Once Human is an interesting survival game that takes elements from popular games like Control and Palworld and puts its unique spin on the concepts. Where the game lacks is stability as several players have been reporting crashing, black screens, freezing, and stuttering in Once Human. These issues mainly occur in the main menu or when a player has access to a server. This guide will address such issues with some effective fixes to help you fix these issues in Once Human for good.
Best Fixes To Resolve Crashing, Stuttering & Freezing in Once Human
There is nothing more frustrating than your game suddenly quitting on you and sending you straight to the desktop. What’s more annoying is when your character isn’t responsive during a difficult boss fight due to the game either stuttering or freezing.
Here are some fixes that will help you resolve these issues for good so you can get back that smooth gameplay experience in Once Human.
Check Game Servers First
Once Human is a live-service game that heavily relies on its servers to function properly. Since the game is relatively new and free to play, a lot of players are rushing in to play it. This overloads the server and might be one of the reasons why you’re facing frequent crashes or rubber-banding in Once Human.
To check Once Human servers, you can visit the following platforms:
Turn Down In-Game Graphics Settings
Once Human lets you tweak a bunch of settings to tune the game’s performance and visuals to your preference. However, the higher presets of the graphics settings can actually cause problems for you as the game seems to have a memory leak issue.
So, the best course of action right now is to switch to the lowest possible preset for each graphics setting in Once Human. If the game runs well, you can later start to slowly bring up some of the settings up to the point that the game doesn’t crash on you.
You can check out our guide if you want the best Once Human settings for optimal performance.
Check For Game Updates
Sometimes the devs will push minor to major updates for the game while you’re playing it. If you’re facing stuttering or freezing or the game just gives you a black screen, it’s best to quit it and check your game client i.e. Steam or Epic Games for an update. Update the game if there’s one available and try booting up the game again.
This will surely resolve any issues that you were facing prior to updating Once Human.
Delete Baking_ppk Folder In Once Human Game Files
This is one of the most effective fixes for people who’re facing crashes at the start of the game in Deadsville. However, you’ll need to delete a particular folder in the installation directory to work, which will fix the issues.
Here’s what you need to do in order to perform this fix.
- Browse to the installation directory of Once Human. Since I downloaded the game on Steam, I simply located the game in my library and selected the “Browse Local Files” option.
- In the game directory, head into the Documents folder and delete a folder called “Baking_ppk.”
- After you delete the folder, boot into the game. You’ll need to rush through the story quickly and exit Deadsville.
- If you fail to do it quickly enough and the game crashes, repeat the process until you make it out of Deadsville. Once you do that, Once Human won’t crash anymore, and you can play the game without worries.
Verify The Integrity of Game Files
Sometimes, game files can go missing or corrupt due to third-party cleaning software or antivirus software flagging them. This happens quite frequently in other games, too, and the best solution is to verify your game files from your launcher.
Once you verify the integrity of files, the launcher will detect any missing/corrupted files and redownload them into the install directory. This will resolve any issues you had while launching the game or with crashing in Once Human.
Update GPU & Other Drivers
Outdated drivers are the number one reason for games stuttering or crashing on PC. If you have outdated drivers, I suggest you update them from your PC’s manufacturer’s website.
When it comes to GPU drivers, you can just download them from Nvidia or AMD’s official driver pages.
Once you’ve updated all drivers on your PC, you should do a reboot to ensure the installation is finished and the old drivers aren’t in operation.
Remove Any Overclocks on Your PC
If you own a high-end PC then overclocking your hardware is a fun and rewarding process to get extra performance. However, some games, especially the ones that are newly released, won’t really run well on overclocked hardware.
When there’s an incompatibility, they end up crashing or freezing, which might be something that happening on your PC too with Once Human.
I recommend disabling any overclocking profiles on your PC, whether it’s from third-party software like Intel XTU or Throttlestop or from Bios/UEFI. After you’re done, reboot your PC and try launching the game. If the problem was happening due to overclocked hardware, it shouldn’t happen anymore.
Close Down Unnecessary Background Programs
Several programs are running on your Windows PC that will take up valuable resources that otherwise are meant for Once Human to run smoothly. This causes stuttering and freezing and even prevents you from launching the game altogether.
A simple fix to this problem is opening up Windows Task Manager and closing all unnecessary third-party programs that are taking up resources. Once you’re done closing down a bunch of programs, you can launch Once Human again and notice the night and day difference.
Exclude Once Human Directory in Antivirus
Antivirus can restrict your game’s access to PC resources, which can lead to issues like Once Human crashing, stuttering, and black screens. It does so by creating a false-positive malware report against the game.
To resolve this issue, simply go into your antivirus settings and add the Once Human install folder to the antivirus exclusions. This will prevent the antivirus from scanning your game and hopefully fix all issues with it.
These were all the best fixes you can try to resolve Once Human crashing, stuttering, and freezing issues. Hopefully, you’ll be able to play the game without any interruptions after applying these.
If you’re interested to learn more about the game, I suggest checking out our beginner’s guide and Deviations tier list for Once Human.
