What are the best Return to Moria settings? Free Range Games has given us limited video settings to tweak compared to other games, but there’s still options you won’t want to miss that deliver decent performance gains while still depicting the ruined halls of Moria in high detail.
The Return to Moria system requirements are modest, so as long as you’re not brushing the dust off your rig like a dwarf in a centuries-old tomb, you should be able to run it just fine. There’s plenty of horrors to discover in the blackness below Middle Earth without adding frame rate misery into the mix. So, read on to find out what settings we recommend to ensure your expedition runs without a hitch.
Here are the best settings for Return to Moria on PC:
Best video settings for Return to Moria
- Frame Rate Limit – Off
- VSync – Disabled
- Graphical Quality – Epic
- Nvidia DLSS – Balanced
- AMD FSR 2 – Off
There is no built-in benchmark tool for Return to Moria, so we tested by capturing sections of gameplay with specific settings enabled and measured the fps and general performance for each one. The above settings gave us around 150fps on a 1440p monitor, which is performance fit for Durin himself!
The stability during testing remained great, no matter what preset or upscaling option was selected. Here are the key settings we changed throughout our testing.
Graphical Quality
Return to Moria gives you four preset options to choose from, and that’s basically it other than letting you choose an upscaler. You can’t tweak shadow settings, texture quality, or anything like that.
Performance across the four options with no upscaling on ranged from 175 with the Low preset down to a still-creditable 98 with Epic on average. As you might expect, Epic looks the best. And since it performed well with upscaling thrown into the mix, it seems the best choice.
If you’re struggling for fps, Medium is probably the best balance of performance and aesthetics. It put out just over 160fps on average and still looks pretty good.
Nvidia DLSS
Return to Moria supports Nvidia DLSS 2. We tested the different Nvidia DLSS options out on the Epic preset, and they made a massive difference to fps. Even the Quality option boosted average fps by 150%, whereas Ultra Performance bumped them up 180%.
We recommend Balanced, which increases frame rate without compromising graphical quality. But if you aren’t struggling for frames, Quality is a good option. Obviously, if your fps are poor, you’ll want to go Performance. We suggest avoiding Ultra Performance, given its negative effect on image quality.
AMD FSR 2
AMD’s upscaling tech had a similar but less pronounced effect on frame rate to DLSS. No surprises there. If you can, we suggest opting for Nvidia DLSS instead. Of course, if you don’t have an Nvidia RTX GPU, you’ll want to use AMD FSR 2 instead.
There’s no bad option here, really. Balanced is always a good choice, and like Nvidia DLSS, it’s the best marriage of frame rate and visual quality. But you can always go for Performance if you’re desperate for a few more frames. Again, Ultra Performance should be avoided because it compromises aesthetics too much for its small fps gain over Performance.
Best gameplay settings for Return to Moria
Again, there are very few gameplay settings to choose from, but there’s one that makes a huge difference.
- Minimap Locked to North – Yes
This is one of those settings that’s a genuine game-changer. It’s always going to be tricky to keep your bearings in the dark, subterranean passageways of Moria, but the swiveling minimap that comes as default makes matters ten times worse.
Luckily, you’ve got the option to lock the minimap to north so it stays in the same position no matter what direction you’re facing. This makes things keeping track of your location so, so, so much easier that we really question why it’s not the default option.
What we use to test gaming settings
At PCGamesN, we use specific gaming rigs to test out the best video settings for performance in the latest games. Currently, our test rigs include the following components: Intel Core i7 11700F, MSI Ventus Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, 32GB of DDR4 3200MHz RAM, and a MSI B560 motherboard. We also test using Widows 11 64-bit.
We use the same rigs to ensure that every game we test is done under fair conditions against the same hardware. We will occasionally upgrade these rigs to ensure they don’t fall behind the market and this allows us to aim for the highest quality possible in every game we test.
Can Return to Moria be played using an HDD?
Return to Moria can absolutely be played on an HDD. In fact, we had the game downloaded to an HDD when carrying out this testing, and as you can read above, the performance was great.
Of course, you’ll always get better load times with an SSD, so consider upgrading to one of the best gaming SSDs to ensure your adventures in Moria aren’t held up waiting for new environments to render.
How to monitor performance in Return to Moria
If you want to keep an eye on performance in Return to Moria, which doesn’t have in-built benchmarking, there’s an easy method that works whether you’re using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.
For Nvidia cards, ensure you have GeForce Experience installed and the in-game overlay enabled, and then simply hit ALT + R in-game to bring up your performance monitor.
With AMD cards, you can enable performance monitoring via the Radeon overlay using the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + O.
Our Return to Moria review will be arriving soon, so keep an eye out to see what we thought of Free Range Games dwarven survival sim. If you don’t want to be another Tom, Dick, and Ori, and plan to get ahead in reclaiming the ancient dwarven kingdom, check out our Return to Moria resources guide.
And there’s no harm in taking a look at our best graphics cards if you want to upgrade your GPU. You’ll need the finest technology in your battles down in the mines, after all.