Starfield finally says goodbye to ‘Pet Rock’ asteroid bug with new update

❘ issued: 2023-12-11T18:56:20 ❘ Has been updated: 2023-12-11T18:56:31

Starfield update 1.8.88 finally addressed the “Pet Rock” asteroid bug that has been present since launch.

Not long after Starfield arrived on PC and Xbox, players noticed a strange bug involving asteroids. In some cases, small asteroids may attach themselves to the player’s orbit and track the player’s ship through space.

Users began to refer to this unexpected phenomenon as “pet lock.” Several players reported asteroids by tracking their ship’s every movement for over 30 hours. Some people claimed that they had unintentionally befriended two or three pet stones.

And you can’t make asteroids disappear. Switching ships, loading screens, restarting the game, none of these actions worked. Fortunately, Bethesda has issued a suitable fix in Starfield’s latest update.

Starfield’s new patch finally removes ‘pet lock’ glitch

On December 11th, Bethesda released the 1.8.88 update for Starfield. This is a small patch that addresses crashing errors and issues related to Outpost weapon cases.

Starfield players will be most interested in learning that the glitch where space material debris would randomly chase you has finally been fixed in an update.

Bethesda, Pastor/Reddit

Here are the complete patch notes for 1.8.88:

Fixes and improvements

Gameplay:

• Fixed an issue where space material could stick to the player’s ship during space travel. Space clings are now removed when loading a save. Please note: This fix should address the space issue where you are stuck while traveling, but will not address if New Atlantis is attached to the player’s ship. That fix will be released in a future update.

Outpost:

• Fixed an issue where random guns would not spawn in newly created weapon cases after loading a save.

Save/Load:

• [Microsoft Store/Xbox] Fixed an issue where players could experience a crash while saving during long playthroughs without going through Unity.

The pet lock fix comes a few weeks after Starfield’s first major update, 1.8.86, which added DLSS support and long-awaited food changes. It remains to be seen how the development team plans to improve the experience in the future.