In General
- The Core Design games rely very infrequently on scripted sequences, instead letting the engine take care of all the rules and giving the player almost total control over Lara's movement. Thus it's often possible to end up in places where she's not meant to go and get stuck, since the game still considers them "valid" conditions.
- In the original games, if you happen to save the game while sliding down a ramp that seems to lead to the next area but instead leads to a Bottomless Pit (or similar), then your only choice is to restart the game from the beginning (or load an earlier save-state, which probably won't exist). This problem is only present in the PC versions. On the PlayStation (1), you have the option to restart from the current level or a previous one.
- Lara is able to navigate pits of spikes if she walks through them. However, if the game is saved while she is standing in the spikes and that save is later reloaded, then the game assumes that she's fallen on the spikes. She dies instantly.
- In most of the classic Tomb Raider games, health packs are in limited supply. Some levels will force you take unavoidable damage. If you use up all your health kits, it's entirely possible to be stuck in a dead game where you can't survive the damage thrown your way without healing. To counter this, Core games started to deliberately include a large medkit before such moments (but not all of them), while most of the modern games in the franchise refills Lara's health to full if you reload your last checkpoint upon dying.
- In the first one, in Natla’s Mines, there's a drill on rails and a movable box that blocks the passage between two areas. To open the passage, a switch needs to be thrown to move the drill backwards and the box needs to be moved. Any direction will open the passage, but the box also needs to be moved away from the drill in order to be used to access an alcove in the ceiling. If the box is moved all the way towards the drill, Lara will clip into the drill as the box ends up touching it, then teleport a few steps outside of the drill. It's no longer possible to move the box in the opposite direction. Trying to move it sideways won't work because, after that, it needs to be moved towards the wall of the open passage, which isn't possible due to a hair wide wooden trim. A lot of progress can still be made without throwing the switch in the alcove. The only solutions are to reload to an earlier save or use a tool to edit Lara's position in the save file.
- The final level gives you only a shotgun to deal with the enemies invading Lara's home. Unlike her pistols, the shotgun has limited ammo, but the cabinet that holds the weapon has a ton of ammo next to it and most of the enemies will drop more shotgun ammo upon death. It is possible to blow through all your ammo before the Elite Mook shows up and being unable to kill him (or anyone else in general) to finish the level, though you'd have to be wasting ammo on purpose to reach such a state.
- You need the quadbike. You will continue to need the quadbike. Don't leave it parked somewhere stupid where you can't reach it.
- In one stage, Lara needs to fill a water tank in London, opening the way to the exit. The tank is only partially filled at first, but she can still jump in the water and survive the fall. The only problem: she can't get out, and the exit's not open yet.
- The game has an easy quicksave, and it will allow you to quicksave in the middle of certain-death situations, such as sinking in quicksand.
- Not to mention that there are several bugs that will probably prevent you from reaching another area. Such as the Temple Ruins. If you go back to the first room inside the ruins (The one with the inanimate Shiva statue and shotgun shells) or save in the room, there is a chance that an invisible wall will spawn, blocking access to one of the paths with the Ganesha keys. The only way to remedy it is to reload the level. A similar invisible wall glitch can occur in Lud's Gate if you save too soon after throwing a certain switch.
- A notorious bug occurs in Aldwych if the player misses a certain tile in the room with the drill. If you skip the first secret, you will avoid this because you will end up stepping on the trigger tile. However, if you do choose to get the secret, make sure you climb up the front side of the hole. If you climb up the right and don't step on the tile between the hole and the other entrance (detailed on this screenshot
◊), when you come back to the drill, the drill will sink far below◊ instead of staying level with the doorway, making it impossible to continue the game unless you restart the level. - In The Lost City of Tinnos, there are four puzzle rooms, each with an Oceanic Mask that must be picked up at the end, all of which are needed to proceed to the next level. It's possible not to pick up the masks, though, and a couple of the puzzle rooms can't be redone at that point.
