Trader Joel is not there

[Red]

Normally he's there, I ran into his base and he's not there, and I can't trade. Any ideas? Went to another trader and they are there, just Joel is my closest one. It's 5pm in the afternoon, the place is open. Is this a part of the game? Any reason why he isn't there?

[DeadlyDanDaMan]

I actually just had this same thing happen to me on a new map today. Did the White River Settlement quest and Trader Joel wasn't there, but it's his place. I've actually never done that quest before, so I wasn't sure if it was normal or not, but I don't think it is....I fully expected him to be there.

[Brian9824]

Is there a flag flying in the outpost? There are some poi outposts that are not supposed to have traders in them

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by Redhotjets:

Normally he's there, I ran into his base and he's not there, and I can't trade. Any ideas? Went to another trader and they are there, just Joel is my closest one. It's 5pm in the afternoon, the place is open. Is this a part of the game? Any reason why he isn't there?

If you build within viewing distance of a trader sometimes they despawn and never come back

The biggest base I ever built was lined up right on the line crossing into the trader zone (I dug right along the line where the ground was immune to damage due to being owned by the trader) so one side of my base was always "guarded" by having the trader there (the zombies would get stuck on his defenses if they approached from that side)

After day 108 I traveled to the other side of the map and back, when I got home, trader joel was gone and never came back

I played another 10 days and he never came back

I searched google and have found several other people who commented on similar issues. It seems that if you have modified a lot of ground near the trader (or built a lot near the trader) then when you leave the area and come back to it, the game decides not to spawn him

He seems to stick around a while if you stay local, but if the game puts that area into compressed memory (because you went to the other side of the map) than your changes to his region prevent him from respawning when you go back

You basically need to leave the traders personal space and a decent chuck of region around it alone and not messed with

Since you say trader joel used to be the closest to you and than you visited the others and they were there, I can only guess you had the same trouble I did. You built something too close to him

I'm on another game now that is more than 130 days and trader joel is still there. This time I built up the road from him, but I made sure I went far enough that his walls were not in view on the horizon. He has not despawned (yet) and I'm hopeful that he won't

You basically have two choices:

Start over on a new game
OR
Fix your current game with a work around. It's possible to keep your character (levels, skills and anything you carry) while reseting the world itself (done right it will even keep the number of days). But you will lose your buildings, but it will respawn the trader along with the new world

[Wave]

Just spawn a new trader joel.

Enable to debug mode and press F6.

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by Wave:

Just spawn a new trader joel.

Enable to debug mode and press F6.

If what you did to the game world caused him to despawn, he will vanish again at some point

Also, not all of us play with cheats enabled

Resetting the game world (to fix it) and than building somewhere else does not require the cheat option to be turned on (you are manipulating the save file) and would (hopefully) prevent the issue from happening agian when you build somewhere else

[DeadlyDanDaMan]

Originally posted by brian9824:

Is there a flag flying in the outpost? There are some poi outposts that are not supposed to have traders in them

Oh so if there is a flag flying outside the base, then there isn't going to be a trader there? And yes, there is a flag flying outside the base.

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by DeadlyDanDaMan:

Originally posted by brian9824:

Is there a flag flying in the outpost? There are some poi outposts that are not supposed to have traders in them

Oh so if there is a flag flying outside the base, then there isn't going to be a trader there? And yes, there is a flag flying outside the base.

He means to imply that there are points of interest in the game that look similar to the trader bases but they aren't traders

The actual traders have the flag over their base and are (supposed to be) always inside during the day

Some people confuse "any random base that looks similar" with the actual specific traders (which on navezgane have predefined locations, as opposed to random gen where they can be anywhwere)

But if this is a trader you have been to before, there should be no confusion. You weren't talking about "i found a random building and thought a trader should be in it ~ which happens frequently with new players"

Another simple way to check is to hit the walls of the base with something. Trader walls can not be damaged. Random points of interest that look similar can be smashed up like any normal building

[DeadlyDanDaMan]

Originally posted by Kunovega:

Originally posted by DeadlyDanDaMan:

Oh so if there is a flag flying outside the base, then there isn't going to be a trader there? And yes, there is a flag flying outside the base.

He means to imply that there are points of interest in the game that look similar to the trader bases but they aren't traders

The actual traders have the flag over their base and are (supposed to be) always inside during the day

Some people confuse "any random base that looks similar" with the actual specific traders (which on navezgane have predefined locations, as opposed to random gen where they can be anywhwere)

But if this is a trader you have been to before, there should be no confusion. You weren't talking about "i found a random building and thought a trader should be in it ~ which happens frequently with new players"

Another simple way to check is to hit the walls of the base with something. Trader walls can not be damaged. Random points of interest that look similar can be smashed up like any normal building

Yeah, it's a trader base, I can't damage anything and it makes the bedrock clang. No trader there though. However, I just found out that the trader NPC spawn amounts are completely random on an RWG map and aren't guaranteed to be at every trade post. Sorry for the confusion, I assumed that every trade post would automatically have a trader in it. Apparently that isn't the case. Not sure why the Dev's made it work that way, seems kinda dumb to me. Oh well, now I know:)

[Wave]

Originally posted by Kunovega:

Originally posted by Wave:

Just spawn a new trader joel.

Enable to debug mode and press F6.

