Fallout 3 bugs

Every game has its share of bugs and glitches, and Fallout 3 isn't an exception.

See also: Fallout 3 patches.

[ submit a glitch ]

Waters of Life

 * When completing the Waters of Life quest, when you need to get to the control center, the door won't open...you cannot exit the game, or reload from an existing saved point because of auto save.. and you cannot exit the building, restart another game.


 * This might be caused by bringing companions with you during this quest. Try leaving them somewhere else (like your house at Megaton) before attempting this quest.:


 * 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, it won't hurt you, even be friendly in your radar, but you wont be able to talk with it, and will attack Doctor_Li and her team,  the only options are:


 * - Kill Dogmeat and move on.
 * - Reload a saved point from before entering the Jefferson Memorial with your father and Doctor Li's Team.


 * Killing Dogmeat as an option due the solution to the bug explain above, can cause another bug. If you accidentally hit a member of Doctor Li's team, while attempting kill Dogmeat, all of them will be fleeing and wont follow you, in addition, Doctor Li might ask you to spare some Stimpaks to heal a member of her team but after you agree, you can talk to her because she'll be fleeing.
 * - The best option is to reload a saved point from before entering the Jefferson Memorial.
 * - Another option is to ignore them and continue killing anything in your way, and after you make it to the Wasteland, most of the team will be there with you, this means some of the team members will be dead, (this doesn't affect the game story since Doctor Li can not die).

Big Trouble in Big Town

 * During the Big Trouble in Big Town quest, after bringing Red and Shorty back to Big Town, when presented with the option to defend the town by repairing the damaged robots, the game can sometimes glitch and the robots will not be in the town. A reload to an earlier save does NOT correct this issue.
 * If you rescue Red but never find Shorty, and go on to complete the quest, you can find him later, and he cannot be rescued. 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.
 * Related to the previous bug: The robots actually flew through the air and died at my feet as I entered the town for the first time. As such, I didn't know it was a bug that would affect anything...I thought they were just enemy robots.
 * In the PC version, the following instructions enables you to fix the problem manually until Bethesda releases a fix: press ~ to open the console, then the following in. After each line, hit enter. PRID 2d934 kill resurrect disable enable PRID 2c11b kill resurrect disable enable After each enable command the console should write something about bot being set to Patrol. After exiting the console, you should now see both bots. Even though they are up and running, you still need to go up to each of them, select them with E, and choose repair bot. See this thread for more information.
 * If choosing the option to teach the residents to shoot, if a resident accidentally shoots Charon, he will kill the resident, thus causing the remaining residents to become hostile towards him.

The Power of the Atom

 * Just before Mr. Burke shoots Lucas Simms in the back after you report Burke's plan to blow up Megaton, if the player fires upon Burke he 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 after this, and upon leaving will appear dead on the other side of the door.
 * After receiving the quest "The Power of the Atom". I got information about a junkie in town, with my medical skill. I see the junkie, and get him to turn over his drugs with my speech skill. Suddenly I have a option for the quest "The Power of the Atom". He says: Loot Leo Stahl's stash at the water treatment plant for mentats. I go to the water treatment plant and loot the mentats from the desk. The optional quest is still there and aren't any there. NOTE: Confirmed. This happened to me in exactly the same way.(I also had this happen to me. I think it's because Leo's stash never really goes away (it replenishes every few days), I'm not sure if that is actually a bug, as it sure is nice for the player to have a replenishing supply of random drugs you can come back to when you stop by in town. Still, it would be best if somehow the game's quest AI could be made to shade out that optional aspect of the quest did complete, since well, I became confused and thought I had done something wrong for quite a while, having missed the stash.


 * If you rig the bomb and then meet Burke in Tenpenny Tower; save it before activating the detonator. If you try to quicksave after the explosion the game may crash and will damage any savegame made after the explosion.
 * If you report to Simms about Mr. Burke while he's not in the saloon, Simms still go to the saloon but then he leaves due to Mr. Burke is not in the saloon. When he's found Mr. Burke, the conversation will skip and Simms will be killed for no reason.

Following in His Footsteps

 * Colin Moriarty disappears. When the quest is enabled to find the druggie, but I went off to complete other quests first. When I finally got around to completing it, the PipBoy showed a marker on Megaton and then to Springvale Elementary. He wasn't in either place.
 * See Colin_Moriarty.
 * Even if you haven't gotten the quest to do so from Colin Moriarty, the game only gives such dialogue options resembling as if the player had done so (i.e. the game assumed I'd gotten the quest already, and my dialogue options didn't reflect the fact that I'd not even met Moriarty yet, so why would I want to get caps for a drug debt from her?).
 * Getting the password for Moriarty's computer, and then finding out about "dad" that way removes the possibility of going through this quest, even if you talk to Silver first about it, and tell her that you will clear things up with Moriarty. Player should still should have the option of being able to go through the dialogue options to go on the Kill-her-for-information-for-caps quest for the sake of XP if desired.
 * Visiting Silver in Springvale first before even going to Megaton caused some issues with the conversation i had with Moriarty. For some reason he wouldn't even offer me the chance to do the mini mission with Silver even if i had under 100 caps (which apparently is the only circumstance he offers this to you). At that point i had 700 caps so before i spoke to him i left all my caps in a nearby container and then spoke to Moriarty, although this still didn't prompt the relevant conversation threads.

Wasteland Survival Guide

 * Wasteland Survival Guide quest gets stuck if Pinkerton gives you the proof again 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 return other quests.
 * Wasteland Survival Guide quest where you place an observer unit inside a Mirelurk nest in Anchorage Memorial still gives you full benefits of completing the (optional) quest where you do not kill any of the mirelurks even if you killed them all before accepting the quest.

Galaxy News Radio

 * Three Dog disappears after the quest "Galaxy News Radio". (sometimes can be found in a bed in the GNR building.)

Tranquility Lane

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

Those!

 * Those! 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 escapes.

Blood Ties

 * Blood Ties quest is unable to be completed. When knocking on the doors of one of the two locked houses, you get stuck on the "..." message and have to reload a saved game. Possibly caused by entering the West's house before knocking on the 2 doors.


 * Quest is unable to be completed, when returning to Arefu you receive a message saying "Quest failed, you are now hostile with the residents of Arefu reloading a saved game may fix this bug.

Vault 101

 * 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, your Dad says nothing, nor leaves and nothing happens.
 * Unable to proceed past the book when you are a baby. Your Dad's leg clips into the door. (Not sure if this is a bug, as the baby can open/close the door to "unhinge" the Father.
 * At 10th Birthday, upon being given the PipBoy, you are unable to move, but still able to look around. So you sit there looking around.  Eventually your father leaves.... and the guy goes to the bar, and you still sit there. Just, sitting.
 * At 10th Birthday I was able to "leave" the bar upstairs by just walking through the door into "empty space". After falling through the whole map I got respawned in the living room and was able to walk through the whole vault, encountering radroaches and other characters. Being unable to attack or other stuff in this stage of game, I had to reload. This happened after Alt-Tabbing to Desktop and back, but I don't know if this caused the glitch.
 * When you are trying to escape from Vault 101, at some point you find Amata being interrogated by her father, if you chose earlier for her to keep the gun, the cop will try to catch her when she stands up, and the cop and Amata will move very oddly, unnatural. (maybe was just that scene? the AI took wrong decisions? Or it is "scripted" that way?)
 * In the birthday scene, Officer Gomez may become unresponsive (Trying to talk to him does nothing but he's still in an idle animation. On my save, he was also about 40cm behind the bar stool where he should be, sitting in mid air). When Butch attacks you, nobody intervenes, so you continually get pummeled until you get your BB Gun or die.
 * If you decide to start the game over during the G.O.A.T. test, then when you get to the baby part the camera will only be able to turn in one direction, sometimes spinning very fast when pressing in the same direction as the one way turn.
 * 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, when the player had left him alive.
 * After opening the vault door and killing the guards that subsequently attack you, if you follow Amata back through the door and turn back around to leave she can somehow teleport to the tunnel outside of the vault door. (Needs confirmation on PC)

Rivet City

 * Jumping on the upcoming bridge when it is not in final position causes throwing into the air and falling onto the bridge, causing death.

