How to fix the Starfield shader download

If you’ve just started Starfield for the first time, you might encounter the Starfield shader download during the startup sequence. If you do see this, you’ll see a loading bar at the top of the screen that states “Building Shaders: 0/7308.”

So far, we have only seen this issue affecting Starfield PC players, and regular PC gamers will be familiar with the building shaders issue.

Essentially, when you load a game for the first time, your graphics card syncs with the game and configures a number of shaders so you get the best possible experience.

In the case of Starfield, your graphics card has to work through 7308 shaders.

Depending on your gaming rig, this process can take seconds or up to an hour. From our testing, we haven’t seen a wait time longer than 15 minutes.

Should your PC take longer than 15 minutes to build the shaders, there are a few things you can try:

• Restart your PC.
• Exit the game, disconnect from the internet, and relaunch Starfield.
• Verify game files.
• Uninstall Starfield, and reinstall it.

Should none of the above work, Bethesda is very likely to address the issue in a hotfix. Otherwise there is always the chance that a Starfield mod on Nexus Mods will contain a fix. Should one appear, we will be back to link to it from this article, so check back frequently.

If you are continuing to have issues, head over to our Starfield forum where you can find other Starfield players who may have a solution or two that works for them.