale=0.5 — This setting works exactly like the above but for grass density.
Is It Safe?
It is completely safe to tweak the config files provided you made a backup of the originals. In case you didn’t make a backup and want to restore the original settings, try deleting the modified config files and relaunching the game. Another option is to choose the ‘Verify integrity of game files’ via Steam.
Video by DanielPlays
Wait for Official Patches/Updates
The most obvious solution may often be the best option, even though it is often overlooked. Patience does pay off with Hogwarts Legacy, however, as the developers have been actively working on squashing every bug/shortcoming with subsequent patches and updates. The vast majority of players who have had an issue with the game are now reporting that it’s playable.
Sometimes, the problem doesn’t lie with the game but with the driver updates for your graphics card. Several users have reported that their issues increased/decreased with a particular driver update. Just as with a game update, your best bet, in this case, would also be to wait.
Another important thing to note is that once you update your game, a previous tweak/mod that seemingly fixed the game may not work anymore. In some cases, it may even decrease performance. Hence, it is best to uninstall/undo any tweaks you made to the game and try running the game.
Video by JorRaptor
