I have a second hand copy of the game bought from a friend of mine who didn't liked the game.So my first run was with a clean game and no DLC's whatsoever.Fine by me, I don't like to play online and nor do I spend moneys on DLCs and other content. So a clean run of about 66 hours of gameplay until I've made some bad decisions ingame and so I decided tot start allover again.This time I've bought from xbox marketplace the 2 add-ons : Stone Prisoner and Warden's Keep .Guess what ? My first run was clean : no major glitches , no bugged quests and no corrupted saves.Hell yeah, at that time didn't knew this even exists.After installing the DLCs the infamous corruption begun to bite me.I must admit, I deserve it.On my second run I was a lousy cheater and exploiter : I wanted some money to buy that fancy tinckets from vendors , I was sick of having litle or no gold for the most part of the game.So what I've done are Duncan power leveling up , the crystal exploit from Bella in Redcliffe village and the money cheat with any vendor ingame ( google if you want to know more). Yes, I deserve to be punished with an infinity of corrupted saves .Amen .It serves me well for not heading the warnings.
In chronological order - Duncan power leveling - got me to lvl 12 , didn't wanted to abuse too much or to make the game easier.Wrong : all nice and fancy until you meet some real chalenges and those cheap armors made of tier 1 or 2 materials are anything but no protection. But in terms of game corruption it has no impact.A harmless exploit from this point of view.Trust me , I've made several experiments and managed to finish the game with this.So Duncan powerlevelingit's excluded from the possible causes of game corruption.On to the next.
The Bella's crystals exploit .Spoilers warning :When defending Redcliffe village from the horrors that came at night , you can convince Lloyd (the tavern landlord from the village) to join the fight and Bella (his waitress) takes up his place and gives you for free some of his inventory.In the clean version , she only gives you some potions and crafting materials,after that her inventory gets empty and never restocks.With the Stone prisoner DLC , she also can give you 3-6 crystals for Shale.If you leave the tavern and reenter again , she will restock her inventory of crystals everytime.This can be done again and again, even later on in the game if you let her in charge.This way you can hoard huge ammounts of crystals that can be sold on the rest of the vendors for some nice sums of gold.And here is the catch.After about 20 hours of play , I've made alot of runs and use the the exploit untill i've gathered the sum of 520 gold.A nice one if you ask me
.After that the fun has began.When reloading a save made in camp I was hit with the first corrupted save.Yayks! Backtraking I was able to load a save made a couple of hours earlier .At that point I've only got about 190 gold from selling crystals .Allthough this save had a big quantity of crystals in the vendors inventory ( Bodahn and Owen ), it seems the save was still valid and the number of crystals didn't triggered the corruption yet.This gave me an ideea and turned me to use another incriminated exploit : the money glitch when selling an expensive item from the junk section.After a bit of training I was able to master it and made huge ammounts of gold (my ingame record shows me 1000g as the biggest sum ever had).With this ammount of gold I was able to buyback all the crystals from the vendors and manualy destroy them in my junk inventory.Guess what ? It worked .Every save from that point on was valid .In return , I gave Bella 5g and got rid of her.No more temptations. And besides, the money glitch looked safer and easier.And so the money cheat worked the whole game.I'm willing to bet everything that this exploit is harmless.I've managed to finish the game and still cheating to huge ammount of gold.My personal oppinion - the money cheat and why not, the duping cheat ( afterall it uses the same mechanics) are safe to use.But I strongly suggest you don't. It spoils the charm of the game.I was forced to use it to solve my corruption problems and to experiment if it can trigger an error.
But my story doesn't stops here.After my so called workarround for the crystal glitch and after another 20 -25 hours of play i was hit with another corruption.This time 5 saves in a row and 4-5 hours lost. And so I've begun backtraking my actions to find out what triggered it. This time there were no crystals involved.So I begun to wonder if it was the huge ammounts of items sold to the vendors allover Fereldan.In fact Bodahn from the camp was the vendor most used for selling my loot. So I've turned again to the money glitch and and made enough money to buy back my loot. Bought all the junk intems and ordinary weapons and armors and destroyed them manualy.I made sure that every vendor discovered until then had under 120 slots occupied.So I've read on some forums.Where did this number came, no ideea. Guess what , after a while I was the proud owner of another 3 corrupted saves.Damn. This made me load the last save from my clean first run.In that case the camp vendor was the only one who bought the entire loot from 66 hours of gameplay. My dear Bodahn was the happy owner of over 240 occupied slots with weapons , armors and trinckets.Counted my self twice and didn't bothered to count the potions and the ingredients too.It was clear that his inventory had hundreds of items, way over the socalled inventory limit.My conclusion: no way it can corupt the information. Not on my games anyway.
