Improving Performance

You might assume because your computer runs modern games at 120+ frames-per-second with ultra graphics and ray-tracing, that you will have no problem running 20+ year old games like Dark Age of Camelot. Sadly, that is not the case. Many of the technologies used in modern gaming, things such as multi-core rendering, were not a thing when Mythic first developed Dark Age of Camelot. Dark Age of Camelot also created before Windows used 64-bit architecture, meaning it was incapable of using more than 2 gigabytes of RAM. Now, the RAM issue has been taken care of already but you will still be stuck using a single core.

There are luckily several ways of increasing performance for Dark Age of Camelot.

Turning off nameplates

When your two-hundred strong zerg rushes headlong into the enemy two-hundred strong zerg, you really don’t need to see what you’re swinging at all that much. You know that Jimmyjoejimbob has your back and that there are a horde of Consantoirs ahead of you that need to be mowed down, which will be a lot easier to do when you’re not charging across the battlefield like a PowerPoint presentation.

Hit Escape and go to “In-Game Options” where about slightly over half-way down the window that pops up you will see “Display Names.”

I personally prefer to only have the names of Enemy Players, Groupmates, Guildmates and Enemies/NPCs visible. You can toggle off Enemies/NPCs if there are a lot of pets around you.

Turning off cloaks

They might look nice and they do keep you dry during Northwestern European Monsoon Season, but it takes quite a bit of power to render all that wagging cloth when people are frequently starting and stopping.

On Eden, the command “/cloak [on/off]” now removes cloaks from all players. You can still use the old “/cloak” to toggle just your own cloak on or off.

Turning off spell effects

Don’t get me wrong, we all love to see 200 of Thor’s hammer or Odin’s spear come slamming down onto the heads of our enemies, but if it doesn’t look buttery smooth then what’s even the point?

On Eden, the command “/spelleffects [all/none/self/etc.]” gives you a great amount of variety in how you want to limit spell effects compared to the old “/effects [all/none]” command.

You can choose to set spell effects to:

Note that all but one of these shows only spells cast ON people, not by them.

Try it out and see what you prefer. Depending on your class, you might want one or the other.

I personally prefer to use “/spelleffects target” the grand majority of the time, so that I can see what I am doing and how it is affecting my target.

Turning off overlays

I love Scrolling Battle Text addons as much as the next person but I don’t really need them much in this game. It’s a lot slower than other MMOs and you don’t hit nearly as hard.

Eden offers a wide variety of custom-made overlays, some of which might impact performance. In the Eden Launcher, click Overlays on the bottom center and toggle off (or on) what you don’t (or do) need! I do not recommend disabling overlays entirely, as this will mean you can’t use functions such as “/ecraft” and others.

Turning off sound(s)

I like hearing the lamentations of my enemy’s women as much as I like seeing them driven before me but I don’t want to see them stuttering as they do it.

Due to being a single-threaded game, Dark Age of Camelot essentially runs everything it requires on that one core. Depending on how old your system is, disabling certain types of audio might improve your performance.

Press Escape and go to “In-Game Options” where you will find “Sound Settings” at the top. Try disabling one or more and see if it helps.

Changing Clip Plane Distance

I can see the group of enemy players approaching me and I don’t need that in my life right now.

On your character select screen in-game, click the round “Options“ button in the bottom center and in the top left you will see “Clip Plane Distance.” This is the equivalent of Render Distance in other games. Lower it to if you feel it is necessary.

I personally keep mine on Far and prefer to lower other settings if needed.

Changing Water Options

It shimmers almost as brightly as my GPU but that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Dark Age of Camelot has three kinds of water: Classic, Shrouded Isles and Reflective. As you might’ve already guessed, water reflections tend to be pretty resource intensive in video games, so the choice is between Classic and Shrouded Isles.

Classic Water is just a .jpg file across the entire body of water and the least intensive.

Shrouded Isles Water is more akin to a .gif file. There will be ripples and such but it will just be a looping animation.

Reflective Water is exactly what it says. Water with reflections.

