[Forever Beta 1.60.1.69913][Linux/DX12] Secondary Lighting Good causes GPU hang loading Stormwind; Fair works

Support Bug Report
1

Summary

Loading into Stormwind from the Deeprun Tram reproducibly hangs the game with Secondary Lighting set to Good. Setting it
to Fair allows the transition to complete. The failure can also briefly freeze the desktop before WoW becomes
unresponsive.

System

  • EndeavourOS Linux, kernel 6.18.49-3-lts; Hyprland
  • Intel Core i9-12900, 64 GB RAM
  • NVIDIA RTX 5090, driver 610.57.04
  • Wine staging 11.17
  • DX12 through vkd3d-proton 3.0.1; DXGI from DXVK 3.0.2
  • Launched through Battle.net
  • Forever Beta build 1.60.1.69913

Steps to reproduce

  1. Set Secondary Lighting to Fair.
  2. Enter the world and travel between Stormwind and the Deeprun Tram. These transitions completed successfully.
  3. Change Secondary Lighting to Good, leaving the other settings unchanged.
  4. Repeat the transition into Stormwind.

Expected result: Stormwind loads normally.

Actual result: The desktop briefly stalls, the loading screen hangs, and WoW eventually reports:

ERROR #109 (0x8510006d) A thread has become unresponsive.
Freeze Detected: thread 2604 has been frozen for 20 seconds

Logs from the Good-lighting reproduction

September 18, 2026; times are PDT:

08:58:55 — NVIDIA kernel Xid 109, WowB.exe: CTX SWITCH TIMEOUT
08:59:06 — gx.log: Failure in WaitForFence
Device Removed Reason: GPU Hung.
Timeout when waiting for queue: Graphics (0x80070102)
08:59:21 — Device context was lost. Attempting recovery.
Doing GxRestart. Reason:DeviceRecovery
09:00:06 — WoW watchdog error #109

Testing and workaround

  • A clean reboot did not prevent the earlier loading hangs.

  • Reducing overall graphics quality to 4 and disabling SSAO did not prevent them.

  • VKD3D_CONFIG=single_queue also failed to prevent the hangs. It remained enabled during both the successful Fair test and
    the subsequent Good reproduction.

  • With Secondary Lighting on Fair, these settings were individually increased and tested without a crash: SSAO Ultra,
    Compute Effects Ultra, Legacy Liquid Detail High, PBR Liquid Detail Ultra, Particle Density Ultra, and Depth Effects
    High.

  • Shadow Quality remained Low.

  • Raising Secondary Lighting to Good then reproduced the failure.

The working Fair configuration was:

SET graphicsLightMode “0”
SET raidGraphicsLightMode “0”
SET giQuality “1”
SET RAIDgiQuality “1”

The crash-time Config.wtf still contained older saved values; the Good setting was selected during gameplay and had not
persisted before the crash.

This identifies Secondary Lighting above Fair as a reproducible trigger on this configuration. It does not establish
whether the underlying defect is in the beta client, Wine/DX12 translation, or NVIDIA driver. Crash reports, graphics
logs, and kernel logs are available.

2 Likes
2

I can confirm I’m seeing this issue as well and it does look like this may also be impacting Mac users

For what its worth I put together a small addon that sets the secondary lighting to Fair when you log out and back to High when you log in as a bandaid fix if you still want the nicer lighting

SecondaryLightingFix.lua

local function SetLow()
    SetCVar("graphicsLightMode", "0")
    SetCVar("raidGraphicsLightMode", "0")
    SetCVar("giQuality", "1")
    SetCVar("RAIDgiQuality", "1")
end

local function SetHigh()
    SetCVar("graphicsLightMode", "2")
    SetCVar("raidGraphicsLightMode", "2")
    SetCVar("giQuality", "3")
    SetCVar("RAIDgiQuality", "3")
end

local f = CreateFrame("Frame")
f:RegisterEvent("PLAYER_ENTERING_WORLD")
f:RegisterEvent("PLAYER_LOGOUT")
f:RegisterEvent("PLAYER_LEAVING_WORLD")

f:SetScript("OnEvent", function(self, event)
    if event == "PLAYER_ENTERING_WORLD" then
        -- Without a small delay it still crashes
        C_Timer.After(3, SetHigh)
    elseif event == "PLAYER_LOGOUT" or event == "PLAYER_LEAVING_WORLD" then
        SetLow()
    end
end)

SecondaryLightingFix.toc

## Interface: 120105
## Title: Secondary Lighting Fix
## Notes: Sets Secondary Lighting low on logout, high on login
## Version: 1.0

SecondaryLightingFix.lua