Dark Souls 3 is out: hooray! The port isn’t a total shambles that fails to run on any machine and requires literally years of fixes to be put into a playable state: double hooray! It has some crash bugs: boo. Not exactly surprising, but a shame anyway. Thankfully one of the most dedicated communities on the planet is already hard at work finding temporary fixes while, we hope, Bandai and FromSoft look into it. Here’s what they’ve got so far, and we’ll keep this updated as more info comes out. Note that there may be spoilers further in as we discuss specific problems.
- When I try to go into settings or new game it crashes and gives me the message: 'DARK SOULS PREPARE TO DIE EDITION executable has stopped working'. I have already checked several other threads for solutions. My monitor is native 75hz, so i tried setting it to 60hz.
- Every time I get to the screen with: New Game PC Settings Key Config (etc) As soon as I select PC Settings DS crashes. Dark souls has stopped working' I have tried DSfix.100 options and different ways. With DSfix withOUT DSfix Going to the BETA section of game properties (in steam) and opting into the second option.
Dark Souls III had crashing (CTD) issues, micro-stutter and choppiness in cut-scenes, an immutable 60FPS cap, and difficulties saving keybindings. We look at some fixes for these issues today.
Getting on fine performance-wise, but dying a lot? Try our Dark Souls 3 beginners guide.
First bonfire crash
This seems to be the most common problem at time of writing, at least partially because it’s so early in the game. After defeating the first boss and gaining access to the bonfire, players are reporting serious instabilities. Moving towards, trying to use or otherwise paying attention to the bonfire will cause a game crash, rather impeding progress.
There’s a couple of fixes. The best but least pretty is to set your Lighting to low in the graphics settings. This seems to remove all problems for most players, who have reported going much further through the game after switching over to low. It would suggest the issue is graphics card related, so it’s possible a driver update (your drivers are up to date, right?) will fix it in the near future.
The other option, oddly, is picking the Knight class. This may seem unrelated, but experiments on Reddit have pointed to something about the default helmet preventing crashes. Assuming that the problems are lighting related, it could be anything from how the bonfire is coded to reflect off bald domes versus helmets, to it blocking some buggy effect from appearing altogether due to its exact shape. Either way, if you don’t want to turn your settings down, this should help.
No cloud saves
This isn’t so much a bug, or sadly a fix, as a PSA. From Software have sadly not enabled cloud saving via Steamworks, so if you’re planning on reformatting or changing PCs at any time soon, you’ll need to transfer them in the same way as the previous two games. It’s possible this could be fixed in a patch, so here’s hoping.
In the mean time, your saves are stored here on your computer: C:UsersAppDataRoamingDarkSoulsIII and can be copied around freely.
Bad framerate on Geforce 500 series cards
Some users are reporting terrible, unplayable framerates on older Geforce cards. These are well below the minimum requirements of the game, but apparently you can get a solid 30-45 fps by using the 314.22 driver – released for Bioshock Infinite in 2013. Three years ago.
PC gaming!
Dark Souls Download Pc
You can grab it from the Geforce site. The relevant Steam discussion and Reddit comment threads so you don’t think I’ve totally lost it, with multiple users reporting it as a fix.
Those having framerate issues on decent machines are advised to restart their PCs, which you’ve probably already tried. There’s rumours of a 1.1 patch coming today that gives a hefty boost, but it’s unverified and neither From Software or Bandai Namco have said anything about it.
Dual Shock controllers not recognised
A few users trying to play with the Dual Shock 4 and Dual Shock 3 Playstation controllers have reported them not being recognised. The instructions here seem to work for most, involving ticking the hide controller option in the settings menu. It may also be worth trying one of several programs that emulate a 360 controller to trick the game into using its internal programming for that. I’ve used Motion In Joy before and been happy with it.
Logitech controller users have also reported problems. Long-winded fix for that also available on Reddit. Hopefully getting people playing is a priority over at From Software, and as with most games on Windows, you might be best off shelling out for a 360 or One controller to avoid problems in the future.
Having other problems? Let us know below and we’ll try to help out. Everyone else – get harvesting. Those souls won’t spend themselves.
Dark Souls III Micro-Stutter and FPS Drops
If you're seeing rapid flickering of graphics, almost as if it's being rendered stereoscopically and overlaid (but isn't), that might be “micro-stutter.” We encountered micro-stutter in Dark Souls III when using SLI and CrossFire configurations. We'd advise first updating GPU drivers to see if the issue has been resolved since this posting. It's best to perform a clean installation of the new driver set, rather than just installing new drivers on top of the old. This can be done by:
- Download newest GPU driver for AMD or NVIDIA card
- Download DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller)
- Extract & run, accept prompt to reboot to safe mode
- Remove driver which corresponds to your GPU
- Boot, install new drivers
- Restart Bluestacks 2 free for mac.
If micro-stutter persists in Dark Souls III, we'd next suggest disabling SLI or CrossFire and running on a single card. This is what we did in our pre-release review process, as we couldn't get SLI working on dual 980 Ti cards.
Dark Souls Crashing Pc Settings
The good news is that the game is fairly simplistic in its graphical presentation, so most configurations will still run the game reliably.
Can't Save Keybindings in Dark Souls III
It was almost comical when, after fighting through menu navigation by using “Q” and “E” (instead of escape/exit), we couldn't even save the corrected keybindings. There's an option to change them – but the save button didn't work.
That was fixed in a day-one patch. If you have manual patching enabled, launch Steam (or appropriate service) and force the game to pull down the latest patch. In the top left of the System page, check that the game is on version 1.01 or later. This will resolve keybinding issues.
Dark Souls III Save File Location
The save file for Dark Souls III is located in the following Windows directory:
C:Users{username}AppDataRoamingDarkSoulsIII{directory}DS30000.sl2
There will be an alphanumeric folder in the “DarkSoulsIII” directory. The save file is located therein.
Dark Souls III Graphics XML File Location & Default Settings
The Dark Souls III GraphicsConfig.xml file – used in some below steps – can be found in the same location:
C:Users{username}AppDataRoamingDarkSoulsIIIGraphicsConfig.xml
If your graphics file becomes corrupted or tweaks have broken the game, you've got two options: (1) Delete the file (back it up first!) and use Steam's “Verify Integrity of Game Cache” button to re-acquire a fresh one, or (2) fix the file by restoring settings. You can find our file below (add < to the front of each line):
This is also where you can manually change windowed mode screen size for Dark Souls III.
Dark Souls III Crashing, CTDs, & Black Screens / Flickering
The day one patch resolved most of our game crashing issues on the 970M, 390X / AMD 300 series, and NVIDIA GTX 900 series cards. As above, force a pull-down of that patch if experiencing CTDs (“Dark Souls III Stopped Responding”). The next step would be to verify the integrity of game cache, as below:
- On Steam Library page, right-click on Dark Souls III and choose “Properties”
- Navigate to Local tab
- Verify Integrity of Game Cache
Allow any missing files to be re-acquired (fixes most crashing issues).
If experiencing black screen crashes or screen flickering, first pull the latest drivers and cleanly install them (as above). Next, disable any multi-GPU technology and troubleshoot to see if the issue is resolved. If you've still got problems, it may be the case that the graphics file is loading settings which are inappropriate for the card or are throwing errors. Try deleting and re-acquiring the Graphics XML file (as above).
If you're experiencing other Dark Souls III crashing issues or bugs, post them below with any solutions you've found so that future readers may benefit! As always, consider helping us through our Patreon page if this content helped you.
Dark Souls Pc Mod
Editorial: Steve “Lelldorianx” Burke