Game crashes

[Luis- Azevedo]

The game is crashing in the Nintendo switch, whenever i start sailing or step on docks 

[Hollow soul 3]

That sounds like it would make exploring the new content difficult

[JanH]

We are sorry to hear about this. Could you provide us with more information and reproducible steps if possible? For example:

• How many in-game days is your world in, before this crash happened?
• Are you playing on a customized, or default game world? If customized, what customizations were you using?
• Are you playing on Nintendo Switch, Switch Lite, or Switch OLED?
• Is this issue happening on any other game worlds that you have? Or is it happening to this one in particular only?
• Are you able to provide us with any error or crash message screens, if you encountered any?
• If you could provide more detailed steps you ware taking before encountering this crash, that would be of help.

[Luis- Azevedo]

My world is 2268 days old, I’m currently playing as wortox, it is survival game mode, no death chronometer, all events on, hunts to more, no wildlife, surprise hunt to more, mactusk to more, fruitfly to none, failed survivors to more, anenemy to more, cactus to more, mactusk camp to more, gears to more, glow berries to more, everything else is set to standard.

I’m playing on Nintendo switch standard v1.

I just play on this world.

It is just a black screen saying that the game was close

I placed a few docks to conect my land to a few salt formation just by steping over the docks after a few seconds the game closes, it happens 100% of the time, didn’t happen before last two updates.

It also happens when I set sailing , I can jump over the boat, start sailing, but after a few seconds the game closes

If I go in and out fast enough the game does not closes

when I get back to the game it rolls me back few moments before  go to the docks or the boats

 

I just tried with no events and seems it worked

[Luis- Azevedo]

Hi after a long time away from don’t starve I just got my switch 2 and this bug is happening again, may be it is because hollowed nights are automatically active 

[InaGaZ]

hi, no there is no difference between switch 1 and 2. The game hardly takes advantage of new hardware (apart from the performance gain due to faster launch of the hardware --> ) but there is no improvement, for example, in graphics or RAM exploitation (more than 4 players, 60 fps).

I imagine that the reason is simple: they do not want/cannot split the already small community of Switch players and program differently on the 2 consoles. Basically, the current presence of players on Switch 1 restricts the players to Switch 2.

As a result, the game crashes occur on all versions of the console because they are essentially programming bugs and not saturation. 
I think that Klei is forced to restrict certain internal aspects of the game engine’s operation (database access, backup method...) because of the low power of the Switch 1 (and therefore also on the 2 because the game remains the same). 
It is a choice of development, I imagine, to restrict certain functions to do with this low power.
 But, at the point where we are, losing some ergonomic points to ultimately gain stability, doesn’t bother me at all anymore. On the contrary, it’s so unplayable now. It has already been mentioned that it is possible to control the automatic backup (deactivation, cycle) because it is clearly at this moment that most crashes occur.

[gzlboy]

On 2025/12/1 at PM5点19分, InaGaZ said:

嗨，Switch 1 和 2 之间没有区别。游戏几乎没有利用新硬件（除了硬件启动速度更快带来的性能提升之外），例如，在图形或内存利用率方面没有任何改进（超过 4 名玩家，60 fps）。

我猜原因很简单：他们不想/不能把本来就规模不大的Switch玩家群体分裂开来，然后在两台主机上采用不同的开发策略。说白了，目前Switch 1上的玩家数量限制了Switch 2上的玩家数量。

因此，所有版本的Switch都会出现游戏崩溃，因为它们本质上是程序错误，而非性能饱和。 
我认为，由于Switch 1（以及Switch 2，因为游戏内容相同）的性能较低，Klei不得不限制游戏引擎的某些内部功能（例如数据库访问、备份方式等）。 
我猜想，这是开发团队为了适应低性能而做出的选择。
 但是，就目前的情况来看，牺牲一些操作体验来换取稳定性，我已经完全不在乎了。相反，现在的游戏体验简直糟糕透了。前面已经提到过，可以控制自动备份（禁用、循环备份），因为很明显，大多数崩溃都发生在备份过程中。

I completely agree. The game crashes frequently after reaching 1000+ days, making it practically unplayable. I've observed that crashes usually occur when saving at dawn; at that point, the game crash completely, with a very high probability of crashing! It would be much better if there were a setting to prevent automatic saving.

[NathalieDST]

Hi,

I’m experiencing the same issue on both Nintendo Switch 1 and Switch 2.

As soon as I start sailing or navigating, the game crashes after a few seconds — regardless of the number of days in the world (it’s happening even on a new world at day 16).

This is really frustrating because it makes a whole part of the game essentially unplayable. The sailing content can’t be used at all.

It used to work fine before, so I’m wondering if there is anything we can do on our side, or if a patch is planned to fix this?

Thanks.

[CrimsonStrider]

On 2/21/2026 at 11:28 PM, NathalieDST said:

(it’s happening even on a new world at day 16).

Which character are you using?

Are either of the rifts activated in game or through the game settings?

[Mike23Ua]

On 2/21/2026 at 9:28 AM, NathalieDST said:

Hi,

I’m experiencing the same issue on both Nintendo Switch 1 and Switch 2.

As soon as I start sailing or navigating, the game crashes after a few seconds — regardless of the number of days in the world (it’s happening even on a new world at day 16).

This is really frustrating because it makes a whole part of the game essentially unplayable. The sailing content can’t be used at all.

It used to work fine before, so I’m wondering if there is anything we can do on our side, or if a patch is planned to fix this?

Thanks.

I don’t own a switch or switch 2, but I can tell you that even on my Xbox series S that there seems to be an issue with sailing in DST. I was playing as Wortox, I went sailing it worked fine for a bit, and THEN I got attacked and killed by a massive group of Pirate Monkeys, I rolled my world back it took FOREVER to Rollback, but when I did that: the pirate raid music played endlessly and forever, like I mean: It played during normal gameplay, it played during loading screens, it played while the game was paused.. this is clearly a glitch.

My game never did crash, but hopefully this information helps the devs identify & track down what’s causing it.