The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Guide to Reducing Black Screen Crash to Desktop

May 22, 2015

If you've played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on PC chances are your game has crashed at least once. Usually when this happens you won't be greeted by an error of any sort, but rather a black screen followed by a return to desktop. This pesky issue leads to lost work and a lot of frustration.





After a lot of testing, I have located a way for you to reduce or outright prevent crashing altogether by simply changing your graphics settings. Issues in the current version of the game seem to stem from foliage in the game world, or more specifically when grass density is set to Ultra. So, try placing your graphics settings at the following:





Grass Density: High or lower


Foliage Visibility Range: High or lower





If you notice stress on your system, try lowering Shadow Quality and disabling Nvidia Hairworks. These two settings are the most taxing of the bunch.





Also, if your graphics card has less than 3.5GB of video memory (VRAM), you are going to want to set textures to medium or lower. Otherwise you may experience frame rate inconsistency.

Although Jonathan Leack began covering the gaming industry in 2009, his earliest roots date back to 2004 when he wrote his first of many reviews to come. Equipped with a B.S. in Computer Information Systems and several information technology certifications, he provides a unique perspective that is technological and business conscious. Having acquired the role of Executive Editor in 2016, his mission is to make GameRevolution a gaming site that thoughtfully considers the consumer perspective, and has a knowledgeable presence of PC gaming, console, hardware, and eSports coverage.