Mortal Shell II Crash and Stutter Fixes on PC

After the release of Mortal Shell II, some players ran into several frustrating technical issues: crashes during loading, freezes after death, black screens, and Unreal Engine errors. Even a powerful PC does not guarantee a trouble-free experience. We went through game forums and communities, read hundreds of player reports, checked Cold Symmetry's recommendations, and reviewed fixes from the latest patches to collect solutions for specific errors and help our readers deal with all known Mortal Shell II issues on PC.

Before looking for a complicated cause behind crashes, check your PC configuration first. Pay particular attention to VRAM and storage, as Mortal Shell II requires an SSD and the developers list graphics cards with 8 GB of VRAM in the minimum requirements. The open beta requirements you may have seen in older articles are no longer relevant here.

As usual, we recommend starting with the simplest checks even if the problem looks more serious. These steps may not fix the issue, but they can rule out corrupted files, conflicting software, and driver problems before you start touching save folders or system settings.

Fully close the game and Steam, then restart Windows through the Start menu. Do not confuse a restart with shutting the PC down and immediately turning it back on. Because of Windows Fast Startup, a shutdown does not always reset the system state as thoroughly. After Windows boots, launch Steam first and test Mortal Shell II without a browser, recording software, or other demanding applications running in the background.

Download the driver from the official NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel website and select your exact graphics card model. Restart the PC after installation. If the crashes first appeared immediately after a driver update, it may be worth testing the previous stable version instead of installing increasingly newer releases one after another.

NVIDIA users should keep one additional point in mind. The developers referenced a report from some players who fixed their problem by rolling back to driver version 596.49. This should be treated as a workaround that happened to help in a specific case, not as a mandatory instruction for every user. Only try a rollback when there is a clear reason to suspect that the issue started with a driver update.

In Steam, open Library, right-click Mortal Shell II, and select Properties > Installed Files > Verify integrity of game files. Wait for the process to finish. Steam will redownload any missing or corrupted data. We recommend running this check after a failed update, a sudden power loss, or the first crashes during shader compilation.

Technical troubleshooting guides often recommend launching the executable with elevated privileges. For Mortal Shell II, the developers recommend the opposite: do not run the game as administrator. The official known-issues list also notes that Administrator Mode and Compatibility Mode can interfere with achievements.

If you previously enabled these options, locate the executable through Steam by selecting Manage > Browse local files, open its properties, and disable both Run this program as an administrator and Compatibility Mode on the Compatibility tab. Save the changes and launch the game normally through Steam. We do not recommend enabling elevated privileges just as an experiment in this case.

Open Settings > Windows Update, check for updates, and install any available fixes. Restart the PC afterward. This is especially worth trying if you get a black screen after the splash screen or have issues involving Windows media components. However, keep in mind that updating Windows does not guarantee a fix for a specific game-engine crash.

For troubleshooting, temporarily disable the Steam in-game overlay, Discord and NVIDIA App overlays, as well as third-party recording and monitoring tools. If you use MSI Afterburner together with RivaTuner Statistics Server, close both applications and reproduce the situation that caused the crash. Also return any GPU overclock or undervolt to stock settings if you changed them manually.

Make sure the game is actually installed on an SSD and that the drive has enough free space. On a laptop, connect the power adapter and set MortalShell2.exe to High performance in Windows Graphics settings so the game does not launch on the integrated GPU. If the PC is unstable in other games as well, first rule out overheating, RAM errors, and storage problems.

We do not recommend disabling Windows security, Control Flow Guard, or integrated graphics simply because a generic YouTube video tells you to. Likewise, do not randomly add DirectX 11 launch parameters. The full game officially requires DirectX 12, and there is no reliable evidence that forcing DX11 is a universal workaround for the release build. We will only return to potentially risky system settings when they are tied to a specific error.

One of the more noticeable crashes happens before the main menu. The Compiling Shaders bar appears, then freezes or the game closes. Some reports include the message Could not decompress shader group with Oodle. Reinstalling the game by itself does not always help because the issue may involve the shader cache or graphics subsystem.

