Fallout: New Vegas bugs

Add-on-specific bugs
For add-on-specific bugs please see the following pages.
 * Dead Money bugs
 * Honest Hearts bugs
 * Old World Blues bugs

General advice and notes

 * Save often and in different slots. Do not rely too much on autosave. A frequently overwritten autosave slot can easily become corrupted.
 * Removing the auto-save function in the settings menu will remove most of the save time/corruption issues as well as reducing travel time.
 * Make sure your computer meets, or exceeds the minimum system requirements. If any component of your computer falls below the minimum system requirements, do not report any bugs you may experience.
 * Installing the game can help greatly, cutting down load times and lessen glitches triggered by entering certain locations or interacting with some non-player characters. If you are experiencing game freezing and framerate drops, loading screens that last a minute or longer, or multiple crashes ensuing from the same action or location, installing the game can help with some of these issues. It may also help to clear your console cache (found under "memory > device options") which will then prompt you to re-download any patches issued on XBL when you next launch the game. Excess saves may cause this as well.

Using the console
On the PC, many non-player character, quest, and player-getting-stuck issues can be resolved through the use of console commands.

Crashing, freezing and other hardware- or software-related issues

 * Whenever the player character first loads into the game (normally from autosave) and tries to shoot, the game freezes. It does not matter which gun. Trying to load the game from a saved file occasionally works. It is possible this could be a hardware issue for certain graphics cards. In this glitch/bug, ATI Radeon HD 5700. The easiest way to quickly get back to the game is to use ctrl+alt+delete, start Task Manager, stop the process (FO:NV), and then restart the game.
 * Using alt+tab may crash the game.
 * A message that reads "This save game relies on downloadable content that is no longer available. Some objects may be no longer available. Continue loading?" may pop up. Even if the player selects the "Yes" option, the game will return to the main menu with a message reading "The storage device you selected is no longer available. Load canceled." This can happen even though no downloadable content has been downloaded and even if the Xbox has never been connected to Xbox LIVE. This issue appears to be caused at multiple points in the game. It is fixed in the 1.2.0.315 patch.
 * Equipping cowboy hats via mapped key sometimes causes the console to freeze (as of latest patch)
 * Trying to holster weapons seems to make some characters stick to the ground, and be immobile. Zooming and turning still works, but the player cannot pull out their gun. Dropping the weapon frees the player for a few moments, as does dropping anything out of the inventory, but the player sticks quickly after. Waiting and fast traveling doesn't work. The player also cannot fire any weapon, and switching weapons causes the bug to occur.
 * Resetting seems to fix this bug, and it only seems to happen after loading a save file, and then loading a second file. Erasing old saves and clearing the hard drive cache may fix the problem.
 * Excessive save games in memory may cause crashes.
 * Sometimes when accessing the world map in the Pip-Boy and leaving the console, the background will disappear. To fix this press R1 or L1.
 * The Pip-Boy at various times may have a poorly detailed or blurred texture due to graphics card related issues.
 * For ATI video card this is caused by settings in 'Catalyst Control Center (CCC)', or the popular ATI users tool Ray Adams ATI Tray Tools (ATT). With ATT you should go to 'tray icon RMB-click' > Direct 3D > Settings > and check your Texture Preference and MipMap Detail Level settings. If it's on High Performance / Performance you should try and change the state of the both pull-down menus to 'Quality' and accept changes. Check the CCC manual for similar settings.


