Jul 30 2015 11:21 AM | Bernkastel in TERA General Guides
Optimizing TERA performance without sacrificing the eye candy we all love.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Party UI buff tweak
Full screen
S1Engine tweaks
Changing field of view
Disable mouse smoothing
Reduce UI lag
Disabling intro videos
Disable hyperthreading
Force max clock rate or overclocking
VPN and TCP tweaks (ping tweaks, not FPS)
Conclusion
Introduction
Tons of misinformation had been spread about optimizing TERA. Most don't work, others can make the problem even worse. Of those that do work, the majority contributes a tiny FPS boost at most at the cost of huge reduction in graphic quality and game experience. For most players with GPU bottlenecks, turning the graphics quality down will produce noticeable improvements. Players who search for these guides obviously already tried turning the graphics down but the game still won't run properly. This means almost everyone with performance issues suffer from CPU bottlenecks, yet most tweaks circulating the internet in principle only work for GPU related problems.
Here I'm going to list a few tweaks, to be listed here the tweak must satisfy at least 1 of 2 criteria:
It must in theory work, and in practice produce a noticeable performance gain, i.e. cannot be accounted for by simple placebo.
It must work to such a large extent that it is without doubt that this tweak works.
Any optimization that produces negligible FPS gain will be ignored. Gaining 0.1 FPS on average while losing graphic quality actually makes you game play experience worse, because it didn't fix the lag, and now the game looks ugly too.
Party UI buff tweak
Effective for: CPU bottleneck
Effect size: 10/10, likely the most effective tweak if you lag in party situations
QoL loss: High, you will be unable to see your teammates' buffs if you use this tweak
Summary: Chocobanana explained on the EME forums that party UI is the single largest cause for FPS drop in a party, and he's absolutely right. Deleting the whole party UI is a huge quality of life issue, as you don't even know who's in your party. Since only the buff bar is affecting FPS, I just removed it from the party file.
How to apply this tweak:
Download my file here: https://mega.co.nz/#!tZN3FAqC!Ts0dOlEOTLJrl77rSzAeV-8K-X7OLRDyI0QT4M4oTqA
Go to your TERA folder: TERA\Client\S1Game\CookedPC\Art_Data\Packages
Make a new folder named _S1UI, yes with the underscore
Place my file into that folder
New file that has debuff turning party member HP bars purple as requested by healers: https://mega.co.nz/#!5IFmHBxZ!vp8a0waF7emHK2_J_QTzTlP9UirmZRvF0ouZGKqrm0k
Full screen
Effective for: Everyone
Effect size: Very noticeable
QoL loss: None
Summary: This is supposed to be obvious but a lot of people apparently never tried it. Full screen instead of windowed or windowed full screen will give a noticeable performance boost.
How to apply this tweak:
Change your game to full screen in game.
S1Engine tweaks
Effective for: Depends on the tweak
Effect size: Variable, depends on your computer specs
QoL loss: Negligible
Summary: Here are some ini tweaks that most certainly works or should have a noticeable effect in principle.
Navigate to your TERA\Client\S1Game\Config\S1Engine.ini file
Delete it
Start TERA
Close TERA
You should have a fresh S1Engine.ini file, now we can start tweaking
List of possible tweaks:
MaxParticleResize - change it to any number above 3 (3 is the highest performance lowest quality). 0 is infinite. Using this tweak will result in some projectiles and particles losing a lot of quality, and may be useful for GPU bottleneck in intense battles. Not advised for hardcore PvPers, since you'll find it hard to see some projectiles like Plague and Flame Barrage.
DisableATITextureFilterOptimizationChecks - False might give some performance improvements if you use ATI.
UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimization - False might give some performance improvements if you use Nvidia.
bSmoothFrameRate - This is a terrible smoothing algorithm that uses CPU and smooths FPS near the lower end of your FPS. Change it to False for an average FPS boost. Only high end machines can afford to have this enabled.
DynamicDecals - False will give massive performance boosts, but you won't be able to see boss red circles on the ground. Not advised.
DynamicLights - False will give massive performance boosts. Your game will look very ugly and dark. Not advised.
DynamicShadows - False will give performance boosts with shadow on, but your shadow quality will be reduced.
LightEnvironmentShadows - Same as above.
CompositeDynamicLights - Composite dynamic lights use a less precise algorithm and save a lot of CPU processing. It is advised you turn it to True if you keep dynamics light on. The quality loss is not noticeable and performance is noticeably improved in high lighting areas.
MaxShadowResolution - Reducing this number in multiples of 2 will reduce CPU usage for rendering shadows if you want to keep shadows on.
?Bloom - Disabling bloom and changing it to false has a small positive effect on FPS, especially in particle heavy contexts.
DepthOfField - Depth of field blurs objects that are far away. Removing this will make far objects more jagged, but gain FPS.
AmbientOcclusion - This option adds a shadow like projection to give objects a more 3D feel. Disable for a moderate FPS gain.
Distortion - Distortions are used for whirling effects such as desert landscape and particle effects, changing it to false will improve FPS. The graphics loss is hardly noticeable.
DropParticleDistortion - Changing it to true will drop particle distortions. Useful for reducing FPS lag from pesky gunner animations. The graphics loss is hardly noticeable.
DetailMode - Reducing detail mode is supposed to make the world less detailed. During testing I see a FPS improvement but didn't notice any difference in the landscape.
I can't remember if V-sync is on by default or not, but if it is, setting UseVsync to false will improve performance. This setting is usually ignored by your graphics card driver, so please enable or disable vsync from there.
Green options should be used by all players because they have negligible graphic quality loss but huge FPS gains.
