Dragon's Dogma Online - Performance Patch by Bunie
This is a patch i have worked hundreds of hours on. It started as a little pet project and i went down a deep rabbit hole with it for a bit.
But you aren't reading this for my story, you want to know what this patch does, or even more likely, what each INI Setting does:
DDO.exe is edited to remove a ton of performance issues caused by Themida anti-tamper. It runs multiple functions in the background, killing performance.
It's also edited to default the "60 FPS" setting to actually attempt to render at 100 FPS.
The DLL is configured to tweak some things Themida is sensitive over. It's not very happy with being modded (Even in the original EXE), so it sort of "Hushes the baby", improving performance even further.
I have also added several settings to help improve your experience, and hopefully improve performance a bit more:

FPS = 100
Overrides the game's internal frame rate cap. The game defaults to 60. Valid range: 40–500.

Log = 0
Enables detailed logging to DDO_perf.log. Set to 1 for troubleshooting — logs every patch, hook, system info, and crash. Leave at 0 for normal play.

Debugging = 0
Disables the game's anti-debugger protections so tools like x32dbg can attach without crashing. NOPs out a breakpoint-triggered crash and starts a PEB watchdog thread. Only useful for developers.

LightFix = 1
Replaces the game's shadow slot allocator with a lockless version. The original uses a CriticalSection that causes thread contention and frame hitches when many lights cast shadows simultaneously.

Wordwrap = 1
Adds English-aware word wrapping to the chat window. The game's Japanese text engine breaks lines mid-word for Latin characters. This hooks the layout overflow handler to insert line breaks at spaces instead.

DisableIdealProcessor = 0
When set to 1, prevents the game from pinning threads to specific CPU cores via SetThreadIdealProcessor. Can help on systems where the game's core assignments are suboptimal.

ThreadPriorityOverride = 99
Overrides the priority level the game assigns to its worker threads. 99 = no override (use game defaults). Valid values: -15 (idle) to 15 (time-critical). Useful if the game's threads are being starved by other processes. (Touching not recommended)

ParallelWorkers = 0
Overrides the number of worker threads the game's job scheduler dispatches to. 0 = no override. Valid range: 1–8. Can help if the game underutilizes your CPU. (Touching not recommended)

MinParallelJobs = 0
Minimum number of queued jobs before the scheduler actually parallelizes them. When the job count is below this threshold, work is forced to a single thread. Reduces overhead for trivially small batches. 0 = no override. (Touching not recommended)

WorkerIdleSleepMs = 1
How long idle worker threads sleep (in ms) before checking for new jobs. The game defaults to 1. Setting to 0 makes workers spin-wait (lower latency, higher CPU usage). Valid range: 0–127. (Touching not recommended)

D3D9StateCache = 0
When set to 1, tracks the last value set for textures, render states, sampler states, vertex buffers, shaders, etc. and skips redundant D3D9 calls that would set the same value again. Reduces driver overhead.

D3D9ShaderConstCache = 0
When set to 1, additionally caches vertex/pixel shader constants (float, int, bool registers) and skips redundant SetShaderConstant calls. More aggressive than the base state cache — larger memory footprint but bigger savings for constant-heavy scenes.

DOF = 1
Depth of Field post-processing. 1 = on (game default), 0 = off. When disabled, patches 11 DOF filter activation sites in the game to prevent all blur effects (standard DOF, bokeh, and special ability/cutscene filters).

ShadowSizeMul = 1.0
Shadow quality multiplier. 1.0 = game default. Values above 1.0 enable 4K shadow upscaling — the cascade shadow atlas is transparently created at 2× resolution (2048×6144 → 4096×12288) and all viewports, scissor rects, and clear rects are scaled to match. Also boosts the game's internal shadow multiplier for spot/point light shadows. Valid range: 1.0–4.0.