 * DLC quests may not appear for Honest Hearts and Old World Blues when downloaded off the Xbox 360 menu together. Deleting files from the hard drive and redownloading does not solve the issue.
 * The only way to fix this is to repeatedly delete the DLC data and re-download it (up to 4 times). However, the DLC Dead Money may take a few extra minutes to load up into the game.
 * Sometimes, the Xbox will crash upon exiting the Hidden Valley bunker.
 * Slow framerate issues may occur. This is due to high memory usage and usually happens in places on map extremities or in locations where a lot of animation is occurring at one time. Creating a save point and re-booting the PS3 system will temporarily rectify this problem.
 * Crashes often when you near completion of the game.
 * Waiting 73 hours can fix this occasionally by resetting all cells except the one you are in.
 * Severe slowdowns occur on all platforms. Restarting your system may help.
 * Turning the Pip-Boy radio off and leaving it off seems to help quite a bit. Try it if nothing else seems to help.
 * Clearing the system cache by holding L2, R2, and square after pressing X for the system save warning, and continuing to hold them until you see the Fallout: New Vegas and press start dialogues disappear seems to help with areas that regularly lag when you enter them. However this requires either loading a save from a lagging area or fast traveling immediately to the problem area after loading. Tested on the Old Mormon Fort/Freeside and Cottonwood Cove.
 * The game freezes when repairing/wearing/unequipping the NCR bandoleer armor found in the tent next to Lieutenant Hayes' tent and in the Supply shack at Camp McCarran.
 * If one saves at the beginning of the game while editing your character the Level up system can crash.
 * At any time the game will freeze up and crash followed by a message box stating that required downloadable content is not present and then continuing to load will bring up another message saying selected save device is not present.
 * Equipping the sniper rifle may cause the game to slow down severely and most likely freeze. On the PS3 equipping the sniper rifle can cause the weapon hotkeys to stop functioning, and the game to crash shortly thereafter on attempts to sleep, save, enter a new area, or just walk around the map for a minute or so.
 * If the game has been installed to an Xbox 360 hard drive, there is a chance that the files will become corrupted. The game will crash extremely often with a notification saying that the disk is unreadable. This issue can be fixed by uninstalling (and reinstalling, if desired) the game to the hard drive. If this happens when Fallout: New Vegas wasn't installed, it is likely that the hard drive itself is at fault.
 * Entering Dead Sea's Barracks in Nelson may cause the game to freeze. This may have been caused by meeting Dead Sea in Nipton beforehand.
 * Occasionally, an enemy will turn invisible without Stealth Boy use, and when one targets them using V.A.T.S. the game will often crash or see through the floor to the gray background.
 * Sometimes changing the color of the interface can cause the game to crash or lock up. Keeping the interface Amber may help in avoiding this (on both the Pip-Boy and HUD).
 * Scrolling the list of saved games can cause the interface to lag or freeze and crash.
 * When you open a container, and before it goes to the menu, if your controller shuts off, the game freezes, even though the radio (If you turned it on) is still playing.
 * The game can crash when going up the stairs to the NCR tents in Bitter Springs. This can make any related quests there nearly impossible to complete. The rate of it crashing seems to be 50/50. Resetting the console does not seem to improve these odds.
 * The game crashes when you try to set or overview hotkey-ed slots (key 1-8) regardless of being in Pip-Boy view or actually playing. The glitch is often caused by the cowboy repeater and could be related with other hand-reloaded rifles.

Menu-, HUD-, inventory-, and radio-related bugs

 * Sometimes when trying to continue or load the game from the main menu, the game will begin loading, but stays loading forever. Slides will still change, and the roulette wheel will still spin, but the game never actually loads - tested up to 25 minutes.
 * An early sign that this will happen on PC is when the developer credits upon starting the game take longer than usual to skip. This can be avoided by quitting through the main menu and restarting the game.
 * This can be solved on Xbox 360 by clearing the cache on the hard drive and it should then allow you to load. Another option is loading an earlier save file, then reloading the intended save file.
 * For PS3 users, the only option when this occurs is to force close and restart the game.
 * Some songs play much more often than others (seems to only be radio stations with an announcer; Mojave Music radio appears to randomize correctly).
 * A noticeable distortion is present in Mr. New Vegas' speech when in Freeside or the New Vegas Strip, caused by the ambient sounds.
 * Radio New Vegas has dramatically different volume levels between the announcer and the music being played.

Physics engine glitches

 * Occasionally a corpse or item (or several) that is visible upon entering/exiting a room or building, may fall from a few feet above ground after loading. Some items are known to float after this effect.
 * If a number of small items are on a shelf or tabletop, taking one of them will cause all the others to move upward and then begin bobbing up and down, slightly, but perceptibly, as if they were floating in water.
 * If a bucket or other pot-like object is thrown into water and then taken out, it will perceive itself as still in water. When thrown on the floor it will splash, and if taken to a lower level of height and dropped, it will sink slowly, as if in water.

