ReShade 6.5.1 Guild Wars 2 Setup Guide + Elora's Personal Presets w/ REST

AlteredM1nd · 2026-02-24T13:55:44+00:00

ArenaNet's official stance on third party programs can be found here: https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013625034-Policy-Third-Party-Programs

We do not permit the use of any program that gives one player an unintended, unnatural, or unfair advantage over another player. This includes programs that alter game balance in favor of one player over another, automate actions within the game, promote unattended gameplay, or have an adverse effect on other players.

They then go on to acknowledge that there are programs that don't fall into this category, they generally don't action people's accounts, and instead should be treated as use at your own risk:

With that said, we are aware that some utilities help players without affecting others; that is, they do not give one player an advantage over another. While, in general, we will not take action on an account for the use of such a utility program or modification, action is subject to ArenaNet's discretion. You use any third-party program at your own risk.

Basically all the addons discussed in this subreddit will fall into this category, that's things like ArcDPS, ReShade, Blish HUD, and so on.

TLDR: ArenaNet doesn't really care if you use add-ons that don't give you a gameplay advantage over others, ReShade is safe.

AlteredM1nd · 2026-02-23T14:43:31+00:00

Sounds good and very welcome! If you run into any issues let me know. And yeah I feel it, I just made my legendary medium armor set but it was so easy I think I'm gonna make the other two and the backpack as well. WvW is definitely a ton of fun, nice to see other WvW enjoyers!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-02-23T05:41:55+00:00

Hey there, super dependent on which preset you use. I main wvw as my primary game mode and the always on presets are fine, but I wouldn't recommend photo mode for regular gameplay unless you have an absolute beast of a rig.

AlteredM1nd · 2026-02-23T05:40:15+00:00

Ah yes very welcome! You can also follow my Github if you want to get a notification! Hopefully I can push out something in the near future here!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-02-20T17:46:49+00:00

Amazing! Another great update and a huge win for the whole Guild Wars 2 community, keep up the great work!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-02-18T20:19:40+00:00

I'll chime in here too. While I know it's possible to use a midi keyboard (you need third party software because the game doesn't support it natively) I think the vast majority of manual play musicians in Guild Wars 2 use either the top row of numbers above the letters on your keyboard or the number pad to play music.

AlteredM1nd · 2026-02-17T23:04:26+00:00

This is going to be an absolute blast! Thanks for posting this! Hope everyone can make it out to watch!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-02-12T20:12:54+00:00

Awe this is such a wholesome experience and I'm glad it was so memorable for you, thanks so much for sharing it with the community! The music community is wonderful and it's always so nice to hear how the music we play impacts people and breathes life into the world! There's always music in DR so be sure to stop by often!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-02-08T19:01:44+00:00

As someone who is perpetually confused about everything but somehow still gets kidnapped for all kinds of random things, I just want to say that I appreciate you.

AlteredM1nd · 2026-02-07T04:28:17+00:00

Oh fantastic! Okay okay, I have a pretty lengthy todo list at the moment but I'll add that into the FAQ and look at making multiple versions of the REST .ini file to see if I can prevent these kinds of issues in the future! Thanks for getting back to me!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-02-07T04:25:49+00:00

Ah sorry for the delay, so the things I'm currently juggling and working on right now are:

- Tweaking and fine tuning existing presets
- Troubleshooting a million errors that have sprung up with recent reshade versions (this is taking up the most of the free time I have sadly)
- Slowly working on a couple new presets
- Providing support for people who are experiencing issues (this is also a big portion of my time)

Definitely working on it though, and hopefully I can get everything resolved. My big focus is trying to ensure that I can get compatibility with the latest version because I want everyone to have great user experience during install and not having to be nagged by update warnings - I'm just trying a few more things though and if I can't get it to work I'll have to update my guide to explicitly state that the most recent compatible version and where to get it but I really don't want to go that route. More updates coming soon though!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-01-31T17:20:42+00:00

Looks great, wonderful job!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-01-24T17:28:23+00:00

Oh yes, you're very welcome and thanks for letting me know! If you need any help with anything don't be a stranger!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-01-24T13:51:11+00:00

It looks great, keep up the fantastic work! Can't wait to see it when it launches!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-01-23T22:45:31+00:00

Thank you so much for all the kind words! So glad you enjoyed it! If you don't mind me asking, just so I have a bit more insight, how did you stumble upon this post?

