Best Dying Light: The Beast Settings for PC and Console

The best Dying Light: The Beast settings for most PCs start from the High preset with DLSS (or your card's upscaler) on Quality, dynamic resolution off and film grain off, then add ray tracing only if you have the GPU headroom. On PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X the choice is simpler: pick the 60 fps mode for combat and parkour, or the unlocked mode if you own a VRR television. Below is a full baseline for PC, console, HDR and audio, updated for patch 1.7 as of November 2026.

We built this from the PCGamesN benchmark guide, Techland's Update 1.4 notes as reported by PSU, Digital Foundry's console analysis via Pure Xbox, the Steam system requirements, a GamerBlurb HDR guide and Techland's own news page, all checked in November 2026.

Update First: What Patch 1.7 Fixed

Before touching a slider, make sure you are on the current build. Patch 1.7, listed on consoles as 1.007.001, arrived on 17 September 2026 with the first anniversary event, and several of its fixes are performance fixes rather than content. It fixed frame rate spikes that sometimes hit boss fights on PS5, stuttering inside the Settings menu itself, and screen tearing that sometimes appeared with ray tracing and frame generation together on RTX 40 series cards, plus various crashes.

That matters because a lot of older advice online was written to work around those problems. If you read a launch week guide telling you to disable frame generation because of tearing, that problem was addressed a year later. As of November 2026 there has been no newer patch for The Beast; the most recent Dying Light update, 1.30 in October 2026, was for Dying Light 2 and its Halloween event.

It also helps to know what your hardware is up against. The Beast needs a 64-bit Windows 10 or newer system, 16 GB of RAM and 70 GB on an SSD at minimum, and Techland's recommended tier targets an RTX 3070 Ti or RX 6750 XT class GPU.

Dying Light: The Beast PC requirements (Steam store page, November 2026)

Part	Minimum	Recommended
CPU	Intel i5-9600K / AMD Ryzen 5 3600	Intel i5-13400F / AMD Ryzen 7 7700
GPU	GTX 1060 / RX 5500 XT / Arc A750	RTX 3070 Ti / RX 6750 XT / Arc B580
RAM	16 GB	16 GB
Storage	70 GB, SSD required	70 GB, SSD required

A PC Baseline That Holds Up

PCGamesN tested The Beast on an RTX 4070 with an Intel Core i7-11700F and 32 GB of RAM, and its recommended list is a sensible middle ground for mid-range and upper mid-range cards. Here is that baseline, grouped the way you will meet the options in the menu.

• Display: V-Sync on, Dynamic Resolution Scaling off, Frame Rate Limiter off, Field of View 70.
• Upscaling: Upscaler DLSS, Upscaling Mode Quality, Frame Generation off for testing (PCGamesN says you can turn it on for more frames).
• Effects: Glow off, Film Grain off, Light Streaks on, Lens Flare on, Chromatic Aberration on, Motion Blur Intensity 75.
• Renderer: D3D12 with Asynchronous Compute on.
• Quality: Texture, Particles, Shadows, Ambient Occlusion, Global Illumination, Reflections, Flashlight, Fog, Postprocess and Motion Blur Quality all on High, Screen Space Shadows on, Draw Distance Multiplier 140.

Two of those choices are taste rather than performance. Chromatic aberration and motion blur both soften the image, so if you find fast parkour hard to read, turn chromatic aberration off and drop motion blur well below 75. Field of view is the other personal one. A wider view helps you spot infected at the edge of the screen during chases, but it costs a little performance and can make melee feel further away.

With frame generation switched on, PCGamesN measured an average of 199 fps at 1080p and 188 fps at 1440p on that RTX 4070, which tells you there is plenty of room on similar hardware. Owners of older cards should try lowering shadows, global illumination and reflections first, one step at a time, and check the frame counter after each change rather than dropping everything to Low at once.

Ray Tracing, Upscaling and Frame Generation

The Beast launched without ray tracing on PC. Update 1.4 at the end of November 2025 added it, alongside New Game Plus and Legend Levels. According to PSU's summary of the notes, the simplest way to enable it is to set the Video Quality Preset to Ultra, and you can then fine tune each ray tracing option in the Advanced Video Settings menu.

There are three details in those notes that change how you should set things up.

