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Silent Hill: Townfall Patch 1.6 Guide: Hard Mode Changes, DLSS Ray Reconstruction and Best PC Settings

Silent Hill: Townfall patch 1.6.0: what Hard mode changes, how to enable DLSS Ray Reconstruction on PC, and the best settings, with cited benchmarks.

T Terapep ·

TL;DR: Silent Hill: Townfall patch 1.6.0 came out on October 28, 2026 for Steam, Epic Games Store and PS5. It adds a fourth difficulty, Hard, which sits between Normal and Nightmare. It also rebalances every difficulty, shows your position on the map in all modes, and adds a DLSS Ray Reconstruction option on PC (Screen Burn Interactive, VideoCardz). To check that you have it, look for v1.6.155963 in the lower-right corner of the main menu on PC (v1.6.156035 on PS5). On an RTX card, the quick setup is: Ray Tracing On → DLSS Super Resolution (Quality) → DLSS Ray Reconstruction On, plus the community-tested "optimized" settings below. Konami and Screen Burn have published no performance numbers for Ray Reconstruction, and every benchmark in this guide was measured before 1.6.

What patch 1.6.0 changes

Every item below comes from the official patch notes. The developer's blog post is dated Oct 29, Konami's notes give Oct 28, and GOG lists the build on Oct 30 (Screen Burn, Playnews, GOG Database).

Area Change in 1.6.0
Difficulty New Hard mode, so there are now four: Story, Normal, Hard, Nightmare
Balance All modes rebalanced for "a smoother difficulty curve". Resources adjusted in some sections (the notes don't say which ones)
Enemies Enemy hearing sensitivity now scales with difficulty: the higher the difficulty, the more they hear
The Weight Its reduced attack severity now applies only in Story Mode. On Normal, contact with The Weight can kill you instantly again
Map Your position is shown on the map in every difficulty
UX / UI Nightmare warning on a first playthrough, clearer difficulty descriptions, more hints and tutorials, valve status lighting improved for colourblind players
Options menu Restructured into categories. The controls remapping entry was renamed because keyboard and mouse can be remapped there too
PC graphics DLSS Ray Reconstruction option added (PC only)

Hard vs the other modes (developer descriptions)

Screen Burn describes the four modes like this (developer post):

  • Story: fewer enemies, less damage, more freedom to explore.
  • Normal: "Fight when you can, evade when you have to." Some resources were adjusted so that combat is a real option. The Weight's instant kill on contact is back.
  • Hard (new): "Evade when you can, fight if you have to." Enemies have more health, deal more damage and are more sensitive to the sounds you make, but you don't get the harshest Nightmare mechanics.
  • Nightmare: tougher, more perceptive enemies, bigger penalties for mistakes, and not recommended for a first run.

You can change difficulty at any time during a playthrough. The developer doesn't give exact numbers for enemy health, damage or hearing range in any mode.

How to switch to Hard on an existing save:

  1. Update the game, then confirm v1.6.155963 in the lower-right corner of the main menu.
  2. Load your save and press Esc (or Options on a controller) to open the pause menu.
  3. Open Options, find the difficulty setting in the restructured category list, and pick Hard. The new description text summarizes what changes.
  4. Play Hard stealth-first. Higher-difficulty enemies hear more, so walk instead of running near enemies and save ammo and healing items for fights you can't avoid.

How to enable DLSS Ray Reconstruction on PC

Ray Reconstruction (RR) is NVIDIA's AI denoiser for ray-traced lighting and reflections. In Townfall, the game's Ray Tracing toggle switches Unreal Engine 5's Lumen from software tracing to hardware ray tracing (Wccftech). At launch the game had no RR support (TechPowerUp). Before 1.6, the only way to get it was a console-command workaround posted on Steam (r.NGX.DLSS.DenoiserMode 1). Version 1.6 adds an official toggle.

  1. Update the driver. Install the current GeForce Game Ready driver through the NVIDIA app or nvidia.com. RR runs on GeForce RTX GPUs only, so Radeon, Arc and GTX cards don't get the option.
  2. Update the game in Steam or Epic and check that the main menu shows v1.6.155963.
  3. Go to Options → graphics/display category (the menu is split into categories since 1.6).
  4. Set Ray Tracing: On. RR reconstructs ray-traced effects, so it has nothing to work on with software Lumen.
  5. Set the upscaler / anti-aliasing method to NVIDIA DLSS and start at Quality.
  6. Turn on DLSS Ray Reconstruction.
  7. If the RR toggle is greyed out, recheck steps 4 and 5. In most UE5 games RR needs both DLSS and hardware RT turned on.
  8. Test in a fixed spot, like the opening view over the water or the town square, and compare reflections in puddles and on glass with RR on and off.

What to expect: RR usually cleans up noisy or smeared reflections. Its performance cost or gain varies from game to game. Neither Konami nor Screen Burn has released RR performance or image-quality data for Townfall, and when we checked, no independent outlet had published post-1.6 RR benchmarks either (CanIRun.gg, VideoCardz). Measure it yourself, for example with the NVIDIA app overlay (Alt+R).