If what you did to the game world caused him to despawn, he will vanish again at some point

Also, not all of us play with cheats enabled

Resetting the game world (to fix it) and than building somewhere else does not require the cheat option to be turned on (you are manipulating the save file) and would (hopefully) prevent the issue from happening agian when you build somewhere else

Imho it's much easier to spawn a new trader than resetting the entire world. Cheats can be enabled and disabled in the game menu.

Originally posted by DeadlyDanDaMan:

Apparently that isn't the case. Not sure why the Dev's made it work that way, seems kinda dumb to me. Oh well, now I know:)

Are you sure? I never found a trade post without trader.

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by Wave:

Originally posted by Kunovega:

If what you did to the game world caused him to despawn, he will vanish again at some point

Also, not all of us play with cheats enabled

Resetting the game world (to fix it) and than building somewhere else does not require the cheat option to be turned on (you are manipulating the save file) and would (hopefully) prevent the issue from happening agian when you build somewhere else

Imho it's much easier to spawn a new trader than resetting the entire world. Cheats can be enabled and disabled in the game menu.

They can, but it's a question of if you want to have to keep potentially respawning him if you have an ongoing problem or if you want to reset and build farther from him to attempt to prevent it from happening again

Reseting the world doesn't take more than a minute to do. Whatever gets you to the solution you want, thats up to you; its just that respawning him seems temporary (to me)

Originally posted by DeadlyDanDaMan:

Apparently that isn't the case. Not sure why the Dev's made it work that way, seems kinda dumb to me. Oh well, now I know:)

Are you sure? I never found a trade post without trader.

I've never seen a (real) trade post without a trader either. There are however several POI that can be mistaken for one at a glance that don't have a trader (but they also don't have the TJ flag and they aren't indestructable)

If there's a real trade post on the random gens without a trader I would bet money it's having the same glitch that despawns them on navezgane

The difference is navezgane is mapped and everyone knows where they should be, so its much more obvious that its a glitch

[Red]

Thanks for the responses. I'm just wondering what kind of distance we're talking. I'm on Navezgane default map, and I'm buildling at the house near the lake, which is just a bit South West of Trader Joel. It's a fair distance away but not sure what distance the game decides is too close. I built a farm near that house, which closed the distance but wondering how many metres away I should be.

I definitely won't want to edit the xml file now and play around with cheats, as there are other traders I can go to but it's just more time consuming and dangerous.

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by Redhotjets:

Thanks for the responses. I'm just wondering what kind of distance we're talking. I'm on Navezgane default map, and I'm buildling at the house near the lake, which is just a bit South West of Trader Joel. It's a fair distance away but not sure what distance the game decides is too close. I built a farm near that house, which closed the distance but wondering how many metres away I should be.

I definitely won't want to edit the xml file now and play around with cheats, as there are other traders I can go to but it's just more time consuming and dangerous.

I've built in that house and never had a problem. I currently have another game where I have a tower along the road between that house and the trader. and it hasn't had a problem. I started near the trader and backed up (along the road) until I could no longer see the trader. That's the closest I've built on that server. It's on one of the hills along the road between the trader joel and the lake.

I mean, it's a glitch so I don't know that there is a safe distance or even if being near him is the actual cause of the problem. It seems that it's just primarily people who liked being near trader joel (the nice one who is actually named that) who have noticed the problem

In the game that he disapeared in for me, I had built right up against his property line

This is purely assumption but I was guessing that being outside of visual range was enough

Seeing as how we don't know the true nature of the glitch, that's all it is. A guess

If you know that area well you might be able to tell exactly where I'm talking about, this video starts on the bridge next to the lake. That road if taken straight goes right past trader joels, I have the tower on a hill just before that which comes into view about a minute into the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB-5zHbfS0Q&t=15s

---

As for playing around with cheats, that doesn't require any editing of xml files. You literally just select the box when you continue your game. You can turn it off again from the same menu setting when you exit the game again

The alternate option (resetting the world) also requires no "editing". You go into the save folder and delete the map files while leaving the player files. When you reenter the world it simple regenerates the map around you and leaves your character untouched where it was standing

The map save files only noted things that had been changed on each location block, so by deleting them it assumes they are untouched and returns them to their original condition (including respawning traders)

There is nothing complicated about the process

[DeadlyDanDaMan]

Okay, so now I can't even go into the trader post, it just keeps teleporting me out. And yes it is past the time it should be open. However, the place NEVER closes. So yeah, it's just completely bugged out. Lots of other people have had this exact thing happen to them as well. After doing a lot more research into this, it has become abundantly clear that traders are just INCREDIBLY glitchy at the moment and don't work most of the time, and they will eventually just stop working even if they do happen to work initially. There are dozens and dozens of reports that back that up. Geuss I won't even bother with them then.

[DeadlyDanDaMan]

Originally posted by Wave:

Originally posted by DeadlyDanDaMan:

Apparently that isn't the case. Not sure why the Dev's made it work that way, seems kinda dumb to me. Oh well, now I know:)

Are you sure? I never found a trade post without trader.

I was wrong on this. Every trading post is supposed to have a trader in it. If it doesn't, then your game is just bugged out.

[vv [FuMM]]

The "trader posts" that don't have a trader are NPC bandit and/or some of the other good NPC's settlements. They arn't working yet because the AI is still being worked on.

If you guys and gals are getting bugs with the traders etc then you should go to the bugs section and look up how to report a bug. These kinds of bugs are annoying!

The only other thing you mighe beable to do is to remove the map sections from your map file and restart your game and when you visit that map section again it'll regenerate the trader and the trader location.