Valheim: How To Enable Vulkan Api

Valheim, even though it’s been wildly successful up to this point, is still in an Early Access period. 

Iron Gate Studios opted for this route to allow the player base to explore the game’s current state while offering feedback on bugs, glitches and other gameplay aspects. This helps the developers to fix any issues before the game’s full release. 

While some bugs have definitely been reported, many players’ biggest gripe with the Viking survival title is the poor optimization. Though you can fix your FPS problems with some tweaking, many players still report receiving lower than usual FPS counts. 

• Read more: How to increase FPS in Valheim: Best settings

This persistent problem for players could be over, however, as the Vulkan API is now usable in Valheim and offers a huge performance boost. 

Turning on Vulkan in Valheim 

Vulkan is an API developed by the Khronos Group, which is led by various industry minds from technology companies all around the world. Essentially, Vulkan is a third-party API that allows players to receive a performance boost in select games. 

At its launch, Valheim was not one of these few select games. Although, with the launch of Patch 0.146.8, Vulkan can now be turned on through Steam. 

To enable Vulkan, you just need to follow a few quick and easy steps. The first is going into Steam and right-clicking on Valheim in your games library. This will bring up a menu and from there, click “Properties.” You should now see the “General” box of Properties. 

The screen you should see after clicking Properties. (Picture: Valve)

At the bottom of the screen, you’ll notice a box with the header “Launch Options.” Simply click on the box to type in it and write the following phrase: “-force-vulkan”. 

The phrase to type in the Launch Options box. (Picture: Valve)

Congratulations, the Vulkan API is now enabled in your version of Vahleim. While it might not fix all of your FPS troubles, some players have reported seeing a significant boost to their frames.