Ascendio II.I – FPS Hotfix and Engine Tweaks for Hogwarts Legacy
Ascendio is an unofficial FPS hotfix for Hogwarts Legacy, a performance boost mod for Hogwarts Legacy: it applies Unreal Engine parameters to help address some of the game’s performance issues.
· M O D D E S C R I P T I O N ·
“Ascendio” is a series of Unreal Engine 4.27.2 custom engine parameters which aims to improve the current stuttering and fps drops the game suffers from. It implements some engine tweaks like force CPU to GPU communication and sync, force frame finalization on stuck, enables texture streaming and tweaks it to work as optimal as possible, and a few more. The tweaks must be chosen during mod installation, so the tweaks it applies will highly relay on your installation settings.
Some performance issues are actual backend bugs on the implementation of some core functions of the game. I’ve tracked an issue with the NPC generation (which is most likely related to a chunk loading issue). That bug needs more work to get properly addressed and chances are Avalanche will actually fix it way faster than I’d be.
This mod “helps” with stuttering, specially with RT turned off, but it doesn’t fix it completely. Hopefully it will make the experience smoother for you though until the dev team launches a proper patch.
The mod does not work on all PCs. A collection of patches have been implemented to help a wide variety of users, but the impact of this patch (and whether if they actually work or not) will highly relay on your PC specs. It might work on an RTX 3070, and not on an RTX 3080. The amount of tests I can perform is limited, as I do not own a hundred PCs with different GPU/CPU/RAM setups to test the mod on different environments. Feel free to download the mod and test if it works for you. If it doesn’t, you can always uninstall it and “at least we tried”, hehe.
· H O W T O I N S T A L L / U N I N S T A L L ·
The mod has been distributed with a fancy installer application for user convenience. Make sure you have .NET 6 (or greater) installed on your computer if you can’t run the application. Chances are you already have this software in your PC if you use it to run games, so no worries.
After March 8th update, the game is cursed: it doesn’t work properly in vanilla (has texture loading issues and still stuttering and fps drops), but the update also broke Ascendio (more info on the posts tab). Currently, the only way to play properly the game is to downgrade to a prior version of the game. I’ll provide instructions about how to do this on Steam, you’ll have to look for an alternative way of doing this if you own an Epic Games Launcher copy of the game.
How to downgrade:
source: makeuseof.com
#### Enable the Steam Console
Press “Win + R” button.Write steam://open/console
#### Now, on the console at the bottom of Steam, type:
download_depot 990080 990081 4181219864002928403
(this command will download HL February 18th version, source here).
Make sure you have at least 80GBs of free space before starting the download.
#### Steam will download the old update silently.
Eventually, the download will finish and you’ll see a bunch of errors with optional paks, don’t worry, this means the download has finished successfully.
The files will be located in your main Steam folder, the path should look a little something like this:
“your_usual_steam_folder/steamapps/content/app_990080/depot_990081”.
#### Head to that folder, and copy the files.
#### Paste them in your Hogwarts Legacy game folder (where the executable is).
The path should look like: “your_usual_steam_folder/steamapps/common/Hogwarts Legacy”.
#### Turn off Steam Automatic Updates for Hogwarts Legacy.
Right Click the game on your Steam Library.
Head to “Properties”, then click on “Updates”.
Switch “Always keep this game updated” to “Only update this game when I launch it”.
This will give you the option to ignore any game updates whenever you launch the game.
How to install Ascendio:
#### Download and Run Ascendio Installer Application.
#### Click on “Install Ascendio”.
If the mod can’t find your engine file, you’ll have to click it manually, to do so:
Head to “%localappdata%/Hogwarts Legacy/Saved/Config/WindowsNoEditor”
Select “engine.ini”.
#### Just follow the installation steps and get it installed.
Alternatively, you can also just use the alternative manual installation method, on this mod files tab.
#### If you encounter fps issues, feel free to try a different setting.
You can just reinstall the mod, no need to uninstall it before installing again.
Of course, if you need to uninstall the mod, just run the application again, but click “uninstall”. A pop-up window will let you know the uninstallation process finished successfully, and the installer will close after pressing “ok”. You can also remove the mod manually by deleting “engine.ini” at “%localappdata%/HogwartsLegacy/Saved/Config/WindowsNoEditor”.
· A D D I T I O N A L P E R F O R M A N C E T I P S ·
Hogwarts Legacy has memory leak issues. For some additional help with stuttering, consider using a third party memory management application like, in example, Reduce Memory.
If you choose to use Reduce memory, here is a quick setup guide:
Launch Reduce Memory x64.
head to “options”.
Set a limit to automatically optimize memory.
Set the limit between 70-80%, I personally recommend 70%, no matter how much RAM you have.
Set the update interval to 5 seconds.
You’ll need to launch this application every time you start your game.
GPU Control Panel Settings:
These settings help gain a few extra fps here and there, as well as overall stability.
This guide is made for Nvidia users, you’ll have to google how to apply these changes on an AMD GPU:
Unlock your max frame rate in-game (the game looses a few frames if you limit
it to 60 with in-game settings for some bizarre reason).
Disable V-Sync in-game.
Head to your GPU control panel -> Manage 3D Settings -> program
settings -> add Hogwarts Legacy if it’s not already added.
Set – Anisotropic Filtering: 8x.
Set – Power Management mode: prefer maximum performance.
Set – Vsync: Fast
