Fallout 3 bugs

Add-on specific
For add-on specific bugs, please see the following pages:


 * Operation: Anchorage bugs
 * The Pitt bugs
 * Broken Steel bugs
 * Point Lookout bugs
 * Mothership Zeta bugs

General advice and notes

 * Make sure your game is patched to the latest official patch (1.7.0.3). If your game is not up-to-date, do not report any bugs you may experience.
 * Save often and in different slots. Do not rely too much on autosave. A frequently overwritten autosave slot can become corrupted.
 * If you are playing on the PC, 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.

Mods

 * The Vault does not cover information concerning third-party mods for Fallout 3.
 * If you have any mods installed, do not report any bugs you may experience, even if it seems to you that your issue is not mod-related. Please visit the Bethesda mod forums for information.

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

Crashing, freezing and other hardware- or software-related issues
Stuttering, crashing, freezing, and slow-down issues are often hardware- and/or software-related. Please visit the Bethesda Fallout 3 hardware forums for information regarding these issues. In particular, read throught the stickied threads at the top of the forum pages.

General solutions

 * Leave and re-enter the area.
 * Load a save from before the glitch occurred.
 * Exit the game, restart the game, and load a save from before the glitch occurred.
 * PC users may be able to fix some issues by using console commands.

Flying creatures and items

 * Deathclaws and Protectrons frequently experience a physics engine glitch which sends them hurtling through the air. They can go quite far.
 * The disabled Protectrons in Big Town, in particular, are often subject to this glitch. This can cause a portion of the quest "Big Trouble In Big Town" to become undoable.
 * Jumping onto the Rivet City bridge when it is not in final position can cause the player character to be thrown into the air.

NPCs' body parts stretching

 * NPC's can become stretched out like chewing gum. Targeting limbs appears to target pieces of them that are smeared. Can be associated with incorrect one-hit-kills but the bodies remain alive and shooting, even to the point of the game thinking they are still moving around. VATS registers on the "dead" body, but the HUD indicator moves around (backed up by the crosshairs registering red and the voice of the actor also eminating from the indicator.) Occasionally it happens to live NPCs which can begin jittering and shooting off into the sky, however they are like a surreal 3-D kaleidoscope, rapidly changing shapes.

The player character is stuck
There are places in the gameworld where the player character can become stuck - in the landscape, behind furniture, etc. The following are commonly known places where the player character can become stuck.
 * My Megaton House - between the bed and the wall.

NPCs are stuck

 * NPCs occassionally experience pathing issues.
 * NPCs may continue to run up against an obstacle rather than finding a way around.
 * NPCs may get hung up on rocks or other low obstacles. NPCs cannot jump, so sometimes this is problematic.
 * Upon fast-traveling, NPCs may spawn inside rocks, behind walls, or in other inaccessable areas.

Commonly stuck NPCs include:
 * Mr. Crowley
 * Scribe Rothchild
 * Liberty Prime
 * Fawkes

Floating in the air
Due to clipping and pathing issues, NPCs, creatures and items will sometimes appear to float in the air. Following are some common instances:
 * Dogmeat exhibits this behavior often when using stairs.
 * Super mutant behemoths, due to their large size, often exhibit floating behavior.

Falling out of the map
NPCs and the player character may occassionally fall through the map or into a wall or other object. Following are some commonly known places where this is likely to happen.
 * Vault 92 - overseer's office. Walk along the wall behind and to the right of his desk, you will clip through it and fall into the hallway below his desk. From there, you can go through the door into a locked room in the Sound Testing chamber. There are some useful items in this room, but there is unfortunately no way to get back, since the door ahead of you is jammed, and the hallway behind you is still covered by the overseer's desk.
 * If you revisit Vault 87 following completion of the main quest mission (accessing it via the Reactor Chamber), then open the vault door from the inside, there is no rendered exterior and you are confronted with a void.
 * Grayditch.
 * Bridges.
 * Craterside Supply.
 * In Seward Square, walk northeast behind the Capitol Building, past a spot where Talon Mercs and Super Mutants are in a firefight. You will come upon a set of buildings that are low-poly distant-land models with low-res textures. You cancontinue walking presumably indefinitely on completely flat land once you pass these buildings.

Clipping
"Clipping" is the term for objects passing through one another. Clipping can lead to the flying creatures and items, the falling out of the map and the stuck glitches. Items with clipping issues may not be visible.

Armor and clothing
Some pieces of armor and clothing exhibit clipping when worn in conjunction with each other.

