Summary
- Starfield has a bug that deletes all your apartment and home decor, causing frustration and wasted time for players.
- The bug occurs after completing certain key missions and can strip all furniture, items, and weapons from the apartment.
- While there are ways to avoid the bug, it requires completing specific quests and being careful with progression.
From the ship-builder to the various homes that can be purchased in the Settled Systems, Starfield has many customization options to help immerse the player into the universe Bethesda has crafted. Unfortunately, the game is still not without its bugs, and some of these can cause a complete lack of immersion and some pretty serious frustration, especially when it comes to home decorating. While many will just utilize Starfield Outposts or their ships as their main home, others will painstakingly take hours to craft the intricate interior designs that rival even the most skilled decorators on HGTV.
Sadly, this bug is probably not one encountered early in the game, making it even worse for those who experience it. This glitch means that hours could have been spent designing the perfect feng shui apartment, only to have all that work wiped away. Luckily, while this is arguably one of the worst glitches in Starfield, it's also pretty avoidable as long as the right steps are taken.
Starfield Deletes All Your Apartment And Home Decor
Starfield has one unfortunate side effect of completing the main Constellation and UC Vanguard missions. According to user Positive_Edge9256 on Reddit, all of their home decor was deleted upon the completion of a key UC Vanguard quest. In addition to the apartment being completely stripped bare of any furniture, workbenches, and decor, the glitch also caused all of the user's items, weapons, and armor sets to disappear. Many users specifically complain that the quest "A High Price to Pay" is the offending mission, though others have voiced that other missions also cause the unfortunate effect.
In addition to the Penthouse, users complained that the other apartment in New Atlantis' underground, The Well, also had all of its items stripped from the domicile upon completion of key quests, with some commenting that this same bug occurs on weapon racks. Sadly, this Starfield glitch makes decorating an apartment or displaying a powerful rifle not only a huge waste of time and credits, but rather frustrating for those with a keen eye for interior decor.
Avoiding The House Decor Deletion Bug Is Easy But Annoying
According to some users, the decor deletion bug occurs as a result of New Atlantis getting reset as a result of key missions. For those who actually want to deck out their apartments without running the risk of Bethesda coming in like a thief in the night and stealing all their items can do so, but it will require completion of the main Constellation questline and finishing "A High Price to Pay" as well as the UC Vanguard quests for "Delivering Devils." In these missions, major events cause New Atlantis to change, then "reset," which seemingly also resets all the progress and items stored in the homes in New Atlantis.
While completion of the UC Vanguard questline is required even to get the New Atlantis penthouse in the first place, completing it after decorating The Well apartment will result in all the items being wiped from that location. Luckily, this glitch doesn't seem to affect ships, even when swapping them, as items found inside the ship will instead be loaded into the ship's cargo hold. While it's unconfirmed whether this can occur in other housing locations across the galaxy, it would make sense that a similar glitch could also occur in other cities across the game when major events take place that change the face of the town there.
Sadly, while this is a pretty lackluster option for a first playthrough, those enjoying Starfield's New Game Plus loop can potentially avoid item deletion by simply taking key questlines that occur within New Atlantis to their logical endpoint. While other bugs — like the bulged eyes that NPCs sometimes have — are just immersion-breaking and slightly funny, the deletion of Legendary Starfield items is certainly not. This is compounded by the fact that houses and apartments don't have cargo holds, and it's more than possible that people were using the containers within the home to store high-value items or even contraband.
Will Bethesda Ever Fix The Apartment Decor Bug?
Since Starfield was originally released on September 6, 2023, Bethesda has been rather slow in releasing post-launch updates for the title. While the game received generally positive reviews upon launch by critics, players quickly pointed out many of the glitches and bugs within the fairly expansive space title. According to some users, it seems the apartment decor bug is quite old, as players had been experiencing it fairly shortly after the game's official launch.
In the last Starfield Patch 1.7.36, Bethesda added FOV sliders and focused mainly on improving performance and stability. That being said, compared to other AAA post-launch updates, the number of enhancements and bug fixes were few and far between. Beyond a fix for the mission "Echoes of the Past," no other bug fixes or quest updates were listed within the patch notes. While the developers of Starfield have yet to lay out more detailed post-launch plans for the title, other than the planned release for a Starfield Shattered Space DLC expansion, it's unlikely that Bethesda would leave such a glaring and game-breaking bug in the game for the foreseeable future.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how one looks at things, Bethesda has a long track record of releasing less-than-polished games upon initial release. This means that this current version of Starfield is likely the worst version of the game that people will get, and future updates should go a long way to addressing some more of these glaring bugs and glitches, like the decor deletion bug. Hopefully, reinvigorated effort and time will be put into the Shattered Space DLC along with other general QoL enhancements, and these types of bugs will be fully ironed out in future patches and updates.
Source: Positive_Edge9256/Reddit