Disappearing Items! [bug]

[Thundercraft]

I know what you may be thinking: If an item disappeared, it probably got dropped somewhere accidentally or something. But I know at least one case where that's not what happened at all.

At one point, my character had died deep in the planet. Luckily, I had some extra stuff stored in my Escape Pod. After grabbing it, I crafted an extra Forager Pouch to store food. (I had been using an extra chest, but I like the Forager Pouch.) And like my old Forager Pouch (deep in the planet next to by dead body), I labeled it as "Food".

Well, shortly after I managed to grab my stuff near the bottom and running away from the nasty monsters, I looked at my inventory. It was a mess. But I could only find ONE Forager Pouch. I went back to make sure I did not miss it, but there was nothing else to pick up!

Judging by the fact that this Forager Pouch had more stuff, I realized this was my old one. And after carefully examining all my storage containers (triple checking, even my workbench), I could not find a second one. It was gone!

Eventually, I started preparing an extra backup - in case my primary set of stuff was inaccessible near the bottom again and my backup set was also inaccessible by a second death.

And so I crafted a THIRD Forager Pouch. As soon as I had crafted it... it appeared INSIDE my first Forager Pouch and it was PRE-LABELED as "Food"! Opening it, I found it had all the stuff from my missing backup Forager Pouch!

So, it had disappeared inside my old Forager Pouch! And when I tried to craft a new one, it "recreated" it inside my old Forager Pouch!

Idea: Was it because I labeled both of them the same ("Food") that confused the game?

Anyway, I did accidentally craft a FOURTH Forager Pouch. This I temporarily put in the Trash Container, but I took it out after reaching the Respawn Base and put it on a shelf there. At some point, I discovered a FIFTH Forager Pouch in my inventory! (After I deconstructed my Escape Pod.) I swear I did NOT craft the fifth Forager Pouch - it just appeared!
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More strangeness
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I had set up a sort of workshop inside the Respawn Base, with a Work Table, Basic Smelter, Smelting Furnace, and Material Grinder. During a particularly busy crafting session, I decided I wanted to smelt steel faster as it was going very slow. So I crafted a second Smelting Furnace and set it up to also smelt steel.

Eventually, one of these Smelting Furnaces had exhausted the supply of Iron Ore I put in. As I was winding down, I took all the steel and materials out and - I thought - put it back in my inventory.

However, while I'm not sure exactly what happened, that second Smelting Furnace has gone missing! Usually, I keep it stored on my Work Table to keep it out of the way. But, at the time, I had TWO separate Work Tables: One inside a wood chest and one in my inventory proper.

I have very carefully examined all my inventory - inside all my storage containers and on both workbenches - but I never was able to find it. As I did not label it, nor have anything in it, even if I tried to craft a new one there's no way to tell if it would "recreate" my missing Smelting Furnace. Either way, the resources to create my old one are gone.

[Signs of Life]

Hmmm... I haven't heard any other recent reports of items disappearing, but I'll keep an eye out. Definitely let us know if you notice a repeatable way to cause items to get lost.

[Thundercraft]

Aha! I know what happened to my missing Smelting Furnace! I know because I recreated the circumstances and even found out how to recover it!

After I lost my extra stuff in the Escape Pod, I decided to build another extra Smelting Furnace. I wanted to use two at the same time again.

After I was done with one of the two I tried to put it away. I keep big crafting tools in a Wood Chest I label "Equipment." When I put it in the Wood Chest I randomly put it in there and it happened to overlap with the Material Grinder... And it disappeared!

At first, I panicked and again looked through all my chests and containers. But, again, it was nowhere to be found.

After this, I left my base to gather some more iron ore.

A short while later I returned. And I decided to grind my extra rock for ores, coal and gems. Again, I like to use two Material Grinders as it makes it go faster. I pulled out the one in my inventory (the one in the same Wood Chest labeled "Equipment") and put it down on a clear spot.

SURPRISE! As soon as it was put down it started "grinding" and spewed out the missing Smelting Furnace.

Apparently, clicking on the Material Grinder with an item (the Smelting Furnace) had the Material Grinder take it as an input of sorts. This works for chests. But the Material Grinder should not behave like this.

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As for the missing Forager Pouch: I've noticed that when I already have one of a given type of pouch in my inventory (Excavator, Hunter, Forager, Jeweler, or Munitions) and I pick up a second pouch of the same type, the game automatically puts it INSIDE the first pouch.

Now, I know I double and triple checked my Forager Pouch and the missing Forager Pouch was not inside. It was only after I crafted a NEW Forager Pouch that it appeared there as if it had been there all along.

In any case, I think it is dangerous to have the game automatically nest containers like this. What if a Forager Pouch already had a nested Forager Pouch inside it several levels deep (like a Russian Doll)? And it's on the floor and you pick it up? The game would think to put it inside the Forager Pouch already in your inventory. At some point, I think it would get confused.

[Signs of Life]

Originally posted by Thundercraft:

Aha! I know what happened to my missing Smelting Furnace! I know because I recreated the circumstances and even found out how to recover it!

After I lost my extra stuff in the Escape Pod, I decided to build another extra Smelting Furnace. I wanted to use two at the same time again.

After I was done with one of the two I tried to put it away. I keep big crafting tools in a Wood Chest I label "Equipment." When I put it in the Wood Chest I randomly put it in there and it happened to overlap with the Material Grinder... And it disappeared!

At first, I panicked and again looked through all my chests and containers. But, again, it was nowhere to be found.

After this, I left my base to gather some more iron ore.

A short while later I returned. And I decided to grind my extra rock for ores, coal and gems. Again, I like to use two Material Grinders as it makes it go faster. I pulled out the one in my inventory (the one in the same Wood Chest labeled "Equipment") and put it down on a clear spot.

SURPRISE! As soon as it was put down it started "grinding" and spewed out the missing Smelting Furnace.

Apparently, clicking on the Material Grinder with an item (the Smelting Furnace) had the Material Grinder take it as an input of sorts. This works for chests. But the Material Grinder should not behave like this.

Ahhhh... yeah I've seen this before, the material grinder is sort of a stealth container, it is a container in the code but you can't right click to open it and the code that lets you drop items on containers to insert items is triggering with the grinder. I'll fix this for the next update.

Originally posted by Thundercraft:

As for the missing Forager Pouch: I've noticed that when I already have one of a given type of pouch in my inventory (Excavator, Hunter, Forager, Jeweler, or Munitions) and I pick up a second pouch of the same type, the game automatically puts it INSIDE the first pouch.

Now, I know I double and triple checked my Forager Pouch and the missing Forager Pouch was not inside. It was only after I crafted a NEW Forager Pouch that it appeared there as if it had been there all along.

In any case, I think it is dangerous to have the game automatically nest containers like this. What if a Forager Pouch already had a nested Forager Pouch inside it several levels deep (like a Russian Doll)? And it's on the floor and you pick it up? The game would think to put it inside the Forager Pouch already in your inventory. At some point, I think it would get confused.

Yeah, you're right, the game probably shouldn't auto-sort the containers, I'll tweak that for the next update as well, thanks for the info.