SAVE GAME FILES CORRUPTED DUE TO CRAFTING AND LOOTING

[Ferreus the Umbral Arrow]

This lovely feature is for the PC version. They have capped the save game files. Now many are on the forums unable to complete the game because they didn't play JUST the main story.
Apparently, if you do too many sidequests, loot too many items, have too many crafting components (any combination of these 3 things) then eventually your save game file reaches its limits and becomes corrupted. Different players are experiencing this at different times. Some as early as 50hrs in. Some have only lost 1 save file, others have lost ALL their saves.
The company themselves have said that this is just reality, and to not loot or craft as much. They have said that the game is not meant to be played continuously - that it has a beginning, middle and end. These are quotes.
They've also said that they MIGHT fix it, they might not.

So beware those of you who are crafting like I was, who loot everything and dismantle it. This data corruption will happen to your saves. There is no maybe, as the company itself has said that the files ARE limited to the amount of data they can hold.

Just thought I'd let everyone here know, as the forums on their end are where the threads and stuff are. Feel free to do your own research and confirm it. I myself have begun the process of seeking a refund. I wasn't going to at first, as I had played 20 some hrs. However, this is unacceptable by any definition. Even the defenders will have problems defending this.

[N7-SPECTRE]

Can't be resolved?

[Little Strawberry]

I'm looting, dismantling and crafting like crazy, including dismantling grenades. After 80 hours my savegame is still at minimal size. Just stop cheating if you don't want it to happen to you.

[Ferreus the Umbral Arrow]

Originally posted by GOOD BOY:

Can't be resolved?

CDPR says to just restart from scratch

[Ferreus the Umbral Arrow]

Originally posted by Little Strawberry:

I'm looting, dismantling and crafting like crazy, including dismantling grenades. After 80 hours my savegame is still at minimal size. Just stop cheating if you don't want it to happen to you.

what size is your save game file? Because the cut off for corruption is 8mb

[Riftwind]

Seems a little odd for a game of such quality to have yet another problem with it. At this stage its getting almost impossible to like this game at all. After sticking through all the other problems, only to find out that even if you continue to enjoy playing it, and avoid doing anything major until its fixed, you find out that all the time you spent playing is going to corrupt the game anyway so you might as well do what the romans do and "rush it as quickly as possible" ?

[Ferreus the Umbral Arrow]

Originally posted by Riftwind:

Seems a little odd for a game of such quality to have yet another problem with it. At this stage its getting almost impossible to like this game at all. After sticking through all the other problems, only to find out that even if you continue to enjoy playing it, and avoid doing anything major until its fixed, you find out that all the time you spent playing is going to corrupt the game anyway so you might as well do what the romans do and "rush it as quickly as possible" ?

Pretty much. They screwed the pooch with this one. Consoles have crazy problems, PC now has this. An yeah. It's nuts what's happening with them right now

[Komarimaru]

Originally posted by RustyXXL:

It is not the save file size.
It is the Item IDs that get used up.
Each item you pick up, each item you craft gets an unique ID.
These IDs are 4 byte int and don't get freed up if the item doesn't exist anymore. This is the main problem.
This sets a hard limit of the amount of items you can pick up or craft. 65535 to be exact.
For a "normal" playthrough this is more than enough.
The ones affected by this save file corrupütion are people who crafted 40000 Grenades to exploit the crafting loop to get more components for selling them for money.

Again: As long as you don't do excessive crafting you will be fine.

This is also why simply increasing the file size limit isn't gonna help. The ID system has to be rewritten to free up ItemIDs that aren't needed anymore and hooked everywhere, where Items get removed. This can be trivial or more involved, depending on their codebase, which I have no insight to, that's why it isn't adressed in patch 1.05.

There.

In other words, the only way to corrupt your save, is using the crafting mechanic to exploit materials to sell.

[Fusei]

Originally posted by GOOD BOY:

Can't be resolved?

According to CDPR the workaround is to "do not do it" (craft "exploit"). Basically if your save file is over 8mb you're screwed (the playthrough).

[Xeonzs]

Originally posted by Little Strawberry:

I'm looting, dismantling and crafting like crazy, including dismantling grenades. After 80 hours my savegame is still at minimal size. Just stop cheating if you don't want it to happen to you.

This, I have a feeling this mostly affecting people that are exploiting crafting, using the item duplication glitch or the infinite money exploit and buying a lot of items.

Pretty much anyone running into this problem is using any of the above exploits.

[MrFrengLitch]

@Komarimari

I haven't used any exploits or glitches to increase my character, but I have used crafting to craft purple upgrades for my suit and weapons and my savefile sits a 6MB right now. Kinda getting scared to craft anything at all now even if it's just to get better mods.

This needs to be adressed now. A lot of people will encounter these save file corruptions in the following week. Especially since it's christmas and a lot of people are on holiday vacations.