Graphics glitches

 * When crouched and holding a rifle while in first person mode, your arms will occasionally appear to be above your head as if the camera moved down your chest and arms did not follow. It can be solved by standing and crouching one or more times. Additionally, the gun seems to disappear altogether from view, even when holstered and redrawn. It can be solved sometimes by switching view to third person and back.
 * This glitch is fixed in patch patch 1.4.0.525.
 * Sometimes the players hand and equipped weapon will simply vanish from the screen as if it had been holstered but the player is still able to fire. The Pip-Boy also becomes invisible at the same time. Movement causes the players hand/weapon to reappear and disappear erratically. Quitting to the main menu and reloading usually solves this.
 * Occasionally, doors appear not to be present and instead you will see the horizon, although this doesn't actually affect the gameplay.
 * Sometimes when using a Stealth Boy, the character model will become completely invisible and will not reappear after the Stealth Boy has worn off.
 * After removing the head of a giant or evolved centaur, either by shooting it or using melee, the ground that the centaur is above can be seen through its neck, where the neck gore would be normally seen. Can be easily achieved by going to The Devil's Throat on the top right of the map.
 * When sneaking in first person view, the player sometimes is able to see his clothing but the clothing is transparent showing only certain parts of the item, usually around the neck area and most commonly happens with the bounty hunter duster
 * When in third person, if you zoom in with your current weapon using the L1 Button then switch to first person whist still holding L1 your gun will disappear from view when zooming in after that.
 * Fix - you need to simply un-equip and re-equip your weapon.
 * Very rarely, when waiting in the section of the Strip with the Lucky 38 and Gomorrah a Powder Ganger and Great Khans will randomly spawn.
 * Sometimes your hands will appear to be abnormally large. ** The easiest fix is to reload your game.
 * Sometimes the area will go very dark, a little darker than night, even when still daytime. When it does become night (via waiting) it becomes even darker to the point where you can't see, as well as when you enter a dark cave. Fast traveling or reloading saves does not fix. Restart system to fix.
 * Weapons used by non-player characters may be invisible to the player. They will fire and reload them as normal, but the weapon cannot be seen. Seems to happen mostly with Fiends.
 * Occasionally, everything on the screen will turn bright blue. The easiest way to fix this is to reload the last save that you made before the screen turned blue.
 * When entering an interior and leaving it again the sun glare effect is gone. This can be fixed by entering Freeside or quit the game and start up again.
 * The Legion flag above Nipton town hall will not show the faction's logo and instead, will rotate between several other textures, including branches, birds, the ground, and water.

Effect bug

 * Loss of perks effect, specifically loss of stat gain from six implants bought from Usanagi. Possibly loss of 10 Barter point. Unknown if there's any other loss of unseen (as shown on Pip-Boy) effects. After using numerous chems in a radiated environment, that lead to numerous effects line (as shown in EFF page in Status button), when the effect wore off, there's a loss of numerous stat gained during the course of game, as stated above. It's highly possible there's also a loss of other hidden unshown effects of perks. To repeat the bug: go to a radiated environment, like Vault 34, or Old nuke test site or Crashed Vertibird, use 20+ chems/mags/foods that led to numerous effect. Wait for it to wear off, then recheck your stat.

Custom button-mapping bugs

 * Using custom control-mappings can cause problems when attempting to activate or use objects, fire weapons, reload, etc.
 * Unload all your equipment into a container. When you pick it all up again you can once again use the D-pad.
 * If you re-map the quick ammo swap, default 2, to another key, such as 9, neither 2 nor 9 will swap your weapon's ammo. In addition, when attempting to map it back to 2, you'll get a message saying that key is not remappable. You may still press 'reset bindings' to fix it, but this has the side-effect of resetting any other changed bindings, as well.

Pip-Boy bugs

 * The Pip-Boy screen may increase in brightness to a point where you can't see anything on the screen. Turning on then off the Pip-Boy light or saving and loading can fix this.
 * In some instances when the player turns on their Pip-Boy's light, the entire sky may glare up, regardless if day or night.
 * When bringing the Pip-Boy screen up, the Pip-Boy moves partially off screen, occluding the view of the Pip-Boy screen. This can be fixed by equipping or unequipping a weapon.
 * Occasionally the damage threshold indicator (Ex: DT 10.0) in the top-right of the Pip-Boy screen will disappear (just the letters 'DT' and the value - all other parts of the screen are fine). Resetting the console, and reloading the save seems to fix it.
 * On the 'Stats' screen, certain stats are not accurately reflected. For example, the Courier has consumed water hundreds of time so far, yet 'water consumed' reads as zero. This also happens with 'weapons crafted', the Courier have made gas bombs, time bombs and all the spears in Dead Money and the total is still zero.
 * The Pip-Boy character texture can sometimes disappear and not enable to take it back.
 * While on the world map, and the dashboard button is pressed the background of the world map will vanish leaving only the map icons, this can be fixed by removing the Pip-Boy or switching from 'Map' to another screen.
 * After starting a new file, the Pip-Boy map may have all locations discovered on previous file marked when Pip-Boy was first received. Exiting Pip-Boy and re-entering fixes the map.
 * Occasionally, the Pip-Boy will not center vertically on the screen preventing you from seeing the menu options. Exiting and performing some other action (such as holstering your weapon) will sometimes fix it.
 * If you die while opening your Pip-Boy, your game will freeze and corrupt all your data.
 * Sometimes, after finishing a game with companions, when you start a new game the companions location will appear on your Pip-Boy map. They will appear in their initial location where you first find them in the game (unknown if this happens with all companions, but does with Raul, Rex, Cass, ED-E, and Boone).
 * Switching between the main Pip-Boy screens will become less responsive as you 'fill it with data'. e.g. discovering (and completing) more quests, collecting notes, etc.

