I did this for my fellow fallout fans,
because of the lack of feedback about the "forthcoming" patches, i have done 25 hours of in game testing to replicate this save game bug we are all having under all different conditions.
The DLC savegame error is not caused by any quest in particular, and its not actual savegame corruption, I have successfully replicated the DLC error in over a dozen different instances, at different points of the game.
The bug is caused by certain combinations of actions, events, and quests, not specifically by come fly with me. The strip and the main storyline need to be put off for quite some time in order to avoid the DLC error, i couldnt start the strip until well after the 15 hour mark.
For those of us who dont want to wait to play the game that we paid our hard earned money for, The ways to work around this game-breaking bug are as follows
-save constantly (I have tried to save around every 15 mins or so)
-try reloading your saves after completing certain events to make sure the bug has not manifested
-if the bug does take out one of your saves, go to the most recent working one, and switch quests to a different task. Once youve completed the new task, try moving back to the one that gave you the error before and it should work now.
-as you build up gameplay hours, the DLC error will become less and less frequent, the combinations that cause it most commonly seem to involve the end missions of questlines
- if you are doing faction missions, space them out so you arent working all the way through one faction in a sitting.

I know that it is ridiculous that these are the only ways to avoid these bugs, but i can promise you that if you really want to play, these methods WORK. I have tested it over the past 4-5 days pretty constantly, so that i could try to give you all some sort of reliable way to play until we get this patch we have been waiting for.

I hope this post helps some of you, and if you have any questions, or ideas, post them here and I will test them. This is not my job, i just want to help out my fellow fallout fans

I always kind of figure my first playthrough of a large sandbox game like this as a test. I'm basically exploring all the possibilities in anticipation of the next character build. I do have to say that having multiple saves and making permanent saves for major areas is the best possible plan for these types of games. I learned a long time ago how important saving really is. Save right when you enter a new area, make another save before you enter any building, make another save before you speak to a person. After I've cleared the area I delete all the saves but the first area one and don't overwrite it. It's tedious and a little bit anol on my part but it's saved me numerous times.

thanks for spending that much time testing it, i have a question:
are you saying i should just start playing, mess around for about 15 hours not really completing any missions, and then start doing the story missions? or what if I just follow the game guide?
btw I have not even unwrapped my game yet so i have not stared playing because of waiting for the patch

Im saying try to focus mainly on side missions for a while, that shouldnt be that difficult because the side missions are pretty engrossing, but getting side missions in right away, seems to lessen the chances of getting the DLC error

I don't think you can detect the save game bug until you reboot your Xbox, as I think they work during the same session they are created in.

Nope, they are bugged from the second they are created, like i said, ive tested this and replicated it over a dozen times, corrupted save games can load as corrupted from the same session they were made in, even if you die, you can get the error from an auto save that is bugged

All my saves worked fine until the next day.

you had loaded all of them the day before?

and ill specify on what i said earlier, when i say save alot, i mean use all 100 of your allotted slots, what happens is at a certain point, you do a combination of things that causes the error, and all subsequent saves are bugged as well, so if you over write saves from the same slots, youll end up with no options

Not true, I went back to a previous save around Novac, because I thought I screwed up the Boone mission, and lo and behold...The bug hit me. And what the OP is saying, I started again, cuz I cant wait around to play this game. Im at Lvl 12, avoided the come fly mission and rest of story, the strip, and any places I heard were buggy. and so far no problems. And there is still a [censored]LOAD of stuff to do, from exploring and questing alone. I like to hunt for unique weapons and equips personally. My brother has put almost 30+ in hours (we share the same HDD and game disc, different LIVE profiles) and he has hit no bugs what so ever. besides random graphic twitches. OH and he hasnt done any of the main line stuff and avoided Novac all together. So yeah, Id say avoid the above mentioned stuff, just meander around, screw off, and have fun with the game if you really want to play it. I had my first character lost to the DLC bug, But I just made a new character and kept on trucking and loving the hell out of this game so far. I have close to 45 save slots used too by the way. SAVE OFTEN! its very useful even if youre not trying to dodge bugs. It lets you have so many do overs if you dont like how some questline turned out and what not. Its not even that tiresome. Anyway, just my 2 cents.

