So what have i not done to earn this great feat? well i will start by saying what i did first, which was to roam about encountering various battles and generally map out the wasteland. After about 30hrs the tedium set in so i made the plunge into doing the quests, the things i have avoided so far are:

Come Fly With Me (Quest)
Vault 34
Modding The Weathered Pistol
Using The Casino Penthouse
Not Killing The Guy In Cowboy Hat In The Strip

There are some more game breaking elements which can be found in the forums but the above are the ones i have had options to do but have side stepped until the patch gives the all clear to attempt, so the game can be played and fun can be had with a little caution and forward planning with events that are likely to mess up the game and game saves.

If you have done something similar post what you did / did not do, so others can find a workable path through the game.

Expecting people to put forth some effort to avoid these bugs until they're fixed is asking too much IMO. They're mad and they want to stay that way, any work around is a crime against humanity.

Last time I checked I wasn't a paid employee of Obsidian and beta testing isn't my job title. As a consumer we tend to think when we purchase a product like a video game and its a relatively safe investment. Having said that I think when it comes to minor issues that trying to do work a rounds until its fixed is a good idea if people are up to it. Sometimes we just have to make compromises. However a bug that corrupts your save file is no small issue and it is reasonable to not bother playing it until its fixed. After all games are played as entertainment. This game was entirely entertaining until all of my save files became corrupted.

I have no problem playing the game after its patched and the save file corruption is dealt with even if I have to restart from the beginning due to an unrecoverable save file. However I like most people want to spare themselves the time and frustration of playing through a broken product. Especially a product that was purchased as entertainment. I think I'll pass on the repetitive disappointment of playing a broken game over and over to list what to avoid. But that's just me.

definetely appreciate the help. we need more constructive posts like this on the forum, though i do understand the general frustration of fallout fans everywhere

Im seriously unhappy with the game, we paid for an experience and to be entertained, how is it entertaining when the game is riddled with bug's, gamebreaker's and not letting you do what is intended? Im still on my first playthrough, but it feel's a waste knowing i cant access the western half of the world map and being denied several quest's because of it.

im losing interest every day....which is a shame as i know how amazing the gaming experience is (from FO3, oblivion)

Turn on xbox, sign into 'campaign/single player' GT, load F:NV, explore the locations i can access, get bored, want to do some of the quests, go towards western part of the map with finger's crossed, game crashes, turns off xbox attempts again (repeat 3-4 times) *rage, multiple expletive's*. Switch to multiplayer account, put's on Halo: Reach, rage's again because the multiplayer is broken thanks to Bungie's noob-loving ruin the skill gap 'change's', switch to Halo 3, a smile comes on my face, feel's entertained once more

Basically that's what has happened the last few day's, when all i want is to enjoy a game i really looked forward to.

Obsidian, Bethesda and Bungie have broken my heart, never thought that could ever happen

i quit playing..after about 50 hours of doing everything outside the strip i can do EXCEPT the quests and places that reportedly cause problems and im not going any farther till someone, other than obsidian whom apparently cant be trusted, tell me its safe to proceed...its bs that this even happened..

Look, I appreciate that you think we are all a bunch of mindless raging idiots who can't be reasoned with. I can also see form your vast activity on the forums and other posts that you are on your second play through (maybe even your third at this point), that you love this game. Good for you, I'm glad you are having fun. I would like to reiterate what has been mentioned many times by many other people: Any game that requires "planning ahead" to avoid game breaking bugs has problems. This doesn't mean it will never be a good product, but it does mean that it needs some work. To continue to claim otherwise or to sing the praises of a product that just *happened* to work for you while failing so many others is just going to get people who are already riled up even angrier. Then again this is the internet and maybe you get some joy from kindling that rage in others. For the most part I've found your posts useful and helpful, but it seems that dealing with everyone's problems has finally turned you into just another cynical person. I'd suggest you go play some more fallout to deal with this as it brings you joy.

Moving on,

My own experience goes as follows-

Boot up game, go "Wow Fallout's back, hurray!"

Play game-

10 hours in I mod my first weapon, the weathered 10mm, giant ! shows up and I think to myself "that's wierd" weapon continues to function properly within VATS despite causing the first person view to glow because the icon encases my character when the weapon is drawn. I continue to use it for a while then store it in case a patch comes out fixing it. I think to myself "no big deal it was part of some lame pre-order I don't need pre-order crap to enjoy this game."

Indeed I was correct-

Further in the game I notice the following bugs occur-

People float in mid-air

Companions get stuck waist deep in terrain

Companions auto-attack ANYTHING they can perceive when in dungeons despite being set to passive

Creatures have their models warped, twisted or otherwise messed up while stuck in bits of terrain

I keep playing despite these issues, none of these bugs, while occasionally annoying break my personal enjoyment of the game. I simply log them for later to report if/when I feel like it.

