The Starminer campaign progression bug is currently the biggest roadblock for players diving into the newly released Early Access space simulation. Whether you are soft-locked trying to deposit 20t of iron at Reclamation 09, or finding your objectives completely frozen during the "Candle in the Dark" mission, this game-breaking issue halts your interstellar expansion in its tracks.
Fortunately, by utilizing specific UI workarounds, over-delivering resources, or updating to the latest hotfix branch (Patch 0.33.3.1), you can bypass these broken quest triggers. This guide dissects every known soft-lock in the campaign and provides the exact steps to force the game's event listener to register your progress.
What Causes the Starminer Campaign Progression Bug?
To understand how to fix your broken save file, you first need to understand why the game is failing to register your actions. CoolAndGoodGames launched Starminer into Early Access in late May 2026 with a highly ambitious premise: a complex, physics-based, real-time simulation sandbox with a linear narrative campaign layered directly on top of it.
The friction between these two systems—the dynamic sandbox and the static quest scripts—is the root cause of almost every soft-lock. The bug is not a single line of bad code, but rather a collection of script failures, UI misdirections, and sequence-breaking events that occur when the simulation outpaces the narrative.
First, there is the issue of UI misdirection. Starminer features a dense, intricate user interface designed for managing massive fleets and automated trade routes. When a campaign mission asks you to interact with an NPC station, the game often defaults to the standard mercantile "Buy/Sell" window rather than the quest-specific "Deposit/Withdraw" tab. If you sell a quest item instead of depositing it, the script never sees the transaction.
Second, the game utilizes a fragile event listener for its quest sequencing. If you trigger multiple objectives at once—such as accepting a main story mission while simultaneously hoarding randomly generated bulletin board tasks—the event listener can become overloaded and fail to flag the main quest as complete.
Finally, the dynamic alien threat system does not pause for narrative beats. If your mining fleet generates a massive heat signature, the alien faction will spawn a strike force. Because the game world is persistent, this alien fleet can path directly through a campaign sector and annihilate a critical story station before you even receive the objective to dock there, resulting in an irreversible soft-lock.
Mission-by-Mission Fixes for the Starminer Campaign Progression Bug
Because the progression blocks manifest differently depending on which chapter you are playing, the workarounds require mission-specific strategies. Here is exactly how to bypass the most notorious campaign roadblocks.
Reclamation 09: The 20t Iron Transfer Bug
Early in the campaign, the tutorial instructs you to transfer 20t of iron scrap to the Reclamation 09 space station. This is where the majority of players encounter their first hard stop. You approach the station, right-click to trade, hand over the iron, and the quest log remains stubbornly unchanged.
The primary culprit here is the trade window UI. By default, interacting with Reclamation 09 opens the "Buy/Sell" interface. If you simply sell the 20t of iron to the station, you are engaging with the dynamic economy, not the quest script. You must manually click the "Deposit" tab to register the transfer as a mission objective.
If you are using the correct tab and the quest still fails to update, you have encountered the transit loss bug. Because Starminer physically simulates the movement of materials through space, chunks of ore can lose their quest-flag tags while in transit from your cargo bay to the station's docking ring. To fix this, players have discovered the "Over-Delivery" workaround. Instead of bringing the requested 20t, load your hold with 100t of iron scrap. Get your ship as physically close to the station's docking port as possible to minimize travel time, and deposit the entire 100t stack. The sheer volume of flagged materials forces the event listener to trigger the completion state.
Candle in the Dark: The Broken Section Objective
During the "Candle in the Dark" storyline, players are tasked with repairing a "Broken Section" of a derelict rig. Prior to the end of May 2026, the game's event listener routinely failed to register the repair, leaving players stranded in the sector with no way to advance.
Developer CoolAndGoodGames acknowledged that the detection logic for this specific repair was fundamentally flawed. If you are stuck here, the only fix is to update your game to Patch 0.33.2.0 or later. In this update, the developers implemented a brute-force workaround: the "Broken Section" objective now auto-completes the moment you reach that stage of the questline, bypassing the faulty repair check entirely.
The Triton Pirate Base Assault
Another notorious roadblock occurs when attempting to assault the Triton Pirate Base. Players would warp into the sector, fully armed with T2 Gauss Guns and fighter wings, only for the mission script to freeze. The pirate station would remain untargetable, and the objective log would stay blank.
This was a sequencing error that was resolved in Patch 0.33.3.0. The patch explicitly fixed the "Triton Pirate Base mission not starting" bug and corrected the progression triggers when entering the sector. If you are playing on an older version of the Early Access build, you must update to proceed.
