Starfield penthouse owner loses "couple of thousand pieces of armor" as New Atlantis quests reset the whole planet

Starfield player character and vasco in New Atlantis standing in front of Frontier — (Image credit: Bethesda)

Owning a Starfield penthouse has one notable downside: you risk losing everything if the property is stationed in New Atlantis.

Since launch last month, some players have been discovering a bug that resets their Starfield city penthouse and removes every item inside. A recent post on the game’s subreddit mentions that a “couple of thousand pieces of armor/weaponry/misc items” inexplicably phased out of existence. “It was all furnished with chests and sh*t,” reads the post, “can’t imagine how they were able to f**k up this mechanic since it worked in [Fallout 4] almost 10 years ago.”

So, bethesda just f***ed my out of couple of thousand pieces of armor/weaponry/misc items from r/Starfield

The empty penthouse does look sad, but there is an actual explanation for the items’ disappearance. “Yeah, this is a known issue,” one player responds. “There’s two (or three, maybe?) times that New Atlantis’ overworld gets reset. Once during the UC Vanguard questline and once after some story spoilers that occur there.” Future penthouse owners in New Atlantis should probably complete the High Price To Pay quest and the UC Vanguard quests before purchasing the property, then.

“When these resets happen (because the spaceport gets a makeover), the entire map is reset to its ‘default’ state once the spaceport goes back to normal,” explains the commenter, “and since the New Atlantis penthouse apartment is on the overworld layer, it also gets reset.”

The commenter does claim that the other properties in New Atlantis don’t have this problem, since many are in their own “instanced load zone" - except for the apartment in The Well, since you also pass through the area in one spoilery quest. But, in case you couldn't tell from the architecture, the people in New Atlantis are really boring, so you should probably spend your credits elsewhere.

You could always save on credits and build your own home with our Starfield outposts guide. Otherwise, you can just avoid the same mistakes in the complicated New Game Plus.

Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that's vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he'll soon forget.