To find out what happened I've started too save often and verify if it's valid. Loads were working fine until the point saves begun corrupted.My next assuption was that the saving slots got somehow corrupted .Overwriting for many times may have triggered some errors.So from the dashboard I've deleted all the saves except one that I knew it was safe. And started to play and find out at what point the corruption triggers. It happened soon. So the saving slots were not the source afterall.Anyhow , later on I've discovered what was the real source in my case.
Spoiler ahead : When doing the companion quest for Sten , you start by asking the scavenger near the lake Calenhad.He points you to a vendor who went to Orzamar named Faryn.In my play I didn't went to to him straight away , but later on in the game.But before this I've noticed that ,when talking to Dwyn( the next step in the quest line )and trying to convince him to join the defenders of Redcliffe village, he had the option to ask him about the qunari sword.And this was before talking to Faryn as the quest should do to trigger this dialogue option.At that point I've ignored this.Later on I've came back to the village after talking to Faryn and went to Dwyn house.The save made in Redcliffe village before talking to him was the last valid one.All the saves made after finishing the quest no matter where they were made , all were corrupted.Tried saving in Denerim, Orzammar , Brecillian forest , camp, small houses( i thoght that being small areas to load willl have less chances to give an error) .Everywhere I went , the corrupting saves were after me.Only one conclusion: the Sten's quest triggers my save corruption.So I decided not to complete it.Guess what ? Safe playing and no fear of loosing countless hours of play.As long as I stayed away from Redcliffe and that quest , no corruption appeared.Conclusion saving in village was safe as long as I didn't complete that quest. But later on some side quests sent me again in Redcliffe village.Also after finishing main plot events went to see if I can safely turn in the quest for Sten. Same thing every time - corrupted save.Later on in the game , just before the Landsmeet , i returned to the village as part of those quests.Game corruption! Even just entering the Redcliffe village area and leaving right way was able to trigger the fatal error.Conclusion : I've stayed away from that area and everything worked like a charm.I've finished the game.And i did another thing:just before the Landsmeet I went to Redcliffe village and finished that quest.Continued to play without loading , but made some saves just in case.Finished the game on hard, without dieing and defeating the archdemon in 3 characters ,my healer going down halfway through the fight.And all the time I knew that every save was corrupt and an entire party wipe would be fatal.After the credits I've checked the saves: 10 savegame corupted on 10 different slots. It seems there is no way arround it than avoiding the village up untill very late in the game.If you stay away from Redcliffe before the Landsmeet , in the final battle when you return for the last time in the village it seems it is safe to save there and in any other part of the world.That area becomes safe again.Me for instance had no troubles saving after that or defending the castle gates ( spoiler!!! after defeating 2 waves of darkspawn at the gates, an ogre boss should appear; some players report that the bugger sometimes never shows and they are stucked there).And no troubles in the final battle.With or without the error that corrupts my saves I was able to finish the game.
And now the final conclusions.Appologies if I've borred you with my story up until now.I mean it.It's a s**tload of words and spelling errors up there.Appologies again , english is not my native language.
1.The clean version of the game seems safe.After 66 hours of play and with Bodahn's inventory overloaded , still no corrupted saves.I think I'm gonna trunst EA or Bioware when they said that the console version has less bugs than the Pc one.Well , also no bugged quests or other troubles reported by other players on my first run.
