How to Fix the Norland Crash at Launch Issue

Norland is the latest medieval colony sim to join the ever-growing genre on PC, and it has launched into early access, published by Hooded Horse. Since this is an early access release, there are plenty of bugs and technical issues that players are running into, and thankfully, the developers are interacting with the community. If Norland is crashing at launch for you, here is how you can fix that.

Fixing the Norland Crash at Launch Issue

If you’re using Avast as your default antivirus, then you need to add the Norland folder to its list of exclusions and exceptions to fix the crash at launch issue. Apart from that, make sure Steam isn’t running in administrator mode.

Add Norland to Avast’s Exceptions

For some reason, Avast is flagging Norland as a threat, which means players who have the antivirus service will not be able to launch the title. You need to add the game’s main folder to the list of exceptions by following the instructions on their support page.

• Open Avast Antivirus and navigate to ☰ Menu ▸ Settings.
• Select General ▸ Exceptions and click Add exception.
• Click Next ▸ I understand risks.
• Add an exception:
• Type the file/folder path or URL (Norland’s main folder) into the text box and click Add exception.
• Or, click Browse, select a file/folder (Norland’s main folder), and click OK ▸ Add exception.
• The specified file, folder, or website will be added to the exceptions list.

After that, it shouldn’t be a problem, and the game should launch as normal.

Verify Game Files

We still recommend verifying game files just in case to restore anything the antivirus might have potentially deleted.

• Open Steam and navigate to your library
• Here, right-click on Norlands and select Properties
• In the Installed Files tab, click on Verify integrity of game file

Don’t Run Steam as an Administrator

For some reason, users have confirmed that running Steam as an administrator causes a crash at launch. This could be related to some permissions rule, but for now, if you aren’t using an antivirus like Avast, try launching Steam without administration privileges. This would only apply to players who regularly run Steam as an administrator.

Apart from that, you can try the following generic solutions that could potentially work:

• Make sure you have the latest GPU drivers: NVIDIA, AMD, Intel
• Update DirectX and Visual C++ Redistributables
• Switch to your dedicated GPU if you’re playing on a laptop

Norland just launched in early access, so you can expect similar issues, at least for a few weeks. We recommend joining their discord to report any problems you find as well.