Nightingale Best Graphics Settings

Nightingale is one of the newest titles to use Unreal Engine 5, but which graphical settings are the best for performance and visual fidelity? Today, we’ll cover the best graphics settings in Nightingale.

Best Graphics Settings in Nightingale

Now, Nightingale is a gorgeous game, and that’s due in part to how Inflexion Games uses Unreal Engine 5. Unfortunately, even with DLSS, Nightingale does not feel particularly optimized. That’s something that was also initially felt in other UE 5 titles like Remnant 2. With that said, whether or not you can use DLSS 2 or 3, the following options strike an outstanding balance between looks and performance.

• Quality Preset: Custom
• Lumen – GI: Balanced or Quality
• Anti-Aliasing: Balanced
• Effects: Balanced
• Foliage: Balanced or Quality
• Post Processing: Balanced
• Shading: Balanced
• Shadows: Balanced
• Textures: Balanced
• View Distance: Balanced or Quality
• Vertical Sync: On or Off
• Nvidia Reflex Low Latency: On
• Performance Boost: Nvidia DLSS – Performance or Balanced
• DLSS Frame Generation: On (If you have a 4000x series Graphics Card)

Even with my Ryzen 9 5800hx and 3080m laptop, I found lots of performance issues running the game on anything higher than Balanced across the board. That said, the settings I found the most visually impactful were Foliage, View Distance, and Lumen – GI. Lumen’s Global Illumination is a piece of Unreal 5 tech that allows for accurate bounced lighting from light sources like the sun.

Even with the roughly 20% performance impact of having it on, the accurate lighting and colors was a world of difference that really helps make Nightingale magical. Whereas Foliage and Draw Distance help to extend how far out you see grass, bushes, trees, rocks, etc, I wasn’t happy with the performance of running Lumen, Foliage, and View Distance on Quality at the same time—dropping below 50fps was the norm. The rest of the settings only slightly changed the visuals at a performance tradeoff I did not prefer.

If you have a 4000x series Nvidia card, then that would allow you to run DLSS 3 frame generation, granting a tremendous performance boost. So much so that you’ll likely be able to have every setting on Quality or higher, you lucky duck you. But if you’re like me with any other card, then DLSS 2.0 or Intel’s XESS will suffice. Here’s hoping Inflexion Games commits to further optimizing Nightingale and explore other options like AMD’s FSR3 with its frame generation that works with many more video cards.

For more on Nightingale, check out our guide on how to quickly get white essence dust.