Scrap Mechanic stürzt ab oder startet nicht: die Checkliste

What this page is willing to claim

Every step below can be checked against the Scrap Mechanic store listing, the developer’s own announcements, or a screen the game shows you. Advice that circulates as registry edits and driver rollbacks is not repeated here, because none of it traces back to a source you can verify. Where an answer is not published anywhere, this page says so instead of filling the gap.

So the order is not “most likely fix first”. It is “cheapest verifiable check first”.

Compare your PC against the published requirements

The store listing gives a minimum target of 64-bit Windows 10, an Intel Core i5-1235U class processor, 8 GB of memory, Intel Iris Xe class graphics, DirectX 11 and 30 GB of storage. A broadband connection is listed for playing together. The recommended target is Windows 11, 16 GB of memory, an Intel Core i5-12500 or AMD Ryzen 5 5600, and an RTX 3060 12 GB or RX 6700 XT 12 GB.

Two of those matter more than they look. The 30 GB figure is storage for the install, and a drive with almost nothing free is a common reason an update finishes badly. The memory figure matters because the load here is physics, and physics load comes from what players build rather than from the world itself.

Why “it ran yesterday” is normal

A machine that walks around the world at a steady frame rate can still fall over on a creation with many joints and separate bodies. In multiplayer everyone in the session simulates the same creations, so somebody else’s ambitious build can be the thing your machine is choking on. A crash that only happens near one vehicle or one base is a physics-load symptom, not a broken install.

Update the game before you change anything else

Patch 1.0.1 fixed steering-angle synchronization, Schematic Box and recipe-unlock problems, a handbook crash, the Pizzaburger achievement, hidden player-name behavior, and crashes affecting some mods. A crash that matches one of those descriptions is a patch you have not installed yet, not a problem to work around.

Check that Steam has finished updating, then read the newest posts in the official announcement feed linked at the bottom of this page. The developer posts patch notes there, and that feed is the only source this site treats as authoritative for what a patch changed.

Rule out mods before anything else

The game itself warns you about mod problems, in its own words. If a world uses content you no longer have, it opens a dialog titled “MISSING MOD” that reads “This game uses a mod that is not installed”. If a selected mod is behind the current build, the warning is “One or more of the selected mods have not been updated to the current game version. The game might not work properly. Continue anyway?”

Treat “Continue anyway?” as a question, not a formality. If the game is crashing, answer it by testing without the mod instead of through it. The mod screen has an option to disable everything at once, so you can start a clean session without unsubscribing from anything.

• Turn every mod off and load a world you know worked.
• If that world is stable, turn mods back on a few at a time.
• Check the Workshop page of any mod that is still selected for its last update date.

The mods and Workshop guide covers what a world keeps depending on after you unsubscribe.

Check your Steam launch options

The -dev switch is a developer mode, not a performance setting, and it changes how a world behaves. A world created while it is active does not start the opening quest chain, skips the opening cinematic, and gives you different starting equipment. If you added it once to try a chat command and forgot about it, remove it before you conclude the game is broken.

Launch options live in the game’s Properties window in your Steam library, on the General tab. The same Properties window holds Steam’s file verification tool, which re-downloads any installed file that no longer matches Steam’s copy. That is the one repair step available through an official channel, and it is worth running after a failed update or a drive problem.

Turn down Physics Quality for large builds

The Gameplay tab of the options menu has a Physics Quality setting. The list runs Smart (Recommended), Advanced, then Simple 8 down to Simple 1, and the game marks Smart as its recommendation in the label itself.

If your problem is a freeze or a crash that only happens around a big creation, this is the setting to move before you touch anything in the graphics tab, because the graphics tab does not affect simulation cost. The blueprint analyzer counts parts, joints and separate bodies in a saved creation, which is a quick way to see whether a vehicle is as heavy as it feels.

What this guide will not tell you to do

There is no published list of “safe” registry values, driver versions or config file edits for this game, so none appear here. There is no crash reporter that hands you an error code either, so any page offering to decode a Scrap Mechanic crash code is inventing one.

What the game does write is a plain log file per session, in a Logs folder inside the install directory, named for the date and time it started. Right-click the game in your Steam library, use Browse Local Files, and open the newest game- file. It is readable text rather than a code, and its last lines are what the game was doing when the session ended. That will not tell you the fix, but it is a concrete thing to attach when you report a problem, which is worth more than a description of the symptom.

If the checks above do not settle it, the Steam discussion boards for the game and the developer’s announcement feed are the official places where a specific build problem gets confirmed or denied. That is a slower answer than a list of tweaks, and it is the only honest one.

Crash and launch questions

Does the game have a manual save I should use before it crashes?

No world-save chat command is published outside the challenge builder, where /save saves a challenge. Survival and Creative worlds are written by the game itself, which is why a backup copy of the save folder is the real protection. The save location and backup guide has the path.

Can an old save cause a crash in 1.0?

Old Survival saves are not compatible with the 1.0 release, so the answer is not “it might crash”, it is that the save is not meant to continue. Creative worlds do load, and the returning player guide covers how to test one from a copy.

Is a mod the most common cause?

That number is not published, so nobody can honestly rank the causes. What is published is that the game ships three separate warnings about missing, removed and outdated mods, and that patch 1.0.1 fixed crashes affecting some mods. That makes mods the cheapest thing to eliminate, which is a different claim.

Will lowering graphics settings stop a physics crash?

Graphics settings change what is drawn, not what is simulated. Physics Quality is on the Gameplay tab for that reason. Lowering shadows or textures can help a machine that is short on video memory, but it does not reduce the cost of a creation with hundreds of joints.