The Blood of Dawnwalker’s System Requirements Get a Refresh

Squinting at the new system requirements for The Blood of Dawnwalker this morning, I noticed that the recommended GPUs are often significantly less powerful than the previous specs. As my eyes came into focus, it became clear why: upscaling, of course. Rebel Wolves has taken into account the modern inventions of DLSS, FSR, and XeSS in its final specs sheet.

Source: cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net

A reply to the X thread from the official account reveals that the new specs are based on Balanced upscaling settings, which would account for some of the drops. The Balanced setting wasn’t clearly stated on the specs image and left for a thread reply to clear up, leaving me wondering why it wasn’t explicitly mentioned.

Source: cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net

For 1080p 30 fps gameplay, Rebel Wolves now recommends an Intel Core i5 11400F or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, alongside 16 GB of RAM and an Nvidia GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580. For 1080p Medium settings at 60 fps, you’re looking at an RTX 2060 Super, a GTX 1070 Ti, an RX 5700, or the Intel Arc A750, along with significantly more powerful CPUs.

Source: cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net

For 1440p High settings, the specs jump significantly to an Intel Core i7 11700K or AMD Ryzen 7 5700X, and an RTX 4060, RX 7600 XT, or Intel Arc B580. Those are some fairly quick processors, although the graphics card requirements are still pretty light.

1080p @ 30 fps

1080p @ 60 fps

1440p @ 60 fps

2160p @ 60 fps

Intel Core i5 11400F / AMD Ryzen 7 2700X

Intel Core i7 11700K / AMD Ryzen 7 5700X

Intel Core i7-12700K / AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

Nvidia GTX 1060 / AMD RX 580

Nvidia RTX 2060 Super / GTX 1070 Ti / AMD RX 5700 / Intel Arc A750

Nvidia RTX 4060 / AMD RX 7600 XT / Intel Arc B580

Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti / AMD RX 9070

6 GB or more

8 GB or more

12 GB or more

Windows 10 or later, DirectX 12

It’s also worth noting that when recommended spec sheets include upscaling across the range, it’s often set to Quality rather than Balanced. Still, the biggest change comes in the form of the 4K specs.

Previously, Rebel Wolves claimed you’d need an RTX 5090 (!) for 60 fps gameplay at 4K Ultra settings, but many vampiric moons have passed since then. Now, presumably thanks to the fairly hefty dose of upscaling, the GPU requirements have dropped to an RTX 4070 Ti or RX 9070.

The CPU requirements are often lower than previous, which suggests significant optimisations have been made. The lower GPU specs in combination with significant dollops of upscaling, however, isn’t particularly encouraging.

Something about the messiness of all this makes me wonder how the game is going to perform when it releases on September 3. I’ve got no idea, but I guess we won’t have to wait long to find out.