Start by verifying the game files through Steam and launch it again. If you use NVIDIA, open NVIDIA Control Panel > Manage 3D settings and find Shader Cache Size. A developer representative suggested temporarily setting it to Unlimited, applying the change, and testing the game. If it does not help, return the option to Driver Default.

If the crash keeps happening, you can clear the DirectX Shader Cache. Open the standard Disk Cleanup utility in Windows, select the system drive, and check only DirectX Shader Cache unless you also intend to remove other temporary files. The cache will need to be rebuilt afterward, so the next launch may take longer and include temporary stutter. If the error remains, save the full message for a bug report.

For some players, everything works normally until the character dies for the first time. After that, the Beacon loading screen freezes or an Unreal Engine crash report appears. In several Steam discussions, users linked this behavior to DLSS Frame Generation. Disabling the feature allowed them to get through the post-death loading screen without crashing.

Open the graphics settings and set Frame Generation to Off. Do not confuse this with DLSS upscaling. You can leave DLSS itself enabled if it is not causing problems. Then fully restart the game and test loading after death again. If necessary, switch to TSR as well and temporarily cap the frame rate.

The GPU Crash dump Triggered message together with FD3D12DynamicRHI::TerminateOnGPUCrash appears in some player reports across different graphics cards, including powerful models. It indicates a failure somewhere in the DirectX 12 graphics pipeline, but does not by itself prove that the graphics card is faulty. The developers have acknowledged reports of similar crashes and released stability updates.

Try the following:

If the crash repeatedly occurs in the same scene, save the Unreal Engine report and send it to the developers.

Another group of reports includes Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION with GarbageCollection.cpp appearing in the call stack. Players have seen similar messages when opening menus, during combat, and while using certain abilities. In this situation, remember not only the error address but also what you were doing immediately before the crash. The same exception text can accompany different underlying problems.

Try disabling Frame Generation and Ray Tracing, closing overlays, lowering graphics settings, and capping the frame rate. If the crash only starts with a particular Shell or when using a specific ability, change your setup temporarily and see whether the problem repeats. For example, the developers previously received separate reports of crashes involving Lazlo's abilities, but that does not mean every EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION is caused by Lazlo.

Some players reported that the game launches and reaches the menu normally but crashes when they try to continue an existing playthrough. One player with an AMD RX 6900 XT reproduced the issue several times and described two temporary workarounds: set a 30 FPS cap before loading, or create and load a new save slot first, then load the main save afterward.

We recommend starting with the frame-rate cap because it does not affect your progress files. If that does not work, make a backup of the save folder before trying the extra-slot workaround. There are also reports that the process may need to be repeated after restarting the PC, so it should not be treated as a permanent fix.

If Mortal Shell II closes specifically when you open the keybinding menu, the problem may be related to user settings files. This issue was discussed during the beta, and after release the developers added it to the known-issues list and published a temporary workaround. You do not need to delete your entire playthrough just to reset the controls.

The game will recreate the settings files. Do not touch WorldState or other save files. They are not needed to reset your keybindings.

Players have also described a situation where the shader compilation bar reaches the end, the menu never appears, but background music continues playing. A Cold Symmetry representative confirmed that the team is aware of the issue.

First, verify the game files, disable overlays, and update your graphics driver. One user reported that the problem disappeared after switching to Windows 11 and installing the Media Feature Pack, but we would not recommend applying that result to every configuration. In particular, Media Feature Pack is primarily relevant to Windows N editions, which are missing some multimedia components.

Do not install random media packages on a standard Windows edition. If the screen remains black, save diagnostic data for the developers.

Steam discussions include reports of Mortal Shell II closing when players use Beacons, move between regions, or return to the game world after teleporting. In some cases, the crash is accompanied by a DirectX 12 error or EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION. If your problem is not a crash but simply that you cannot travel between Beacons yet, check the unlock requirements in our Mortal Shell II fast travel guide.

We recommend starting by disabling Frame Generation because users linked it to some crashes during transitions between areas. Then verify the game files and temporarily lower the graphics preset. Before testing again, make sure your save is not corrupted and, if possible, try a different available Beacon.