[Ferreus the Umbral Arrow]

Originally posted by MrFrenglitch:

@Komarimari

I haven't used any exploits or glitches to increase my character, but I have used crafting to craft purple upgrades for my suit and weapons and my savefile sits a 6MB right now. Kinda getting scared to craft anything at all now even if it's just to get better mods.

This needs to be adressed now. A lot of people will encounter these save file corruptions in the following week. Especially since it's christmas and a lot of people are on holiday vacations.

If this issue isn't resolved by the time dlc is released, then people DEFINITELY will be reaching the cap.
While I was playing, I grabbed EVERYTHING, even the food and liquor. Used the latter as crafting components as well.
You absolutely don't have to cheat to reach 8mb. Hell, I didn't even know there were exploits. Most people won't know about them. But if you loot everything, craft a lot, you will run into this issue. Plus, doing the side quests gives you shards which will add to your save file.

[feline]

can you go back to previous save ? i always leave a save behind at every 20 save :o

[Fusei]

Originally posted by Viking Blood:

Originally posted by MrFrenglitch:

@Komarimari

I haven't used any exploits or glitches to increase my character, but I have used crafting to craft purple upgrades for my suit and weapons and my savefile sits a 6MB right now. Kinda getting scared to craft anything at all now even if it's just to get better mods.

This needs to be adressed now. A lot of people will encounter these save file corruptions in the following week. Especially since it's christmas and a lot of people are on holiday vacations.

If this issue isn't resolved by the time dlc is released, then people DEFINITELY will be reaching the cap.
While I was playing, I grabbed EVERYTHING, even the food and liquor. Used the latter as crafting components as well.
You absolutely don't have to cheat to reach 8mb. Hell, I didn't even know there were exploits. Most people won't know about them. But if you loot everything, craft a lot, you will run into this issue. Plus, doing the side quests gives you shards which will add to your save file.

Well if it's simply a matter of size something should be doable. However on reddit some were starting suspecting that something like reaching the max integer value. If that's the case could be a lot trickier to fix ...

I haven't got the first clue how databases are designed for video games, but aside from splitting items in different categories (tables) with different IDs there's not much you can do.

[Heu, Iterum Id Feci]

Originally posted by Fusei:

Originally posted by Viking Blood:

If this issue isn't resolved by the time dlc is released, then people DEFINITELY will be reaching the cap.
While I was playing, I grabbed EVERYTHING, even the food and liquor. Used the latter as crafting components as well.
You absolutely don't have to cheat to reach 8mb. Hell, I didn't even know there were exploits. Most people won't know about them. But if you loot everything, craft a lot, you will run into this issue. Plus, doing the side quests gives you shards which will add to your save file.

Well if it's simply a matter of size something should be doable. However on reddit some were starting suspecting that something like reaching the max integer value. If that's the case could be a lot trickier to fix ...

I haven't got the first clue how databases are designed for video games, but aside from splitting items in different categories (tables) with different IDs there's not much you can do.

Originally posted by Komarimaru:

Originally posted by RustyXXL:

It is not the save file size.
It is the Item IDs that get used up.
Each item you pick up, each item you craft gets an unique ID.
These IDs are 4 byte int and don't get freed up if the item doesn't exist anymore. This is the main problem.
This sets a hard limit of the amount of items you can pick up or craft. 65535 to be exact.
For a "normal" playthrough this is more than enough.
The ones affected by this save file corrupütion are people who crafted 40000 Grenades to exploit the crafting loop to get more components for selling them for money.

Again: As long as you don't do excessive crafting you will be fine.

This is also why simply increasing the file size limit isn't gonna help. The ID system has to be rewritten to free up ItemIDs that aren't needed anymore and hooked everywhere, where Items get removed. This can be trivial or more involved, depending on their codebase, which I have no insight to, that's why it isn't adressed in patch 1.05.

There.

In other words, the only way to corrupt your save, is using the crafting mechanic to exploit materials to sell.

[Greb]

I don't like it either especially considering the ending states essentially "Thanks for playing! Keep playing!" and then CDPR are like "Don't keep playing." in relation to the 8MB limit, which sucks, but I have to weigh in that I have a 106 hours old save that I basically did everything I could possibly do on, exploring and looting and collecting and crafting and all of that stuff, generally getting my moneys worth as they say, and when I heard about the 8MB limit I checked my save file size and it's 6.6MB - hovering closer than I'd like to the 8MB limit but there's basically nothing left for my character to do at this point anyway.

They should increase the limit if they're able to though. Even if the only feasible way to hit that is by either exploits, cheats or playing far longer than anyone would expect you to. It's just such a stupid thing, a save corruption bug based on file size (such a tiny size, too) on an AAA game, etc.