Fix the Blessed Pearl Bug in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: Complete Guide

Introduction

Stuck in the Blessed Pearl mission? You're not alone. This notorious bug in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has multiple, game-breaking variants that can halt your progress completely. This guide breaks down every known issue and provides proven workarounds to get you moving again.

Understanding the Blessed Pearl Bug: What's Actually Broken

If you're hitting a wall in the Blessed Pearl mission, you're not alone. This section of Sukhothai has multiple ways to break, and they all feel completely different when they happen to you.

The 5 Bug Variants You Might Encounter

Here’s what the community has actually been running into:

• Ladder Lock-Out: If Gina's objective is still stuck in 'Search' mode, the ladder's interaction zone just vanishes, which means you'll never see the 'Climb' prompt. You're just standing there like an idiot.

• Vine & Ivy Freeze: Indy either hangs motionless when you try to grab the vine, or he rubber-bands straight back to the floor. The animation state can't figure out what to do with itself.

• Shimmy-Wall Gap Collision: Narrow wall gaps stop registering the shimmy prompt entirely, and the collision actually pushes you outward instead of letting you through. The gap's soft collision capsule can stay compressed, permanently blocking you.

• Gina Despawn Soft-Lock: If Gina's AI timer expires during the river chase, her model just disappears. The cut-scene trigger never fires and your objective marker vanishes, leaving you with absolutely nothing to do.

• Hybrid Failure State: This is the nightmare scenario where you get hit with everything at once - ladder lock-out, wall-gap collision freeze, and vine AI de-sync all happening simultaneously, trapping you after the river skiff checkpoint.

Why the February 2025 Patch Didn't Fully Fix It

MachineGames pushed Patch 1.3.2 in February 2025 and it fully fixed the Blessed Pearl bug for existing saves. The patch automatically marks the quest 'A Glimpse Beyond' as complete if the Blessed Pearl is in your inventory, and the achievement is re-checked upon quest completion. If the Pearl was discarded, the drum respawns a replacement copy.

Universal Workarounds for All Platforms

These three methods have been battle-tested across PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5, and none of them require mods or console commands. They’re not guaranteed, but they’re your best shot until MachineGames pushes an official fix.

Manual Save + Shader Cache Wipe Method

Your first step is to create a manual save right before you enter the Sukhothai temple - like, literally standing at the doorway. Once that’s done, quit to the dashboard (on Xbox/PS5) or fully close the game on Steam. This is where it gets slightly technical: you need to delete your local shader cache. On PC, navigate to the *IndianaJones\Cache* folder and wipe everything inside; console players can typically find this under game storage management.

Now restart the game offline and load that manual save. What this does is force the companion AI tether to completely reset, which means Gina’s nav-agent gets a clean slate. The community estimates this works about 60% of the time, so it’s a coin flip - but it’s a lot better than nothing.

Gina Teleport Trigger Trick

If you're already stuck and Gina’s just standing there, you can brute-force her AI back to life. The bug happens when her AI is in a 'combat idle' state during an asynchronous load, which essentially garbage-collects her navigation path. To fix it, aggro the guards in the temple courtyard, let them kill you, then reload your checkpoint. That death reload forces Gina to teleport back to your position and re-enables the vine and ladder prompts.

MachineGames has acknowledged this on its public Trello board as a high-priority bug under 'AI Companion – Sukhothai soft-lock – investigating,' but as of January 18, 2026, there’s still no patch in sight.

Journal-Entry Pop Method (100% Completion)

For achievement hunters, the Easy Archivist node is particularly cruel. If you pick up the Blessed Pearl entry while the animation set is bugged, the hidden counter flag never flips, and you’ll be locked out of the achievement. Here’s the workaround: after grabbing the note, immediately open your field journal, close it while hugging the wall gap near the ladder, then hammer the climb button repeatedly. This animation cancel can nudge Indy into the shimmy state and register the journal flag.