After about 30 hours I start to get more serious glitches that cause some actual annoyance

I'm playing hardcoe and hard combat

Companions begin to get stuck in things and disappear all together. This can occasionally be solved by fast traveling I find, sometimes not. Boone begins to have an affinity for getting stuck inside bits of terrain and while I can still converse with him will sometimes remain stuck in terrain even after I remove him from the group, and attempt to send him back to the lucky 38. Sometime in the future after a few days of gametime and a console reset he seems to magically pop back in and behave normally.

Companions begin to disappear and mysteriously die, once I am pretty sure this was caused by falling through the ground to their death, most other times they get stuck in a piece of terrain with a creature and the creature kills them. Because I can't shoot through rocks I can't save them, conversing doesn't work either, I only have so many stim packs.

While in the vault with the fiends the lock pick system freaks out. I no longer see a lock and a pick, instead I see the a computer screen like I'm about to hack something, complete with the B button in the lower right side to log off with. Oh and I can see the screw driver handle coming off the right side. Thing is, I can still pick the locks I just have to do it blind going by the controller vibration. Same time this bug occurs hacking becomes impossible because I also get this blank computer screen whenever I access the terminals. I reload to a previous save and still no dice. I put the game down and search out these forums for the first time and read a little.

Upon resetting the console and reloading a save from 2 hours before I redo everything get back to the fiends vault and everything seems to work ok. I start to wonder if I'm going to be able to finish this game without it breaking on me.

In fact I don't.

About 45 hours in I get stuck in the lucky 38 casino thanks to the bug where victor won't talk to me. Because I had spent the last 3 or four hours doing quests that were pretty trivial for my current level and equipment I hadn't saved, relying on the ingenious auto save to keep my saves up to date, obviously a big mistake on my part. Apparently I should never trust a great and insightful save mechanism built into the game to be my main save. I will likely start saving at 15 minute intervals if I ever pick the game back up, just to be safe.

Sadly I was remiss in my research of bugs and didn't bother to check up on all the game breaking bugs that are possible. Now now I can hear you saying "But you really should research how your game is broken so you can avoid the problems." And you are totally correct! However in my personal experience I have had very few problems with most games and despite seeing these forums felt that such a thing was rare and wouldn't happen to me. I was wrong.

I put the game down and come to the forums some more to try and find a work around and ponder if I really want to sit back down and replay those 3 hours, thereby accepting the risk that something like this will happen again. You might be saying "Well you already spent 40+ hours playing the game right? What's another 3 hours?!" Personally I'd rather replay a game like this with a whole new character concept and quest direction, not because the game has messed up, so I don't. Also it's a game, I don't pull my hair out over things that are supposed to entertain me. But then I might have a little more in the way of disposable income and also confidence that some day (possibly in the distant future) a patch will come along that will fix these issues.

So there it is, I'm patiently waiting for a patch and am a little peeved. My biggest issue is that the game let me have sooo much fun before sticking it to me. Most bugs I encountered required no more than a little ingenuity and experimentation to work around. However the game breaking bugs I've encountered are just that. Game Breaking. End of story. Thanks for reading!

I played 92 hours on my first character, and then from that point completed all 4 of the different endings, so I had at least 100 hours total playtime. I didn't download the patch, just played offline (Xbox) until I was done.

I had no serious game-breaking issues, and I did all of the things you listed other than modding the weathered pistol, which I don't have. That includes completing the Come Fly With Me quest and killing the cowboy hat guy on the strip.

I've seen plenty of the usual minor glitches and experienced occasional freezing, but that's all. I have now downloaded the patch and started a new character. I'm at level 10 and 12 hours on this one, so we'll see how it goes.

I do sympathize with those who've experienced a broken game or corrupted saves, but it doesn't happen to everyone.

Am i the only one that doesnt play this game for "PLAYTHROUGHS"? I see so many posts on here saying they are on "playthrough" number 2. Am i the only one that doesnt speed run a "playthrough"? I take my time, explore every "dungeon" find every special weapon, clean out every cave, EXPLORE, taking in the scenery, get immersed, usually finishing the actual storyline (on my first apparent "playthrough") after expansions hit?

my first and only playthrough, of morrowwind: 200 hours, Oblivion: 300 hours, fallout 3: 200 hours, fallout NV: before game broke, 48 hours.

Thanks!
I actually did the Come Fly With Me (Quest)
and Vault 34, but I think that The dude in the Cowboy Hat is what finally broke it. Luckily, I had a previous save right before I shot him, so I reloaded that. So far, no crash. Here's hoping that it took care of the problem. If you have any other tips, then PLEASE post them. Thanks again! :rock:

Yep - Caleb McCaffery killed New Vegas
Tried multiple options that used to crash my game everytime. I can now do all of them no problems because I didn't shoot that one guy.
Thanks for the tip!