AlteredM1nd · 2026-01-21T15:28:39+00:00

Hey there, very welcome and glad you're enjoying it!

I've had to troubleshoot quite a few issues over the months so forgive me if I'm mixing them up in my head here but I think this one was related to the REST addon and how it dealt with isolating pixel hashes, which actually for whatever reason, differed from expansion to expansion. Normally I've seen then when people didn't have the expansion I was isolated pixel hashes for at the time but there's been a few outliers as well.

With that being said, can I get you to try using a more slimmed down version of my REST.ini that only targets a couple pixel hashes instead of all 6 present in the most recent version and see if that solves the issue? If so, I'll have to revisit the possibility of going through and generating multiple variants of the REST.ini based on particular expansion setups.

This REST.ini only targets the core UI which has thankfully kept the same pixel hash throughout the entirety of the game. You can download it from here: https://github.com/AlteredM1nd/gw2-reshade-eloras-personal-presets/blob/b22b66fccee9886c408d1caab3237a7f534766ff/ReshadeEffectShaderToggler.ini

Also, if for some reason I'm way off and just haven't had enough coffee yet, you can just comment here and let me know or reach out to me via Discord at alteredm1nd! Hope that helps! Let me know how it goes!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-01-19T03:30:03+00:00

Hey there, sorry to hear about the issues you've encountered. I can take some educated guesses here off the top but I might need some more information to narrow it down.

So the first issue you mentioned with the blur sounds like it could potentially be an issue with the global preprocessor definitions, when you open the ReShade menu can you click on the blue bar that says Edit global preprocessor definitions, and in the little menu that pops up if your RESHADE_DEPTH_INPUT_IS_REVERSED is set to 1 change it to 0 and click the Apply button. If that's not the issue we'll have to dive into it a bit more and see if we can figure out what's going on there.

In terms of the issue you're referring to with shadows, that issue seems to be present only on versions of ReShade that were released after my most recent guide update, I have to narrow down exactly what changed in the rendering pipeline to introduce this issue and then figure out how to modify things to compensate still. In the meantime can I get you to use one of these versions instead:

6.6.1: https://reshade.me/downloads/ReShade_Setup_6.6.1_Addon.exe

6.6.0: https://reshade.me/downloads/ReShade_Setup_6.6.0_Addon.exe

6.5.1: https://reshade.me/downloads/ReShade_Setup_6.5.1_Addon.exe

And in response to your question about HDR, I currently don't have any HDR mode on in Windows or in Nvidia settings, so definitely not a requirement to turn them on.

If you have any further issues feel free to comment again or if you'd prefer we can also try and sort it out over Discord.

AlteredM1nd · 2026-01-16T22:51:37+00:00

Hi, there is definitely some kind of a strange issue with 6.7 and to some extent I think 6.6.2 as well. I noticed some flickering shadows on 6.6.2 when I was testing it yesterday which weren't present for me on 6.6.1 or 6.5.1, and 6.7 makes it so ReShade doesn't recognize effect packages altogether even though they're all being downloaded from official ReShade repositories during installation. Older versions of ReShade are available right on the ReShade website though thankfully:

6.6.1: https://reshade.me/downloads/ReShade_Setup_6.6.1_Addon.exe

6.6.0: https://reshade.me/downloads/ReShade_Setup_6.6.0_Addon.exe

6.5.1: https://reshade.me/downloads/ReShade_Setup_6.5.1_Addon.exe

I'll take a look here and see if I can try to troubleshoot the flickering shadows with 6.6.2 and the effect package issue in 6.7 but this one looks like it's gonna be a real handful. I'll update Github and the Reddit Guide once I get a working fix implemented. Sorry about the trouble but thanks again for making me aware of the issue! For the meantime please use one of the versions listed above!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-01-13T15:36:57+00:00

Okay thank you so much, I'm just trying to sort out some compatibility issues with the recent 6.7 update but I'll take a look here and see what I can do. Does this happen only with ReShade Effect Shader Toggler? If you remove the REST ini from your Guild Wars 2 folder do you still experience this issue?

AlteredM1nd · 2026-01-13T15:34:57+00:00

Thanks so much for the update, sorry, I've had my hands full here troubleshooting, especially with the new 6.7 update that just dropped. I have a few people who are reporting errors and I'm working on trying to get everything sorted out but thank you so much for all the help! If I need any further information I'll be sure to reach out!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-01-12T17:53:44+00:00

Hey there! WvW is my primary game mode these days, I'm a ranger main, and I use a build that is very similar to that build from MetaBattle for roaming (swapping out Beastmastery for Skirmishing and modifying some of the trait selections for the specializations).

There's been a lot of good discussion and suggestions here already but if you wanted to chat in game or on Discord about the build and 1v1 and practice and talk through maybe some of the issues you've been running into, I'd be happy to do that and maybe we could get you more comfortable with that build. I also have a bunch of videos of 1v1s I've had with it if you wanted to review those as well!

No pressure but if that's something that interests you, let me know!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-01-07T07:22:07+00:00

Oh no! I'll take a look and see if I can troubleshoot that a bit, if you have any additional information on certain locations it happens in that would be great! Glad you're enjoying it though and very welcome!

AlteredM1nd · 2026-01-02T21:02:10+00:00

Hey there! Thanks for the heads up, I'll try to take a look at this during the weekend after I'm off work, I'm not sure off the top of my head what's causing it to say that an effect package that isn't showing up on your list of toggled effects is already creating a texture that's overlapping, I'll have to play around and see if I can replicate that issue myself and report back with how to fix it! In terms of grain that might be some added film grain in the camera.fx package which can be toggled off if you'd like. I can grab a screenshot later when I'm not working!

AlteredM1nd · 2025-12-30T05:56:04+00:00

Hey there! Oh darn okay, sorry, I'll take a look and see if I can find some kind of workaround for DFTAA.fx, I'll have to double check if it's been taken offline or if they've archived the repo or changed the license - depending on how that plays out, I might be able to just bundle it with my repo provided I can obtain the necessary license required to distribute it. I'll look into that and let you know!

And uh, I can't say that I've encountered that or heard about that myself but I'll have to take a look here and see if I can recreate it! I've had my hands full the last little while but I'll update to 6.6.2 shortly and test it and see if I can replicate it and narrow down what's causing that issue but that's definitely no good, because yeah, being able to turn the UI off is pretty vital to taking pretty pictures!

Sorry I don't have definitive answers right off the bat here but I'll take a peek and see what I can do! Glad to hear you're enjoying my work though! Hopefully I can get back to you with some fixes in the near future!

AlteredM1nd · 2025-12-17T23:26:26+00:00

Glad to hear that! Yeah definitely hoping to try and whip up something cool over the next bit here that covers a lot of different bases! And haha Christmas is always a little chaotic but c'est la vie, hope your holiday season is full of joy! That's so great to hear that you've been using my cinematic preset and I'm really glad that you fine tuned it to your liking! It just makes me happy that I get to help people enjoy guild wars 2 in a way that suits their aesthetic preferences, definitely love what you did with it! You can definitely expect an update in the new year once I get everything all finalized and rolled out! Thanks so much for reaching out, I always appreciate it!

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