Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on Steam Deck – optimized settings

Nordic open-world action adventure game – Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – runs pretty well on Steam Deck. In this guide, you will find the best graphics settings for most stable game performance.

Unfortunately Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is not available on the Steam store. If you want to play it on Steam Deck then I recommend manually installing Ubisoft Connect as a non-steam game or using Lutris. Both the game and the program work fine with the Proton.

Valhalla automatically detects Steam Deck controller, in the settings you can scale the interface and the size of the subtitles. It is very comfortable to play.

Unfortunately, the game is very demanding and it takes some effort to make it run smoothly and look good.

First, stable 60FPS is unachievable, so I recommend 40Hz/40FPS limit in SteamOS (or 40Hz and in-game V-Sync) . Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is very responsive and I find this setting to be the most balanced.

Let’s start with the graphics settings:

• Resolution: 1280×800, 100% Resolution Scale. Borderless window mode, no V-Sync with 40FPS/40Hz limit on Steam OS or Fullscreen mode with ingame VSync without Steam FPS limit – there is small input lag with first option, but frametimes looks a little better
• Adaptive Quality: Off (doesn’t support 40FPS limit)
• Anti-Aliasing: low (this is not a classic TAA, high settings have a big impact on performance)
• World Details: medium or low for a little less stuttering
• Clutter: medium
• Shadow: low (huge performance hit)
• Volumetric Cloud: medium (looks great)
• Water: medium
• Screen Space Reflections: Off (huge performance hit)
• Environment and Character textures: medium
• Depth of Field: Off or Low (high is very demanding in cutscenes)
• Motion Blur: personal choice
• Upsample Type: FSR with Ultra Quality (prevents huge frame drops during battles and large NPC groups)

With the above settings you will have a fairly stable 40FPS even during fights. Only in cutscenes the framerate can drop to 30-35FPS. There is also a slight stutter which cannot be completely removed. Assassin’s Creed Valhala on Steam Deck is very playable and looks nice on the small screen.