Animation bugs

 * When unequipping a heavy weapon with a backpack attachment, sometimes the backpack will stay, even if the player is not using that weapon (viewed in 3rd person mode). Other weapons holstered on the back or with backpack attachments will clip through the glitched backpack.
 * Reload to a previous save not affected by this phenomenon, reset the game console (in case you auto-saved with the bugged backpack on) or change to another weapon while you have your weapon holstered. Keep doing this until the backpack disappears, or if you have another of the weapon in your possession, switch to it (the backpack of the minigun should cancel the one of the Gatling laser.
 * If "True Iron Sights" is disabled, many modded weapons when aimed will block the target reticule and obscure all view.
 * Sometimes your character will hold the gun above the screen if you're in first person. Switching from first person to third person and back will fix this bug; alternatively, you can access your Pip-Boy (fixed with latest patch).
 * Zooming in with guns equipped with the scope mod sometimes results in a black screen with a hack computer screen. If you exit the game completely, restart it and "load" a save game rather than "continue", the bug is cleared.
 * Zooming in and quicksaving the game and then loading the game will cause the zoomed-in view to overlay the first-person view, you will be able to move around normally but most of the screen will be covered.
 * Occasionally, some non-player characters' heads will turn completely upside down, being near their chest. This is extremely rare, but the most notable person to do this is Antony.
 * This bug can be solved by changing the screen texture settings in the pause menu.
 * When activating a computer console for use, the screen becomes blurry, rendering the terminals unusable, but you can hear the typing on the computer as if nothing is wrong. Players can still back out from the screen.
 * Numerous non-player characters will sit down at a dining table or empty desk and begin to type on a computer that isn't there. You can hear the keys and their fingers will move, but no computer will ever appear in front of them. Note that this has occurred in locations where a computer isn't present.
 * Sometimes after wearing heavy armor such as power armor, the holster and unholster animation for two-handed guns or energy weapons will remain the same no matter what you wear. This can be fixed by reloading the last save. Some NCR rangers may also suffer from this even if the Courier hasn't worn power armor.
 * Sometimes NPC's will be walking in place or standing on top of desks. This happens most often in crowded indoor environments, such as the Mojave Outpost HQ. Leaving and returning to the cell sometimes solves this problem temporarily.
 * Rarely when you give Craig Boone or Rose of Sharon Cassidy a modded automatic weapon (minigun or assault carbine) their arms will disappear and render outside of the playable area and be useless until the weapon is taken out of their inventory. A temporary fix would be giving them an unmodded version of said weapon.
 * Sometimes upon an enemy's death, its body will stretch out incredibly far.

