Drakensang: How to Fix Save Game Issues 2022

When playing Drakensang, you may or may not encounter a save game error which freezes your game and corrupts your save files. There are many solutions out there and some work for many people while others don’t. Therefore I collected what I could find, but since I did not complete the game yet, there might be special save errors I might not be aware of.

When attempting to save (it doesn’t matter if manual, quick or auto save), there might be an error message “Nebula Assertion Error” saying that it couldn’t save a texture. After clicking OK another error message will show up (“Runtime Error”), causing the game to crash.

1. Fixing start-up issues. If not done already, go to your Steam Library, rightclick on Drakensang -> properties -> set launch options and type in:
-d3d9 -windowed
This is to make the game playable in fullsreen and fixes startup issues. After the intro, you can set your resolution to maximum and press alt+enter to go to fullscreen mode. Just remember to skip the intro before doing that, because else you will have a black screen with just audio.

2. Run the Drakensang.exe as Administrator. To do this go to your Steam folder where Drakensang is located f.e. G:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\Drakensang
then rightclick on Drakensang.exe -> Options -> Compability -> check the box “Run as Administrator”

3. Add the Drakensang.exe to your antivirus whitelist. Since Drakensang writes the save files in your Documents folder your antivirus might block this (Avast for example).

These are the main problem solvers for MOST people. The next steps need some trial and error and you can do them in any order you like. They don’t work for everybody! They are also general tips to make your life easier if the error happens randomly during your game.

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4. Disable shadows and dynamic lights in the in-game options. Go to Settings -> Graphics -> set shadows to off and uncheck the box for “Dynamic Lights”

5. Rename every manual save. If the error happens while you want to override a save file it might get corrupted. To prevent this from happening I simply rename it to f.e. 1, 2 etc. This way you will still have the save from before the incident.

6. If the error happened and the game crashed:
a) go to C:\Users\XXX\Documents\Drakensang\profiles\default
b) cut the save folder with ctrl+x and copy it with ctrl+v to another location (for example your desktop)
c) start the game and close it again
d) move the save folder back to it’s location
e) restart the game

7. Save early and save often. I think this doesn’t need explanation

8. Get the DirectX9 redistributable (June 2010) from Windows. Sometimes your DirectX is just corrupted and needs to be replaced.