Quick tip for Pillars of Eternity 2 Deadfire - try the Linux version

Hi,

I recently started to play PoE II on my Steam Deck and stumbled upon a significant FPS drop when I reached Neketaka. In the more populated areas it dropped significantly, especially when I sped up the in-game time. The FPS regularly dropped to the low 20s when doing so.

Not an enjoyable experience at all.

Since then I tried to improve the performance and tested different settings. On some forums people recommend to use the Windows version, somewhere else it was mentioned that the game has issues with CPU threading (there is even an additional program to help with that, which seems impossible to use on the Steam Deck, at least to my knowledge) and so on.

Anyway, after trying almost everything I thought to just try the Linux version of the game, because that was basically the only thing left for me to try.

Result

Now I just tested it for around an hour but I saw a very significant improvement. The FPS are more stable, there are no more significant drops (though they still drop a bit in the highly populated areas). It is just a much smoother gaming experience for me so far.

I read that the game apparently has a memory leak issue, so I still need to see how the game reacts when I play it for a longer time and maybe leave the game on while the Steam Deck is on standby and I resume playing later.

But for anyone having similar performance problems, I encourage you to test the Linux version of the game.

Hope this helps someone.