Another Bethesda launch, and another round of frustrated gamers trying to navigate error codes. The latest, Starfield‘s Shattered Space DLC and its “Lookup Failed” message, is incredibly frustrating—but the fix is probably simple for most people.
Reports came pouring in after the DLC launched, with many players reporting the same thing: They owned the DLC, they had downloaded the content, and when they tried to find the system the new DLC was located in, they received nothing but error text reading “LOOKUP FAILED.” This occurred to some when looking at the starmap, others for bits of dialogue from Andreja that seemed to be related to the DLC, and more. Some players even got to the new system only to find untextured planets and more error messages. The big problem? There are multiple downloads for the update, and many people have only downloaded one of them.
This one got me, too. I started up Starfield this morning to force through any pending updates, which my Xbox dutifully did. And it was a chunky update, as well, coming in at 18 GB, so I expected that to be all I needed. Unfortunately, as I started jumping from system to system after the update, I received no distress calls or means of starting the DLC.
That’s because the Shattered Space DLC was in a separate update folder, the first update apparently containing most of the extra stuff coming to the galaxy outside of Shattered Space‘s main content. Once I went to the game’s page on my Xbox, hit the “manage game updates” option, and then selected the game and add-ons screen, there was an unselected file for Shattered Space right at the bottom. I just had to hit the button to install it, hit save, and download the final 10 GB update. After that, I opened up my game and found the DLC waiting for me as soon as I jumped to a new system.
Why did this ship in two different updates? Why didn’t my system just automatically update both? Both of those questions are mysteries deeper than the void, presumably to be discovered amidst a distant supernova in Todd Howard’s brain.
There are also players reporting they’ve downloaded all parts of the DLC using the method above and are still encountering errors, which is a shame, and unfortunately I don’t have an easy fix for you there. But most people seem to fix their Lookup Failed woes just be double-checking their game pages and making sure all parts of the DLC are downloaded.
It’s an annoying hiccup, but a hiccup for most. Now get out there and explore the stars.
