Patches have already freed Starfield from a few bugs, but it’s particularly serious that is currently tormenting long-time players.
Starfield is large and, as an environment for all kinds of playing styles, offers a variety of opportunities to make the most of your technology. A very special limit is currently a bug that threatens save games after hundreds of hours of play.
We’ll explain to you what’s behind it and what you can do to…
- …to save your long-term save
- … find out whether you could soon become a victim of technology.
Who is threatened by what? Anyone affected by the bug may even be unable to load the save game at some point after numerous, increasingly regular crashes. As a time limit sets Reddit-User SpareDifficult9987 something in between 200 and 800 hours – depending on the style of play.
A question of infinity
1:36:39
What’s next for The Elder Scrolls 6 after Starfield? – with Mhaire Stritter
What exactly is the problem? Every item in Starfield’s world, whether a chair, a weapon or a piece of cheese, has a unique ID. And Starfield doesn’t delete items from the world per se; once they’re somewhere, they stay there and can be found there again dozens of hours later.
The longer you play, the more IDs will be generated and they will all need to be stored in your saves. Over time, millions of IDs accumulate.
Now Starfield’s engine is actually supposed to use many of these IDs, as said Reddit user explains in detailwhich do not necessarily have to be permanently preserved, are recycled and given to new objects – However, this doesn’t work as intended.
There was a similar problem with The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion:
3:14
GameStar Spotlight: Oblivion – This bug destroyed The Elder Scrolls
What can be done about this at Starfield?
Nothing per se. This overflow of IDs is deeply anchored in the core of the engine and as a user there is little you can do about it, since you have new IDs generated with virtually every action in the game. Currently the best way to save your character and some progress, is the New Game Plus.
A new galaxy is literally generated – with an empty tableau in terms of IDs.
Can I tell if my save is at risk? Yes, on the PC it is. Not on the Xbox Series X/S because you need access to the console. To find out how many IDs have already been generated, do the following:
- Place an ammo box on the ground.
- Opens with
ö
(Default) the console. - Now click on the ammo box so that it appears selected in the console.
- For example, it should say: AMMO (FF3FDD7C)
- Now you remove the first two characters, in this case FF
- The result (here: 3FDD7C) you wear, for example into this conversion mask. This is how it becomes Hexadezimalcodea readable number, for example: 4.185.468
According to the expert on Reddit, the number should be like this are over 4 millionaccording to the experience he has collected, you are in the critical area where crashes are definitely more likely.
You can find out more about console commands in our extensive guide.
Is there anything else that can be done? Not really, no. It remains to be seen whether and when Bethesda will address the problem.
1:04:49
Is No Man’s Sky really the better Starfield?
The GameStar talk video above gets to the bottom of the question of whether No Mans Sky isn’t ultimately the better Starfield? And directly below you can, among other things, read intensively about all questions relating to the realism of Starfield’s space trips.
Are you one of those affected? Have you ever experienced a crash like this or is your save nowhere near old enough for such an ailment? Do you perhaps (also) know problems of this kind from previous Bethesda titles other than Oblivion? If yes, from which one? Feel free to write us your stories and experiences in the comments under the article!
