Gloomwood: Common Bugs, Softlocks & How to Fix Them

AI Pathfinding Bugs

Gloomwood's AI is generally solid, but the pathfinding can get weird in certain situations. These are the most common issues and how to deal with them.

Enemies Stuck in Walls

This is the bug I see most often. An enemy clips through a wall — usually during a chase sequence — and gets stuck. They'll keep running in place, unable to move. The fix is simple: leave the area and come back. When you reload the area, the enemy resets to its patrol path. If that doesn't work, save and reload. The enemy will respawn at its starting position.

This bug happens most frequently in the Streets area, where the narrow alleyways and complex geometry confuse the pathfinding. If you're doing a speedrun and an enemy gets stuck in a wall, it's actually a benefit — they can't chase you. But if you're going for a Ghost run, a stuck enemy might block your path, forcing you to find an alternate route.

Enemies Don't React to Noise

Sometimes the AI stops responding to sound cues entirely. You can throw a bottle right next to an enemy and they won't flinch. This is caused by a memory leak in the audio system — the game's sound propagation engine gradually degrades over long play sessions. Save and reload to reset the AI state. This usually fixes it for another hour or so.

If you're noticing this bug frequently, try restarting the game every 2-3 hours. The memory leak is a known issue that the developers are working on fixing.

Enemies Seeing Through Walls

This one's frustrating. Occasionally, an enemy will detect you through a solid wall. This isn't a feature — it's a bug with the line-of-sight calculation. The game uses raycasting for enemy vision, and sometimes the rays clip through thin geometry. The workaround is to avoid hiding behind thin walls. Stick to thick stone walls or full cover objects like crates and furniture.

Softlock Fixes

Softlocks are the most dangerous bugs in Gloomwood because they can waste hours of progress. Here's how to avoid and fix them.

Stuck in Furniture

Gloomwood's physics engine can trap you between furniture and walls. This happens most often when you're trying to squeeze through tight spaces. If you get stuck, try crouching and jumping simultaneously. The combination of the two movements can sometimes free you. If that doesn't work, use a flash bomb — the explosion force can push you free of the geometry.

If you're really stuck and nothing works, you can use the console command "noclip" to phase through walls. This disables achievements for that session, but it's better than losing hours of progress. To open the console, press the tilde key (~) and type "noclip". Fly out of the geometry, then type "noclip" again to disable it.

Door Won't Open After Key Use

Sometimes using a key on a door doesn't register. The key disappears from your inventory, but the door stays locked. This is a desync between the key's state and the door's state. The fix: drop the key (if you still have it) and pick it up again, then try the door. If the key is already consumed, save and reload. The door should be open when you load back in.

Quest Item Not Spawning

Occasionally, a quest item won't spawn in its designated location. This happens most often with the bell tower key in the Church. If the key isn't on the altar where it should be, leave the Church and come back. The item spawn is triggered by area loading, and re-entering forces a spawn check. If that doesn't work, reload your save from before you entered the Church.

Theatre Stage Trapdoor

This is the most common softlock in the game. In the Theatre, there's a trapdoor on the stage that opens when you step on it. If you fall in, you land in a pit with no obvious way out. The intended solution is to find a lever that opens a gate, but the lever is on the other side of the pit and you can't reach it.

The workaround: use a flash bomb at your feet. The explosion force clips you through the geometry of the pit, letting you escape. Yes, this is an exploit, but it's better than reloading. The developers know about this and have said they'll fix it in a future patch.

Performance Issues

Gloomwood runs on a modified version of the id Tech engine, which is generally well-optimized. But there are some performance issues you might encounter.

Low FPS in the Streets

The Streets area is the most demanding part of the game. The outdoor environment with multiple light sources and complex geometry can tank your framerate. The fix: lower shadow quality to Medium or Low. Shadows are the biggest performance hog in this area. You can also lower the draw distance, which reduces the number of objects rendered at once.

Stuttering

Gloomwood has a known stuttering issue, especially when entering new areas. This is caused by the game loading assets on the fly. The fix: disable VSync and cap your framerate at 60 FPS. The game's physics engine is tied to the framerate, and running above 60 FPS can cause physics glitches. If you're still getting stutters, try lowering texture quality — this reduces the amount of data that needs to be loaded.

Audio Crackling

Audio crackling or popping is a common issue in early access builds. It's caused by the audio buffer being too small. The fix: go to your audio settings and reduce audio quality to Medium. This increases the buffer size, which eliminates crackling at the cost of slightly lower audio fidelity. You won't notice the difference in gameplay.

Loading Screen Freeze

Sometimes the game freezes on a loading screen. This is usually caused by corrupted game files. Verify your game files through Steam (right-click Gloomwood → Properties → Local Files → Verify Integrity of Game Files). If that doesn't work, try clearing your shader cache. The shader cache is located in %appdata%/Gloomwood/ShaderCache — delete everything in that folder and restart the game.

Save Corruption and Backup

Save corruption is rare in Gloomwood, but it does happen. The game creates automatic .bak (backup) files alongside your main save files. If your save gets corrupted, here's how to recover:

1. Navigate to %appdata%/Gloomwood/saves/
2. You'll see files like "save_001.sav" and "save_001.sav.bak"
3. Delete the corrupted .sav file
4. Rename the .bak file to .sav (remove the .bak extension)
5. Launch the game and load your save

This works about 90% of the time. If the .bak file is also corrupted, you're out of luck — you'll need to start a new game. To prevent this, manually back up your saves every few hours. Copy the entire saves folder to a safe location.

The most common cause of save corruption is crashing during an autosave. If the game crashes while it's writing to the save file, the file gets corrupted. To minimize this risk, don't quit the game during autosave sequences. Wait for the autosave icon to disappear before closing the game.