SAVE SAVE SAVE... what i mean by that is save as much as possible and save strategically. for example, save before taking on any new quests, and do not save before completing that quest so you can check for any bugs that may hamper your game later on. once its all clear... SAVE. and when your with a companion save all the time, especially before entering new areas, so you can avoid the disappearing problem many people seem to have with them.

**also. when firing a companion, make sure that you do it when your in the location that you recruited them in. this saves them wondering off and getting lost/stuck when walking back to there main location. which seems to be the main reason for them going missing.

*and for more safety, turn off auto-save. doing so speeds up loading times and resolves a few errors involving entering certain areas. this does NOT solve the strip crash problem. but i have a found a solution to avoid it.

the strip issue seems to revolve around the "Debt Collector" mission you get from Freeside. The last part of the mission involves killing Caleb McCaffery and taking his hat as proof. the issue doesn't lie in taking his hat, it's about how you kill him. whatever you do, do NOT shoot him in the head, make sure its still attached when he's dead, then take the hat. i've played this mission on different saves and it seems to crash entering the strip if the hat is still on his head after "taking it off", which only happens if he's decapitated. if his head is still attached, taking his hat removes it from his body out right. thus avoiding the bug.

***another little bit of advice about that quest is if you've already done that and don't want to start over again just because of that quest, and your using the Old Cowboy Hat trick found by other players. whatever you do, do NOT save in the strip, even with the hat on. it totally kills your game and you won't be able to access that save/game at all. thus losing many hours of play and your sanity too. trust me, i had to restart after losing a game with over 50 hours of play to this problem.

**and if your experiencing that bug and walking around the strip after using the Old Cowboy Hat, whatever you do. do NOT take it off, and if you have try not to focus your view in the direction of the body until you've put the hat back on as it can be a problem and freeze your game.

*watch what you pick up too. some quest items have bugs where they cannot be dropped even if the related quest has been completed. Like Motor-Runner's helmet for example. it may be a small problem but if your like me and are a bit of a neat freak and don't like seeing item's in your inventory you don't need yet can't get rid of and a costing your weight etc.. you'll totally understand where i'm coming from and why it's a problem.

*and on the topic of super-long loading times. copy the game to your hard drive... this dramatically cuts the loading times down. also, it seems the longer you play the game in one sitting the longer the loading times seem to take. my advice is to save in a good place *see above* and turn off your xbox for about five minutes or so. then start it up again. this gives the game/console a bit of a rest which it needs from playing such a big game. this will shorten the loading times down once again.

i can understand people's anger on this huge subject but i can also sympathise with bethesda/obsidian in certain aspects of this. these days the gaming market is huge. one of the biggest in the world, maybe even the biggest. they have a lot of competition especially this time of the year coming up to christmas and new years. they have to compete with huge games franchises such as the fable series with fable 3 and star wars with force unleashed two. and other games such as black ops. getting their game out before these gives a huge boost to their sales as not everyone can afford all the games that come out in the holiday season. so many often go for the first big one that comes out. and christmas sales are massively important, especially for games. so things are going to be overlooked whilst trying to get it ready for release. maybe not this many, but it is a huge game with thousands of tiny things going on all the time inside the game. the developers aren't going to catch everything.

that's what we're here for. game developers rely heavily on the players to find the things they miss and have forums like this for people to discuss what they find. therefore helping the developers work on the problems that we have found with their products. they don't need to be scrutinised for the bugs/issues, they need help from us to make their products as perfect as we possibly can. remember, there's a few hundred of them and millions, even billions of us. the faster we work with them the quicker the issues are resolved. so if you find something wrong with new vegas or any game. report it, and make sure it's known of.