Weapon bugs

 * Weapons that ignore damage threshold and damage resistance will not actually ignore DT/DR due to an engine bug.
 * Due to an engine bug, weapons firing non-hitscan projectiles with explosions, such as missiles, will only deal explosion damage and no impact damage.
 * If you throw mines too close to each other and then take one, any mines close to it will disappear and you will lose the other mine.
 * Weapons may freeze and refuse to fire. Going to the Pip-Boy and unequipping and then re-equip the weapon will fix this.
 * Sometimes a weapon will fire straight down from muzzle to the ground when fired in first person. It will still fire properly in third person. Reloading a game can sometimes fix this. Otherwise, exit New Vegas and reload the save.
 * Anything related to the hot-key functionality might cause the PS3 to hang, requiring a hard reset, including: using R2 to assign a weapon to the analog-pad hot-key from the Pip-Boy interface, using the D-pad to change weapons.
 * After reloading a pump-style or shotgun, the fire trigger may not work from 0 to 60 seconds after the reload. This also occurs with the cowboy repeater and lever-action shotgun. It may also affect more than the fire trigger. The Pip-Boy cannot be accessed, cannot aim, or search bodies and crates.
 * Do not let the ammunition in your gun run out, i.e., reload before it's absolutely required to fire another shot.
 * Performing a quick 360-degree spin or taking a step backwards, allows the weapon to be fired once again.
 * Hitting the fire key/mouse button won't fire the weapon while in this glitch, but fixes it quickly.
 * All guns you load rounds into individually such as the .357 magnum revolver, hunting shotgun, and cowboy repeater may not work. It happens with all reloads whether it's firing every shot, pressing reload button or switching ammunition types. All controls including the esc key will be locked out. The last thing you press before LMB (fire) will happen except if you press LMB twice.
 * Press tab then LMB to bring up the Pip-Boy, then press tab again to gain controls back. Beware having to reload any of these weapons in V.A.T.S., as you will stand doing nothing for a while.
 * When you have an upgraded, as well as a standard 9mm submachine gun, moving them in and out of a container might make the standard one disappear (it reappears upon removing the other one) or be "magically" repaired to full condition. Similar problems with plasma rifles found, this happens with many weapons on the PC while trading with companions. See also the bug list of 'Crashing, freezing and slowdowns' above: There seems to be a generic item bug which happens from time to time. Similar things can happen not only with weapons but with other items as well.
 * After finishing hacking/using a computer then attempting to zoom in with a scoped weapon, you will have a computer monitor display instead obstructing your view.
 * Revolver type pistols fired from the third person camera do not hit where aimed. Instead, they hit much higher, probably due to the fact that revolvers have a bigger kick and the weapon moves upward when fired therefore the bullet is set to leave a little to late and hit a lot higher than aimed. In the first person camera this bug does not manifest.
 * The + sign that indicates the weapon is modded may not show up when opening storage containers or trading like it normally should.
 * The + sign that indicates a weapon is modded may disappear when another weapon of the same type is traded.
 * Firing a missile launcher until it breaks with either HE or HV missiles equipped, and then switching to another weapon using the Pip-Boy will cause any remaining missiles to be loaded into the selected weapon. This weapon will now fire missiles instead of its normal ammunition. This works with almost all weapons tested, including melee and thrown. For example, instead of hunting shotgun firing 7 buckshot pellets at 10x7 DMG, it fires a spread of missiles at 24.3x7 DMG. This only costs 1 missile worth of ammunition.
 * Sometimes after completing the Old World Blues and Dead Money DLC, the Gauss rifle will sometimes either jam in V.A.T.S. and keep you in the firing position in real time indefinitely, or knock every one of your enemy's hit points down to one or two and other shots will not or will kill them until another weapon is equipped.
 * If you switch to hollow point rounds for the cowboy repeater and V.A.T.S., you will be frozen in V.A.T.S. and will not fire.
 * If loading a saved game from the main menu in which you have a re-loadable weapon equipped and drawn, the reload animation takes twice as long as normal. This can be solved by simply switching to another gun and then back again.
 * Trying to repair boxing tape can freeze the game.
 * Performing the glitch to obtain infinite ARCHIMEDES II Charges or using console commands to get them for the Euclids C-Finder will result in the weapon being able to fire but the beam will never come down and the targeting lasers will randomly show up nearby.
 * Sometimes you will lose a weapon or two when you exit a New Vegas casino. So don't bring weapons with you if you plan to gamble. This also affects any weapons held by companions.
 * Even if the player doesn't have the skill needed to hide their holdout weapons when they enter a casino, attempting to hide them will result in the weapons (knives, switchblades, Silenced .22 pistol, etc.) staying in your inventory even when they're supposedly being taken.

Barter system bugs

 * If a vendor's standing cap count via barter exceeds approximately 32,000 caps(likely 32,768 (2^15) or more), that vendor will no longer transfer caps back to the player when the player sells items to them. However, the vendor will continue to accumulate caps for items sold to the player. This upper limit count may not apply to vendors that provide repair services or have shared inventories, as caps accumulated in those cases are handled differently for some vendors(like Samuel Kerr). The map cell the vendor operates out of (not the vendor inventory) generally has to reset to fix this condition.
 * Vendors that offer repair service may track caps accumulated from repair services and item sales separately. Caps received via repair services for these vendors are assigned to accumulate as personal inventory, though still display in their store inventory. Caps accumulated for such vendors through their repair services cannot be exchanged for items bought from the player.
 * A vendor whose inventory contains quest related items will not reset. This is only sometimes alleviated when related quest conditions are met. Examples include, but not limited to Blake, Ralph, and the SCIU (of Old World Blues).
 * Do not at any point attempt to sell any faction armor that is currently equipped as it will result in you receiving the notice that the armor has been removed and you are no longer dressed as the said faction. You will be unable to select "A" to accept the message, if you do hit "A" it will simply sell or buy the next item in the list. When this happens, if you press the start button and then resume, you are then able to get rid of the notification.
 * The vendor's name is blank when the barter screen is first opened. If the category of the vendor's items is changed, when you cycle back to the vendor's name, it is now displayed.
 * Selling a modded weapon and then subsequently trying to buy back the weapon, will result in the purchasing of a different form of the weapon (if it is stocked).
 * Example: Trying to buy back an extended mag 10mm pistol while other 10mm pistols are present will result in the purchase of the unmodified weapons first. Purchasing all weapons did not solve this problem, as the modded weapon would not be transferred, though caps were lost
 * If the user abuses the infinite caps glitch with a vendor, the item the player is buying may duplicate in their, or the vendor's inventory. If the item duplicates in the players' inventory and the player is already carrying an item of that type, all the duplicates will not be listed. However, once the player drops or stores that item, the duplicates will appear.
 * When repeatedly buying items from vendors, the item the player is buying may simply disappear when the player accepts the trade. The player will still be charged for the purchase, but never receives the item.
 * When bartering with a traveling merchant, the barter system may freeze upon finalizing a transaction when purchasing one or more cards - this is either because you pressed a button before the system inserted the card to your deck (to avoid this wait a second after you hear one or two clicks before you press any buttons) or it is because you bought two of the same card at the same time. It is quite likely that this only occurs when trying to purchase a card that you already have one of within your inventory.
 * First time bartering with Alexander at 188 trading post or Vendortron at Gun Runners: save, quit to main menu, continue from lasted saved game will refresh the inventory (including 45-70), once you leave the area the bug will stop working, but if you continually go through the process you can get unlimited amounts of stuff. If you quit to the console's main menu and then "continue" from the games main menu, it will refresh even if you had left the area and returned.
 * When buying multiple ammunition boxes, the game only adds the amount listed for 1 box, a workaround would be to buy all the ammunition boxes, then sell all, but one back and exit the buy/sell screen. Then once the game registers the ammunition as being added, repeat as needed. DO NOT exit the buy/sell screen till you sell the ammunition boxes back as that will simply cause the game to only add the amount listed for 1 box.
 * The addiction and radiation treatment will begin, but the NPC doctor will have its AI released, meaning they will wander away and even engage others during the procedure. If there are still pending dialogue with the player, they will come back and engage the PC after that.