The Great Spill: Eonite Detection Failure
In "The Great Spill" mission, players must clean up derelict debris and deposit Eonite fuel onto a hangarship. A bug prevented the Eonite from being detected by the hangarship's cargo logic, halting the mission. Patch 0.33.3.1 corrected the derelict configurations and ensured Eonite deposits register correctly. If you are stuck here, verify your game cache and ensure you are on the latest hotfix branch.
The Europa Station Destruction Soft-Lock
This is the most devastating bug in the game because no patch can fix it once it happens. As mentioned earlier, the alien threat is active during the campaign. If you run a Nuclear power plant at its maximum 500 MW output without building adequate thermal dumping radiators, your massive heat signature will summon an alien strike force.
If that strike force paths through the Europa sector, they will destroy the Europa station. Hours later, when the campaign instructs you to dock at Europa, you will find nothing but debris. The quest cannot progress because the physical target no longer exists. The only workaround for this soft-lock is to reload an earlier save from before the station was destroyed, and strictly manage your heat output to keep the alien threat level low until the campaign moves past the Europa chapter.
How to Avoid the Starminer Campaign Progression Bug in Future Runs
If you are starting a fresh campaign or have managed to bypass your current roadblock, there are several best practices you should adopt to prevent the game's scripts from breaking again.
Do Not Stack Bulletin Board Quests The campaign relies on a highly sensitive script sequencer. If you accept a main story mission and simultaneously load up your log with randomly generated bulletin board delivery tasks, the game engine's event listener gets overloaded. This sequence breaking has a near 100% failure rate for corrupting the campaign state. Play the main story linearly, and save the bulletin board grinding for sandbox mode.
Manage Your Heat Signature Treat the campaign as a stealth mission. Do not build massive, sprawling industrial complexes that generate 30k+ heat levels while you are still trying to clear the early story chapters. Keep your footprint small, use water-based thermal dumping efficiently, and avoid drawing alien aggro to sectors that contain critical story NPCs.
Manual Save Discipline Starminer uses dense JSON save files to track the persistent universe. Relying entirely on autosaves is a death sentence in Early Access. Manually save your game before jumping into any new sector, and keep a rolling backlog of at least three distinct save files. If a quest trigger fails, reloading a manual save from before you entered the sector is often enough to reset the event listener and allow the script to execute properly.
Developer Updates on the Starminer Campaign Progression Bug
To their credit, the team at CoolAndGoodGames has been exceptionally responsive since the game's Early Access launch. They have established a rapid iteration cycle, pushing out Patches 0.33.1.0 through 0.33.3.1 within days of release.
Beyond fixing the hard progression blocks, these patches have addressed numerous underlying simulation issues that indirectly broke the campaign. Water consumption has been reduced by 50%, making station maintenance significantly cheaper and preventing early-game economic death spirals. The developers also fixed a critical bug where auto resource balancing was causing physical damage to ships, and they removed the close dialogue (X) button for all tutorial missions to prevent players from accidentally skipping vital script triggers.
If you want to ensure you have the absolute latest fixes, it is highly recommended to switch to the Beta branch on Steam. By right-clicking Starminer in your library, selecting Properties, and navigating to the Betas tab, you can opt into the testing branch to receive hotfixes days before they are pushed to the default public build.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the Starminer campaign progression bug affect sandbox mode? No. Sandbox mode strips out the linear quest scripts entirely. You can mine Thorium, build T1 Hangars, and fight the alien threat without worrying about broken event triggers or soft-locked story missions.
How do I actually deposit iron at Reclamation 09? Approach the station closely to minimize the physical travel time of the ore chunks. Open the trade window, explicitly switch from the default "Buy/Sell" tab to the "Deposit" tab, and transfer the 20t of iron scrap. If the quest does not update, bring 100t of iron and deposit it all at once to force the game engine to register the transaction.
Will my corrupted save file be fixed by the new patches? It depends entirely on the nature of the bug. The Patch 0.33.2.0 fix for the "Candle in the Dark" mission is retroactive and will auto-complete the objective the moment you load your save. However, if the Europa station was physically destroyed by aliens in your save file, no patch can resurrect it. You must reload an earlier save.
Can I manually edit my save file to bypass a bug?
Yes, but it is risky. Starminer stores its persistent universe data in dense JSON files located at C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\LocalLow\CoolAndGoodGames\Starminer\Saves. You can open your save in a text editor and manually change a mission's objective state from 0 to 1. However, forcing a quest to complete without actually delivering the required resources (like Eonite or Thorium) can cause negative balance issues and permanently corrupt your storage manager.
Sources
- Steam Community General Discussions: Stuck at Campaign Mission - Transfer 20t of Iron to Reclamation 09
- SteamDB Patch Notes: Starminer 0.33.2.0 and 0.33.3.1 Updates
- Reddit r/Space4X: Starminer Early Access Launch Feedback
- CoolAndGoodGames Official Developer Diaries and Hotfix Announcements