Teamfight Tactics is a very intriguing video game that acts as a worthy spin-off to the League of Legends franchise. It’s a mostly well-optimized game and is extremely convenient to play – but sometimes you just don’t have a machine that can handle the game to its potential. And sometimes a weird incompatibility issue with some piece of your hardware can cause the game to run slower than it should, too.
Fortunately, there is a way to increase the frame rates of Teamfight Tactics by tinkering a little bit of the game’s graphics settings, as well as some of the other customizable options available to you in the client (launcher) settings too. This will help you out in cases of compatibility issues, a low-end PC that does not run the game very well, or even just to match the framerates with your monitor in case you have one with good hertz and a high refresh rate.
Client based settings
The first thing that you need to do here is to launch the game’s official client. Something to know here is that the game’s client and its settings are almost the same as League of Legends, so if you know how to handle the settings of that game, you’ll have a great headstart with TFT.
Once the client is launched, click the ‘Options’ button on the top right and you’ll be in the settings section which is where you need to be.
General Settings
In the General section for the client, you can turn on a mode called the ‘Low Spec Mode’. This is exactly what it sounds like and is the developer’s attempt at offering you extra FPS if your PC isn’t very good. What it does is lower down the game’s graphics a bit to increase framerates on the other hand.
The second thing that you can do here is to select the ‘Close client during game’ option, which stops the client/launcher from consuming your computer’s ram to run in the background and allows the game to do its own thing the entire time. The only downside you get by turning this option is that returning to the scoreboard at the end of the match takes a bit longer than it did before. But it’s worth the extra FPS if your game runs slower than it should.
So, to sum up with you do in General:
- Enable Low Spec Mode – Tick this option on
- Close client during game – Tick this option on
Client Settings
Here, you’ll find an option that says ‘Enable HUD Animations’. The option will most likely be enabled by default, so turn it off. The game’s performance might not be affected that much, but it’s always good to try everything that you can. It does exactly what it sounds like – the additional animations in the HUD will be turned off to get you a few extra FPS. They’re not important to the game so you don’t really lose much.
In-game Teamfight Tactics settings
You’ve done everything you could in the client side of things now. What you do at this point is to click the ‘Play’ button on the top left and join any normal game.
Once you’re inside, you can press the ‘Escape’ button to access the in-game settings and from there you will have to click on the ‘Video’ section of the Options menu to do the things that are necessary for improving your framerates.
Video Settings
Here, the first thing you should do is to set your resolution as native. That’s usually the best thing to do – but if you have a native resolution that is already quite high such as 1080p or 2K, then what you should do is lower the resolution down to 720p or even less. The game might look a bit blurry at this point but it will run like butter.
In the Fullscreen or Windowed selection, it usually depends on the game’s optimization in terms of what will cause it to run better. But in most cases that includes Teamfight Tactics, Full-Screen is the way to go.
You should try to tick the ‘Hide eye candy’ option on since it decreases some visual effects and allows you higher framerate. And lastly, turning ‘Enable screen shake’ off is another thing that you should do for the same reason, which is disabling additional visual effects.
So, to sum up, here’s what you do in the Video section of in-game settings:
- Use your native resolution or something a bit lower, based on how much of a FPS boost you need
- Use Full-Screen mode
- Turn the ‘Hide eye candy’ option on
- Turn the ‘Enable screen shake’ option off
Graphics Settings
Now move onto the Graphics section of the in-game settings of Teamfight Tactics. What you do here is lower everything to the weakest settings so that while the game will look worse/lack detail – it will run much better. You don’t have to turn it all low directly, so you can try setting things to medium first. But if you’ve already tried that and it doesn’t work, here’s how you take it to the lowest point.
- Character Quality – Low
- Environmental Quality – Low
- Effects Quality – Low
- Shadows – Off
- Character Inking – Off
As I said, you can try a mix of different options in these settings instead of going for an extreme, such as keeping Shadows on low instead of off, and so on. But if you don’t get the ideal FPS that you consider playable for the game, then putting everything on the lowest settings possible is all that you can do.
All of this can be done both manually and automatically, the latter requiring you to just simply slide the ‘Graphics Bar’ to the lowest.
Advanced Settings
Lastly, there are a few options in the Advanced side of the settings that can help you increase FPS for your game too. Here’s what you do:
- Frame Rate Cap: This is essentially something that you’re supposed to sync with your monitor’s refresh rate. Take it as high as you like for experimentation but it might become unplayable due to random screen tears and whatnot if you take it too much higher than what your monitor is meant for.
- Anti-Aliasing: Turn it off. It slows down your framerates, although it’s very useful if you want your game to look good.
- Wait for Vertical Sync: This is the full form of V-Sync in case you know it better as that. The purpose of this option is to avoid screen tearing and other visual inconsistencies – but at the cost of FPS usually. So, turn it off.
Editing the Game.cfg file
You can find the game’s files by pressing the Windows and R buttons on your keyboard at the same time and typing the game’s directory in what pops up – eventually pressing enter. The directory will look something like this:
C:\Riot Games\League of Legends\Config
The beginning says the alphabet of the drive the game is installed in, if it’s a different drive for you then you can change it to that instead. Once you’re in the folder, look for ‘game.cfg’ and right click it.
Select the option to ‘open with’ and pick any notepad or similar software to open it with. The stuff here is pretty difficult to meddle with for a normal person and most of the settings here are something that you can easily fix in the official settings too. The only reason you should do this is to fix random things such as increasing the number of the cursor’s size or making resolution bigger or smaller than the game officially allows.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But one thing that you need to keep in mind is that after you make the changes that you want, make sure to right click on the file after saving it, go to properties, then general, then attributes, and then finally mark it as read-only.
The only thing you need to keep in mind further is to just remove the read-only restriction if you wish to edit the file again, and then to make it read-only once more after your changes are done. Keep in mind, though, that if you participate in competitive matches – this might not be the best thing to do since the developers might assume that you’re trying to modify the game.
That’s it for our guide on this topic! If doing all of this does not boost your game’s FPS – then nothing else will. What you can do here is to simply upgrade your computer or try downloading the latest display drivers, and hope for the best. We do hope one of our methods helped you, though.
Last but not least – don’t forget to check out some of our other helpful guides related to Teamfight Tactics on the website too!