How heavy is Townfall? (pre-1.6 benchmarks)

These are independent results from the launch build, with no upscaling and no RR. Patch 1.6 may change them.

GPU 1080p max, avg FPS (GameGPU)
RTX 5090 189
RTX 4090 159
RTX 5080 146
RX 7900 XTX 129
RTX 5070 Ti 128
RX 9070 XT 110
RTX 5070 106
RTX 4070 95
RTX 3080 93
RX 7800 XT 90
RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB 82
RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB 74
RX 9060 XT 16 GB 64
RTX 3060 12 GB 51

Source: GameGPU benchmarks as summarized by VGTimes (full list: GameGPU).

Silent Hill Townfall 1080p max settings average FPS by GPU, GameGPU, pre-1.6

At native 4K max with ray tracing, GameGPU measured an average of 34 FPS on the RTX 3080 and 31 FPS on the RX 7800 XT (Konami's recommended cards). The RTX 4090 averaged 66 FPS and the RTX 5090 88 FPS (GameGPU). Konami's own targets are vendor numbers: minimum spec (RTX 2060 Super / RX 6600, 16 GB RAM) aims for 1080p Low at 30 FPS, and recommended spec (RTX 3080 / RX 7800 XT, 32 GB RAM) aims for 4K High at 30 FPS with DLSS/FSR/TSR Balanced. The game needs Windows 11, DX12 and 75 GB of storage (Wccftech, citing Steam).

Recommended settings

Townfall has no presets, just seven quality options plus the RT toggle. Most settings make little difference to image or frame rate, so only a few changes are worth making. The settings below are Wccftech's optimized profile, cross-checked against TroubleChute's per-setting tests (both independent and from before 1.6).

Setting Recommended Why
Upscaler DLSS (RTX), FSR (Radeon), TSR (others), at Quality DLSS gave the sharpest image in both tests
DLSS Ray Reconstruction (1.6) On with RT On, then compare New. No published data yet
Fog Quality Low (Wccftech) / High at most (TroubleChute) One of the few settings that frees up GPU time
Texture Quality Ultra with 8 GB+ VRAM ~8 GB at 1440p Ultra with HW Lumen, almost no FPS cost
Reflections High Ultra costs FPS for little visible gain
Shadow Quality Medium Wccftech saw a worthwhile gain. TroubleChute saw little difference in its scene
Global Illumination High Ultra → High: 89.3 → 94.6 FPS (TroubleChute, RTX 3080 Ti)
Post-processing Low Removes film grain and chromatic aberration. Medium → Low: 65.4 → 71.8 FPS
Ray Tracing On on RTX 40/50. Off if you're short on FPS Off: 73.3 → 78.3 FPS on RTX 3080 Ti
Motion Blur Your choice Off: 76.5 → 78.3 FPS, but traversal hitches become more noticeable
Letterbox On if you don't mind the bars Draws fewer pixels. Wccftech saw 90 → 105 FPS
NVIDIA Reflex Off if you get stutter Wccftech saw heavy stutter with Reflex on at launch

On an RTX 4090 at 1440p (TSR native), Wccftech's optimized profile raised average FPS from 101 to 135 (+34%), the 1% low from 70 to 82 and the 0.1% low from 52 to 64 compared with max settings.

Silent Hill Townfall max vs optimized settings FPS on RTX 4090 at 1440p, Wccftech

If you're still short on FPS after the table, use this order: turn Ray Tracing off, then lower the DLSS/FSR mode to Balanced or Performance. Don't cut every other setting to Low, because it gains very little. Here is how the single changes compare in TroubleChute's tests:

Silent Hill Townfall FPS gain per setting change on RTX 3080 Ti, TroubleChute

Extra fixes

  • Film grain and chromatic aberration without lowering Post-processing: create Engine.ini in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Townfall\Saved\Config\Windows containing:
    [SystemSettings]
r.FilmGrain=0
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0
    Then set the file to read-only (Wccftech).
  • No native frame generation: 1.6 still doesn't add DLSS or FSR Frame Generation. RTX 40/50 owners can use NVIDIA Smooth Motion (NVIDIA app → Graphics → Program Settings → Silent Hill: Townfall → Smooth Motion). Radeon RX 6000+ owners can use AMD Fluid Motion Frames in Adrenalin. Wccftech found OptiScaler frame generation unstable.
  • Stutter: don't clear your shader cache over and over. The game finishes compiling shaders as you play, and areas you revisit run smoother. Patch 1.3.1 (Sept 30) already reduced stutter caused by shader compilation (CanIRun.gg). For Windows-side mouse stutter, see our KB5127648 mouse stutter fix.

Related Terapep guides

Sources

Caution: every FPS figure here comes from the pre-1.6 build, so re-test after updating and compare RR on and off.

#Silent Hill Townfall#Patch 1.6#Hard mode#DLSS Ray Reconstruction#PC settings#Unreal Engine 5#2026
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