Leveling bugs

 * After completing a playthrough and starting a new one as the opposite sex (tested male to female), the Courier may not level up past level 1 despite gaining more than 200 XP. This can be fixed by starting a new playthrough as the same sex you were on your original playthrough. This may also occur if you pick a different race, but are the same sex as your original PC. It is not confirmed whether or not trying the old race fixes this.
 * When helping the Powder Gangers or agreeing to do the tutorial, but not finishing the whole quests will lead to being left at permanent level one even IF you change races when it asks you if you would like to rebuild your character before the Courier makes progress.
 * Changing race in a new playthrough does no longer prevent leveling up past level 1 in the new patch.
 * If you are killed just as you level up you may stay at your previous level and require the same amount of XP for the next level to progress.
 * Even with no DLC, a character may level up beyond 30.
 * If you save or auto-save after gaining enough experience to level up, but before assigning skill points or perks (due to being in combat or under "caution"), loading that save will cause you to skip the level you are advancing to and go to the next one. This causes you to miss out on the skipped level's skill points/perk.
 * There are many speech check challenges that can be repeated. Since successful speech checks award XP, this can be exploited to achieve unlimited XP. For example, if the courier asks Angela Williams about her opinion on Dr. Hildern, her response will prompt a 25 speech check. This action can be repeated, awarding around 40 XP every time.