On your character select screen in-game, click the round “Options“ button in the bottom center and on the left center you will see “Water Options.”

Choose Classic, Shrouded Isles or Reflective Water.

You do not need to worry about “Reflection Quality” or “Reflection Update” settings if you do not use Reflective Water.

I personally go with Classic Water.

Changing Trees & Terrain

The grass is always green on the other side, it doesn’t have to be higher fidelity as well.

On your character select screen in-game, click the round “Options“ button in the bottom center and slightly above the left center, you will see “Use Atlantis Trees” and “Use Atlantis Terrain.”

Changing Dynamic Shadows

Shadows are spooky enough even when they’re not dynamic.

On your character select screen in-game, click the round “Options“ button in the bottom center and slightly above the left center, you will see “Dynamic Shadows” as well as “Shadow Quality” and “Shadow Figures.”

Quality and Figures only has an effect if Dynamic Shadows are enabled. You can try turning them down first and see if that has any meaningful impact on your performance. If not, you can disable them entirely.

Hiding Facial Morphs

Now you too can look like your favourite Hollywood actress

In game, press Escape and go to “In-Game Options.” In the middle of the options, you should see “Show Facial Morphs.” You can choose between All, Self or None.

Setting it to Self or None may slightly improve performance due to not loading individual character customizations.

Reverting to Classic Models

There’s nothing scarier than coming face-to-face with nostalgia and being disappointed.

After changing your water quality, this is the most drastic change you can make. The old models will obviously look much different than your character made with Catacombs models but you can purchase an appearance changing stone (“Luminescent Visio Stone”) for 5000 Bounty Points from the following Bounty Master NPCs in your realm’s frontier relic town:

These stones can also be found on the housing market, if you do not have the required Bounty Points.

You will need another bounty stone if you decide to revert back to the Catacombs models later.

Using a VPN

It’s not just for Netflix anymore!

In most circumstances, a VPN would normally add latency to your connection but you might get lucky an find a more efficient route and actually lower your latency!

Eden’s server is located in Germany, so try to connect to either that country or one of the surrounding ones. Places in Scandinavia, France or the Netherlands typically yield good results.

Blackthorn’s server is located in France.

Long Loading Screens (Windows)

Taken from the Eden Discord’s “fast-load-times” channel in the Technical Support category, posted by Sathariel: [source]

How to speed up DAoC load times:

1. Press the Windows key and type "Windows Security" then select it
2. On the left click "Virus & Threat protection" and then "Manage Settings"
3. Scroll down to the Exclusions section and click "Add or remove exclusions"
4. Click the button "+ Add an exclusion" then click "Process" from the dropdown menu
5. Type in "game.dll".
6. Then click "Add" and if presented with a UAC prompt, click "Yes" to confirm you want to add the entry.
7. Load DAoC as normal to see the benefits.

Only for those who still have very long loading times: Add patchui.dll and game.dll as file type exclusions. Make sure to pick the ones from the used Eden folder.

Setting Dark Age of Camelot to High Priority (Windows)

You love Camelot don’t you? You should make her a priority.

Open Task Manager. You can use Control+Shift+Esc to open it directly, Control+Alt+Delete to open a menu where Task Manager is an option or right-click the taskbar or start button and select Task Manager from the list that opens.

In Task Manager, click “More Details” on the bottom left if you haven’t already and then go to the “Details” tab at the top.

In Details, find the entry “game.dll” with the Dark Age of Camelot logo next to it. Right-click it, go to Set Priority and select High Priority.

This process will need to be done every time you launch the game.

Setting your Runtime to Proton via Steam Install (Linux)

I use Arch, btw

In the Eden launcher, click settings in the top right and on the left hand side, go to the “Game” section and select “Graphics.” In the very first option, make sure that your runtime is set to “Proton via Steam install (Recommended).”

Changing your Proton version (Linux)

Even if nobody got me, I know GE-Proton got me

In the Eden launcher, click settings in the top right and on the left hand side, go to the “Game” section and select “Graphics.” The second option will allow you to select your Proton version.

I have been using Proton Experimental on CachyOS and it has had no noticeable issues.