Even if the game does not crash, sudden frame-rate swings can ruin combat just as effectively as a complete freeze. Reports include stuttering while moving through the world, after updates, and during complex visual effects. In the September patches, the developers specifically optimized shadows, textures, and several effects, confirming that performance work is ongoing.

First, make sure the game is not installed on an HDD. Then test it on the Medium preset with Ray Tracing and Frame Generation disabled. If you use NVIDIA, try the developer-recommended Shader Cache Size change. After clearing an old cache, give the game time to build a new one. Also cap the frame rate and monitor VRAM usage.

The Out of video memory message means the game or graphics engine encountered a memory-allocation problem while performing an operation. The cause is not always literally that your graphics card has only 8 GB of VRAM, as graphics settings, drivers, and overall system state can affect memory behavior. Still, checking available resources is absolutely necessary in this situation.

Start by disabling Frame Generation and Ray Tracing, lowering Texture Quality and resolution, closing applications that use the GPU, and restarting the game. Make sure Windows is managing the page file automatically and that the system drive has free space. We strongly advise against randomly setting an enormous fixed page file just to address one crash. It does not increase physical VRAM.

After the first post-release updates, many players reported problems loading and saving progress. The developers improved save handling in a major August patch, but the official support thread still includes recovery instructions in case progress disappears.

Close the game and copy %LOCALAPPDATA%\MortalShell2\Saved\SaveGames to another location. Check whether the folder still contains WorldState files and WorldState_Backup versions. The official instructions suggest that, when necessary, you can use the appropriate WorldState_Backup_0_[save number].sav file in place of a corrupted WorldState_0.sav. Before doing this, save all original files and make sure you have selected the backup for the correct slot.

Not every bug ends with a crash to desktop. Mortal Shell II also has issues where interaction prompts disappear, the character stops being able to pick up items, or progression becomes blocked. Cold Symmetry has confirmed some of these cases and recommended simple workarounds such as restarting the game. If you are instead stuck behind a closed path or do not understand where to go next, first compare your progress with our Mortal Shell II walkthrough. Sometimes the missing step is a story interaction rather than a technical fix.

If interaction buttons disappear or a dialogue will not accept your choice, return to the menu and fully restart the game. For a stuck dialogue option, the developers also suggested trying the Spacebar to confirm the highlighted choice on PC. When a problem occurs in a specific location, do not rush to delete your save. First check whether a recent patch has already addressed it.

The September 24 update, for example, fixed a soft lock when cancelling Mether's Severance with a gamepad, an issue that could make Stray Genessa non-interactable after using Mether's Severance, and several cases where players could fall through elevator lifts. The September 14 patch fixed Grisha summon-related issues and several cases where the character could become stuck in specific areas.

If Steam shows An Application Control policy has blocked this file (0x11C7), the problem is not related to graphics settings. A Windows 11 user found that Smart App Control was blocking MortalShell2.exe, and a developer confirmed that the report had been received and that the official game executable is safe. Verifying the game files may not change anything because Windows itself is making the decision to block the file.

Start by updating Windows and Microsoft's security components. Then check Windows Security history and confirm that the warning specifically refers to MortalShell2.exe from the official Steam installation folder.

Do not download a replacement executable from third-party websites. If Windows continues blocking the game, a developer has said that disabling Smart App Control may allow the game to launch, but doing so reduces system protection and should remain an informed choice.

If you have tried the relevant fixes and Mortal Shell II still crashes, stop changing system settings at random. Instead, prepare a short but reproducible report. Explain exactly when the crash occurs, which update it started after, whether it still happens with Frame Generation disabled, and what the Unreal Engine Crash Reporter says.

Crash reports can be found in %LOCALAPPDATA%\MortalShell2\Saved\Crashes. Include your hardware, driver, and Windows information. If the crash happens at a specific Beacon or boss, include its name. For bugs involving disappearing objects, the developers also ask for screenshots of the scene and the map.

The official place for bug reports is the Mortal Shell II Steam community under Bug Reports. Before posting, check the pinned Known Issues thread and the latest developer news. Patches released on September 5, 14, and 24, 2026 after the August fixes, and some older advice is already outdated. When the cause is inside the game, a detailed report followed by an update is more useful than endlessly reinstalling Windows.