Wuthering Waves Best Settings: Ray Tracing Can Cut FPS in Half (What to Change First)

Ray Tracing is the most expensive option in Wuthering Waves’ graphics menu: Inven Global’s May 2026 testing found it “can cut your frame rate in half or even to a third,” while most of the rest of the menu barely moves your FPS counter. If you change only a few things, change those, not the shadow slider that every older guide leads with.

Reflections matter here, but not as a single “quality” slider. The current menu bundles them into Global Illumination Mode plus Reflection Mode (Lumen or the older SSR) and a separate Ray Tracing switch, which is why launch-era advice about “reflection quality” no longer maps onto what you see on screen.

This guide ranks the settings by what the available data says they cost, then gives starting profiles by hardware tier. The measured figures come from Inven Global’s May 2026 tests, the requirements from Steam’s current listing, and the version context from the Version 3.7 launch on September 30, 2026. Kuro changes menu labels between updates, so confirm names in-game. For driver- and OS-level tuning that applies to every title, pair this with our guide to optimizing PC game settings for better FPS and the NVIDIA Control Panel settings guide.

Quick Start: Seven Changes in Order

Work top to bottom; the first five cover the settings Inven’s testing found actually move frame rate.

1. Set your resolution first. It decides how many pixels the GPU draws, so every other choice sits on top of it.
2. Turn on DLSS (RTX cards) or FSR (AMD). Start on Quality and step down to Balanced only if you still miss your frame target. Our DLSS vs FSR vs XeSS comparison covers the differences.
3. Leave Rendering Precision at 1.0. Inven found almost no FPS difference between 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0, and 1.6 cuts frame rate roughly in half.
4. Test Global Illumination and Reflection Mode as a pair: Lumen + Lumen against Off + SSR. Keep Lumen only if you still hit your frame target.
5. Keep Ray Tracing off unless you have an RTX 40-series card or newer and a lot of spare performance.
6. Set Shadow Quality to Medium, Volumetric Fog to Off, Motion Blur to Off. This is Game8’s recommended baseline, not a measured result (see below).
7. Cap frame rate at 60, or 120 if the game lets you select it and your CPU holds it.

Wuthering Waves PC Requirements: What Steam Lists Now

Steam’s current listing puts the recommended tier at an RTX 2060 or RX 5700 XT with 32 GB of RAM, and it asks for 150 GB of storage. Kuro’s original launch specs showed 30 GB of storage and 16 GB of RAM, so treat any guide quoting those as stale.

Which Wuthering Waves Settings Cost the Most FPS?

Ray Tracing costs the most, followed by Rendering Precision above 1.0 and the Lumen lighting and reflection mode; upscaling is the biggest gain you can buy back. The table separates what a source actually measured from what is only recommended.

Two caveats matter. First, Inven’s DLSS figures include 2x frame generation, so they overstate what upscaling alone delivers, and the test PC is not named. Second, when DLSS is on, the game disables the Anti-Aliasing and Rendering Precision settings, so those two only matter on non-DLSS setups.

Upscaling and Frame Generation: The Biggest Free Win

Upscaling is the one change that raises FPS without a large visual penalty, so make it your first move rather than your last. Inven recommends DLAA on a powerful PC, which skips upscaling and uses the AI pass only for image quality, and Quality or at least Balanced on weaker hardware. Moving from Quality to Balanced to Performance lowers the internal resolution and increases how much detail the AI has to guess, which is where the smearing in motion comes from.

Frame generation inserts extra frames between real ones. Inven notes RTX 50-series owners can go beyond 2x up to 4x, but that it “can also increase input lag and ghosting.” Because generated frames do not respond to your inputs, a low base frame rate stays sluggish even when the counter reads high. Turn it on after you have a stable base rate, and read our frame generation guide before enabling it for combat.

Reflections, Lumen and Ray Tracing: Where the FPS Actually Goes

The reflection cost in Wuthering Waves comes from how reflections are calculated, not from a quality slider. SSR is the cheap method and Lumen or ray tracing the expensive ones.

Epic’s documentation explains the gap: SSR is “limited to only reflecting what is visible on the screen,” so anything off-screen or hidden behind another object cannot appear in the reflection. Lumen and hardware ray-traced reflections trace rays through the whole scene instead, which Epic says “comes at a higher rendering cost.” Inven describes the in-game result: Lumen gives much brighter, more vibrant lighting than SSR, and ray tracing adds detailed reflections such as a character’s image in glass.

In practice, that means the cost scales with how much reflective, brightly lit surface is in view. That part is inference rather than a measurement, so check it on your own PC by comparing frame rate in a city and in an empty field. Kuro announced ray tracing for Version 2.1 in February 2025 with an RTX 40-series minimum, and a Steam player thread suggests the restriction still stands, so check whether the option appears for you.