Changing field of view
Effective for: Probably everyone
Effect size: Noticeable
QoL loss: Variable, possibly QoL gain
Summary: Higher FOV allows you to zoom further. Hardly anything is rendered in the sky, and by putting more distance between you and the rendered objects, this is a pseudo-view distance tweak to make less objects render.
How to apply this tweak:
Navigate to your TERA\Client\S1Game\Config\S1Input.ini file
Below bEnableMouseSmoothing add Bindings=(Name="A",Command="fov 90")
A is the keyboard shortcut which you can changed based on these mappable keys(http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/KeyBinds.html#Mappable keys), you can also change the FOV to something else. Remember not to add ; before Bindings= like everything below, that disables the binding.
Save the file
Log in and press the mapped key to change FOV
Disable mouse smoothing
Effective for: All users with fluctuating FPS
Effect size: Very noticeable
QoL loss: QoL gain, every player even if you don't lag should do this
Summary: Mouse smoothing not only takes up CPU resources but changes your mouse speed based on your FPS. If your FPS is bad and fluctuates, now your FPS is not only bad, but you can't even aim because your mouse speed isn't consistent.
How to apply this tweak:
Navigate to your TERA\Client\S1Game\Config\S1Input.ini file
Change bEnableMouseSmoothing=true to false
Save the file
Reduce UI lag
Effective for: Probably everyone
Effect size: Noticeable
QoL loss: UI sound is completely absent
Summary: UI SFX causes slight lag. Disabling it improves UI performance.
How to apply this tweak: Go to Sound Options and turn Interface SFX to 0%.
Disabling intro videos
Effective for: RAM/memory
Effect size: Not clear, possibly helps with memory leak
QoL loss: You gain QoL for not having to watch those stupid videos
Summary: Apparently TERA uses an old BIK version that causes memory leak. I have personally confirmed TERA using less memory with this tweak, but the extent of effect is unknown. Credits to techdude01(http://forum.teratoday.com/user/1936-techdude01/) from TERAToday.
How to apply this tweak:
Go to TERA\Client\S1Game\CookedPC\Art_Data\Packages\Video
Find intro_atari.bik, intro_bhs.bik, intro_eme.bik, intro_fog.bik, intro_ubi.bik, Prologue_kor.bik
Rename all of them to something else
Disable hyperthreading
Effective for: i7 CPU and other architectures using hyperthreading. Warning, advanced users only.
Effect size: Depends on your CPU
QoL loss: Negligible if you use your computer predominantly for gaming. Huge performance loss if you use it for rendering, calculations or other tasks that can utilize hyperthreading properly.
Summary: TERA does not utilize multicore properly. Hyperthreading is useful for applications that use multicore but not for TERA. If you disable hyperthreading you should notice an improvement to performance on single or duo core programs (such as TERA) but huge performance loss to 3D rendering applications and intensive maths programs, etc. Disabling HT also drops your clock temperature, therefore allows you to overclock CPU cores more for even better performance.
How to apply this tweak: It is not advised for beginners, and advanced users already know how. Google it.
Force max clock rate or overclocking
Effective for: All computers. Warning, advanced users only.
Effect size: Depends how much you overclock
QoL loss: Your computer will gain performance, but if you don't know what you're doing, you can damage your hardware.
Summary: Useful tools for beginner safe overclocking or forcing clock rate include:
Throttlestop
MSI Afterburner
I won't be teaching you how to use these, Google is your friend.
VPN and TCP tweaks (ping tweaks, not FPS)
Effective for: Those playing from halfway across the world
Effect size: Depends on your location, ISP and network quality
QoL loss: If it doesn't work, just turn it off
Summary: These tweaks are most effective for those who are physically far away from the server. These programs most definitely work based on their principle, and those users that don't benefit from them suffer from other network issues. This is why if you live in America and have high latency, these will probably do nothing for you; you'll need a better ISP. If you live in Asia or Oceania, this is for you.
These tweaks are also sometimes effective for those living close to the server but suffer from fluctuating or unstable internet rather than high latency.
Remember, VPNs and network optimizations are not magic spells. There are physical restraints that you cannot change, e.g. how far away you are from the server, how good your ISP traffic is, etc. If you play from Australia and already have 200 ping or less, VPNs won't make it go any lower. Your net is already perfectly optimized for how far away you are from NA.
How to apply:
Download and apply Leatrix Latency Fix 3.00
Disable and enable your network adaptor, or reboot
Download WTFast
Launch TERA through WTFast network
Leatrix works by TCPAckFrequency, which speeds up packet exchange at the cost of network stability. Leatrix is not advised for people on very unstable internet. WTFast disables Nagle (an algorithm used to make TCP more efficient, but bad for gaming) and connects through a VPN which is faster and goes through less hops. Both will produce noticeable latency improvements for players playing from long geographic distances away from the server.
For very advanced users, you can set up packet QoS priority, port forwarding, or ask your ISP to disable network interleaving on your DSL. This isn't a tech forum so I won't go into the details. Google them if you're interested.
Conclusion
Remember, tweaks significantly improve your QoL but are not magic pills. It is beyond doubt that you will see an improvement using these tweaks, but if you're still running at 10 FPS in vault, you should consider a new computer.
Without these tweaks, I can't play Corsairs well on minimum setting, with most of these tweaks enabled, I can play Corsairs with everything maxed out. I'll update this article if I think of anything else or find anything new. Feel free to leave a comment here or contact me on TERA (Bernkastel - Tempest Reach) if you want a chat about this. As with my warrior guide, donate to the poor warrior funds!