Something new happened last night to me. My main character has been at level 31 for a while now so I decided to create a second character and level them up. I popped back to the main screen and created my new character and continued. I ended up in the same safe house I was last in with my main character, Boo church. I realized I had forgotten to transfer any weapons to him so popped back to the main menu and switched to my level 31 character. When I continued rather than Boo church I was at the starter island on the shore where you start the game at. I proceeded to empty my backpack of weapons and ammo by dropping them for the second character to pick up. Popped back to the main menu and switched to my second character and continued. My character was on the shore of the starter island, but no backpack. Lost all of my experimental weapons and 1000s of rounds of ammo.
Backpacks don’t stay in game after quitting to main menu. You should have dropped all your stuff into Plundra.
Long time ago, before Plundra became a thing, dropped stuff (in backpacks) did remain on the ground when you exited to the Main Menu and then Continued your game. However, since the time Plundra was introduced (actually two updates after Plundra), devs removed the “backpack transfer”, since you can now put all your stuff into the Plundra, if you want to transfer stuff between chars.
Or when to put it shot: game is working as intended.
Ouch! That sucks dude. Yep, the Plundra storage box is shared between all of your characters. Also remember that it still only holds the same amount/weight of loot no matter how many characters you have (200 total(edited)). Most end of using their alt characters as storage mules. Put 100lbs gear in Plundra box; switch to alt character, take out 100lbs of gear. Then switch back to current character, knowing your spare gold and experimental weapons you want to trade are safe and no longer taking up space in the box. Now you can go kill and then horde more! Yeah!
It’s 200 total actually. Only Recycling Station holds total of 250 units of crafting materials.
I stand corrected sir, and have struck the offending total to the afterlife!