Gameplay bugs

 * Workbenches may be unable to use schematics because it doesn't list what you can make.
 * When leaving the tutorial area flying, killed due to an explosion, you still get the option to rebuild your character. When you do so, the game freezes. If you choose the option to 'finish onward' the game continues to load your last save (like normally on death).
 * Sometimes in combat, an enemy will face the other way and fire at nothing, but the game will think the bullets are hitting you when they don't appear to, and you lose health.
 * Beams and bullets can shoot backwards out of an NPC gun.
 * Sometimes in combat, Missing in V.A.T.S. will cause grenades from grenade launchers to clip through you.
 * Dead Money poison gas carries over on save files if you save within the gas.
 * When performing various unarmed attacks, characters' vocal expressions (yells, grunts) are that of a female despite the character being chosen as a male. Perks, non-player character interaction, and the player character model are that of a male as well.
 * Companions and other non-player characters may randomly flee, and possibly never return to their original location.
 * Dropped items in The Hopeville missile silo bunker will sometimes seem to fall through the floor. The item dropped remains where it is although invisible.
 * Occasionally, after changing ammunition types in one of your guns, you will be unable to manually swap ammunition types from within the Pip-Boy. It is still possible to change types via the hotkey, but when selecting a new ammunition type in the ammunition menu you will get an empty-sounding click and the square indicating selection will refuse to move. Experienced with Lucky, the service rifle, and the varmint rifle.
 * Dropping the affected weapon and picking it back up appears to fix the issue.
 * Boxes or jars of ammunition primer or powder are useless and take up weight until dropped or stored in a container, and then picked up again, at which time the quantity of weightless ingredients is added to the inventory. This applies to most boxes and jars with a few exceptions, such as "ammunition box, Microfusion cell", which are correctly added as ammunition immediately. In hardcore mode, this 'bug' is actually a benefit; a box of 250 5.56mm surplus rounds weighs only 5 pounds as opposed to 250 individual 5.56 rounds, each weighing 0.03 pounds, totals up to 7.5 pounds.
 * If an enemy attacks someone that is Neutral to the player and the enemy, the Neutral non-player character becomes hostile to the player.
 * Purchasing the Strength implant does not increase Strength when at level 7.
 * Occasionally, clothing and armor is not properly unequipped, resulting in being attacked for no reason by friendly factions, independent of your reputation.
 * Try to remember which faction armors you had equipped before this happened and re-equip it. Example: If the NCR starts attacking for no reason, and you were dressed as a Legion some time before, try to re-equip the Legion armor and unequip it again. Make sure you receive the message that you are no longer dressed in Legion clothes. If you were wearing a Brotherhood armor before that caused this bug, only un-equipping a Brotherhood armor will fix it.
 * The above fix doesn't always work. In case your reputation is too negative, you'll have to use the console command.
 * Sometimes weapons do not properly hotkey when multiple items are being assigned.
 * Loading a save may change your current reputation with a faction.
 * Various wasteland critters often fall through the terrain. Occurs most often over high, rocky, and uneven ground. Also occasionally occurs at Lake Mead with lakelurks. This can result in creatures with half their bodies exposed and half their bodies submerged, making them destructible but unable to move or attack the player.
 * When a new game is started, sometimes vendors and traders stock will never change and you won't be able to buy new things through the entire game.
 * On Xbox 360, clear the system cache by going to Storage Settings > Memory > Press Y while Hard Drive is highlighted > Clear System Cache. After you've done this, all vendors will refresh their inventory.
 * Go up to the vendor that you want to refresh their stock, then create a save, exit to main menu, then continue from the save you just created. (Note: Only the vendors stock that you saved by will be replenished)
 * Corpses will often become either immovable or unlootable, which also happened within Fallout 3. Occasionally, revisiting the body will result in it being able to be looted, but at other times it still will be set in and you won't be able to interact with it.
 * Goo and ash piles will permanently sustain. If a respawnable NPC is turned into an goo or ash pile the goo/ash pile will share their inventory after respawning. If turned into goo/ash again it will spawn another pile duplicating them infinitely. When looting an ash/goo pile while sneaking, the piles show as a pickpocket attempt on all NPC's that can be pickpocketed, allowing you to pickpocket/loot NPC's at a safe distance. This glitch also occurs when revisiting an area where energy weapons were used previously. Ash and Goo piles can be 'looted', stripping a dead non-player character several feet away.
 * Occasionally a glitch will occur causing the doorman of a casino to not interact with you or even disappear, causing you to be frozen.
 * If you take advantage of your companion's inventory to store weapons while at a casino and then enter an area where your weapons are confiscated, the weapons stored in your companion's inventory may not be returned once you leave these areas.
 * It is possible to break into the cashier area and steal your weapons back. There should be two lockers that have the items, but this will turn the casino hostile.
 * Sometimes after auto-saving and then turning off the console (sometimes without even turning off the console) the right stick can become stuck. It can still be used to look around on the map screen in your Pip-Boy.
 * Entering V.A.T.S. and performing cinematic kills has been known to unstick the controller.
 * If you kill everyone in a casino on the strip (such as the Gomorrah), the game may freeze when you walk into it again because there is no person to take your weapons.
 * During a cinematic kill while not in V.A.T.S., occasionally, the game will remain in such a slow-motion state following the kill. This can continue for anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes.
 * Enemies can move through the player during hand-to-hand combat, and will sometimes be thrown away several meters in a random direction faster than the non-player character can move. This can result in targeting problems if the player attempts to use V.A.T.S. in melee or situations where an enemy can strike at you from a longer range than their weapon seems to allow.
 * Some versions of the Xbox 360 experience problems while attempting to hack a computer terminal. The screen blurs out but the hacking mini-game does not initiate. This seems to only occur with the terminals with the non-foldout keyboard.
