Mule character - Dropping too many items crashes game - items gone forever

Platform: PC

Description: While reorganizing my storage box I decided to use one of my characters as a mule and pack her with tons of items. Then I had to move her a few feet, so I decided to drop most of the stuff on the ground. After I pressed esc to get from inventory screen back to the game it simply crashed - all the items were on the ground and now gone after I tried logging back in. This happened at Iboholmen church safehouse.

I love this game, but this one crash kind of broke me. 135~ HDP rounds gone, several ā€œgoldenā€ weapons and a few experimental ones gone, tons of other consumables and ammo just poofedā€¦ I think it had to do with the fact that I dropped such a high amount of stuff on the ground, but I canā€™t know for sure.

Steps To Reproduce: Logged in, went into inventory, selected a bunch of things and just clicked R to drop them. When I was done and pressed esc to go back to game from inventory/menu, game crashed instantly. No signs of issues or lag prior to this.

Images / Videos: None. But I did send crash report.

Host or Client: N/A

Players in your game: Just me.

Specifications: N/A

How much stuff, in terms of weight (units) you lost?
And how much stuff you had overall? E.g 150 kg (units), 200 kg, 500 kg?

Iā€™ve stated this before, but will do so again; I personally donā€™t recommend using characters as mules because, at some point, the game might not approve of going way over the weight limit. It was never designed to just stockpile gear on alts like that.

3 Likes

This has happened to me twice now. First time there were only a couple of decent items (like the RPG launcher), so I just bit my lip on drove on. But this second time when I was moving gear around on a mule, recycle / decide to keep or not / put stuff back in storage / etc., the game crashed and everything that was on the ground was gone when I logged back in. This time there was A LOT (and I do mean A LOT) of great gear and hard to find ammo (RPG rounds most notably). There was a bunch of gold (yellow?) attachments and weapons, a bunch of AP rounds that I was going to recycle for the copper to make rounds for the recoilless rifle. So whatā€™s the purpose of putting in a truly crappy crappy method of transferring gear if the game will crash and lose it all at any moment? Please tell me I didnā€™t actually pay for this game? Ohā€¦ waitā€¦ yes I did. eyeroll

The crashes do not appear to be consistent. The only commonality is that gear/ammo was on the ground. The first time the amount was rather low, but the second timeā€¦ Grrrr! It happened in different locations and gawd only knows the exact type and amount of items droppedā€¦ and ofc, subsequently lost.

Now donā€™t get me wrong, itā€™s not like this game is garbage because itā€™s not! It really is a great game to play. (Seriously!) Sure, there are a few glitches in graphics, and for the most part everything seems to run rather well. But the storage / ability to transfer between characters on the same account or between players in a multiplayer game is absolutely horrible. Iā€™m pretty much now afraid to drop anything to help out a buddy for fear that the game will crashā€¦ takes some fun out of the game if you canā€™t help your buddy, or your own alts for that matter. Although the alts thing is minor truth be told.

Iā€™ve seen a few comments about the storage system, some you have addressed and done a rather good job of it. But there is still more to go. A shared storage (for alts - hopefully eliminating the need for mules) and a direct trading system for multiplayer sessions would go a long way.

If I were to go back in time knowing what I know now, I would not have bought the game. Stability of the game should always be priority one! But it appears that it is not. I see complaints about the game crashing during completely normal operation, e.g. someone logging into the game, dating back over a year. So the game needed work on stability even back then. Seems like youā€™ve been spending plenty of time on adding more material, which I understand and agree withā€¦ but rememberā€¦ stability, stability, stabilty!

Iā€™m now at the point when I debate with myself whether or not to even play the game any more. Because I know if I even try to trade/transfer itemsā€¦ they can disappear at any moment, nullifying the fact that I even picked them up to begin with. Unless I donā€™t ever trade/drop items ever againā€¦ then Iā€™m fine ofc. If this were a single player only game, I would not. I would just uninstall it and not even bother with a forum post. (Too many games out there that I can enjoy that are stable.) But Iā€™m in a game session with a friend and Iā€™m not going to stab him in the back and stop playing.

Iā€™d like to end this on a positive note, so let me add that the graphics over all are very well done! Great job guys! The over all mission systemā€¦ main and side, are also pretty good. As well as the weapons and other misc. items. (Iā€™m guessing you are planning on plenty of new material for future releases.) From what Iā€™ve seen so far, the ā€˜end gameā€™ missions/random bosses seems to be working good and offers some variety. There is plenty to be proud of here guysā€¦ just needs a little more, ummmā€¦, polishing. =)

Out

1 Like

Moved to relevant thread, and renamed it.

For the record;

Thereā€™s no telling how it affects the game to store an excessive amount of items on a mule character, and then dropping them on the ground in the game world. This is the reason why I canā€™t recommend people to use mule characters, we donā€™t know what the limit is.

//Mod

The same thing just happened to me. Now i only got some pistol and bad guns in my storage. I literally loss all my stuff. all the grind and time i spend went to waste. any way to bring back the stuff?(im alone not online btw)

You have backup of your own save file done by the game. Important thing is if crash happens, you dont launch the game.

Copy paste this to file explorer to go your save folder and folder having long string of numbers is your actual savegame folder which contains files savegame, savegame.bac

C:\Users\%username%\Documents\Avalanche Studios\GenerationZero\Saves

Select savegame.bac file, right clik, properties and previous versions tab. There might be by default windows system saved copies of your savegame.bac file.

Restore the file you, rename it savegame by removing .bac (might need to delete current savegame file, recommend doing your own backup of it)

You might loose some game progress, but you might get all or most or your stuff back.

Juhu one year laterā€¦ a new Necro. Destroy all items you dont need.

or worse, you have your save-file completely deleted, like me, going on a week now, and only today found out why, but Iā€™m lucky and have 2 back-ups, Iā€™ve learned my lesson, I also need weapon parts anyway