2.The DLC's .In my oppinion they are one of the sources of evil.C'mmon people, they were released separatedly after a day or two the game was released .How much time did they had to test before releasing them ? I've read somewhere that Stone prisoner was intended from the start to be part of the main game.Somewhere on the road , in the last stages of development they choosed not to add it .Also the party chest from Soldier's Peak : in the early stages of development they had it in mind , but in the end they decided not to implement it since in their oppinion will not bring much improvement to the gameplay.Oh really ? Every major rpg that respects himself has a storage container for the loot.But after all let's say it's ok with 120 slots in the party inventory, I can live with that. But no, after
2 days they change their minds and decide to bring them for extracost. So what do we have : 2-3 hours of gameplay that brings improvement close to zero to the main story , an set of armor with no bonuses, a bugged companion and the crystal exploit that backfires when you're less especting it. My 2 cents : the DLCs are no properly tested and synchronized with the data from the original game.
3.The Bella's crystal exploit. Another root of our evil.When you look at all the crystals in the game if you haven't used this cheat they are about 20-30 at best.Purchased from vendors all over Fereldan, found in chests or other places.After the Stone prisoner all the vendors have them , before - none of them .Maybe when the new data is updated in the game database an error may occur. Don't know , it's a possibility worth taking in consideration . Another issue is Bella as a vendor.If you look at this , she's not a real one, she gives you some stuff for free.In the clean game , after emptying her inventory she is of no use.With the DLC she remains only with the crystals and she refreshes the stock everytime you leave and return .This may be another source for an error to occur since no vendor in the game updates his inventory or replenishes his stock.Bodahn for example has The Veshiale since you first meet him. Imagine my surprise when I seen its price ...130 gold and I only had at that time 5 gold.This leads to the conclusion that every vendor has a number of items and some unique ones predefined from the start.Bella is a variable as it constantly changes the number crystals and their time.If you ask me , this NPC should have removed the option as a vendor after you deplete her initial stock.My advice , don't take any crystals from her, take only the rest of the items.Get rid of the temptation and give her 5g and send her off to Denerim.People said they have experienced save corruption without using her exploit.Bolocks .When talking about exploiting is a verry loose notion and people tend not to be so sincere.Exploit is when you have hoarded 300 crystals like I did. But when they take her initial stock and visit her twice or a couple of time when they find themselves in the village , they will never admit that this is in exploit.Well it's not...in a way.But I think is enough to trigger the chain of events that leads to the corrupted saves. For the sake of God or any other deity you may believe STAY AWAY FROM HER ! And another issue with the crystals is quantity you have in your inventory or spread among the vendors when you update your data to the EA servers.This may be a problem when the game tries to synchronise with the servers, it's possible errors and somekind of incompatibylity may appear. Dunno , I never played online.I like to keep my gaming experience personal and I don't see the point to show the others my personal achievments.So maybe others can help me on this issue. My console stays offline 99% of the time and i intend to leave it like that. I see my pc fit for the internet and comunication.
4.The socalled 120 slots and overloading the vendors.Who and where did it came with this number ? Because the party inventory has a maximum of 120 slots ? Bolocks. On my first run DLCs free , my poor Bodahn had almost all I've looted .Now that's what I call overloading. And still no corruption occured. And there were 66 hours of play. And why should there be any corruption ? Somebody said on the forums that beacause you cheat and have lots of moneys you are able to buy everything the vendors have to offer. As I said before, all the vendors in game come with a preset number of items. Even if you don't buy their items, they are still in the game.This is a constant like in math.The variable here is the number of items you loot from the dead foes.You can kill 10 darkspawns and loot 5 weapons and some potions, or if you reload the fight all you can get are some crafting materials and some silver.On this matter you have no control.As long as the items don't dissapear from the ground when you leave the area and the vendors don't loose your loot or refresh their inventory, this means the game can handle any amount of items in the game world and should be no problem.Or simply it's because the game engine has faults from the start. On the other hand I have no ideea what it happens when you go online.So please correct me if I'm wrong.
