Crashes, Lag & Performance Fixes

The most common non-gameplay complaint on the forums is performance. Here is everything the community and the developer have confirmed so far.

#"It's a pixel game, why does it lag?"

From the developer's pinned troubleshooting thread: this is a misconception. The game uses shaders, dynamic surfaces, night-time and weather effects, and it is measurably GPU-demanding. Reported hotspots:

• Laptops are where most lag reports come from — integrated GPUs and thermal limits.
• Rain visually reads as an FPS drop for several players, even when the counter holds.
• Windowed vs fullscreen and resolution changes produce different results per machine — there is no universal setting.

Try first: lower resolution, close overlays (Discord, browsers), update GPU drivers, and test both windowed and fullscreen modes.

#RTX 5070 Ti / new NVIDIA card crashes

Symptoms: Win32 function failed: HRESULT: 0x887A0005, device lost (reason 0x887A0007), crashes minutes into play.

The developer confirmed this is not fixable from the game side — it is a known issue between GameMaker-engine titles and the newest NVIDIA cards/drivers. Other GameMaker developers report the same. Waiting on engine/driver updates is currently the only path.

#Quest-log crash (reproducible)

Scrolling up/down through the completed quests list crashes the game instantly. Until patched: avoid scrolling the completed list — use the active quest view instead.

#Fullscreen + Chinese IME bug

Typing with a Chinese input method while in fullscreen forces the game into windowed mode. Workaround: switch IME before entering fullscreen, or play windowed.

#Savegame corruption after power loss

At least one player lost a 10+ hour save after a power outage mid-session — the game loaded with zero mercs and reset locations. There is no confirmed recovery. Back up your save folder (%LOCALAPPDATA%\Tradesman on Windows) if you are deep into a run.

#Sources

• Steam pinned thread: GAME IS LAGGING? What to do? — developer explanation + 5070 Ti confirmation
• Steam thread: Game Breaking Bug — quest-log crash
• Steam thread: A bug report — IME fullscreen bug
• Steam thread: Game crashes after a few minutes — DXGI device lost on RTX 5070
• Steam thread: I found a game killing crash — power-loss save corruption

Community-reported as of launch day. Patch notes may resolve items here — check back after each update.