Fans everywhere found out that Dark Souls 3 for PC is riddled with a couple of deal-breaking issues to their dismay, but fortunately, there are some temporary solutions for them.
Crashing Issue
Players report that the title crashes right at the first bonfire, and some even say that they encounter the game-stopping error in the character creation stage.
@utanapishtim198 Hey! Please contact our support team. Thanks! https://t.co/qC60nOtTXr
— Bandai Namco US (@BandaiNamcoUS) April 12, 2016
At this point, the reason is still unclear, but many speculations have been going around. IGN suggests that the bug is possibly related to the class of the player, while some users over at Steam say that the crashing is because of how the game renders the character's hair.
The potential fix here is to go with a Knight class and set the lighting to Low or to cover the character's head with a helmet.
Stutter Problem
Equipped with some of the finest, top-of-the-line hardware, there's no way that the game will stutter, right? Well, it looks like that's not the case at all.
"AMD MSI R9 380 4 GB. Drivers: Crimson 16.4.1 i5 4460 @ 3.2 GHz 8 GB RAM. I'd get 60 to 40 usually stayed around 60 except for some micro-stuttering here and there where it would go as low as 45 for a few frames. It overheated my GPU and had a CTD (crash to desktop) then had to hard reset," a user posts on Reddit.
A Steam user found a decent workaround for this one: revert to the previous video card driver. Here's a quick step-by-step instruction on how to do this one:
Step 1: Head on over to the Control Panel.
Step 2: Go to the Device Manager.
Step 3: Look for Display Adapters in the list and roll back the version.
The Blank White Screen
Players are running into what could be known as the short-lived white screen of death for Dark Souls 3 when they start the game. Again, it's not sure what causes this problem, but initially running the game with the computer's integrated graphics and switching back to the dedicated one works wonders apparently for some.
For Nvidia users, here's how to do it:
Step 1: Right click on the desktop and select Nvidia Control Panel.
Step 2: Navigate through Manage 3D Settings and then to Program Settings.
Step 3: Choose darksouls.exe and select Integrated Graphics as the preferred graphics processor.
Step 4: Go to PC Settings, set it to fullscreen and pick the optimal resolution for your computer.
Step 5: Exit the game.
Step 6: Go back to Nvidia Control Panel and change the preferred graphics processor back to the dedicated one, and that should do the trick.
Note: This fix was uncovered for the first Dark Souls, but it appears to still work two games later.
Bandai Namco has yet to make an official statement addressing these problems, redirecting players with complaints to its support page for now.
Are you one of the Dark Souls 3 players facing crashes, stutters and white screen? If so, leave a comment below if the temporary workarounds above fixed your problem.