This method has roughly an 85% success rate as of early 2025. If it fails, the 100% fallback is to reload a manual save made before you picked up the note and replay the section offline. It’s tedious, but it guarantees the flag will trigger correctly.

Platform-Specific Solutions

PC Exclusive: Console Commands & Mods

Let's get the situation clear: The game does have a developer console accessible via community-made fixes. The official game does not include a built-in console, but players can enable one using an ASI loader (e.g., GreatCircleFix) or by editing the Engine.ini file to allow console commands.

So PC players have to get creative. Nexus Mods hosts several save-file manipulation mods like 'Blessed Pearl Checkpoint Skip' and 'Sukhothai Clip Patch' that can shove you past broken sections. For direct control, grab Cheat Engine 7.6 and the public 'IndyGreatC.CT' table (file #4873 on Nexus). Fire it up, hit Numpad *, and you'll have a working no-clip/ghost mode that lets you bypass broken triggers and walls.

The trade-off? Achievements get disabled the second you start messing with memory. For that brutal Blessed Pearl bug where cogwheels despawn and you're stuck at 7/10 - usually triggered when you back out of buying the rebreather because you're short on cash - these tools are your only real option. Bethesda's official advice is somehow still 'start a new game.' Yeah, good luck with that.

Console Solutions (Xbox Series X|S & PS5)

Console players, you're in a tougher spot. You can't just download Cheat Engine, but there are still a few tricks that might save your save.

Xbox Series X|S has the best shot. Every title gets a 4GB Reserved Space partition that caches updates, shaders, and cloud-sync metadata, and when this cache gets corrupted, it can make your Game Slot look broken even when the save itself is fine. To fix it, go to Settings → System → Storage Devices → Clear Local Saved Games. This button wipes your local folder and flushes the Reserved Space cache in one go, forcing your Xbox to pull the last valid cloud snapshot the next time you launch. It's a server-side rollback without an actual rollback button.

PlayStation 5 users have it rougher. Sony doesn't give you a 'Clear Reserved Space' button - the partition is hidden under Settings → Storage → Console Storage → Games & Apps → Reserved, but you can't touch it directly. Your only Sony-sanctioned option is a full reinstall of the game, which is as annoying as it sounds.

Why does this work? Bethesda's own support confirms the game uses this cache to validate its online-aware Game Slot structure, so purging it can un-flag a 'corrupt' save.

There's also the Chapter Select feature. It is unlocked after completing the prologue and the first full campaign level.

One final kick: if you're on PC Game Pass, you're out of luck. Microsoft only supports save versioning on Xbox consoles, not PC, so Bethesda Support straight-up admits there's no rollback option for you.

Nuclear Options: When Nothing Else Works

Chapter Select Method (Official Recommendation)

The game does have a chapter select feature. It is unlocked after completing the prologue and the first full campaign level. Players can access it via the Journal menu to jump to any previously completed story segment. If the Blessed Pearl mission locks you in a broken instance, you can use this feature to jump back or replay the section without restarting the entire campaign. The February 2025 update did fix some ladder and vine collision bugs in Sukhothai, but collectible and cog-wheel issues are still lurking, and for some players, a manual restart might still be required.

The one silver lining is that collectible progress persists at the system level, which means you won't lose those precious Expedition Journals. Everything else? Gone. Main story, side quests, map exploration - you're back to square one, fog of war and all.

Complete Save File Restart

This is where things get technical, and honestly, a bit frustrating. The save-restart bug shows up as that lovely 'No Save Found' message on launch, giving you only NEW GAME as an option despite having multiple manual saves stashed away. It's a nasty chain reaction between aggressive auto-saving and fragile cloud sync, and while MachineGames has acknowledged the problem, a permanent fix hasn't shipped yet.

Starting over doesn't even guarantee safety, which is the real gut punch. The Blessed Pearl bug can re-corrupt a fresh playthrough, so you're never truly immune. But if you're trapped and out of manual saves, here's the proper way to restart while protecting yourself.