Mind if i post this at the beginning of the Complete Bug/Glitch List? I'll give you credit and seeing how ppl still jump on there and are upset cause of the DLC bug this might save a little post space. That way ppl see at least a temporary fix til the patch is up.

well said

no i dont mind at all, i made this to help other fans, not to horde credit

good stuff man thanks for posting this

Glad to be of service, im continuing my tests so more will be posted as i discover it

Hey I just wanted to say that it's cool how you're spending so much time to help everyone out but I felt I needed to register and make an account to reply to your post. I experienced the content load glitch and am unable to play the game, however my game failure is happening in an almost exact opposite way that you have listed. I'm 45 hours in and only made it as far as Boulder City in the main story line. Also I run around a lot doing random faction quests and not one faction completely. I had my game saved on my HDD too but tried various combinations of disc/HDD play, clearing system cache, and dropping all inventory items but no combination works. One thing that I think is interesting after reading so many posts about this particular glitch is that I was actually able to pinpoint when my game became unplayable. I was in Vault 3 looking for some quest item for the BoS when I was directed to the Maintenance area. I realized after I left the Maintenance area that I killed a quest important person in there. I reloaded a couple saves back to discover the content load error. I found one that worked in the Maintenance area. I discovered that I can make any number of saves and loads within this wing of the Vault and have no error but once I left this area in the vault and loaded the next area I could not load any saves made. I tried for hours to see if it was the items I collected or the important NPC in there but could not get anything to work. From what i've read elsewhere I think that the two Average difficulty terminals I hacked may have something to do with the glitch but unfortunately my load takes me back to right after I hacked them.

It seemed like this post had some people who were really working hard to find a work-around for this game breaking glitch so I hope my experience helps.

How are you able to assert that it's not save game corruption?


Possibly, but if most people are encountering it after Come Fly With Me, there is either a trigger for the bug in that quest or one of the ones leading up to it, and people don't notice until after they've done Come Fly With Me. Narrows down where to look for the bug trigger a bit.


Since you don't give any real evidence, I'll disagree with this.
I was going for the hardcoe achievement and only did story line quests and the strip for the majority of the game (about 25 hours total), was probably on the strip within 10-12 hours. Any side quests done were just because they were easy and on the way or some part of them was needed for the main quest.
Skipped Come Fly With Me (and anything else that was in Novac) because of what was said on the forums. No save game bug encountered.
Not that this is proof of anything, but I don't see any real proof offered in your text yet either.

Good work on at least attempting to work something out though. At least someone is posting about trying to figure out the save game bug.

I did come fly with me on 2 diff characters and I never got the bug. Between these two characters I have around 65 hours of playtime. I only had one freeze during a loading screen which was in vault 3, but I had it coming because it was going sluggish. The xbox needs to be reset at least every 2 hours to mantain good load times and lower risk of freezes.

I also went to a different quest and once completed I went back to vault 34 and did the same things i did before but this time no crashing/dlc error.

Instead of getting the pulse gun for veronicas pers quest i did the one for the technology i think in vault 22 and solves that mess. I took that to the elder and went threw her quest to complate it so it was 'closed'
Then I got the sharecroppers quest before i went to 34. The other time I went to 34 but did not have the quest. It should not matter but forr me something did.

Whatever it is I got around it but probably lost 5 or 6 hours of gameplay for redoing stuff and doing it again a different way.

It's nice to be free roam but when these quests are conflicing because of so many cross factors between them or the NPCs, etc.

As far as the vaults go, the BoS isnt part of the glitch for vaults. I personally hit the save corruption glitch after about 5 hours, an shortly after novac. but when i restarted, i currently have the pad in novac, but i cleared out vault 34, 22, 3, and several others just for the sake of looting them (had all 3 quest items for the BoS when i came across that quest line) and have had no problems with that bug this runthrough. On another note, when they ask you for either of the 3 pieces of technology, if you have more than one already, it uses archamedes II no matter what. i had archemedes active, the pulse gun, and was trying to get the farming tech, but it wouldnt allow me to get it. instead, it turned in archemedes.

My evidence is that i was able to replicate the dlc error (cause it to happen) 5 different times at different points of the main story on the strip, however all of these happened at under 15 hrs played time.
Yes come fly with me is the most common place to get the bug, but not because of just the quest, its all the things you do that lead up to it as well.

and @PyroInsomniac , thank you, I have noticed alot of different bugs associated with vault 34, i created the DLC error their twice, both times were in relation to the terminals, but no errors specifically in the way you said, I will look into that today, and thank you very much for the well thought out reply, i like any input for this testing, since it seems the powers that be arent going to tell us anything

At this point it seems safe to say don't go in any vaults unless you have a quest to go there. That might clear up some issues from the look of things. Which pretty much ruins the spirit of the game (being able to never do any quests and just kill/explore.

Well said, sad as all hell, but well said

I've done a fair bit of testing/theorizing as well.

Vault 3 is the location that's problematic for me, as well. I wasn't able to hack the terminals (science skill too low) but I get consistently bad save games in Vault 3.

I don't think it's save game corruption, either. Not in the classic "mangled beyond the point of being salvageable" sense.

For one thing, the console doesn't flag...it...as... corrupt. Uhh...Hmm.