 * This bug seems to only happen if you change the default button mapping of X on the PS3 or B on the Xbox 360 to another button. Restoring your button mapping to default will allow hacking the stationary (not foldout keyboard) terminals or a bypass is by holding the 'activate' button down, this will bring up the hacking screen enabling you to hack. Keep it held down till you complete the hack, release, then re-enter the terminal.
 * Sometimes when equipping a weapon mod to a weapon, the mod (scope, extended magazine, etc.) may not show up on the weapon but the effect will still be applied to the weapon.
 * Occasionally, when attempting to fast travel, the game may tell you that fast travel is currently unavailable from your location.
 * The fix is the same for the 'Custom button-mapping bugs' for Xbox 360: unload all of your inventory weapons (in worst cases - all equip-able items) to a container or drop them and after picking them up try to re-set your hotkeys. If this doesn't work add Save > Exit game > Start game > Load - and then pick up your items.
 * If you have more than 2 different save games, it will automatically stop you from leveling up (2 completely different saves, not more than 2 of the same save game).
 * Reloading from a very early save (this may not work) or restarting the game may fix this.
 * After convincing the Great Khans not to form an alliance with Caesar and completing Aba Daba Honeymoon, every once in a while your character may disappear entirely and a random Great Khan will appear in the area. Your character will re-appear after talking to someone.
 * The day of the week is set to Sunday when loading a save just after starting up the game regardless of the date in that save. This causes vendors' inventories not to reset unless three game days pass without exiting the game entirely.
 * When hostile non-player characters are sneak-killed (feral ghouls, Vipers, etc.) you are given good Karma, but when they are killed without sneaking there is no Karma gained or lost.
 * Sometimes while walking up rocky terrain, the player character may randomly fall through and will not be able to get out.
 * Moving while in third person view can negate the chances of this happening.
 * This can be fixed by fast traveling to any location. However, if this occurred with hostiles nearby, the only solution is to load an earlier save as they can still detect the player character inside the terrain.
 * PC users can open the console and use to get out.
 * If you move any Fallout: New Vegas file that has a companion following onto a memory unit, then you insert the memory unit into an Xbox 360 without Xbox Live, and no title updates on either the Xbox or the memory unit, the current companion will keep entering conversation if they get too close to the player while following. This was only tested with Boone.
 * While aiming at a target and shooting the target outside of V.A.T.S. the bullets will either not shoot but your ammo count goes down or the bullets do nothing.
 * Occasionally, items picked up can become unsellable to vendors permanently. This occurs on acquisition and other triggers (likely repair). This does not affect the item's use, crafting, or whether or not it shows up when opening boxes, only store inventories.
 * When running occasionally the player will run very quickly even with the weapon equipped.
 * This can be fixed by saving and loading that file.
 * If the player character decides to flee from a hostile, usually a creature, and loses them due to a boundary restriction on that hostile, the players [HIDDEN] status becomes [CAUTION] as usual but will stay that way for a considerable time in the surrounding area, when approaching non-hostile NPC's they will react as if a hostile is close by, fleeing from the Courier.
 * To fix this, continue your venture until the status disappears or fast travel to another location.
 * Upon loading a player in the tutorial area, limbs may become permanently crippled with no recourse. (i.e., seeing a doctor, sleeping in normal mode, applying stimpaks, doctors bags or hydra will not fix the affected limb/limbs)
 * One can make their player character appear as if they were melted by a plasma weapon. Using the ammo switch exploit to load an AOE ammunition type (i.e. Mini Nuke - Big Kid) into a plasma weapon. Then by sneaking and firing at an NPC, the cinematic kill cam will play, during which the player shoots at a wall to kill themselves. Upon reloading, the player character's joints will no longer be rigid upon death.
 * One very common glitch encountered is having the Courier get stuck in/on an object so that they can't move or leave.
 * If the player character is close enough to a chair, stool, or other sittable objects, sitting in the object and then getting up should free the Courier.
 * Since loading a game gives the player a slight brief boost forward, a save/load sequence can often be used to free the Courier. Move as far forward as possible in the direction you want to escape, then save. While reloading the game attempt to jump and move forward at the same time.
 * PC players can usually free themselves with console commands. Specifically, open the console with the ~ or ` key, type to enable moving through objects, close the console and have the Courier walk free, then open the console and use  again to turn this mode off. You should then save and relaunch the game so that achievements will not be disabled.
 * When playing the game, for uncertain reasons, your entire field of vision can become permanently blurred, without having any head injuries at all. The blurring is absolute and total, not fading in and out of focus in cycles like when you have a crippled head. There appears to be no way of fixing this bug, turning the Pip-Boy light on and off, sleeping, fast traveling, getting killed, and reloading the game and rebooting the system several times do not fix the problem. Perhaps getting a crippled head may make a difference, but more likely the cycles of blurriness would not even be apparent as your vision is already at maximum opacity.
 * This can be fixed by going to Guardian Peak, wandering around for a minute, and using the Pip-Boy a couple of times. It may be necessary to enter the cave in order to fix the problem.
 * If you kill an NPC and the death is shown in cinematic form, then kill another NPC and the death is also shown with cinematic presentation, the first NPC's nametag may replace the second NPC's tag after death.

PC only bugs
Stuttering, crashing, freezing, and slow-down issues are often hardware- and/or software-related.
 * A common bug is a slowdown when opening containers or loading new areas, looting or searching corpses. The cause of this slowdown is due to third party graphic software. Uninstalling software such as ASUS SmartDoctor, ASUS Gamer OSD or FRAPS will resolve this issue.
 * Entering the Steam overlay menu, exiting to the Windows home screen and then entering back into the game again will result in a pause menu bug where the player character can fully move with the menu still on and the world will be in a paused state. This can be exploited to move past enemies for short distances but areas will not properly load with the menu still on, and moving longer distances will crash the game.
 * Certain mods may cause meshes to fail to load, resulting in a large red diamond with an exclamation point.

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