"you touch it, you bought it policy" for dead villager's belongings.

[d2shr6o8av]

When I visit villages for the first time or when they have refreshed their items for trading (they do refresh right?), I like to move dried goods and other items I might be interested in buying in one location and so far I've had no issues with villagers yelling at me.

A village I visited was attacked by wolves and an old man was killed. At first none of the other villagers were interested in taking the old man's body or his loot, that was until I picked it all up (body included).
I got yelled at from a distance for trying to not pay for the old man's items, and before I could get the reputation hit (or did it happen anyway?) by allowing one of the villagers to start a conversation, I dropped all of the old man's stuff on the ground.
The entire village rushed over to the old man's loot to pick it up and I guess drop it inside the village's buildings.

Fast forward a week or so and I come back to the village and find worn out clothing and a knife (I forgot they were the old man's belongings) and so I do my usual routine of gathering all the stuff I may be interested in buying in my designated dumping location.
Unlike the normal items you find in the buildings, once I picked up the old man's belongings that were now stored in the buildings I somehow got treated with a "you touch it, you bought it policy".
Even if I dropped all the old man's stuff back in one of the buildings, when I talked to any adults in the village about trading, I would get the "you need to pay for the stuff" conversation.
The incident concluded with one of the villagers chasing me down to pay for the old men's stuff that were not in my possession and me telling them that "I can't pay for them, take them back".
I continued to talk to the person to see if I got a reputation hit, but he seemed cheery as usual. I either did not get a reputation hit OR my reputation with the village was high enough that this incident wasn't severe enough to make their attitudes change.

[Sami]

It's true that dead villagers belongings aren't collected or organized by other villagers, but nevertheless they remain as village property.

It's quite tricky to say what happened in the latter "touch it, bough it" kind of scenario, but if you could provide a savegame from the said village (or nearby it) I could try running a few tests.

It should be noted that your trading reputation in the village probably had decreased when you got yelled to pay for the first time. The lower the reputation the lower the villagers' tolerance to fiddling their items, and sooner they want you to clearly go for trade. I think it's also not very wise policy in the long run to move villagers' items around from building to another UNLESS you already have got reliable trading reputation in the said village.

If we think it from villager's perspective a newcomer who starts moving interesting goods around may seem not as a trader but a thief planning a heist.

[d2shr6o8av]

I don't have a backup save game of that incident. I went back to the village and the stuff is not in any of the buildings.

I'll try hard to remember to upload the save game next time.

[d2shr6o8av]

The character folder is around 200 MiB. Do I need to upload the whole folder? Where do you suggest I upload it to?

[Sami]

The character folder is around 200 MiB. Do I need to upload the whole folder? Where do you suggest I upload it to?

Pack/compress the folder (.zip it for example) and it will come down in size a lot.
You can then e-mail it over to me: sami[at]unrealworld.fi or put it available for download where you like.

In this case it's not necessary to have exact backup right after the incident, but if you just have the character in the village where it happened I can try to check few things.

However, if something like this happens again the sooner after the incident you can come up with a backup the more easily we can solve what might be the reason.

[Tom H]

I found an old man who had apparently fallen into a previously frozen well? I picked up his belongings but could not move his corpse. Anyway, all the items were labeled 'Taken', which I had not seen before, unlike the usual 'Unpaid'. I traded for everything because I wasn't sure what 'Taken' implied. I had not actually moved far from his corpse so I guess I avoided the OP's predicament.

[d2shr6o8av]

The character folder is around 200 MiB. Do I need to upload the whole folder? Where do you suggest I upload it to?

put it available for download where you like.

In this case it's not necessary to have exact backup right after the incident, but if you just have the character in the village where it happened I can try to check few things.

However, if something like this happens again the sooner after the incident you can come up with a backup the more easily we can solve what might be the reason.

Here's the save game. I'm already in the deceased old man's village.

Edit: just uploaded a new version.
I did my usual thing of gathering stuff and I found a knife, picked it up, and it looks like it's the one the old man used to use.
I sent a kill signal to the game, reloaded the game and now in the new save game I uploaded I'm standing right beside the knife in question.