Megaton

 * Can get stuck in Player's house in Megaton and not escape. (See below on way to fix this).
 * Walter is dead for no reason at ground level in Megaton with a lead pipe through his gut.
 * Walter in Megaton sometimes falls to his death off one of the bridges in the town. You can resurrect him by entering the console, typing "prid 00003b59", hitting enter, then typing "resurrect" and hitting enter. Finally, type "enable", hit enter, then type "moveto player" and hit enter.  When you exit the console he should appear next to you.
 * After speaking with Silver in Springvale, you cannot find Moriarty anywhere *note* may be on balcony area outside of the bar. Pipboy may show wrong place in world map near the river. If you get this bug do these steps on the PC: To summon Moriarty you have to do this: 1) Go to his bar 2) Go into console mode (press ~ ) 3) Write and confirm: prid 00003b3c (that is Moriarty's object ID) 4) now you have selected Moriarty and can move him to any item in the world, so you can put him right next to bar stool, so write down this: moveto 00003f61 5) He should be here and act normally
 * After blowing up Megaton, attempting to reenter Tenpenny Tower results in a crash with exception 0xC0000005; a memory access violation.
 * Upon saving Lucy's brother from the family and returning to Arefu, any attempt to enter the houses results in the game freezing and possibly wiping all save games. NOTE: I completed said quest and nothing happened to me, so probably it's not a general issue.
 * Sometimes, in the Xbox 360 version of the game, the player can fall through the ground of the craterside store for no apparent reason, which traps them falling outside the map, the console must be restarted to rectify this glitch. NOTE: Moira will fall through the floor first, but the mercenary leaning against the wall is unaffected.

Grayditch

 * Game Objects (Player, ants corpses, etc.) will twitch/fall through the surface of the map near the Marigold station entrance and ramp area. This is basically the "bobbing" bug of the player in Oblivion. Gibs however, can result in the game displaying their anticipated paths, textures, trails far into the sky. I think in the case of gibs the models somehow become "confused" as to where they are supposed to go.

Arefu

 * After meeting with Ian West in Arefu when i had just saved him, all the other people of Arefu turned hostile towards me. The crazy wife was lying dead on the street and I don't think i had killed her. Before that happened, i saw a barrel falling out of the sky. (Confirmed. Not the only user to have the inhabitants of Arefu go ballistic after a random barrel strikes down one of the citizens: http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=898197)
 * The old favourite when fast traveling to Arefu, a Rad scorp/robot/anything actually is attacking Lucas Simms, you help out, the entire village is hostile. After leaving for 2 weeks (In game time) I returned, the villagers had gone, one was left, she was still hostile.
 * When fast traveling to Arefu on some occasions deathclaws will come through the highway that arefu is built on and continue flying through the air until it is out of sight. They can however be targeted in vats until out of range. (unconfirmed)

Evergreen Mills

 * When fighting the Super Mutant Behemoth in Evergreen Mills if you stand on the walkway so you can throw a Frag Grenade at it, the Mutant may start to rise in the air and get stuck there, appear next to you and other strange things (if it gets stuck in the air, when it falls down it dies giving you a great advantage).


 * 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.

National Guard Depot

 * Protectron bot corpses outside the Depot do some bad jittering and falling if fast traveling to the location later, or exiting the Depot and returning back outside.

Jefferson Memorial

 * Sometimes while approaching the Jefferson Memorial the game freezes. Clearing cache does not work to fix the issue.
 * Attempt to exit the Jefferson Memorial during the "Scientific Pursuits" mission crashes the game to desktop. This bug appears to be triggered by completing the main quest missions out of order and perhaps related to the bug which crashes the game when getting within a specific distance of the Jefferson Memorial.
 * Jefferson Memorial Crash - While traveling or approaching the Jefferson memorial during main quest the game crashes. (This only occurred after speaking to Dr. Li; walked past Jefferson Memorial without trouble on the way into Rivet City.}

Vault 92

 * If you go to the overseer's office and 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.
 * Sometimes the Overseer's terminal won't have an option to open the secret passage under his desk like it should.

Vault 87

 * 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.


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

Regulator HQ
You can summon Sonora Cruz back by entering the console, typing "prid 0006f212", hitting enter, then typing "moveto player". When you exit the console she should appear next to you.
 * 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.

If Sonora Cruz flees after a Giant Scorpion or Yao Guai attack, she will leave the building and run into the wilderness. Since she cannot be killed, you can get her back, as she does not disappear either. If you search the wilderness in the vicinity of the HQ you should find her. The easiest way to get her back is to knock her unconcious, then drag her body back to the HQ, when you get her in front of the door and she wakes up, she will go inside. However, this will cause all the other Regulators to become hostile to you and they will have to be killed. This is an excellent option for players on the PS3 or 360, who do not have console access. (Confirmed on PS3)

Temple of the Union

 * If you ask Bill Seward about Lincoln, the dialogue is missing speech and mouth animation.

Tenpenny Tower

 * The game may crash when you get the reward from Burke on Tenpenny Tower (after the bomb explosion).
 * The game may crash when you get the necrophage mission.
 * While standing in the lone wanderers suite a Paint Gun seemingly appeared out of nowhere and fell to the floor. When picked it up and it disappeared from my inventory. Didn't cause the game to crash or anything. It was just really strange.
 * While Tenpenny is still sitting in his chair next to the detenator for power othe atom i used a mesematron on him and it caused him to glitch. His hands became the size of deathclaw hands but he could still shoot his gun

RobCo Facility

 * You may see some robots lying down, frozen in the air.
 * There may be graphic glitches where the robots are stuck bouncing "in" the floor making loud clanking sounds, and even dragging them won't reset their position.
 * Using V.A.T.S. on the Mole Rats may freeze the game.

Shalebridge Hill

 * The game will crash when you attempt to pick up any of the 5.56 ammo magazines in the Ant Queen's chamber

Museum of Technology

 * Trying to leave the security office upstairs results in repeatedly being pushed back, can't leave the room. Might be a result of picking up the Nikola Tesla and You book in the back corner.

Fort Bannister

 * Sometimes when leaving the fort (no matter which door)a Deathclaw will block the door from outside, I still can leave, but will get stuck outside between door and Deathclaw which I cannot target.

Smith Casey's Garage

 * On some occasions when fast traveling to this location, the game will glitch, causing a sentry bot, 3 robobrains, and a Yao Guai to spawn. Thirty seconds after they all die (not counted if in menu) the game will crash. This ocurred on the 360, and each time the save is reloaded the same happens. Only by running away from the robots can the player avoid this. (This happened to me as well, I walked 5 steps away, they all blew up, but the Yao Guai lived. I killed it and the game was fine. (Also on the 360.))

NPC Specific

 * When giving Charon a Shishkebab, after about 1 week in the game there is 2 Shishkebabs. When one is removed, both disappear from his inventory. [confirmed on Xbox 360]
 * This can happen with any follower and most weapons.
 * Scribe Rothchild disappears and cannot be found. The quest marker puts him north of Springvale School and east of Big Town.
 * Scribe Rothchild can get stuck, making the main quest line impossible to continue. Can't be fixed by traveling elsewhere, pushing the character, or making him unconscious. This bug is possibly caused by Rothchild leaning to a wall in his room 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 and you can go back and knock Rothchild stupid.
 * PC: Fixable by entering console (~), clicking Rothchild, typing "disable" and after that "enable".
 * If you have a save game before talking to Rothchild and he is already stuck beside his bed: you can WAIT until night - then Rothchild is suddenly sleeping in his bed and then you can talk to him about the vault.
 * Make Rothchild unconscious and drag him in front of the orange map.
 * "Dogmeat" will randomly attack friendly NPCs.
 * Eulogy Jones in Paradise Falls, as well as other characters that are in the same building may vanish. If any other character is scripted to engage with any of these characters, they will enter the building and then remain stationary permanently. The only fix is to reload a save from before every character in Eulogy Jones' building vanishes.
 * The giant robot "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. (Save immediately when you see liberty prime walking for the first time to avoid this bug.)
 * Liberty Prime gets stuck and does not progress forward, making it impossible to finish the quest.
 * Can be fixed by waiting for an extended amount of time with the WAIT function.
 * PC: Liberty Prime can be nudged by using the noclip cheat until he no longer glitches. To enable or disable noclip, press the tilde '~' key and enter the command "tcl".) This may also be caused by the remaining soldiers of the Lyon's Pride being left behind - gathering them up will also solve this problem.
 * 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 "lecture" 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. Only fix is to fast travel away from the area.
 * 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 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 may occasionally 'teleport' up to where Stockholm is in Megaton, permanently. The only way to fix this is by loading an earlier save or by using the console to move him.
 * Firing upon Fawkes with a gatling laser while he is using one may occasionally cause the projectiles to stop showing. This can be fixed by resetting the game or console.
 * Sometimes when the player gives a large weapon to a follower, then the follower walks into a mine it can casue the weapon to be stuck through their bodies but still shoot as if they are still holding it in their hands

Beneficial glitches

 * Knock Knock of Little Lamplight has an easy Speech Challenge that does not get cleared. Can repeat for infinite experience.
 * Vera Weatherly of Rivet City has the ability to "Gossip" with you, she can gossip quite a bit, this means that every time you pass you speech challenge you get Exp. Isn't Infinite, but if you want/need quick exp, go see her.