Weapons

 * Sometimes when the player gives a large weapon to a follower, then the follower walks into a mine it can cause the weapon to be stuck through their bodies but still shoot as if they are still holding it in their hands.
 * Sometimes NPCs get stuck on path while advancing toward deployed Frag Mines then instantly appear as though they teleported through it's triggering area. Additionally, Frag Mines have also been observed warping nearby enemies onto the Mine.

Creatures and items
Creatures, items and NPCs sometimes spawn partially inside a surface. This can cause them to jitter, vibrate, or make noise. As a result, items sometimes cannot be picked up or moved. Common instances of this glitch follow.
 * Disabled Protectrons in the Robco Facility.
 * Certain weighted chain traps start spontaneously shaking, probably caused by the level not loading correctly. The heavy weight connected to the chain seems to float in mid-air while the chain violently shakes.
 * Protectron bot corpses outside the National Guard Depot do some bad jittering and falling if fast traveling to the location later, or exiting the Depot and returning back outside.

Heads spinning around
Sometimes NPCs' heads spin around and upside-down.

Multiple skin tones on NPCs
Sometimes NPCs' various body parts are of different ethnicities.

Upside-down gun
NPCs sometimes weild, fire and/or holster their gun upside-down.
 * In the case of followers, sometimes manipulating their inventory (e.g. giving them a stimpak) will fix it.

Crashing and freezing
Crashes and freezes may happen occassionally to anyone. Crashes and freezes are only notable when they are repeatable (e.g. they happen under the same set of circumstances often). If the crash only occurs on one particular save, then the save itself is most likely the source of the problem. Please verify that crashes and freezes are repeatable on more than one savegame before reporting.

Following are some reported circumstances under which crashing and freezing occurred.
 * After blowing up Megaton, attempting to reenter Tenpenny Tower results in a crash with exception 0xC0000005; a memory access violation.
 * Birth scene: Right after Doctor Li leaves and your Mother says "We did it", the game becomes idle; only the E button works making the baby cry.
 * Approaching the Jefferson Memorial.
 * When you get the reward from Burke on Tenpenny Tower.
 * When you get the necrophage mission.
 * When using V.A.T.S.
 * In Shalebridge Hill when you attempt to pick up any of the 5.56 ammo magazines in the Ant Queen's chamber.
 * When receiving your first Pipboy.
 * When skipping NPC dialogue by clicking through.
 * When bringing up the PipBoy.

Scribe Rothchild

 * Rothchild disappears and cannot be found. The quest marker puts him north of Springvale School and east of Big Town.
 * Rothchild can get stuck, making the main quest line impossible to continue. This bug is possibly caused by Rothchild clipping into a wall he is leaning against when you speak to him about the vault.
 * A solution to this problem is to find Vault 87 yourself. When you get to the Vault the Missions will complete.
 * You can wait until night when Rothchild will be sleeping in his bed, and then you can talk to him about the vault.

Mr. Crowley

 * Crowley may get stuck on his route to or from Fort Constantine.

Liberty Prime

 * Liberty Prime can get stuck on the left side of the highway when heading to install the G.E.C.K. Going forward and fighting some enclave soldiers can fix this problem.

Hannibal Hamlin

 * After getting the slaves to the Lincoln Memorial, a stuttering glitch happens to the NPC leader Hannibal Hamlin. Usually because of the interruption of his speech at the monument to his fellow slaves (talking to him during the middle of his talk). Keeps repeating "Bye" over and over again, while the slave NPC's stand clapping, forever.

Cherry

 * After bringing Cherry to Rivet City to free her from Dukov, Cherry will stay on the bridge outside of the city. In a subsequent fast travel to Rivet City, she respawned in the same spot, except the bridge was no longer extended so she immediately fell to her death.

Ahzrukhal

 * Ahzrukhal and Charon become stuck and cannot interact after informing Charon about his contract. Seems to be related to when Ahzrukhal starts work, he will walk over to the bar and Charon will just stand by his bed.

Leo Stahl

 * Leo Stahl may teleport up to where Stockholm is in Megaton, permanently.

Mysterious Stranger

 * The Mysterious Stranger may permanently die during one of his appearances.

Susie Mack

 * Susie Mack's Test results sometimes skips completely and she walks out of the room.

Megaton residents missing or dead
Any NPC in Megaton may fall off the various high places in town and die or disappear from the town. Please seeRecovering_missing_NPC_in_Fallout_3 for more details.
 * They may fall somewhere where you cannot find their bodies.
 * They may be lost in the "void," the normally not playable area that exists if you climb over the Megaton walls.
 * They may have teleported to Springvale.

