It took me over 30 hours of gameplay, plus who knows how long for testing, trial and error, re-installing multiple times to get this game to function properly — but I got it to work, not sure if it will help everyone — but hopefully it will help someone.
My PC is just over a year old with all drivers up to date. I purchased and play Veilguard through Steam.
TLDR: My original install was onto an external 5TB SDD and no matter what, at some point during or after the first Veiljumper Camp visit, my saves would corrupt without warning or recognizable triggers.
My fix was installing it onto my internal SSD and verifying the game files BEFORE opening it for the first time after install.
Full story and my personal troubleshooting details below:
Originally I installed it onto My external SSD, which had 3TB still available after installing DA:TV. Upon first launch, the game took 15-20 minutes to load the shaders, then said that it was installed on a HDD despite both Steam and local files showing it installed onto my E drive. Despite this pop-up I was still able to play it AND at high graphics. I got a few hours into my first play through, got Lucanis, and went back to Minrathous. I noticed some stuttering and actual environmental elements weren't loading in fast enough for any character (Rook or NPCs) and I was tired of falling through the map. So, I went to flick my graphics down to medium, but accidentally set it to ultra, causing my game to crash. Loaded the game, fixed the graphics, restarted, then loaded my save…or at least I tried to. The minimap, my Rook, and the immediate environment would load for a split second before fading to black with the Load Error. This happened with all of the saves for that character. No auto saves loaded, no manual saves, no temporary decision saves, no Lighthouse saves. Nothing. The entire profile was corrupted and I lost 11 hours of play time.
I closed the game, verified the game files through Steam to which is just said "done" after it finished. I relaunched the game and started a new Rook. I got just a bit further than my first play through. I was exploring Treviso and the Crow's Road and stumbled upon an *incredibly* difficult boss. I died, reloaded my most recent save (an autosave), and got the same error. It kicked me back to the main menu again. I reloaded another autosave, a more recent Manual save, and an 3-hour old manual save — no success. Another 5 hours wasted.
I uninstalled and reinstalled the game onto my E drive and verified the files before relaunching. No issues found, first re-launch didn't show the shader load screen, nor did it show the same HDD message as the first time. I created another Rook, got to the area where you recruit Bellara and you see the temple overlook. I went to save but — then the game just reloaded instead? I am 100% sure I hit "Save Game" (side note: what happened to F5 quicksaves devs?) Regardless, there was no other trigger. No reloads, no deaths, no graphics changes (still on medium).
At this point I'm losing my mind and can recite the entire prologue word-for-word. I couldn't find this issue anywhere else. I decided to just play with the character creator since I couldn't get a refund for the game or figure out the issues. Played through the prologue, saved the first chance I could in the Lighthouse, closed the game, and went to bed. Tried to reload my 3rd Rook the next morning - no luck.
Made a 4th Rook and played as much as I could, saving at the Lighthouse and random points. Reloads were working on this run, but I didn't trust it, so I closed the game and tried to load this most recent Rook. Failed. I just wanted to find the corruption trigger, so I made a 5th Rook. I died, reloaded various saves, all fine. Then I got to the Mirror of Transformation. I didn't change anything about the model, but after exiting/canceling NOT saving, Rook was a completely different (male instead of female). I reloaded the save before the mirror, but it remained the same incorrect, bald, model. Rook's model wouldn't load correctly after that, either with reloads or in new areas, or in character inventory - forcing me to reload the save back to the prologue which turned out to be a corrupted file. no idea what triggered it.
By now, I had spent 26 hours playing, troubleshooting, reloading, etc. I found a few other posts discussing specific sequences to save and load your game in order to get the file to load — I had no such luck despite creating a 6th Rook to test the process.
I closed, uninstalled, and set the game to reinstall onto my internal SSD after reading a few others who had luck with that. Afterwards, I went through Steam and verified the game files BEFORE first launch. This time the message was different — instead of "done" it said "811 files verified". I booted up the game, let the shaders load (this time they loaded in about 90 seconds rather than 15 minutes), and reloaded a known corrupted save from Rook 4. It loaded successfully in seconds, no 90+ second long black screen. I reloaded a manual save from Rook 3 (I had stupidly and angrily deleted Rooks 1 and 2 — I had quite literally lost my mind a few times during this whole bs). Rook 3 succeeded. Reloaded an auto-save Rook 4, Lighthouse manual save, Arlathan autosave, closed the game and relaunched it, hit continue on the menu rather than load and it worked!
The shaders loaded on every boot, but honestly the game is running smoother and so much better than before and that's a small price to pay to keep my save data. I hope this helps others save their Rooks and not lose 30 hours of life and progress! I hope to never play through the Veilguard prologue ever again :)