General Bugs

 * When traveling to Paradise Falls there was a line connecting the character to one of the attacking slaves. V.A.T.S didn't work properly.
 * It is possible to get "stuck" between rocks with no way of escaping (jumping, crouching, etc.) User can fast travel to escape (if no enemies are near by.) The wasteland could really use some environmental management out here! (I encountered this bug while in combat. After bringing up the Pip-Boy and dropping a gun, I immediately mashed "Y" to jump as I put the Pip-Boy away, which threw me out from between the rocks I was lodged in.)
 * If you get "stuck" between rocks or in the mist of fallen debris there is another way to get out: Save the game, then reload that save game, while the save game is loading mash "Y" (or what ever you have changed jump to) while mashing "Y" also try holding either forward or backwards. If it doesn't work holding it Forwards, try holding Backwards. This should get out unstuck and able to play on. NOTE: This also works with getting stuck on Railings, Desks.. Etc Etc (Example: Read the next Dot-Point)
 * It is possible to get "stuck" in "your" home at Megaton between the bed and the wall with no way of escaping (jumping, crouching, etc.) The user can NOT fast travel to escape.
 * It is possible to get "stuck" in "your" home at Megaton by sleeping and having a big sized companion. The user can NOT fast travel to escape, but can dismiss/kill the companion to escape.
 * To fix these problems on the PC, open the developer console (tilde, or `) and type tcl. When you are unstuck, type tcl into the console again.
 * If you have the Lawbringer or Contract Killer perk and you knock someone unconscious over and over again they will keep getting ears in their inventory,which you can pickpocket from them. (example: Shrapnel at Rivet City).
 * In some places, such as the Deathclaw Sanctuary, it is actually possible to become stuck inside of a large boulder. Though it's not likely to happen by accident.
 * When stuck, if you toss a grenade at your feet the resulting explosion can occasionally jar you loose.
 * When you pass between the rooms, radio may be glitched because of loading. It repeats a part of the song/speak until the radio returns to normal. (codec related latency?)
 * Using the Mister Sandman perk on some children while they're asleep leads to unlimited experience. You get the experience, but the children can't be killed so it's possible to do it repeatedly.
 * Radio songs and news skip occasionally skipping to another song or another piece of news
 * Companions being stuck in the wall or outside of game
 * Sometime when you go through a door they won't come with you through it no matter how long you wait. I found that some areas they cannot go through, But if you try to force them through (with the console) they will appear outside of the game if you're in a hall or corridor or a tunnel.(the only way to fix this is by going to the back through the door or going to a non-quest area.
 * Corpses and gibs can actually "fall out" of the maps. (Mirelurks in tunnels, ant gibs in Grayditch)
 * Items and other objects can also do it, but this is rare.
 * In some maps, this is more of a problem than others, see the bugs for the "Grayditch" location.
 * In Megaton, (also experienced in Minefield) when reloading a game the Player Character got stuck in looped attacks, without buttons being pressed, resulting in a shot being fired or melee attack, when exiting the Pip-boy or out of an ammo box This is related to firing while loading a new zone, reloading saves will continue to exhibit this behavior. Closing and re-opening the game will fix this
 * (Move if placed wrong) After alt-tabbing the menu was playable, meaning you can walk around with the different options on the side and the "Fallout 3" text to the left somewhere. To get rid of this press ESC.
 * Jefferson Memorial Freeze - While traveling or approaching the Jefferson memorial during main quest game freezes.
 * Visiting the Jefferson Memorial building, the player may find themselves permanently locked in/out of the building during the main quest the Waters of Life, new objectives drain the intake pipes begins.
 * While at the National Archives during the "Stealing Independence" quest, if you choose for Sydney to join you, she will sometimes get stuck and run against a wall forever. Even pushing her out of the way doesn't work.
 * 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.  Fast traveling and reboot do not fix it.  Only loading an earlier save will correct the problem.
 * After visiting the GNR building, the player may find themselves permanently locked in/out of the building.
 * Speech Errors - NPC's mouth moves during dialogue but nothing is said. Script/subtitles at the bottom of the screen "fast forward". Reloading previous saved games DOES NOT fix error. Restarting seems to be the solution.
 * Megaton NPCs dead for no reason - Possible death from falling from a height. Walter and Lucy West can die this way.
 * When heading to Vault 87 through Murder Pass (after you retrieve G.E.C.K and get caught by enclave) the Vault 87 vault door opens and there is simply the end of the map, a gray nothingness, walk through it and you end up back in the confinement chambers where you rescue the Supermutant.
 * Pretty early in the game travel to Sewer Waystation. In that location "Galaxy News Radio" is heard even though Three Dog has not been met yet nor has the antenna been fixed.
 * This is not a bug. GNR will still transmit, but it is not intelligible beyond the confines of The DC Metro Area.  Sewer Waystation is likely within the limited range of the station, pre-quest.
 * Clover disappears from where you tell her to wait for you after you finish a quest (get captured by the enclave for the G.E.C.K)
 * When attempting to recruit Dogmeat for the first time in the Scrapyard, can talk to Dogmeat but he didn't follow, tell Dogmeat to go get ammo and wait by Vault 101 but Dogmeat simply stood there and did absolutely nothing.
 * Citizens of Big Town will all be dead, after clearing the Mutants and saving the two from Germantown Police HQ, the security robot was still active and "guarding".
 * Lyons' Pride will attack without being provoked after taking down the Super Mutant Behemoth in front of Galaxy News Radio.
 * 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.
 * Fawkes and Cross both follow you. Simply get Fawkes first, then go to the Citadel and find Cross; ask her to follow you and she will.  After a while, she will end up dead for no reason.  This happened after re-entering Vault 87; Cross is frozen on the ground and you can search her body.  However, the game shows "Talk Star Paladin Cross" under your crosshairs.  After a few days, receive the follower message indicating that she has died.
 * At the birthday scene, the door in the back opens up after some dialogue, and if you go through, you will be warped to another part of the vault, with no way back to the birthday scene.
 * After looting a decapitated body and taking the hat from the person, the head still wore the hat. (This is true for any body that has lost a limb. Removal of clothing from the corpse does not affect detached appendages. This does not lead to sleeveless business suits, sadly.)
 * Disarming traps (tripwire, pressure plate) and then quicksaving and quickloading lets you "activate" the traps again but nothing happens.
 * Fast traveling may cause some NPCs to become stuck in inaccessible places, such as Fawkes becoming stuck inside the Enclave barriers at Project Purity. Fast traveling again, or waiting an extended period of time may fix this problem.
 * If people start to flee, they will be read as hostile to the player. This is normally harmless, but should you have a follower they will fire upon the NPC. This means that killing one person in a town will most likely result in the deaths of everyone else if your character is powerful. I advise sniping someone from the town gates, or just leaving your followers outside.
 * The dead bodies of decapitated humans (possibly ghouls?) will begin to spaz about, squirm on the floor, and jump into the air. Nicknamed "Break-Dancing corpses".
 * Ash piles and goo piles never disappear. What's more, they stay linked to their actor, which is not really a problem, unless actor is alive and friendly. In this case, when you try to loot it, you will be actually pickpocketing her/him/it, which she/he/it might not take too kindly with consequences that follow (just turned Outcasts hostile, back to quick save).
 * NPC's (usually dead ones) 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 NPC's which can "Break Dance" like before, shooting off into the sky, however they are like a surreal 3-D kaleidescope, rapidly changing shapes.
 * Sometimes even if no one there you will still in caution phase when sneaking.

NPC glitches
Confirmed, I saw Red from Big Town out near the Republic of Dave?
 * Sometimes the NPCs will go off the track of their movement and wander around the wasteland. This is usually caused by going back and forth through two areas which will load them in a different spot. Or attacking them in combat and leaving the area or having them chase you out of the area.

Feral Ghoul Reavers in the Presidential Metro have a tendency to spaz out. Killing them with a headshot, especially a melting critical from a plasma weapon during this action, causes them to launch straight for about 40-50 feet.

I've seen Garza sleeping in the Super Mutant camp near Rivet City. SpellChecker 21:53, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


 * On some save games (this might randomly show up in the beginning of the game and will never end) NPCs will randomly stop conversations between 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.

