January 17, 2024 Game Update Possible DirectX 11 Fix

Many players have had issues since the January 17, 2024 game update brought DirectX 11 to live servers.

If you suffer from lagging, frame rate issues, stuttering, and/or slow zoning, the follow may (or may not) help.

Start up the LaunchPad. From there go to the gear icon Advanced Tools. Then Validate Game Assets. Which will probably find nothing. It will take a while.

Then go to Game Configuration.

A box will pop up titled Video Card. Even though I only have one video card, this always shows two entries. This is where you can pick the one EQ uses. If the highlighted one (should be the top one) is your video card, click Next.

If the highlighted one is not your video card, click the one that is your video card to highlight it and click Next. Note: You do not want to use Microsoft Basic Render Driver. If your choices are confusing or none of them match your video card, you should ask for assistance from Daybreak technical support or post on the Daybreak forum asking for help.

Having clicked Next, now it will say up top Model Selection. You can pick whatever you want.  You likely will be fine with checking them all.

Click Next.

You can check Sound and Social Animations if you wish or not.  That should not matter for this.

Mip Mapping - Uncheck

Dynamic Lighting - Uncheck

Texture Caching - Check

Texture Compression - Check

Resolution - You might want to have this set to your normal EQ resolution setting.  If you change it you might have to rearrange your UI windows.

Texture Quality - Set this to Low. You can always go back and change it if you are unhappy with the game's appearance and willing to try it higher.

Now click Finish.

Start up EQ, change the Resolution if needed in the in-game Options > Display tab as described above. You might also have to re-arrange your chat boxes and UI windows back to normal.

See if this has fixed your problems. It worked for Fanra. Your mileage may vary.

The idea behind this comes from this thread on the EQ forum by FrankTheNotTank.

If this does not work, you might want to make a new eqclient.ini file as well.  Note that the eqclient.ini file has important settings and you should back it up first and be aware of possible issues.

To read about Fanra's journey and for more information, read his thread From Crawl to Tall: eqclient.ini Changes and DX11 on the Daybreak forum.