How to Fix “Preparing Shaders” slow load in The First Descendant

Following an update to The First Descendant, some users are encountering very slow loading times as the game is "Preparing Shaders". This can happen even if you simply want to travel to and from Albion. Fortunately, we found a solution that works.

The developer dropped a hotfix on June 11 hoping to tackle the issue, but it seems players are still experiencing the problem.

Read on to learn how fix the Preparing Shaders issue. Hopefully Nexon will find a long-term solution!

If you're experiencing incredible slow load times and the Preparing Shaders message in The First Descendant as you swap between areas, this is a fix that we've personally tested and it worked.

The solution to the slow Preparing Shaders load is to Link a Nexon account to your The First Descendant account. For some reason linking a Nexon account solves the Preparing Shaders long load. The solution was first shared by user Ewoke on the Steam forums.

If this solution does not fix the problem here are some other possible avenues to explore.

Ensuring your NVIDIA or AMD graphics drivers are up-to-date is another potential solution to the Preparing Shaders long loads in The First Descendant. So make sure you hit Check for Updates.

We all imagine our rig can handle Ultra settings across the board, but it isn't always true. If you're struggling with loading times, consider reducing or evening turning off Ray Tracing completely. You can find it in Options -> Graphics.

Hopefully once of these solutions managed to solve the Preparing Shaders issue. If not, consider dropping other visual settings to make the load a little easier on your PC.

Installations don't always go to plan. On the PC version of The First Descendant you can go into Steam to verify integrity of the game files installed.