Sniper Issues

 * It was previously stated that sniper shots simply passed through the target at long ranges. This is not true; the problem is that the bullet passes way over the crosshair (not noticeable on closer range or V.A.T.S.). On a 37 inch TV (360 version) I need to raise my aim about 1.5cm when sniping on long range. This bug makes it extremely difficult to snipe, but it's doable with a lot of practice.
 * This issue may also exist for the Scoped Gauss Rifle.
 * In certain instances, the shot might even definitively make contact (with such confirmations as 'Critical hit on Raider' or 'Sneak attack critical on Super Mutant' appearing in the corner) and yet no damage is done to the target or its weapon (in cases in which the shot hits their weapon, of course). When this happens, the target often gets a limb crippled, despite not having lost any HP. It is not uncommon to connect with a headshot, only to have the target alerted and crippled, yet not take any damage.
 * The above issue is also true with the Backwater Rifle (Point Lookout) or possibly other weapons, with both V.A.T.S. and free-aim attacks.
 * You may have hit the enemy on their weapon, causing it to to become broken. (Not a glitch, attacking a target's weapon will damage/break it, depending on the remaining weapon health and your attack damage. You can do this to force disarm an opponent.)

NPCs only half-dead
Sometimes followers or other NPCs will kill an enemy and continue to attack after the enemy dies forever. The "disable" command won't work on the "half-dead" enemy. Their inventory cannot be accessed, and the player will just get the regular "cannot do this" sound and nothing will happen when activated. Other NPC enemies may fall into this state, but NPCs won't continue to attack these enemies after death, and if the player has the Cannibal perk, eating the enemy will make their inventory accessible afterwards. Cannibal perk-players won't be able to access the enemy's inventory by choosing "Search" from the dialog box before devouring them, though.

No Damage from Guns

 * During a fight (more prevalent in large battles), the player may notice that none of the bullets from his gun are causing any damage to his foe and seem to go right through him/her/it. The issue is more common with the Minigun and situations where multiple hostiles are firing at the player at once. Even the "kill" console command will not kill the enemy; the only way to neutralize them is to use the "disable" command, which makes getting their items impossible.