***NEW BUG FOUND. this is regarding a smaller bug i've recently found. it's not so much a game destroying one but it can ruin the overall game experience. this involves the quest chains "The House Always Wins" for mr.house and "Wild Card" for yes man. if your are planning to side with yes man but are perusing it through mr.house's quest line (both ask you to do the same things). i've discovered that if you decide to kill mr.house after visiting the el dorado substation for him, then inform yes man. a bug occurs after yes man takes over the lucky 38. after talking to him on mr house's monitor you will be unable to switch back to 3rd person mode for the rest of the game. i'm not sure what causes it. but killing mr. house before visiting the substation and then going there for yes man instead seems to solve this problem. i know it's not a MAJOR issue, but for me personally, not being able to use 3rd person takes a lot from the game play.

ill update this if i find any other ways of avoiding certain bugs when i find them.

thanks

You are now my new hero. You are the wind beneath my wings. I crashed 9/10 times trying to leave Lucky 38 and was about to give up and figure out how to return the game when I found this. I had killed Caleb and taken off his head before I got the crash. I went back to a previous version, killed him without decapitating him, took all of his gear and, voila, no crash. I exited Lucky 38 at least 10 times after doing this to double-check and so far I've been issue-free.

Anytips for the bug that screws up all your save files?

I commend your efforts to help people with these problems. Hopefully this topic will stay bumped and actually be used.

I'd like to add a little information to these two points I've quoted.

1. When you enter the strip in search of Caleb walk up and talk to him. As soon as he's hostile plug him once in the chest, then run over to the gate leading to Freeside and try to get out of his line of sight if possible. When he gets closer hit him once more in the chest then use the gate and enter Freeside. Once he comes through that gate into Freeside go ahead and kill him. Loot him, turn in the quest and never have to worry about freezing on the strip, at least where it concerns this quest.

2. Another quest item that will stay in your bags is the Van Graff armor. Although I think for this bug to manifest you have to lock pick the weapons cache outside of the Silver Rush and then loot the VG armor.

Right now Im about 45 hours in. All along I have not encountered any glitches un til around the 40th hour. The game freezes when I get into heavy combat if I fight more than two enemies, and forces me to hard reset my 360. This happens mostly when I fight Rad Scorpions or Super Mutants. The game is installed to my hard drive. I have cleared my cache several time and that doesnt work. I have even loaded an old save and replayed about 3 hours and it still crashes. I have read some people saying its because I started my game before the patch came out, and the only way to fix this is to start a new game. Please let me know if this is true, I would really HATE to start all over and have the game freeze at the 40 hour mark again.

I don't know if you'll have to start over or if starting over will cure your problems. What I can do is tell you that I've had no issues and have been playing the same game I started after the midnight release. I'm sorry that I don't have any advice for your problem, but it seems so general that I couldn't even fathom an idea on how to fix it. It's not like a quest glitch where you can outline the exact steps you took up until it bugged on you.

I shot him in the head... with bloody mess... he exploded. I have no problems entering the strip.



Simply restarting the game has this effect too.

is the macafferty head thing true? as long as the head is still intact? what if the head is obliterated instead of simply decapitated?

All of this advice was what I have less eloquently been trying to say in several threads...saving (and retiring to an old save when you get freeze up) is the easiest remedy for game breaking bugs. I had the same problem with hardware and is been much better since I've limited game pals to about 4 hours. I think my 13 hour megarun affected my saves at that point.
Also, if anyone typically has their xbox set to 1080 resolution, go ahead and lower it to 720 (or lower if you're using a regular tv). My tv is 1080 but most every game is in 720 and reducing the video cards resolution will be less taxing on the system.

I really liked your post. I never had an issue with caleb, but knowing why I know after my first playthrough, I am happier with the game and able to backtrack without losing my enthusiasm. I typically back up anywhere from an hour to as much as 8 hours of gametime to retry unsatisfying outcomes in the game.

very very helpful, definetely appreciate the advice

My advice is to NOT download the patch. I see alot of people having vats freezing problems as well as other problems with quests and such post-patch. I never connected to live to get the patch- i wanted to wait and see if it would actually be beneficial. Seems like it only made the game even glitchier. As for your crashing problem, I had the same issue at one point about 15-20 hours into the game. It crashed 8 times consecutively in a certain area whenever i accessed my menu. I fast traveled out of area, saved game in a safe house and problem never came back. Im now 50 hours in and all i come across is minor graphical glitches, but no more freezing in last 35 hrs of play. dont download the patch

It doesn't matter how you kill him, you can even melt him with plasma or turn him to ash with lasers. So long as you kite him back into Freeside this bug won't happen.