Lip-synch not working

 * NPC's mouth moves during dialogue but nothing is said. Subtitles at the bottom of the screen "fast forward".
 * If you ask Bill Seward about Lincoln, the dialogue is missing speech and mouth animation.

NPCs referring to the player character by the wrong gender
Common occurrences follow:
 * The dialogue for the first Enclave soldier who greets you in Raven Rock was not recorded twice; he refers to you as a "he" if you are playing a female character.

Common issues with all followers

 * Duplicate weapons may appear in followers' inventories. Removing one weapon makes the duplicates disappear.
 * With multiple followers, sometimes they may not all follow you into a new area. If you save while this is the case, the save may be corrupted.
 * Followers may become inexplicably hostile toward other NPCs.

Dogmeat

 * If you left Dogmeat at home (Megaton or Tenpenny Tower) while escorting Doctor Li and her team to the evacuation point & Taft Tunnel, Dogmeat makes an appearance, behind a door. He won't hurt you, even be friendly in your radar, but you wont be able to talk to him. And he will attack Doctor_Li and her team.
 * Dogmeat rocks quickly forward and backward as though his physics are off when standing idle. This seems to be triggered when loading a save where Dogmeat is set to the "Stay" command.

Quest items remain in inventory permanently
Any quest item may get stuck permanently in your inventory. However, even though the item displays a weight on the pipboy screen, that weight does not count toward your total carry weight.

Waters of Life

 * When completing the quest The Waters of Life, when you need to get to the control center, the door won't open, and you cannot exit the building.

Big Trouble in Big Town

 * When presented with the option to defend the town by repairing the damaged robots, the robots will not be in the town, due to the flying creatures and items glitch. This renders this section of the quest undoable.
 * If you rescue Red, but never find Shorty and go on to complete the quest, you can find him later. Once you rescue him, he won't get up. He will stay tied up and talk to you as if he was rescued a long time ago.

The Power of the Atom

 * Just before Mr. Burke shoots Lucas Simms, if the player fires on Burke, Burkee will begin to point back and forth between the player and Simms with his gun, eventually shooting in a random direction until he is killed. Simms will walk to the exit of the building and appear dead on the other side of the door.
 * If you report to Simms about Mr. Burke while Burke is not in the saloon, Simms will go to the saloon and then leave. When he finds Mr. Burke, the conversation will skip and Simms will be killed for no reason.

Wasteland Survival Guide

 * The quest gets stuck if Pinkerton gives you the proof twice about Rivet City's true history. He does this if you ask more about Doctor Li after completing that part. Moira just wants to hear from Rivet city, and you can't talk about other quests.

Tranquility Lane

 * If you have the military school brochure with you and choose to activate the fail-safe while the quest objective "Make Timmy Cry" is running, it may get marked completed, even if you haven't even talked to Timmy.

Temple of the Union

 * Hannibal Hamlin and the rest of the slaves sometimes take a long long time to appear in the Mall after you have cleared the Lincoln Memorial of slavers.

Those!

 * The quest doesn't work if the player visits Marigold station and clears it of ants before starting. When prompted to return, the scientist will not be present and the queen ant unreachable. This may also be a result of approaching Grayditch from the wrong direction, skipping the initial trigger.
 * After killing the guardian ants but not killing the queen ant in "Those!" quest, after talking to the Doctor, he walks to the Queen Ant and then disappears.

Blood Ties

 * When knocking on the doors of one of the two locked houses, you get stuck on the "..." message. Possibly caused by entering the West's house before knocking on the doors of the other two houses.
 * When returning to Arefu you receive a message saying "Quest failed. You are now hostile with the residents of Arefu."
 * After meeting with Ian West in Arefu when you have just saved him, all the other people of Arefu may turned hostile towards you.

Growing Up Fast

 * At 10th Birthday, upon being given the PipBoy, you are unable to move but still able to look around. The scene around you progresses.
 * In the birthday scene, Officer Gomez may become unresponsive. When Butch attacks you, nobody intervenes, so you continually get pummeled. Butch's attack will continue even as you head downstairs to receive your BB gun.

Escape!

 * After choosing not to kill the Overseer, Amata walks out of the room where she has been sitting and abuses the player for killing her father. A quick check of the room where he was reveals it's now empty, and the Overseer is nowhere to be found. All further dialogue with Amata runs as if the player had killed the Overseer.

Galaxy News Radio

 * The player may find themselves locked out of the GNR building.

The Waters of Life

 * The player may find themselves locked out of the Jefferson Memorial building.

Evergreen Mills

 * Sometimes the behemoth may also disappear and appear only when you will destroy all nearby generators.
 * Sometimes, upon freeing slaves, they may free the Behemoth as well. Unsure if it is scripted this way.