Technical problems

 * Freezing for 10 seconds or so whenever the radio tracks loop. Does not do it every time, but most of the time. It is always after a track on the radio finishes. (Not a codec, fdshow, or pagefile issue)
 * Crash on Vista x64 with K-Lite codecs. Problem in FLVsplitter.dll. Uninstalling codecs helps
 * Vertical Sync may force an unsupported refresh rate for some monitors, resulting in no display. Disabling v-sync may correct this issue.
 * When launching the game a 'Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Runtime Error - C:/Program Files/Bethesda Softworks/Fallout 3/Fallout3.exe - The application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.' error pops out. Pressing any key exits the game.
 * When reloading a saved game, your character will have nothing in his/her inventory, just access to Enclave Radio and Galaxy News Radio.
 * At 10th Birthday, upon being given PipBoy, unable to move, but able to look around. So you sit there looking around. Eventually your father leaves.... and the guy goes to the bar, and you still sit there. :Solution: This can be fixed by going to Control Panel->Sound and Audio Devices. Under Speaker Settings click Advanced. Under the Performance Tab lower the acceleration tab to "Basic acceleration" or lower and it should fix it. Enjoy! :If that doesn't work, typing enableplayercontrols in the console forces the game to let you move around. Doesn't fix any of the sound issues though.
 * Not responding when launching the game on XP
 * Crash when launching the game or soon after gameplay starts on Vista x64 - Program has stopped working message. Note that updating video drivers tends to fix this, however the newer nVidia 180.84 and 181.20 also have been reported with this problem, so you may need to downgrade to 180.48 until nVidia resolves this problem.
 * No games saved when clicking "save". Possibly related to having a roaming user profile. Check if your saves are located in your save game folder. If they are, start game and scroll down to the bottom of your save game list, and your saves should be there.
 * Severe drop in FPS at random times while playing in the wastes. Reloading a different save or minimizing/restoring the game usually fixes it. Lowering texture resolution to medium or small will also lighten this problem
 * Crash to desktop without a send/don't send error report.
 * Crash to desktop if Anti-Aliasing is turned on, usually when tab is pressed to bring up the Pip-Boy, but sometimes just on the loading screen. Turning AA off solves this issue for some.
 * Crash to desktop when tab is pressed to bring up the Pip-Boy
 * Crash when "getignorecrime" is entered into console.
 * Crash to desktop on exit. (Also present for some Oblivion users.)
 * Crash when "New Game" is pressed in the main menu (related to ffdshow - adding fallout3.exe to the exception list in the Audio Decoder Configuration apparently fixes this, but usually doesn't work.).
 * Crashing and corrupting top save to be back at beginning of game.
 * Crash when "Play" is pressed in the launcher splash screen (Discuss specific issues/solutions on Talk:Fallout_3_bugs).
 * APPCRASH with faulting module Cinemasteraudio.dll. Removing Roxio software, uninstalling Fallout3, then reinstalling Fallout3 appears to fix this.  First encountered issue in the bar, later saves also had issue.  The fddshow method above may be an alternative to this.
 * Tilde (~) not working to open console. Going into Device Manager Device Manager->"Human Interface Devices"->"Microsoft eHome Infrared Transceiver"->'Update Driver Software'->'Browse my computer for driver software"->'Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer'->'Infrared HID Device'->'Ok'->'Close' (Note: same fix works for TOEE) Once the driver has been changed, it can be changed back.  Somehow changing the driver frees the tilde (~) mapping.  Note: Infrared receivers are one of many possible incompatibilities/problems.
 * Crash on loading screen when trying to load saved game.
 * Crashes happen more frequently the longer the game is played, resulting in a "log in and crash straight back out" effect after only an hour or so of game time.
 * Crash with error "APPCRASH Fault Module Name:	d3d9.dll" - Try this: since this is DirectX related, try Start->Run dxdiag and run the diagnostic tests.
 * Disk unable to be read, viewed or otherwise seen as media on some DVD drives such as a Sony DRU-720A. (If you are experiencing this, you could try defragmenting your drive before installing, or install to a new hard drive.)
 * VATS - severe drop in FPS for some users when entering VATS. Disabling anti-aliasing in the game launcher may fix this(This is the memory leak being addressed.)
 * VATS - freezes the game for a few seconds when activated. The same happens with the PipBoy. (settings: HDR, medium textures, full actor, object and item fade distance, 800x600; also, switching AA on does nothing, texture edges are still "steppy")
 * Mouse lag and strange acceleration. Force vsync off in your graphics Control panel to fix.
 * Due to an error in installing, certain sound effects (like gun shots/reloading and monster sounds) do not play.
 * Drop in FPS after playing for an extended period of time. Restarting the game fixes this. Lowering the texture resolution to medium or even small will also help
 * Rebinding The Pip-Boy key only rebinds the key to open, the closing key is still default. NOTE: As a workaround, since the three categories Stats/Items/Data of your Pip-Boy are also hardwired to the F1-F3 keys (this is unrebindable, not shown in the in-game >controls >action mapping menu and NOT mentioned in the game manual at all), you can use those instead of needing 2 different other keys for opening / closing the PB.
 * Some key bindings are dropped (very rarely) after loading a saved game.
 * Wait function does not work when button is rebound to "w" key.
 * Sometimes when firing full auto or pistols too quickly causes sounds of weapons to be silent for a few shots. (Sounds very similar to the "radio glitch" mentioned under general bugs.
 * Streaks, flickers, and graphical corruption on full screen with Vista and SLI enabled. Running in Windowed mode solves the problem. (Try adjusting your monitors refresh rate, I'm not sure if you have to adjust both your graphics cards to the same refresh rate since you are using SLI, but you may.
 * Turning on radio causes graphics to stutter, possible solution: turn down the graphics a bit, if your graphics are walking on the edge, throwing in the sound might be just too much for a few seconds, and cause the stutter. (Hmm, are you possibly using an onboard soundcard and an onboard graphics card? If you have a PCI/etc. connectable soundcard or graphics card, try that, I imagine that would be less taxing on your motherboard.
 * On some configurations, no 16/9 or 16/10 resolutions are available in setup.
 * Can't exit vault 101 - game crash. Loading imported save does not help - game crash after walking anywhere.
 * Suddenly unable to play holotapes. Reverting to a previously saved game seems to fix it.
 * Music on the PipBoy crackles and pops, while the DJs are coming in crystal clear. Is fixed by installed K-Lite codec pack, opening FFDshow and moving the DirectShow slider all the way to the left. *Note a properly functioning radio will have a slight underlying hiss the farther away you are from the station. This is not to be confused with the crackling/popping which is a symptom of broken codecs. (An alternative to the K-Lite/FFDshow solution is to install a single DirectShow filter MadFilter.ax. It can be found at sourceforge.net/projects/maddxshow )
 * Defeated enemies weapons sometimes spontaneously disappear from their inventories, leaving only the ammo behind. Loading an earlier quicksave didn't help, but restarting the game and loading the very same quicksave again did fix this.
 * Pressing Tab does not exit Pip-Boy when in the Items->Misc->Keys submenu.
 * After playing for a long time, textures start to be loaded at very low resolution. Restarting the game resolves this.
 * Raiders spawn inside the stone bridge ramp between Wilhelm's Wharf and The Citadel. Raiders can shoot out from inside the solid walls.
 * Bad Z-sort of transparent hair texture when Grandma Sparkle is wearing goggles.
 * In VATS, at certain zoom levels, it won't highlight any areas on the target until you either select a new target with the left or right arrows, or unless you move the cursor to a far edge of the screen and back again.
 * If an Xbox 360 USB controller is plugged in, and if "Enable Xbox 360 Controller" is set to "Off" in the controls menu, key bindings in-game will still show as the controller. (e.g. In the HUD, instead of displaying "Use E)" which is really the keystroke you would use if the controller option was set to off, instead when your crosshair is over an item, it'll show up as "Use A)" as if it were still using the controller.) Unplugging the controller will remedy the bug. You can also go to control settings and set "Enable Xbox 360 Controller" to on, and then off again to fix this, but you will have to do this every time you restart the game.
 * In the Inventory screen, when interacting with the various boxes and containers of the game world, it's not possible to scroll the item highlight cursor up/down with the arrow keys. When you try this, all you get is an unhealthy "flicker" between items as if the cursor is stuck somehow. NOTE: This only happens when you still have the mouse pointer hovering over the list, i.e. it's not a bug at all.
 * Sometimes when user plays with an Xbox 360 Wireless controller, the game disables it and user must press on Xbox guide button in order to re-enable it.
 * In the wasteland, if user looks at the mountains, the geometry flickers even with Ultra settings.
 * When walking in the wilderness it is possible to have your feet seemingly stuck in the ground, or walking in mud, and jumping only makes a tiny jump. This followed by warping back to earlier positions and finally a crash.
 * Jumping key is very unresponsive at times, i.e. sometimes my character jumps when I press it and sometimes not. This is especially annoying when you want to jump from one building to another or across an irradiated body of water. Note 1: This may be caused by encumbrance. Note 2: Nope, it also happens with empty pockets and is more likely related to being on uneven terrain. (Yes, I noticed this as soon as I got to Megaton! I would jump from balcony to balcony and the outer rails don't respond to jumps. I figured it was from my low agility of 1, but the map surfaces just aren't made very well it would seem.
 * Scrolling with mousewheel in Pipboy 3000 causes fatal crash, monitor turns off and you have to reboot system
 * On the Rivet City Flight Deck, pointing towards the broken Bow is a portion that is a good deal lower than the rest. The game fails to realize this and has the player walking on thin air. (Hmm... I didn't make it to Rivet City yet, but this sounds a lot like the problem I wrote about under "discussion" for the Grayditch area". just what is the deal with these maps on this engine?
 * Cannot talk to "Mister Burke" character in the bar in Megaton (have tried disable/enable fix to no avail)
 * Wild dog totally vanishes when I brought my PipBoy up in order to change weapon. Dog vanished when exiting the PipBoy.
 * Scroll wheel problem. Using scroll wheel makes anything usable by the scroll wheel constantly up or down. e.g either fully zoomed or out on map, either fully zoomed in or out for 3rd person to 1st person, either fully scrolled up a list or down the list. If you scroll up (wheel) the scroll bar will move up to the end and will be unmoveable unless you scroll down one click with the wheel to try and put the scroll wheel in neutral, scrolling two much down will move the scroll bar down to the end. Sometimes when the scroll bug is activated after talking to someone even through it wasn't activated previously. This also affects VATS.
 * User cannot quit the game normally and has to reboot the computer.
 * With Sound Blaster sound cards using surround sound, some sounds such as NPC speech do not always play. (Sounds like clipping from an overtaxed processor not able to process the ogg stream in six channels)
 * Some sound clips get stuck and loop until very far away from source. - fixed by lowering or disabling "hardware acceleration" in Control Panel > speaker > advanced [Seemingly related to EAX support]
 * Fawkes's Gatling laser will occasionally cause a sound glitch when fired at a target that has just died, quicksave/quickload resolves this.
 * Memory leak related to excess processes, on-board sound card, and/or SLI. (The memory leak is still very much a problem regardless of what processes you are running... I get it and I disable every process I can, including explorer, start menu, etc. And yes, while those things can make it worse, the root cause of the memory leak is not an issue of a user's system management at all.
 * Upon exiting VATS, graphics will have automatically reduced to low settings with jagged edges, flickering buildings and trees, and brightly lit pixelated shrubs. Game restart will revert graphics back to normal state. (sounds like antialiasing is somehow getting shut off from zooming in on enemies maybe and your video card is not restarting antialiasing once leaving VATS, have you maybe managed to get a similar problem to occur with either zooming in and out with scopes, or playing with third person modes mouse wheel zoom? Also do you have your card's settings managed to "application specified" Or does your card have a anti aliasing level "forced" by your card's software?
 * The game freezes during the character creation stage, a few minutes after selecting the gender for the player.
 * Complete crash of entire system when opening gate for Washington Monument.
 * Attempting to enter the Arlington Library after the entire building has been cleared (but before any books have been turned in to the Scribe) causes the game to crash (Faulting application fallout3.exe, version 1.0.0.15, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 5.1.2600.2180, fault address 0x00001230).
 * Pink screen during few seconds after launch while background music and voices are playing and then crash on desktop. Mostly for ATI videos.
 * Game freezes randomly after entering any house with no NPC present in it.
 * Saving while inside the Nuka-Cola Plant often leads to corrupt saves (game crashes to desktop when loading the save). Sometimes the game crashes during quicksaving there. Seems to be specifically this location that causes those, hasn't happened elsewhere.
 * Blue screens or reboots system when you enter name, use pip boy or get to character creation screen, this is still unresolved for people with this issue. :Since blue screens are the result of either driver or hardware failure, try updating video driver and testing your system memory (DirectX should be updated by the installation utility). If you have an nVidia laptop, try using a driver from laptopvideo2go instead of the vendor supplied driver since vendor drivers tend to be significantly out-of-date.
 * When entering the Super Duper Mart, after 1 minute or less inside the building, the screen starts to show white dashes across the screen (like static) until the game freezes completely requiring a restart, or if the user exits the game quickly, the computer doesn't freeze, but the static remains.
 * This sounds like a problem with data corruption in your video card. Make sure your video card is not overclocked and is properly cooled.
 * Using the scroll wheel in the console (used to scroll through targets) causes a 'Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Runtime Error - C:/Program Files/Bethesda Softworks/Fallout 3/Fallout3.exe - The application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.' error.
 * Crash when a Raider near Megaton is killed.
 * General freezing issues after short amount of gameplay - NOTE FROM POSTER: I managed to fix this by changing the memory buffer size, in the ini, to a much larger number and deleting all but the most recent saves, also I deleted all the auto saves (autosaves.bnk and autosaves.bnk.dat), as these are generated at load anyways.

