Settings are not being saved. (+ strange shadows/lighting bug, and performance issues)

[Equ]

My settings keep getting reset with each login. Seems like they don't get saved, which is weird. It's like I was opening the game for the first time with each launch. Plus, why does the game launcher has to stay running even after launching the client? Closing it, or leaving it open, does not change a thing. Oh, and there is always an 85 Bytes file which gets re-acquired every time.

Oh, and am I the only one who experienced weird happenings like shadows loading in only after staying in the same spot for a while? And even if shadows appear, they randomly disappear and then come back. Plus grass and other ground objects keep disappearing too while changing position sometimes. There are times when only the terrain texture is there, and them all of a sudden all the grass etc appear.

And not to mention the stuttering especially during Water Dash.
During Dragon Pulse, there is 0 stuttering, it's smooth, although It might be pre-rendered.

One more thing, but I believe this is just how the game works to improve performance: People in the distance are rendered in a very strange way, in which their character's FPS is reduced significantly; or have any distant object including players updated less frequently.

I tried messing around with settings, letting the game decide it for me, forcing stuff with drivers, but I keep getting the problems.

My setup for anyone interested:
i7-2600 @3.40GHz (not k edition)
GX 750W power supply
Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 with latest drivers (CCC / AMD Radeon Settings)
8 GB RAM
1440p monitor
64 bit WIN 10 Pro (booting up from Corsair Force GS SSD)
Game is installed on my HDD : Hitachi HDS723020BLE640
ASUS P8P67 LE motherboard (no ASUSGameFirstService, so that fix which was posted a while ago doesn't help a bit)

[Rori]

About that shadows problem, this happened to me as well when I entered Gloomdross forest, and it seems to not be happening anymore since I opened the graphics options and decreased the Brightness by like 10 points.

[Equ]

I'll check it out, Thanks.
I fixed the grass on terrain disappearance by turning off that option in the settings, but funnily even if I turn it back on it's still fixed. Strange.