Bizarre Starfield bug sees players take off in just their ship's cockpit, leaving the rest of it behind

A ship taking off in Starfield.
Credit: Bethesda.


A ship taking off in Starfield.
Credit: Bethesda.

Most of the hardcore Bethesda RPG fans who’ve invested thousands of hours into Skyrim and Fallout 4 couldn’t wait for the chance to start digging into Starfield.

While some players will be blasting off for the first time today, most of those who paid for early access are now plenty of hours deep into their adventures through space, with lots of that time having been spent making interesting discoveries, getting up to wacky hijinks, or downloading mods.

Meanwhile, a number of interstellar explorers have been busy building the ideal spaceship to roam the cosmos aboard. In an amusing turn of events, it seems that one of the game’s current bugs is causing some pilots to end up leaving half of their craft behind when blasting off from the surface of planets.

Have you experienced this hilarious ship bug in Starfield yet?

A clip showing off a textbook instance of the issue in question has been shared to Starfield subreddit by user Denubtheredditor.

Judging by the video, it looks as though the bug causes part of the player’s ship to duplicate upon them initiating the take off procedure, resulting in just the cockpit and the skeletons of some modules directly attached to it rocketing up into the sky. The thrusters, landing gear, and plenty of other essential components, meanwhile, are left behind.

“Anybody seen this bug?”, the poster asked their fellow players, continuing: “[I] can't tell if the [Xbox Series] S is just giving up running this game or [this is caused by] run-of-the-mill Bethesda launch problems.”

Thankfully, they also added: “[I’m] having a grand old time with the game, [I] didn't experience a single bug until right before this, [when] my ship disappeared, then, after I fixed that, this happened.”

It looks like Denubtheredditor isn’t the only player to have experienced this problem, with user Dr-Fl4k having responded: “I love that bug. I [took] a bunch of screenshots of the shell-less structures in space [just] for my loading screens.”

Some of those in the thread who’ve reported having had the same thing happen to them have suggested that the bug seems to occur just after you’ve modified your ship and have recommended some potential solutions.

“Set a new ship as your home ship so it unloads, then make the old ship your home ship again and that'll fix it,” said user Iziama94, while GodLovesCanada revealed: “I got this bug and all I had to do was close/reopen the game and reload my autosave.”

This is far from the only ship-based bug players have encountered in Starfield thus far, with another redditor recently having shared a shot of a space suit-less Barrett and Sarah Morgan just chilling atop their craft while it sat in orbit above a planet.

Regardless of whether you’ve encountered any bizarre bugs while exploring the cosmos to this point, make sure to follow us for lots of guides to Starfield’s characters, mechanics, and quests.

You can also check out our latest mods of the month.

This Article's Topics

Explore new topics and discover content that's right for you!

Gaming NewsStarfieldRole Playing Games