Gameplay related
Also game crashes if you steal all votes from the ballot box and Dave comes to check them -More specifically there are two types of pre-war books. There are the ones which are represented in the inventory by a stack of books, are light blue in color in normal gameplay, and can be offered to the Scribe in Arlington Library. The other variety are a darker blue in normal gameplay and are represented by the miscellaneous icon in the inventory. This second variety are apparently unimportant to the Scribe, despite her insistence that even children's books are important artifacts. Unfortunately, all pre-war books purchased directly from vendors are of the latter variety (confirmed by purchase through Crazy Wolfgang, as well as Lydia Montenegro (or Michael Masters if the ghouls are let in) in Tenpenny Tower.
 * When selling and buying leather armor to/from merchants (tested with Crow and Moira Brown), armor's repair level isn't uniform (i.e. I bought a set of armor at 75% repair from him and after the transaction completed, the armor was at only 25% repair). 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.
 * Above armor exploit works with all armor Crow sells provided he has at least 3 of that item or 2 with 1 in 100% condition. After investing in him to increase his trade supply you can take whatever you want, repair all items (his repair is 70 after upgrade), and walk away 1,000 caps ahead (plus whatever armor you wanted, including power armor, can easily get 6 suits in 3 minutes.)
 * It even works with weapons. To be more specific, it affects all Merchants, and only the items they have by default.  Meaning if you sold items to the Merchant that they don't already have, attempt to glitch with said items, the bug does not occur.  The way I've been able to exploit this bug is by first making sure the Merchant has two of the item in question.  If they don't, I sell one of my own.  Select the cheaper of the two, purchase it.  It may the correct item, so you might need to sell it back and repeat the previous step.  Eventually, the better quality item will be your inventory, but you will have paid for it at the cheaper cost.  By sell it back and repeating the glitch, a secondary effect occurs.  You get the item in perfect condition, but the Merchant still has the two items in their inventory.  It's not a perfect clone.  So if you sold it back, one of the two in the Merchant's inventory will inherit the 100% quality.
 * 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...which then detonate spectacularly.
 * Named NPCs spontaneously die in Megaton, possibly from falling off walkways or rad exposure near the bomb.
 * NPCs and/or corpses appear to float. Restarting the game fixes this.
 * Random named NPCs disappear from towns and are teleported outside of the town wall, floating in empty space. Some quests are unable to be finished in normal gameplay due to this bug. Temporarily solution is using the "tcl" command in the Console to reach those NPCs. Also you can use these commands in console mode to bring NPCs back: prid (disappeared NPC objectID), moveto (AnyObjectID). Object IDs can be find out in console mode (~) by clicking on character/object.
 * Game load state may not exactly match game save state: a fresh set of enemies were spawned next to the player at the graveyard north of Big Town when loading a quicksave that was created after the player had just killed all the enemies in that area. NOTE: Confirmed from here, but for me, it happened in Downtown. Ouch!
 * In the Republic of Dave, when Dave asks you to tell everyone to vote in the election, after I told Bob to go vote, I went to the wait screen and waited for about 5 hrs to get the sun up, after that I entered the building and he is refusing to move or vote, he stands in front of the box staring at it, but interaction with him is still possible. NOTE: Confirmed. Several People reported the same issues - you tell the citizens of Dave to go voting, but they only stand in front of the voting box, doing nothing. Moreso, after talking to Dave, I don't even get an entry about Election Day quest in my log, no notes, nothing ...
 * Disappearing followers: When leaving Rivet City Marketplace after closing time, the "Dogmeat" companion is suddenly missing. This occurred several times after reloading a quicksave inside the market. Fourth try finally worked, so it's possibly avoided by leaving the market earlier on time. ADDENDUM: This has also happened with Charon in a subway station - one second he's right behind, then I pass through a door and he's gone. Also, it looks like all Companions/Followers have a rare but strange tendency to suddenly disappear in rocky terrain, just as if they would sink into the ground. This issue is possibly related to bringing up the Pip-Boy.
 * The two paladins (Hoss and helper) are hostile towards the player when entering the area for the first time and cannot be interacted with.
 * All Brotherhood of Steel members starts as friendly and then turn hostile towards the player after first contact for no apparent reason. (This happens because you accidentally killed one of them at some point in the past.  car blowing up, landmine, stray bullet.  Game completed 2x without them ever being hostile.  be careful! (Wonder if it's possible that if you keep killing super mutants and "rival factions", your diplomacy with said faction improves?
 * There is a large City Liner coach on the south-west side of Vault-Tec Headquarters that can be bashed around by simply walking into it.
 * There is one Pre-War Book with a VAL of 5 instead of 1, and it cannot be sold to Scribe Yearling. NOTE: This is simply a different style Pre-War book. They can be bought from Crazy Wolfgang once you invest in his store.
 * Attacking feral ghouls or raiders running at the player (to attack in melee) will sometimes pop from 30ft in front of the player to melee range. The new position is usually just to the left or right off screen.
 * Mysterious Stranger perma death by behemoth mutant- unable to fix at reload, have to restart new game.
 * Hacking a terminal impossible, no matching password! I was trying to hack into an average difficulty terminal. After two false passwords I figured out the two letters it told me were correct. But sorting out the rest of the passwords on screen using the correct and incorrect letters left me with exactly no valid password. I checked my results twice, rebooted the terminal, same result. Restarting Fallout 3 and loading the corresponding savegame fixed this. Which Terminal was this, do you remember? Once I had a problem with "&lt;*$&gt;" style brackets, clicking the "&lt;" resulted in a failed attempt, message, but would cause no changes, good or bad. 
 * When doing The Replicated Man, if you take the android component but reveal the truth to Harkness, it will remain in your inventory, but you will not be able to talk to Dr. Zimmer to remove it for some positive Karma. See below.
 * Ink Container from the Arlington Library for Button Gwinnetts optional quest in Declaration of Independence cannot be dropped/stored/sold after the quest is finished - message says "Cannot drop a quest item" NOTE: Confirmed. Useless Quest items sometimes remain in the inventory and cannot be removed. This has so far happened with the ink, the Android part for Dr. Zimmer and the House: Pre-War theme. You can use 'player.removeitem 3AA2 1' in the console as a quick fix to get rid of the Ink Container.
 * Galaxy Radio "heavy rotation": Whenever I turn on the station, Three Dog still repeats his initial announcement that "a cat recently left Vault 101" ("... Revolution? Vacation? Somebody fart?"). Problem is, I'm already at level 19, about 40 hrs into the game and if I have to listen to this bloody announcement just one more time, I'm going to eat my Pip-Boy! Possible reason: After kicking ant butt in Those!, I ventured directly to Rivet City and talked, amongst others, to Dr. Li, unwittingly skipping the rest of the Following in His Footsteps quest line, continuing directly with Scientific Pursuits. Thus, I haven't finished the Galaxy News Radio (quest) yet and I dearly hope the mindless repetition stops afterward.
 * No. In fact Three Dog's announcements are very buggy in general; I finished all side quests and almost all of the main quest, and Three Dog has stopped saying anything at all on the radio other than the above announcement about me leaving Vault 101, and the settlement of Grayditch going quiet. (I finished Those! ages ago.)
 * I have something vaguely similar. I finished Those! and Three Dog will alternate between telling how I saved Bryan Wilks and how Grayditch has gone all quiet. Seems to say one or the other completely at random. In fact, he's still speaking about things I'd done ages ago, such as helping out Big Town and Arefu. --Dark Pulse 23:38, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I've experienced a similar problem. At the beginning of the game, I'm getting a glitch where Three Dog is already making announcements about Project Purity and how the BoS stormed it two weeks ago.  I believe this is most likely linked to the Broken Steel DLC being loaded in at the very beginning of the game.Xevrex 01:02, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I have pretty much the same issue, the ONLY thing three dog talks about is the 3 ghouls I killed during the Tenpenny Tower quest ('What's that? Megaton nuked? Project purity sabotaged?! CITADEL DESTROYED?!?! Ah who cares, three ghouls who live under ground in a skip that no-one knows or cares about are SO much more important.) If you have done EVERYTHING and three dog still says the same stuff, then either start a new game with a new save or kill three dog (it works and it's fun but Martha the technician will take over and she has only 4 announcements) Also Three dog used to say the name of the track he was about to play, now he just says 'and now some music..."--UltorUnlimited 11:03, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * During hacking any terminal, it is not possible to chose any password or bracket string which is close to the end of each line, because the chosen string highlight 3-4 chars from mouse pointer. I tried to to solve it by changing of in-game screen resolution many times and it seems to be not related with this problem, but in windowed mode in this problem is increased offset between mouse pointer and highlighted string.
 * Outdated video drivers are usually to blame for pointer position/draw offsets. Check to ensure that your card drivers are fully up to date. If your mouse uses third-party pointer driver software, check it as well.
 * 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. With no points to grant and no provision for removing them, the player cannot continue to perk selection and resumption of game. Reverting to an earlier savegame does not clear this error.
 * You can fix this by manually setting the number of skill points in the console.
 * In the event of not being able to properly access Games for Windows - LIVE (other than simply problems with the user's internet connection), the game will not be able to abort the sign-in process, thus locking up the main menu. This can only be solved by forcibly exiting the program via alt-F4 or the task manager.  Such an inability to access properly may be due to a GFW-LIVE outage or a problem with the automatic sign-in function (unconfirmed).

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.
 * This can also happen in other places. I've had it happen to me by punching Betty after triggering the Chinese Invasion, because she got confused and could not turn around to give me her line and kill me. --Dark Pulse 04:09, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 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.

PlayStation 3

 * Susie Mack's Test results sometimes skips completely and she walks out of the room (also on PC).
 * When you have two followers, a follower (Jericho, Clover, Fawkes, Charon or Cross) and Dogmeat, there is sometimes a problem when entering a building that results in them not following you in. 99% of the time, this will cause the game to freeze or crash when you try to exit. It should be noted that the game will autosave when you exit, therefore there is the possibility of corrupting your data if you turn the PS3 off. The only solution to this problem is to reload a previous save before exiting the area. The only prevention is to keep Dogmeat at home, as it only seems to freeze when Dogmeat accompanies another follower. You can also turn the autosave function off so it won't corrupt your data if this bug occurs.
 * When at the birthday party, your father will ramble on, and when the Overseer is supposed to give you the Pip-Boy 3000, the game will not crash but everyone will just stand there and you will remain in the fixed position. This cannot be solved by reloading; instead, turn off the system properly and wipe the disc.
 * Watch out if people stop using voices. This will cause the dialogue text to skip by very quickly, and the player will miss out on whatever was being said. A possible solution to this is to simply restart the PS3.
 * When repairing many items in your PipBoy if you press the "Triangle" button twice quickly the game will freeze. To fix this restart your PS3 and only press the "Triangle" button once when repairing items.