• Hardware: you need a ray tracing capable card (NVIDIA RTX, AMD RX 6000 or 7000, or Intel Arc), with at least 8 GB of VRAM and 16 GB recommended at 4K.
• Frame generation: it switches on automatically when you choose Ultra. Techland notes it can add input lag, especially with V-Sync on, so competitive or parkour focused players may want to turn it off again and accept a lower frame rate.
• VRR: on a variable refresh rate display of 60 Hz or more, V-Sync is disabled automatically. If your monitor supports G-Sync or FreeSync, let VRR do the work.

Our advice: try Ultra once to see the difference at night, when ray traced shadows and the flashlight do the most work, then decide whether the frame cost is worth it on your card. If you drop back to High, keep DLSS or your upscaler on Quality before reaching for Performance, since Quality is the mode PCGamesN used for its baseline and it keeps the image cleanest.

Console Settings on PS5 and Xbox

Console players have fewer knobs, but the mode you choose makes a big difference. Digital Foundry's tech review, reported by Pure Xbox on 29 September 2025, found that PS5 and Xbox Series X behave similarly, each with a 30 fps mode and a 60 fps mode. Both also offer an unlocked frame rate mode, and on a 120 Hz television with VRR it can climb above 60 fps, though it does not get close to 120.

• PS5 and Series X: use the 60 fps mode for most players. Dying Light combat and parkour reward responsiveness more than resolution.
• VRR televisions: try the unlocked mode. It will feel smoother in quiet areas, with the trade-off that frame rate swings during busy fights.
• Series S: there is only one 30 fps mode, so focus on brightness and HDR calibration rather than hunting for a performance option.
• PS5 Pro: the analysis channel ElAnalistaDeBits, reported by Vandal, measured 576p to 720p in the 60 fps mode against 540p to 635p on a base PS5, so the Pro gets a modest sharpness bump rather than new modes.

If your console menu offers film grain and motion blur toggles, turning them down sharpens a soft 60 fps image at no cost. The PS5 boss fight frame spikes fixed in 1.7 were a console issue, so an up to date install is the single biggest improvement you can make.

Whatever platform you are on, change one thing at a time and test it in the same place, ideally a busy street in Old Town at night, where infected, fire and the flashlight all load the system at once. A setting that looks fine in a quiet forest at noon can fall apart there, and testing in a consistent spot is the only way to tell whether a change actually helped.

HDR and Brightness

Night is where The Beast lives, and badly set HDR either washes out the dark or crushes it to black. GamerBlurb's HDR guide offers a clear starting point.

1. Set Maximum Luminance to your display's real peak brightness: near the top for a 1,000 nit OLED, around the middle for an HDR400 monitor.
2. Keep Minimum Luminance low so caves and night areas stay truly dark.
3. Set Brightness around the middle, then nudge it until you can see the ground at night without it turning grey.
4. Keep UI Brightness around 40 to 50 so the HUD does not glare.
5. Turn Glow off, which GamerBlurb says causes most of the overexposure people complain about.

A correctly set screen also helps with puzzles. Several safe clues only appear on whiteboards and walls under the UV flashlight, and our guide to every safe code in The Beast points out which ones.

Audio and Spatial Sound

Hearing a Volatile before you see it is half of survival at night. On 5 November 2026 Techland announced the Immerse Gamepack by Embody for Dying Light 2 and The Beast, a personalized 360 degree spatial audio option meant to help you locate enemies above, behind or around you. It works with any standard stereo headphones and is switched on in Settings, then Audio, then Enhanced Headphone Mode. When it is off, the default audio is unchanged.

The pack comes with a 14 day free trial that needs no credit card, and after that a lifetime license costs $19.99 per platform as of November 2026. Steam lists it as an add-on for The Beast as well. If you play with headphones most nights, the trial is worth a test run before your next hard mission; if you play on speakers, you can skip it.

Smooth performance matters most in groups, where one slow machine drags everyone down. Our explainer on four player co-op and crossplay covers how sessions work, and once your frame rate is stable, our best armor sets guide and the Definitive Edition breakdown cover what to equip and whether the paid packs are worth adding.

Want It Done for You?

Settings fix how the game runs, not how long it takes to build a character. If you would rather spend your evenings on the fun parts than on farming, the Dying Light section of the store groups boosting for Dying Light, Dying Light 2 and The Beast, covering items, cash and progression, with 24/7 support listed on the page.

Each product page there states its own platforms and delivery method, so check the page for your system before you order. Players who would rather keep everything earned the slow way can lean on our XP farming guide instead.

Frequently Asked Questions