Nivalis Nights Fixes: Stuck Holding Food, Save Location

By Mirela Constantin · Updated October 4, 2026

Official known issues (September 29)

The developers’ Read First / Known Issues post on the Steam forum lists what they are working on:

Performance: frame rate varies in areas with many NPCs. Restart if FPS sinks after several hours; set Windows power mode to performance.
Quests: minor dialogue issues in a small number of quests.
NPCs: how characters move around the world and in venues.
Venues: minor issues placing items.
Steam Deck: performance.
Visuals: minor clipping and animation issues.

What the October patches fixed

Two patches landed in the first week, both posted as Steam announcements.

Update #1 (October 1)

Staff taking orders no longer repeat the action when ingredients need restocking, and managers buy ingredients more sensibly. This is the patch that ended the launch overbuying.
Business and barter skill levelling fixed.
The decoration and plant objectives for Ramen Noir now say where to shop: the home furniture retailers at Eastern Residential, Hive Mall and Central Canyon.
The intro “Fill Venue Inventory” objective no longer confuses players who bought only the shopping-list amount.
The boat cockpit gives better visibility and less motion sickness.
Other characters no longer push you inside geometry, and chess now handles castling while in check correctly.
Known issue left open: after holding J to hide the quest log for a while, its text can turn illegible. Reload your save to fix it.

Update #2 (October 2)

Cooks now use older ingredients first. Less food rots, but customer reviews may mark the meal down for freshness.
Staff follow a fixed task order (see staff and managers).
Decorative furniture with a storage or refrigerated-storage value now counts toward the venue’s storage. The Kitchen Buffet holds 100 normal and 50 refrigerated slots.
Trash bins for the player-ownable venues in Central Canyon were moved closer, so managers and cleaners behave better there.
Overwriting a save no longer loses the old one if the game crashes mid-save.
Fishing rod physics are steadier, and the treasure fishing-spot icon was replaced to be less confusing.
Fixed: getting stuck after cleaning trash a staff member had already cleaned; the counters at Odin’s Pub; the blurry newspaper in Hive Mall.
Known issues left open: fast travel to some places can drag performance down (save on arrival and reload that save), and staff can get stuck idle (hire fewer staff at that venue for now).

Stuck holding food or an item

Searches for “picked something up and can’t put it down” and “stuck holding food” are common. Players report it mainly with stolen kitchen equipment when there is no room to place it at your venue. Fixes to try:

Go to your venue and clear a spot: move or store furniture to open floor space, then place the item.
For food, open a cabinet or fridge with free slots and transfer it.
If nothing frees you, load your last save. The game saves anytime from the menu, so save before a night of moving furniture.

Cannot buy food at another venue

You eat out by sitting at a venue and waiting to be served. When a venue will not sell to you, players have found:

Some venues simply do not sell to you.
The venue may be out of stock. Rivals you robbed may not have replaced their kit.
Rival kitchens can fill up with rotten food they never clear, which stops them cooking.
A daily ingredient shortage can leave a menu unbuildable.

”Go to bed early and you get review-bombed”

One player went to bed early and woke to several identical bad reviews (“the service is an absolute joke…”). Another suggested it may be a quest or NPC event that triggers review-bombing. Reddit players found the likely cause after a recent patch: every undelivered order at a venue you are not in at closing time becomes a one-star review. One player’s 4.9-star venue fell to 2 stars overnight. Close with your own staff on shift and orders cleared, or be there at closing. Separately, venues suddenly getting zero customers (one player saw a whole Hive Mall district go quiet) has no known fix yet.

Business Permit Tier 2 does not include Tier 1

Reported as a bug: a Tier 2 permit did not let the player lease Tier 1 venues. One player got a Tier 2 licence from a third Tier 1 business reaching level 5 rather than from the Tier 2 quest. Permits come from venue-level quests, from second and later venues reaching level 5, and from some side quests.

Manager buying too much

Patched. Update #1 (October 1) reworked how staff take orders and how managers buy ingredients; the author of the Nexus fix mod called it obsolete on October 2. See staff and managers.

Shared stock between venues

Players asked how to put stock into a shared inventory. A mod adds it; the base game keeps stock per venue, and your manager or you move it.

Save file location

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\ION LANDS\Nivalis Nights

Paste that into Win+R. The .sav files and the logs (Player.log, Player-prev.log) are there. Each launch overwrites the previous log, so copy them before restarting if you are reporting a bug. Steam Cloud saves are supported, and cloud sync needs an internet connection.

Reporting a bug

Use the support page on the 505 Games site with what happened, where, the steps, your PC specs and a screenshot. Attach DxDiag and both logs.

Days pass too fast

A common complaint (The Singleplayer Squad’s review among others): the clock runs fast for a game about exploring. Mods that slow the in-game clock appeared within days of launch; see mods. Time does stop during curfew and while you edit staff schedules.