Graphics glitches

 * In the Birthday scene, Officer Gomez's left eye may stretch over the entire viewable screen and follow his head and eye movements.
 * While in third person mode, if you back up into a wall (forcing the camera to zoom in and your character to become invisible), it will glitch if you walk out of it slowly and your body will become invisible (except for your head and your weapon). Reversible by switching in and out of third person and first person mode.
 * Random objects blocking both PC and NPCs. If outside, fast-travel; if unable to fast-travel, load a previous save.
 * 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. To solve the problem you must go to the XMB Menu and quit the game.
 * When shopping at Lydia Montenegro's at Tenpenny Tower, the merchant window lags; exiting results in pinwheeling or complete blackout. Restarting the game and reloading the autosave from entry into Tenpenny Tower usually fixes this

V.A.T.S.

 * Sometimes saving (or autosaving) while in motion or firing your weapon may make the player unable to fire a weapon or reload it after loading the save. The gun will begin to fire randomly and it persists no matter what weapon used and the same thing happens when unarmed or with a melee weapon. V.A.T.S. becomes inoperable, it will enter slow mode but the weapon will never fire. The only way to fix this is to reload a previous save or to prevent it from happening by never saving while in motion or firing/fighting/jumping etc.
 * If the game is started with the controller set to Controller 2, 3, or 4, the game will still be playable, but L2 and R2 will fail to function. This makes it impossible to enter V.A.T.S. or switch views.  Restarting the game after reconfiguring the controller will fix this problem. Also, holding the PS button, turning off the controller, and turning it back on seems to help.
 * V.A.T.S. will freeze before showing percentages.
 * Time slows down during V.A.T.S., but your opponents can still attack you in between shots. Assume there are two Fire Ants on screen; one close, and one far.  If you target the close one, he may have a chance to respond, which freezes up V.A.T.S. while he breathes fire.  Afterward, you take your last few shots in V.A.T.S., and the game returns to normal.  However, in the off chance the far away Fire Ant gets an attack opportunity, the game freezes until that distant ant crawls (very very slowly) up to you and breathes fire.  This has happened twice.
 * When switching in between enemies body parts will not highlight. Switch back to last enemy and wait for the parts to highlight, then continue.
 * When you are about to kill an enemy (when the screen turns black &amp; white), and the enemy moves behind an object, the game will occasionally stay in V.A.T.S.. The only way out is to reload the game.

(Note that most of this has never happened to the majority of PS3 users).