Vault 87

 * Sometimes the centaurs will be able to leave their locked cells and attack the player. This happens more often while accompanied by companion characters.

Regulator HQ

 * Death Claw appearing inside when entering for first time.
 * Sonora Cruz at Regulator HQ sometimes flees into the wilderness after a giant scorpion or Yao Guai attack.

Level up error

 * A rare level-up bug leaves the player with a negative number of skill points to allot, jamming the game in place at the skill point distribution page.

PipBoy glitches

 * PipBoy moves up a little in the screen each time you view it. Repeatedly viewing and hiding PipBoy will eventually render the whole PipBoy screen invisible. Keep opening and closing eventually will reset to normal.
 * Using your PipBoy to repair many items at once may cause the PipBoy screen to become distorted and the text to dissapper. Upon going to the start menu the text will not appear or be distorted aswell.

Common user errors

 * Pushing buttons too fast when in menus or in dialogue may cause the game to freeze.

Radio bugs

 * When you enter new areas, radio may be glitched because of loading. It repeats a part of the song/speak until the radio returns to normal.
 * Radio songs and news skip occasionally skipping to another song or another piece of news.
 * Freezing for 10 seconds or so whenever the radio tracks loop.

Loading and saving bugs

 * A game may load with the player stuck in firing mode.

Infinite ears and fingers

 * With the Lawbringer or Contract Killer perk, you can knock an unkillable NPC (e.g. Shrapnel or one of the children) unconscious as many times as you like. They will spawn an ear or finger each time they are knocked unconscious.

Infinte XP

 * With the Mister Sandman perk, you can knock a sleeping unkillable NPC unconscious as many times as you like. You get experience for the "kill" each time.
 * Knock Knock of Little Lamplight has an easy Speech Challenge that does not get cleared. Can repeat for infinite experience.
 * Listen to Bittercup rant about how she has been with all of the men in Big Town. In this rant you find out specifically about what happened with her and Pappy. End the conversation with her and talk to Pappy. A couple lines in you'll have a speech option that will never go away and can continue to gain 5 XP experience each success.

Free repair

 * When selling and buying leather armor to/from merchants (tested with Crow and Moira Brown), armor's repair level isn't uniform. Further, selling and re-buying the same suit of leather armor will yield a fully-repaired suit! This is thus partially a bug and partially an exploit, as the player can obtain a 100% repaired suit of leather armor (DR 24!) at level 2 for less than 100 caps.

Crashing and other hardware- or software-related issues
Stuttering, crashing, freezing, and slow-down issues are often hardware- and/or software-related. Please visit the Bethesda forums for information regarding these issues. In particular, read throught the stickied threads at the top of the forum page. Common pc-only crashes and freezes occur under the following circumstances:
 * When alt-tabbing while in fullscreen mode.

NPC scripting glitch and pc-only fix

 * On some save games (this might show up in the beginning of the game and will never end) NPCs will stop conversations with each other before they should, or the player might not get his/her controls back if a script does the "disableplayercontrols" command and a conversation ends. This has occurred at least in Vault 101 in a conversation with Dad and Oasis with the conversation between the two arguing inhabitants. Another problem that seems to be related (appears along with the aforementioned bug) is that NPCs may walk through a load door to a new cell and not appear on the other side.
 * Both these problems are seemingly fixed by going into the G.E.C.K., loading Fallout3.esm, and clicking the "recompile all scripts" button and saving a plugin with this change, loading it right after Fallout3.esm.
 * The v1.7 patch still requires this fix.
 * A workaround has been found: save the game if NPCs stop talking suddenly, and then reload that save. They'll continue their conversation for at least one response. Repeat the process as many times as needed to get the conversation to finish.

Radio bugs

 * The radio can cause audio and video stuttering.

Key-binding bugs

 * Rebinding The Pip-Boy key only rebinds the key to open, the closing key is still default.
 * Wait function does not work when button is rebound to "w" key.

Common user errors

 * Player stuck unable to move, HUD also missing. Possibly due to bumping the "~",which opens the console to input cheats, directly above the TAB. If you're sure the console is not open, pressing the tilde (~) key and typing "enableplayercontrols" will fix this.
 * Sometimes you get stuck in "slow walking mode". CAPS LOCK, which locks down "run", is probably enabled (and possibly toggled when you Alt-Tab out of the program if the light is mismatched), so try hitting the key again.
 * Having a game controller plugged into the computer can cause control problems, even when the controller is disabled in the .ini file. Physically disconnect the controller from computer.