- It's possible to jump into the small water tunnel in the empty third water tank in Thames Wharf before you fill the tank. The jump is rather challenging and requires careful timing. Doing this will lead you to the edifice, but the edifice's exit will be too high for Lara to reach, thus preventing her from finishing the level. The empty tank has no ladder and is too deep to get out of. This can be corrected by reloading, but if you save after making the jump, Lara will be stuck in the edifice forever unless you restart the level.
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation
- You can skip levels with a cheat code. In some levels this is useful, but if it's used in certain levels with certain key items that seem to be inconspicuous at the moment but turn out to be necessary to unlock doors or other plot advancing actions in later levels, you're screwed. It's only safe to skip the first 4 levels in the linear Valley of the Kings segment - after that, Lara will have to travel between levels to make use of items.
- The first Ireland level has an unwinnable situation which can happen if the player lets their curiosity get the better of them. After the cut scene of the priest throwing iron into a pit to repel a demon, it is possible to jump down in the pit, but you will die from the fall. However, having full health and dropping down into the pit by hanging from the edge makes it possible to survive the fall, but now you can't climb back out. Oops!
- The final level has several places where the game becomes Unwinnable if you save the game there, resulting in plot-critical items / enemies disappearing or never showing up; game scripts or mechanics getting screwed; doors not opening etc. Some claim you should through the last stage without saving at all, just to avoid these bugs! (Due to the level's climactic nature, this is easier said than done.) It should be safe to save an time before Lara enters a particular storeroom with a turret and soldier; after that, it's highly recommended to back up saves across multiple slots.
Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness
- There's a major bug called "Fatal Error - RMX version mismatch" that completely denies the player of going any further in the game. It can happen at ANY point in the game when trying to access a new level, and there is no possible solution since the disc itself is corrupted. Unless you're willing to buy a new copy and hope it doesn't suffer the same fate, you're screwed.
- Due to its unfinished state, AoD has many similar glitches that can occur at any time when exploring. Best back up your saves to at least 3 different slots; not that there's any guarantee that'll even help, mind you.
- AoD normally has some respawning ammunition in sections where you have to shoot any objects to progress to prevent this (such as a Mag Vega magazine respawning in the Strahov Fortress in the section where you need to shoot a propane tank); however, the start of Aquatic Research Facility has no ammo in the entire section (due to being near the start/no enemies) where Lara has to cause an explosion with gunfire to stop some turrets, so you're stuck without cheats.
- Completing the time trial for the Bolivia Redux level gives you the "One-Hit Kill" cheat, allowing you to defeat any enemy with a single bullet from any gun. But if you use this to kill the shadow entity in the Kazakhstan level (which in a normal playthrough you can't kill) then you will be unable to grab the sword fragment to finish the level.
- Near the end of the England level, there is a boss fight against a serpent. However, you can access the room earlier in the level. The main mechanic of the fight is interacting with levers that will drop cages on the serpent's head. Except, if you press the grapple button repeatedly as opposed to once, the lever will break and no longer drop the cage. You can break any of the levers in the room, but breaking just one will make the game Unwinnable. You pass multiple checkpoints after this point, so even a reload won't help you if you broke it without knowing.
- In the very last level of the game, Final Conflict, there is a room with a lava pit and a small cage you need to push around to reach higher platforms. There's nothing stopping you from pushing the cage into the lava, where it will disappear and not respawn...or saving the game at any point after that happens. If you save after pushing the cage of the lava, particularly after triggering a checkpoint, your save file will be hosed and you will have to reload an earlier save (or start over if you didn't have one). It would hurt a lot to have to have this design oversight force you to start all the way over after you've spent so much time getting all the way to the end.
- The Wii version had a glitch in which exploring a watery passage without exploring down the hallway first would cause a switch later in the area to fail to spawn. Naturally, you need that switch to open a door. Without it, you're trapped forever.
- In the PS2 version, it is possible to abandon the motorcycle at a spot that is hard to reach with it and impossible to reach without it — before you're done with it.
- There's a glitch where rope arrows will fail to work upon reloading a save. Unless the player was careful enough to save across multiple slots, Lara is screwed.
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