For Steam users, dig into %USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\MachineGames\Indiana Jones and the Great Circle\ and copy that entire folder to your desktop. Xbox folks will find theirs at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\BethesdaSoftworks...\SystemAppData\wgs\. Once you've got your backup, disable cloud sync completely, then paste your files back before launching. Doing this reduces the bug's recurrence to near-zero, according to community testing.

If that fails, there's a scorched-earth method that veteran Raiders swear by. Delete everything in your save directory except settings.cfg, launch the game, start a NEW GAME, then immediately create a manual save. Exit, copy your old .sav files back into the folder, and boot it up again. The engine re-initializes the save header and often accepts your restored data. Heads up, though - if you mess with console commands during this process, achievements get disabled, so keep it clean if you're hunting that 100%.

Prevention & Best Practices

Alright, so you want to dodge the Blessed Pearl nightmare? The community has this figured out - it all hinges on two things: how you save your game, and how you actually play through the sequence.

Save File Management Strategy

The golden rule is the 'Rule of Three.' Before you enter any loading tunnel or grab quest artifacts in this mission, create three manual saves and rotate between them. Think of it as your safety net because if one save file gets corrupted - and it can happen silently - you're not completely screwed.

If you're on PC, you can be even more thorough. Your save files live in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\<your SteamID>\2677660\remote\, and you can copy the .sav files to a desktop folder called 'IBeforePearl'. It's a bit of manual work, but it's the only way to guarantee you can roll back to a clean state.

Xbox players aren't stuck either. When a save goes bad, you can force the cloud to hand you a fresh one: go to My games & apps, find Indiana Jones, hit Menu, then Manage game & add-ons > Saved data > Reserved space, and clear it. This dumps your local cache and forces a re-download from the cloud, which often fixes corruption issues.

Sequence Optimization Tips

This is where most people mess up without even knowing it.

When Gina says 'I'll meet you on the other side,' do NOT touch Photo Mode. Seriously, don't even think about it until you see that spinning whip autosave icon vanish. Using Photo Mode during this specific window is like flipping a 'break quest' switch.

For climbing vines or grabbing ladders, tap the Interact button twice - clean presses, no spamming. Spamming the button corrupts the interaction flags, which is exactly what triggers the softlock.

And here's a big one: don't be the player who rolls ahead to skip Gina's dialogue while she's climbing. Wait for her climbing animations to finish completely before you move forward. Rushing ahead mid-animation is another confirmed bug trigger.

Developer Status & Future Fixes

Current Developer Acknowledgment (January 2026)

MachineGames has acknowledged the bug and stated a fix is in testing, but no official date or priority classification has been announced. The 'P0' designation originated from an unverified community post, not an official MachineGames or Bethesda statement. They did already take one swing at this - the February 2025 hotfix (Update 3) patched Sukhothai traversal issues where ladders, wall squeezes, and vine climbing would fail during the mission.

How to Report Your Bug Effectively

If you're still running into walls (literally), filing a proper bug report can actually bump the fix up the queue. MachineGames has been clear that player footage directly steers their spline-rebuild priorities, so your clips aren't just noise - they're telling QA what to hit first.

When you use the in-game feedback tool, always attach:

• A video showing the exact progression break
• Your platform (PC/Steam or Xbox Series X/S)
• Build version from Settings > System
• Precise location in the Blessed Pearl mission

Alternatively, you can file directly at support.machinegames.com using the keyword 'Blessed Pearl progression block' in your ticket. This helps them specifically track orphaned pickups and journal desync issues that the February patch didn't fully squash.

Conclusion

While the Blessed Pearl bug remains a persistent issue, the community has developed reliable methods to bypass it on every platform. By managing your saves carefully and using the specific workarounds outlined, you can overcome this obstacle. Stay vigilant for the official fix.