This stuff is useful to know. I'm pretty busy IRL, so I haven't had a lot of time to devote to the game; usually just an hour or two after the wife & kids have gone to bed. I'm still on my first playthrough, and I'm only up to Level 8. I'd noticed some of the terrain-clipping and a few other minor video glitches that were reminiscent of FO3, so I didn't worry too much about them. After about 8 hours of game time, the first patch showed up. Immediately afterward, I got the ol' VATS-Freeze bug. The game would completely freeze everytime I touched the right bumper, and would eventually crash after a few minutes even if I avoided VATS altogether. And I hadn't been going nuts with the saves. I only had two regular save files and the Autosave, mainly because my 20GB hard drive is filled up with over 400 FO3 saves. I guess this was an overreaction. So anyway, the newest save file that would work was about five hours old, so I was pretty steamed that so much work had gone to waste. Around then is when I started poking around this forum to see if anyone else had been having the problems I was having.

Man, it looks like I was one of the luckier ones.

So now I've cut way back on playing, hoping the next patch would come soon. I understand that it's in the works now and will be released in the coming weeks (weeks?!), so maybe I'll just stop altogether until then. But up till now I've just been avoiding the more infamous trouble spots. I've been given the Come Fly With Me quest, but I won't start it. I haven't entered any codes for any DLC, I'm staying away from any and all Weathered Pistols ;^) and I'm going to put off hitting the Strip for as long as possible.

At least this way I can still have a modicum of fun, without feeling like I've completely wasted my money on an unplayable coaster.

i had no problems with the game at all until i killed Caleb McCaffery from the Debt Collecter quest and now the screen goes blank and it corrupted my game save

I have experienced just about every bug aside from save corruption. I've effectively lost ED-E on my second play through because I had him upgraded and now he doesn't engage in combat or even follow me around. I fast travel and he follows, but as soon as I move he just sits there. Did I come here and create a new thread like I'm the center of the universe and my issues with this game are more important than anyone else? No, I did not. I encountered a bug with the BoS quest line that forced me to end things with them in a way I did not want. Did I come here and make a thread acting like Obsidian owes me their first born children because of this? No, I did not. I'm locked out of getting the companion achievement on this current character because I went to far with the Legion before talking to Arcade. Did I come here making a thread blasting Obsidian because I can't get this companion and nothing in-game told me this would happen? Again, no I did not.

I haven't made a new thread regarding any of the bugs I've encountered and I've encountered many. The difference between me and the mindless raging idiots you claim I think you are is that when I have an issue I take 5 minutes out of my day to find out what caused it, how I can fix or work around it and then I do that. If there is no fix then I move on with my game and chalk it up to a lesson learned for my next play through.

The only people that have any real legitimate gripe about these bugs are those suffering the save corruptions. This is a bug that can't be reliably avoided because there is no fast and hard "here's the reason this happens", it can be any number of things. However, since a lot of people experience this bug shortly after completing "Come Fly With Me" I took it upon myself to not do that quest on my second play-through, even though I did it on my first with no problems.

Instead of wasting my time coming to these forums and acting like I'm the center of the universe I come to these forums to find out how I can work around an issue. I spend a few minutes reading the fallout wiki bug reports on quests and locations if I'm having an issue. I read these bug reports if I find myself in a location I recall giving issues to other players. I do this so that I am prepared for these problems.

To sit there and act like my good fortune with this game was nothing more than dumb luck is like me saying save game corruption is 100% the users fault for not taking a pro-active attitude to deal with these possible issues. It never ceases to amaze me now so many people can put dozens, if not 100's of hours into this game but to ask them to spend 5 minutes to protect themselves from some bugs is asking too much.

Your point is well taken LoD, thank you for continuing to share your view. I will restate now: You think we're a bunch of ego-maniacs (this might be completely true I can't speak for my fellow forum posters, hell I'm not even sure if I'm an ego-maniac or not).

Statistically I suppose none of us have any right to complain: According to a little internet searching there were at least 1.4MILLION copies of F:NV sold in the first week, given the number of posts on all 3 of the hardware/software issue forums combined it does seem like those of us with problems are in the extreme minority.

Pretty sure there is still no workaround for Victor no longer talking to me, I sure can't find one.

Pitty it is not a legitimate complaint.... *sigh*
I guess I am an egotistical too.

your a huge joke..seriously..your not a mod here as far as i know so quit acting like one you dont work for obsidian or bethesda as far as i know so quit acting like you do..why you cant understand that every single person that makes a thread here regarding a bug or a glitch or a problem they have has ever god given right to do so if they want..also when do you have time to play? your always skulking around here complaining about what ppl post and acting like your big fallout player #1 when do you have time to actually play the game? also if you dont like ppl making threads dont come here thats what this place is for..