5.Save slots corrupted from too much overwritting and the corruption spreading in time from an "sick" slot to the "healthy" ones.I lived to read this one on some forums and on Dragon Age wikia.Oh man, programing is simple : what you see is what you have , what you write is what you read.Simple like that , it's bits and bytes of information , 1 and 0 from the binary code written on available clusters( memory units) on the disk of the HDD.If I'm not mistaking an xbox has the architecture of an pc , simplyfied and pushed to the limits for the best gaming experience.I have slots overwritten over 30 times and if the Redcliffe region was avoided , every time a valid save was made.If it loads when you check a save , it loads now, tommorrow and after 2 years.Period.I have deleted all except one valid slot.Loading errors appeared on both clean slots or previosly written ones.This one falls.Also , a corrupted save don't corrupt those nearby.What da hell, it's not an oil stain on the water or an cancer that spreads.It's erronated piece of information and the program that used to written it on the disk is now unable to recognise it and hence it cannot load it.Simple.It needs a trigger , a bug to occur ,something that alters the quality of the information. To me ( and I think for many others too ) it was the Redcliffe village area and the quests involving it.When you make a corrupted save you'll be doing it in a row , no valid saves in between. You just don't know, you continue to play , you make your saves and you end up with a series of corrupted saves without even knowing it. The next load ruins your life. My advice , save often , verify your saves and also make a save for each new big area you enter. And leave them like that, don't write over them.You never know when you might need them to backtrack your progress and see what caused the error.Reload if a quest is buggy.Try it again until it works sharp.Continuing to play with a bugged game like i did may cause problems later on.
6.Redcliffe village area.It's buggy like hell.Be it main quest or sidequests, many have reported errors and bugs here.After all, this area suffers the most environmental changes.There are 3 stages:a. before the night assault and during it (many bugs may appear here); b. after the battle and all the way through the game until the Landsmeet;c.the darkspawn assault upon the village and the castle from the final battle. Having an area with many variables and changes I think it predisposes to bugs and errors.Stage a: many bugs can occur here and later on can trigger the corrupted saves.Stage b: same as the first one, only this time, besides bugged quests, even entering this area for a brief time can trigger the infamous corruption.Stage c: clean and healthy like a baby's ass
) .If you had experienced troubles before like I did when entering Redcliffe village, now you have nothing to be worried.You can safely save here or in any other part of the game.It seems the game engine changes this entire area completly and wipes out any errors or bugs previously stored in there.My advice , make a big save before advancing the main plot in Redcliffe village area , lookout for any buggs or errors and reload until you have a clean run.Limit your trips to this area to a minimum and allways check your saves after leaving it.7.After 40 hours and more of gameplay corrupted save may appear.Read this one too on Dragon Age wikia. Hey, just like this , out of thin air ? No way , you need a trigger : a bugged quest , serving some crystals from Bella ( but not so many to be considered an exploit) , the area becaming unstable and with errors and you didn't know it.Playing for 10-12 hours nonstop and not checking your saves, overwritting the valind ones without having the ideea you wrote a corrupt save ...now this hurts.Pays to be more carefull from time to time.In this matter there are no inocents .Cheating or not cheating, everybody have triggered an unknown event and later on this corrupted the saves.My first run had 66 hours, no cheats , no nothing.No erronated saves out of the thin air.The second one, with all the cheats, exploits and corrupted Redcliffe village area, but because I avoided the trigger , finished the game with a total of 78 hours of play.Again , if I stayed out of trouble , every save I made was a valid one.
8.Money cheat and possibly the duping one.Both safe in my oppinion. They use the same mechanics. I managed to gather with this cheat huge amounts of gold and be able to buy anything.About 5000 gold or so.And still i was able to finish the game.Even with the corrupted information and not able to reload.But again , this happens in my offline version.Maybe when you go online errors might occur.Just let me know if you find out.
9.Saves taking only 17Mb of memory. Some are saying that this given ammount of memory is not enough to store the load of items and information you'll have in the endgame.Hmm, a save made at the begining takes the same 17MB as in the endgame.Maybe.All I know is a matter of perspective: a high-resolution picture can take 17 Mb to store , but on the other side the entire library of Vatican can be stored in the same ammount.It depends on how you encrypt and compress the given information.I don't know what to say.But then again , on my first run Bodhan had a huge ammount of items in his inventory and the gave never crashed on me.On my second run, well I've manualy destroyed many items so I can't make a comparison.
And with this all said and done I have nothing more to add.Sorry about those who lost many hours of play.Until they release a patch , I have no ideea how to make those saves working.And even after they release a patch your saves might not become viable.Maybe the harm done it's to great to be repaired.Just be more carefully, check your saves often and isolate the cause of corruption like I did.Again I appologies for this huge topic and the spelling errors.Hope it can be of any help to you.
Happy new year guys!!!
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