Xbox 360

 * After dying and having the game auto-load, sometimes the primary fire button will get 'stuck.' By this, you cannot fire by pressing the trigger. It will keep firing automatically every few seconds. So far, the only known way to fix this is to completely shut down the console and restart it.
 * When fast travelling anywhere in third person, your legs wil raise in mid air to the sitting position breifly and then return to normal (confirm?)
 * Upon arriving in Big Town, speak to a girl named Bittercup, where she will rant about how she has been with all of 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 as long as the speech is successful (It was 100% when my speech skill was at 30).
 * During the mission to escort Dr. Li out of the Jefferson Memorial, Dr. Li disappears into the wall directly in front of the exit to the Rotunda and does not emerge on the other side. The map marker indicates that she is inside the center island in the room.  Restarting has not fixed the issue.
 * When quick traveling to Raven Rock with Fawkes, Fawkes will spawn and not respond/follow you, or, he will spawn partially in the ground where you are standing. Fast traveling to a new area will fix the issue.
 * During early game, near Bethesda Ruins, a horizontal line with a vertical triangle on top towards random enemy shortly before combat, lasted until death. Reverting to save did not fix, but system restart did. May be an isolated glitch.
 * After fixing the water leaks in Megaton, Walter disappeared completely, thus making the mission impossible to finish. Have not found fix yet. NOTE: Walter can randomly fall to his death sometimes. Look behind brass lantern or the doc's and find Walter's dead body to verify.
 * After getting into a fight in Tenpenny Tower and fast traveling away the game locks upon re-entering Tenpenny tower. The only fix is to re-start from an earlier save.
 * When heading toward Three Dog for the second time, after installing the dish, Pip-Boy screen got progressively brighter until it was no longer readable. A save, and restart of the game through the Dashboard was able to fix the problem. This has also occurred in other situations, and may be triggered by long periods of play.
 * After assisting the Temple of the Union with the Lincoln Memorial the refugees never show up if slavers are killed first. The only known solution is to wait until Hannibal Hamlin asks for help with slavers before eliminating opposition at the memorial. WORK AROUND: Sometimes Fast Traveling around to random locations/ waiting for a few days to pass, after coming to where the arrow shows, they will be there. The refugees are just slow.
 * Upon doing Trouble on the Homefront quest, player can only move with the LS, the RS non-functioning yet it works in pip-boy, previous saves, reloads, all have no effect, have to restart game.
 * All notes have vanished from the Note page under the Data tab. Workaround: Saving the game and using the xxlbrbxx cache clear code on the dash board solved this problem.
 * Randomly, upon exiting Megaton, a clipping issue occurs where the players legs sink into the "soft" terrain (not affected when on cement or rock). This causes movement to become sluggish/jerky and makes corpses sink and become unsearchable. Loading a previous save seems to fix the problem.
 * When setting Dogmeat to the "Stay" Command, it is possible that upon returning to that location, he may be gone. You will not get the prompt that says he is dead, and so far it is unknown where he has gone. (A message should pop up after letting Dogmeat wait for an extended period of time that says Dogmeat is waiting for you outside of Vault 101. This is not a glitch)
 * This Dogmeat error extends to other NPCs as well, some of whom simply disappear when in waiting mode, even from safe locations such as the Megaton house.
 * Try speaking to a traveling merchant while he is swimming with his head above water so the conversation is allowed. When he's introducing himself his head will make a full 360 turn counter-clockwise.
 * The runaway slaves randomly attacked only companion and not the player. The only way to escape this is to run away from the compound and fast travel, hoping they haven't killed him by then.
 * During the Those! mission in Marigold Station. There's a fire ant at the bottom of some stairs sitting on the track of a door (half-in, half-out). When approached too close and killed the body sticks to the player. It's headless body dangles and jiggles in front character and can only be gotten rid of by reloading.
 * After fighting and killing a Super Mutant outside Chevy Chase Station, upon reentering the station the game froze. When the game was reloaded from auto save after a system restart, the Super Mutant was alive again, but immortal. Repeated bursts to the head did no damage.  Was still vulnerable to splash damage from frags.  I've run into ten or so invincible enemies. VATS wont hit them and neither will free aim. Simply leaving the area solved the issue and the glitched enemies were always outside so it didn't make questing difficult, and like I said its a rare occurrence anyway)
 * When approaching the Super Duper Mart at dawn, all the raiders spawned outside the building at once, creating a mob of raiders which spawned right in front of the player. Reloading and waiting a little while allowed them to presumably walk inside.
 * If the player fast travels to the Citadel when escorting Dr. Li to the location during the "Waters of Life" mission, Dr. Li will move to the right of the entrance and refuse to move. Attempting to force her to the door is ineffective, as she constantly walks back to the wall and paces back and forth. This glitch in the main storyline is considered to be game-ending.
 * On the bridge to Anchorage War Memorial covered in land mines, one of the mines is active but is not visible by the player. Trial and error to collect mine.
 * Crouching and un-crouching while using the mini gun will cause it to stop firing even though it still uses ammo and makes the spinning animation.
 * In one save, after installing the dish at the Washington Monument, I went back to talk to Three Dog only to find myself locked out of the GNR Building. Using the intercom does not help, as Three Dog just tells you that the door is open. Worked my way around this by getting a higher lock pick skill, and picking the door lock on the second floor. The main door remained locked for the entirety of the game. Bug has been reported to happen in several different locations other than the GNR Building.
 * During You Gotta Shoot 'Em In the Head, after telling Tenpenny that I would kill Crowley for 300 caps and then doing it I can not receive the quest reward or the achievement. I had to reload a save file and give the keys to Crowley to get the achievement. I then had to reload my main game and just accept that I couldn't complete the quest on it. I tried giving Crowley the keys and then killing them and taking them back but that just completed the quest by giving him the keys, not the Tenpenny optional quest of killing Crowley.
 * When player leaves Vault 87 before collecting GECK but after Fawkes is in position to get it --but not told to, yet-- one of the doors on the way to the GECK chamber will be locked when player reenters. It is the door in the room the Enclave will ambush the player in on her way out with the GECK. The lock cannot be picked. I'm not aware of a workaround, currently.
 * During Head of State quest in Downtown D.C. Hannibal Hamlin appears to get stuck. A Tesla-Photon barrier has been set up but only the generator is visible.
 * In the Wasteland Survival Guide quest, in chapter 3, after doing the Rivet City section, returning to Moira, and picking all options other than the lie, then choosing the "Take a break from the research." option, the quest becomes impossible to complete. If you speak to her again, she repeats all of those same options and then only gives you the choice to take a break from the research. The only solution is to lie, which alters the outcome of the quest and gives you bad karma.
 * Sometimes creatures will be stuck in the terrain.
 * In Evergreen Mills, when walking around behind the main buildings, I got stuck in the cliff side with no way of getting out. Had to reload to fix.
 * During the Three Dog quest to replace the satellite dish, the game would freeze when passing by the Washington Monument on the way to the Museum of Technology. After several trial and error attempts to reach the MOT, it appears that having your radio on when you pass by the monument is the cause.  No idea why, perhaps 3 Dog begins a broadcast that makes the game crash.
 * Randomly, there will be graphical glitches that appear to stretch and obscure your view in certain directions. The fix for this is to fast-travel to a location far away and then fast-travel back.
 * Right thumb-stick stops responding at random when transitioning between locations. After it has happened you have to load an earlier game to fix it. Alternatively, entering some locations (locked) will automatically fix this. (Unconfirmed)
 * After doing the quest for the ghouls to get into Tenpenny Tower and live side by side with the humans, the dead bodies of the remaining humans that the ghouls will kill do not appear. Probably caused by staying in the tower for 48 hours (about the time the ghouls move the bodies into the storage room). Only workaround is to complete the quest, go and wait or sleep outside Tenpenny Tower for 48 hours, and come back to the tower.
 * During the Stealing Independence quest, NPC hands glitch occurs (when the arms/skeleton of the Sydney NPC would retract into the body, stretching the arm textures, causing a floating gun effect). Occurs only after the battle with the super mutants, probably from the massive amount of grenades used, and also the missile launcher used by the mutant. Fix is to enter and exit the area with the Sydney NPC following.
 * Certain weight/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. No known fix.
 * Issues with teleporting creatures, especially the giant fire ant queen for the misc quest "Those!". Queen ant would be in main chamber, then suddenly teleport to the smaller hallway, blocking exit, thereby resulting in the player frantically escaping by jumping over and/or squeezing through the side of the queen. No known fix.
 * Small lag issue in where the player character would teleport forward as he's walking, dialogue skips, or game stops and tries to load. Usually caused by going into Xbox guide during play through (not pausing), and letting the disc stop spinning. Easily preventable glitch, just pause game and then open Xbox guide (might be on the Xbox's fault).
 * Crazy Wolfgang NPC, Trader Protector NPC, and Brahmin NPC all flip out randomly when Player Character is attacked by other NPCs in vicinity. Specifically, was at Rivet City near the entrance to the drawbridge. After trading with Crazy Wolfgang NPC, Talon Mercenary NPCs opened fire on player character. After those NPCs were dealt with, Crazy Wolfgang NPC and Trader Protector NPC flip out and attack Player Character. No fix, they were killed except for the Brahmin.
 * The option to discuss Charon's contract disappears from Azrukhal's speech. I killed Carol and went back to Azrukhal and he greeted normally with no option to discuss the deal. (Correction: you aren't supposed to kill Carol, you kill Greta).
 * When trading with Moira, going back into dialog and then back to trading again can cause you to switch the amount of bottle caps you both have. A bad trade off as the player most likely has more caps than Moira.
 * When in the artificial world in vault 112 the game freezes if you repeatedly check your PipBoy(which is then a watch).
 * Sometimes when buying the jukebox from Moira it will not appear until later in the game at random points.
 * The quest for rescuing initiate Pek is severely bugged. After several attempts random events seems to happen. Sometimes Pek is dead, and the quest cannot be completed. Other times the paladin Hoss is gone when you emerge from the office building, and then later reappears in random settlements running away from you when you get close. Sometimes both Pek and Hoss is both dead or missing.
 * Occasionally the PipBoy screen will appear entirely green and too bright to read, though the now-unseen menus can still be accessed and inventory / fast travel still works. Fixed by reloading a previous save, or by turning your PipBoy light on and off, and then rechecking your PipBoy. You might have to do the latter multiple times.
 * Starting a new game, my right stick will not allow me to turn right, only circles to the left. Exiting and starting another new game does not help.
 * At Rivet City it is possible to get behind the scenery of the broken off bow. I discovered this when attempting the discover the history of Rivet City section of the 'Wasteland Survival Guide' quest. You are required to gain access to the broken bow to obtain records, the only way in appears to be the door that requires 100 lockpick skill to be picked. However it is possible to jump to the exterior if you go to the flight deck (where all the ruined planes are) on the working half of the ship. If you use one of the girders jutting from the side as a jumping platform you can arrive at the outside of the broken bow (this will usually result in crippled legs from the fall). All the doors are fake and if you head along the face jumping from girder to girder to girder (easier than it sounds)it becomes possible to walk in the air, go behind the exterior face and phase through some of the walls. If you go to far into the bow you fall through the invisible floor and end up in the water. It is impossible to get out from here. Edit:You can enter the broken off section through a passage just under the water in the broken section of the ship. You will have to swim through the pipe, then take a breath in a small section, and find the doorway under water. When you come up, there will be several Mirelurks to fight before you find your way to the stairs leading to the section of the ship you are searching for. There is a Switch on the inside of the locked door to allow you to unlock it without picking the lock so you can use that door from then on.
 * Robots in Big Town might be missing, even before quest has started. When defending the town from super-mutants these might get stuck after the first dies because of frag mines(or grenades)
 * talon company mercs might teleport out of nowhere right in front of you, during Those quest and leaving the metro station (Mercs appeared in front of me after walking 4 or more meters).
 * Dropping a frag mine on a dead enemy might cause a sharp drop in fps and then freeze the game. The only fix is to restart the console.
 * In the Vault-Tec Headquarters the door to the Mainbrain in the final room will sometimes not unlock after you have accessed all three computer terminals.
 * For some reason, the hands of ALL characters (PC and NPCs) will sometimes get stretched to very strange proportions. First observed on a raider in combat, where his hands started to look like gigantic claws (very long fingers instead of just big, thick hands), which I assumed was some sort of mutation.  Then later my character's hands exhibited the same type of bug, only in this case my hands had gotten just a bit longer, in so that holding weapons didn't look right in third person (first person hands were unaffected).  The bug resolved itself randomly (reloading my save did nothing, fast traveling did nothing, it simply corrected itself later when I stopped trying) and I have no idea what might have caused it.
 * In Seward Square, there is a place where you can easily walk out of the map. Walk north east behind the Capitol Building, past a spot where Talon Mercs and Super Mutants and in a firefight.  You will come upon a set of buildings that are obviously low-poly distant-land models with low-res textures.  You can continue walking presumably indefinitely on completely flat land once you pass these buildings.  This might be an issue with loading adjacent cells.
 * after Killing certain enemies ( most likely only applies to humans) when the bodys are still fully intact ( IE no blown off head, arms, etc) the limbs become stretched and zing all around, the body being pulled too-and-fro. the limbs stretched out at least 10 times the length of the body, and never stopped. the body eventually sank underground and was unsearchable during its "seizure". unknown if it was from killing the enemy in V.A.T.S. or in standard firing. occurred with Stockholm (outside megaton) atop the entrance to Megaton. as well as a Talon Merc.
 * When fighting humans e.g. enclave, talon company mercs if you go into V.A.T.S when they are low on health or hurt they may regenerate some lost health when you enter the V.A.T.S results they may even regenerate all of their lost health this may happen on creatures and mutated things.
 * On one of my occasions possibly extremely rare, I mean extremely rare, at my 10th birthday party, Butch spawned with a Double Barrel Shotgun (The Kneecapper), and after not giving him my sweetroll, he shot me, to death. But I finish the campaign, but in that campaign I wanted Butch's Toothpick, I wasn't a real fan of the Double Barrel Shotgun, so I reversed-pickpocketed him giving him it.  So when I started a new campaign it didn't get rid off it, somehow?

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