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Valheim Vulkan API
Category:
Tips

How to Play Valheim Using Vulkan API

Performance issues? Visual glitches? Let's see if Vulkan helps.
Image of Madison Benson
Madison Benson
|

Published: Aug 22, 2022 05:45 pm

Valheim is a survival game you can play solo or in a group. Whether you’re looking to try out a singleplayer world and survive as long as possible or tag-team with friends to defeat monsters, there is plenty of content available for you to explore. However, if you’re playing the game on an older computer, you may experience some performance issues.

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Don’t lose hope, though! During an update in February 2021, Iron Game AB released an API known as Vulkan to help improve overall performance. If you’re interested in learning more, continue reading to discover how to play Valheim using Vulkan API.

How to Play Valheim Using Vulkan API

If you’re on a Windows computer playing Valheim using Steam, you’re in luck. Vulkan is a relatively simple API you can add to the game to help fix GPU-related crashes and bugs. You may also experience a positive side effect of increased FPS and CPU performance while playing.

To enable Vulkan API into Valheim, take the following steps:

  1. Find Valheim in your Steam library and select the game.
  2. Right-click the game’s name and navigate to Properties.
  3. Under Properties, head to General and find “Launch Options“.
  4. Enter “-force-vulkan” into the Launch Options box. Omit the apostrophes, but make sure to add both hyphens.
  5. Close the Properties menu, launch the game and select “Play Valheim using Vulkan“.
Valheim Steam Properties Vulkan
Image via Valheim’s Steam Properties

Related: Valheim | How To Play With Friends

While Vulkan may not fix every issue you encounter in the game, it is a reliable way to improve your performance and eliminate some of the bugs you might find. In particular, if you experience low frames or stuttering while playing, enabling Vulkan may give you enough boost to enjoy the game without having to deal with these problems. It beats having to buy a new PC, at the very least!

Valheim is available to play on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. If you’re like to find more information about the game, check out our guides on How to Repair Weapons and Items, How to Cook Raw Meat, and Where to Find Flint.

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Valheim
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Author
Image of Madison Benson
Madison Benson
Madison was a staff writer at Prima Games who has played video games for over twenty years and written about them for over two years. Her love for video games started with turn-based strategy games like Heroes of Might and Magic and has since extended to casual farming sims, MMORPGs, and action-adventure RPGs.