Shadows, Fog and Combat Effects: Cut Carefully

Shadow Quality at Medium and Volumetric Fog off is the common recommendation, but it is a recommendation, not a measurement. Game8 lists Medium shadows, fog off, motion blur off and Medium crowd and foliage density as its baseline. The only guide I found with FPS numbers, FPSHQ, labels them a “model estimate” and does not isolate single settings.

Be wary of old advice too. Prima Games’ May 2024 launch-era guide recommends Shadow Quality Ultra High and Capsule AO on, written before ray tracing arrived in 2025. Medium is the middle point Game8 settles on, so start there and move only if your frame rate or the look demands it.

Combat visuals are the opposite case. Inven rates Post-Processing Effects as a negligible FPS cost, so lowering them saves little while visibly flattening a skill combo. If you need frames, take them from upscaling or lighting first.

Starting Profiles by Hardware Tier

Use these as starting points, not benchmarks. They combine Steam’s hardware tiers with the measured and recommended values above, and I have not tested them on each card.

Combat-focused players should hold a steady frame rate over any lighting upgrade, since hit timing is easier to judge at a stable 60 than at a swinging 90. Explorers who play for the scenery can spend frames on Lumen. Our Wuthering Waves beginner guide covers the game side.

60 vs 120 FPS: Check Whether Your CPU Is the Limit

Cap at 60 unless the in-game menu offers 120 and your CPU can hold it. Beebom’s Version 1.2 report listed the 120 FPS gate as RTX 3060 to 4090 and RX 6700 XT to 7900 XTX GPUs, paired with 12th-gen Intel or Ryzen 7 and 9 CPUs; that list dates from August 2024 and may have changed.

If GPU usage sits well below 90% and you still miss your target, lowering graphics will not help. One Steam player with a Ryzen 5 7500F reported the CPU maxed while the GPU swung between 50 and 90%, which is anecdotal but fits the pattern. For tearing, our V-Sync on or off and frame generation guides explain the trade-offs, and monitor settings for gaming covers making sure your display actually runs at its full refresh rate.

How to Test Your Own Settings in Five Minutes

Pick one repeatable route and change one setting at a time, because averages from other people’s PCs only tell you the order of costs, not your numbers. Use a route with three parts: a crowded town, an open area with water or glass, and one short fight against the same enemy.

1. Show GPU and CPU usage with your driver overlay or a monitoring tool.
2. Run the route at your current settings and note the average and the lowest dips.
3. Change a single setting, repeat the same route, and compare.
4. If GPU usage stays under about 90% at your target frame rate, you are CPU-limited and graphics cuts will not help.

Keep any change that gains frames without a visual loss you notice, and revert the rest. Write down your last stable profile before you try Lumen or ray tracing.

What Version 3.7 Changes

Version 3.7, live since September 30, 2026, adds a limited test of tiered client resource downloads, letting PC players choose UHD, HD or SD resource packs. Gematsu reports each tier balances download size against graphics quality. It is a storage choice, not an FPS setting, and nothing in the sources I read suggests the render settings above changed. Re-check the menu after any large patch.

FAQ

Is ray tracing worth turning on in Wuthering Waves?

Only for screenshots or quiet exploration on an RTX 40-series or newer card. A drop of up to half or a third is too steep for combat, where an unsteady frame rate costs you more than better reflections add.

Should I use Lumen or SSR?

Try both and decide by your frame target. Lumen looks clearly brighter, but SSR is the cheaper method, so the right choice depends on whether you still hold 60 with Lumen on.

Does lowering Rendering Precision raise FPS?

Barely. Inven measured almost no difference between 0.6 and 1.0, so dropping it only blurs the image. Use upscaling for performance instead.

Sources

1. Lee, Donghyun. Just Follow These Settings! A Guide to Visual and Frame Rate Changes by Graphics Option. Inven Global
2. Kuro Games. Wuthering Waves system requirements. Steam
3. Epic Games. Reflections Environment in Unreal Engine. Epic Games Developer Documentation
4. Gostick, Elliot. Wuthering Waves Ray Tracing Arrives in 2.1. Siliconera
5. Wuthering Waves Version 3.7 Update Launches September 30. Gematsu
6. Wuthering Waves Best Settings for PC and Mobile. Game8
7. Best Wuthering Waves Settings: Optimization and FPS. FPSHQ
8. Yates, Anthony. Best PC Settings for Wuthering Waves: Graphics and Performance, Explained. Prima Games
9. 120 FPS in Wuthering Waves Not Available: How to Fix and Enable. Beebom
10. Wuthering Waves Discussions: 120 FPS and Ray Tracing Restrictions. Steam Community

Michael R.

I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.