Pretty much all hardware should see a substantial gain in FPS, as much as 30 FPS on some of my test PCs.
For those interested in the technicals: On the CPU bottleneck, I found that the engine's "Event System" was monitoring raycasts and inputs at times where it absolutely wasn't needed, causing a big CPU overhead every frame. I implemented a solution that disables/enables it when needed. On the GPU side, I found that many shadows were rendering or trying to render in situations where they shouldn't. I cleaned up a lot of them and gained several FPS there, amongst some other small improvements I found. Overall between both CPU and GPU improvements, I saw significant FPS gains even on my best machine.

[Please let me know if you run into bugs regarding the new Event System solution, such as a certain UI not registering clicks, or certain Inputs not working, etc. TY!]

In addition, I added three more toggles to the Graphics Settings which addressed some of the more expensive visuals, with the biggest one by far being the option to completely disable all realtime shadows. While this will certainly make the game look old and uninspired, it should also gain substantial FPS depending on your PC's bottleneck. I'd prefer if this was only used as a last resort but until I implement more Shadow solutions, I'll leave this option available.

WASD
I've continued to test and iterate on WASD and implemented a few more targeting and movement improvements. I also fixed the bug where the mouse cursor would not properly warp to the auto-target when using Spell Indicators.

Other Fixes:

1. Fixed a bug where after you maximize an item, the UI effects are not properly drawn until you drop/re-pickup the item.
   
2. Improved the placement of Tooltips to be less obstructive, especially in the middle of the screen like when browsing through Craft Recipes.
   
3. Fixed Orange Head Gear item The Devourer's Mouth which was granting an Effectiveness buff instead of a Haste buff as intended.
   
4. Tons of other back-end and server improvements but not really relevant to list them out here.

New Feature: WASD Movement option implemented. (Not full gamepad/controller support yet, it's not ready. Lots of UI and Spell Indicator issues to work through.)

Go to Settings -> Input -> change movement type dropdown to WASD. Then you can rebind the keys if you want to.

Additionally, in Gameplay settings there is a new feature: "Enable Auto Target", which makes it so that a target is automatically chosen in the direction that the player is pointing. This feature is only intended to be used with a Gamepad/Controller/Steamdeck on PC. In Steam, you can set your Joystick to WASD, other joystick to the Mouse Cursor, and then enable this new Auto Target feature and you should be able to play decently. When the "Full" support comes out, this will all be done natively in the game as well as lots of shortcuts setup for the UI to make it easier than controlling the Cursor with a Joystick.

EMERGENCY FEATURE: Due to a recent update to the back-end code (for performance improvements), an unexpected consequence was that the Appdata folder structure changed on where Ash & Rust save data is stored. Thus, everyone's prior characters, shared stash, and settings are not being loaded. So now when you boot up the game, there is a new section with buttons that lets you restore these files and merge them into the new location so nothing should be lost. Sorry about that and please let me know if you still have any issues! The Buttons may not work in every scenario, but it can probably be done manually.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a new bug caused by a recent patch change that was making the UI Jump indicator not go away.
  
• Fixed a couple new bugs on Region 2 The Valley from a recent patch change. The walkable Ground area was messed up and the optional Shrine Quest was not progressing.