Terrible Framerate in Ring of Fire

My framerate is fine in the earlier part of the games, but once I get the Ember Light Camp (and beyond) I have terrible framerates. Its between 1-4 fps which is unplayable.

I have tried turning all of the settings down and reducing the resolution but it makes no difference.

I have an ATI Radeon 9550 with the latest drivers. Any suggestions on what it could be? Anyone else have similar problems?

Strange... I just went out of town with henchies and the framerate was much better than with real people in my party. Could it just be a lag issue?

Ring of Fire islands are graphically very intensive, what with all the lava, fire and brimstone. I had noticed the drop in the framerate when I first got there but with the latest (March 9ish) update, FPS has become unacceptable to me. Funny thing is, after I first noticed this crawl trying to join a cap party, I was able to remedy the situation somewhat by simply restarting my computer. Now (After the March 11 update) it seems my PC cannot keep up even when it is freshly-booted. My specs aren't the cutting-edge, I admit, but I was able to navigate the islands without too much performance loss. Now I'm looking at the counter that says FPS: 1, dumbfounded.

Sorry to bump this oldie but it just got _very_ relevant to me.

It's because of all the particles. Particles are still a nightmare to draw because of alpha map(transparency), z-sorting issues (Which one comes 1st; this particle or this one etc.).

Even the newest of cards can't handle too much of this. There really isn't a cheaper way to do it. Especially with all the new per-pixel technology everyones using these days, I don't see it getting better anytime soon. It's one of the banes of making real-time artwork.

If you turn off the post processing, it might help a bit but not much.
Of course, if you are running anti-aliasing then your just asking for it aren't you .

i had this before too. when i first entered ring of fire, the 'turning rate' and fps was considerably slower than in other areas. maybe its all that lava and flame lol. it turned out better after i checked my internet connection. lag could be the problem because after that the fps was ok and my card is an old one, geforce4mx.

This is happening to me too - before the March 9 update, I could play the Ring of Fire without too much performance loss - but I just tried to play it then and I get constant freezing and terrible framerate. :S

For me, RoF is not considered unbearably laggy, but the framerate does have a significantly visible decrease. As stated above, they are quite graphically intense, making it sort of reasonable as to its low frame rate.

GeForce 5500FX, I run every graphical setting on high (except anti-aliasing at 2x and reflections at default). Never have any considerably choppy framerate anywhere but RoF. Still, it doesn't seem as bad for me as with you all. I have downloaded all the March 9, March 10, March 11, etc updates. Only issue with me is the dread sound problem being discussed in the Riverside forum.

That's wierd. For me the ring of fire is one of the better areas...but then when i go to places like Ascalon city my frame rate is much lower.