I'm just about to get to level 30, 90+ hours in and so far not any real game breaking problems apart from two crashes resulting in me having to reboot and lose a few minutes of gameplay. Unlike ^^ OP above, glitchy things I've done so far are:

Come Fly With Me (Quest)
Vault 34
Modded the Weathered 10mm (but given it to Boone, no weird exclamation mark/red diamond if he has it equipped but pretty sure the mods don't work)

Not even set foot in the strip yet.

I just have four different save files that I keep saving over in turn every now and then. The only really big thing I've had is when the framerate really starts to stutter I immeadiately save (as it WILL crash after that starts happening as the same thing happened in FO3 every now and then) then quit to the dashboard and reload the game which instantly sorts it out (must be a memory leak or an engine problem or something).

The problem with this is that some of the glitches happen regardless of the steps you take and completely at random. I know of twice where I have just gone through the wasteland without doing any quests exploring and gotten save file corruption problems, I have heard of others who just equip the pistol without modding and have a glitch, and a lot of people who have the glitch where they can't enter the strip haven't met the guy in the cowboy hat, because they can't get in the strip in the first place. The support is great and all, but a lot of these glitches happen at random. A lot of people aren't complaining because a specific set of steps sets off the glitch(Even though they should as most of these should have been tested for), they're complaining because their games are unplayable just due to sheer luck.

I honestly feel that if they were going to release the game with minimal testing they should have released a disclaimer about the fact that the game may completely break and be unplayable.

For me, the most annoying glitch I've encountered(or one of them) is with one character I'm on the "Oh My Papa" quest and Melissa doesn't exist. She just disappeared from the game for no reason. On another character, there are no NPCs, no animals or enemies or anything. There seriously is not to do except go around and loot stuff, in some cases it's still considered stealing! Don't tell me they planned that, they would have called it Legend mode(would have been cool to have ghouls and/or robots though).

Not if they've put hundreds of hours into the game. But if I've put 30 hours into the game and then found a bug that makes my game unplayable(in one case I was unable to start a new game for 3 days), then it is asking too much. I don't have a whole lot of time to play this game because I'm a senior music education major in college about to graduate. I'm a huge fan of the series, and generally all Bathesda and a lot of Obsidian games. As a consumer, I shouldn't have to purchase a product on release day to turn around and immediately look up glitches that haven't been posted yet, or even 30 hours in to know what will and won't break my game. That's like buying a baked chicken and then immediately going online before you eat it to look up problems only to find out you can't eat it on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. It's like buying a car that you have to go online to find out where you can and can't drive it on highways that your other cars drive fine on without your car falling apart and being stranded in the middle of no where. Even as a saxophone player, I shouldn't have to buy a saxophone and read about it online 2 days after it comes out to find out that if I play middle C on it, all of the notes are suddenly unplayable. The saxophone is bricked and I have to wait at least 2 months for the company to come out with a fix for it while I just sit here with a broken saxophone and have to play on other saxophones.

You are acting like people posting on here are careless because they didn't research a product they recently bought when there was no research out yet without it breaking. If you'll see in my other post, developers should have a big disclaimer sticker on the front of the game saying it hasn't been tested before they release it. This would save a lot of people time and let them know which products to research and which ones not to. I've never experienced this many glitches or ones this bad before. I only have 1 or two other games that have bad glitches, but none that break the games and simply for the same reasons of not being tested before release where it was a simple thing that could have been prevented if they had even tried. My problem is their fault, end of story. Crackdown 2, Borderlands, and Dragonball: Raging Blast come to mind.

i've done all of these! Wow...

Ive put almost 30 hours into my SECOND playthrough, after about 15 hours into my first I got the DLC bug. Second time around was a charm, almost no notable glitches/bugs/freezes, etc. Didnt even do really any "work arounds" except didnt do come fly with me, as that was the quest I believe got me the DLC error (it was the last quest i turned in then saced, went to reload and found all my saves were busted). But 2nd time through, did vault 23, went to the strip (and killed the cowboy hat dude and wasnt wearing any special hat or anything...), the penthouse, did almost every quest Iv'e encountered, progressed the story line into the "Wild Card" plots. Ive gone to all the "buggy" locations with no hitch. All the quests that people have had problems with, sans "come fly with me", no problem.

Sooo....my theory, its random where the bugs hit you. I know nothing of writing code and wont claim to, it just seems to me its random. Maybe its cuz 360 gets the new DLC before other platforms, and in the coding its faulty...just a theory.

Computers don't do "random". Ever. They may look like they're doing "random", but it's a programmed variable, abnd the result, whilst can be dependent on a number of variables, is always dependent on a variable, and if you know what that variable is, you will know the outcome.

I am more and more convinced after going back to my save before I got corrupted the first time and mucking around with it that it's related to the faction scoring.

As soon as I increased or decreased my faction score, with any faction, then redid Come Fly - no more corruption.