Steam Deck Performance Overview - RuneScape: Dragonwilds
Image Credit: Jagex, RuneScape Dragonwilds
Thinking of taking your dragon-slaying survival dreams on the go? Well, RuneScape: Dragonwilds technically runs on the Steam Deck but it is a little rough. Here’s a breakdown of how it actually performs, what to expect, and whether you should even bother booting it up.
Read More: All Skills in RuneScape: Dragonwilds
Can You Play RuneScape: Dragonwilds on Steam Deck?
Yes. But should you? That’s another question.
RuneScape: Dragonwilds is playable on the Steam Deck with both OLED and LCD models, but performance is a bit of a mess as of release on early access. This game throws you into a hostile survival world filled with crafting, base building, and angry dragons, but also stuttering, muddy visuals, and broken UI on Deck.
Performance
Best Case FPS: Around 30-40fps on the lowest possible settings.
Worst Case FPS: Dips to 22–23fps when looking across the environment.
FSR: Enabled by default, but doesn’t help much. Image quality stays blurry, and lowering settings doesn’t bring major gains.
Frame Generation: Exists, but don’t turn it on because it makes things worse.
In short, it chugs. The game struggles on the Steam Deck even with basic visuals, which is unfortunate because we personally have been loving this game.
Battery Life
Steam Deck OLED: About 3 hours.
Steam Deck LCD: Around 2 hours.
No setting changes really improve this. The game pulls enough power that the battery drains fast regardless.
Controller Support
Controller support exists, but it’s buggy.
Menus are half-broken. You can scroll right but not left in crafting.
Some UI items can’t be selected unless you use the trackpad, which breaks controller mode entirely.
On a handheld? This gets old fast.
Save Syncing? Nope.
Your offline save is stored locally only.
If you play on Steam Deck and want to switch to PC later, you’ll have to manually move your save files.
This is obviously not ideal for a game that begs to be played in short sessions on the go.
Should You Play on Deck?
If you’re very curious, very patient, and very into early access, you can try. But performance is poor, the UI doesn’t fully work, and it’s hard to recommend in its current state. It even struggles a little bit on a RTX 3070 PC (I need to upgrade soon).
Unless you’re determined to be the first person to build a wobbly hut and get stomped by a dragon while fighting a controller bug, maybe wait. Dragonwilds might grow into something great, but right now on Steam Deck? It's more frustrating than fun.
Final Blurb
The dragons aren’t the only thing that needs taming—this game’s performance does too. We’re hoping that this gets better as the game’s life progresses, and we’ll update this article if/when things get better. For now, though, you can catch us playing the heck out of this game… Just on teh PC.
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