[3.61, Windows 10] Items are no longer showing as unpaid when I pick them up

[jonottawa]

This has to me too in the past. i'm also a player that does a lot on the zoomed in map, sometimes i'll build a house about 10 world map tiles away from a village that you can get to the village by following a path like "go south and whenever you hit a tree go east until you can go south again", and then visit the village once a week. I usually keep the goods I'm interested in buying in a pile in one of the buildings, and then if the building was one of those 2x1 buildings then i'd drop all my stuff too on top of it to do crafting or whatever and then when i picked up all my stuff i would notice that all the stuff was mine, so my hypothesis was that I was picking them up too much and dropping them and that reset it, but maybe that was a red herring.  I'll try to submit a save next time it happens to me.

I suppose it's possible that the map maintenance issue and the 'free stuff' issue are completely unrelated because I almost always, upon first visiting a village, even if I'm not there to trade, pick up everything I might want at some point (weapons, clothing and furs mainly) and drop them in a pile, usually in an otherwise-empty building. I 'create my own store', in essence, because running around finding out what a village has to offer is a tedious task that I'd rather not have to perform more than once per village. I find it hard to imagine that that would mess up the game somehow, but who knows?

Edit: What I don't do is the 2nd part, dropping my OWN stuff, or crafting in a village. I have the perhaps misplaced idea that a villager might lay claim (finders keepers) to something I drop in the village and my stuff stays in my pack (unless it gets magicked out by a trade, anyway) when I'm in or near a village.

[Sami]

This has to me too in the past. i'm also a player that does a lot on the zoomed in map, sometimes i'll build a house about 10 world map tiles away from a village that you can get to the village by following a path like "go south and whenever you hit a tree go east until you can go south again", and then visit the village once a week. I usually keep the goods I'm interested in buying in a pile in one of the buildings, and then if the building was one of those 2x1 buildings then i'd drop all my stuff too on top of it to do crafting or whatever and then when i picked up all my stuff i would notice that all the stuff was mine, so my hypothesis was that I was picking them up too much and dropping them and that reset it, but maybe that was a red herring.  I'll try to submit a save next time it happens to me.

I suppose it's possible that the map maintenance issue and the 'free stuff' issue are completely unrelated because I almost always, upon first visiting a village, even if I'm not there to trade, pick up everything I might want at some point (weapons, clothing and furs mainly) and drop them in a pile, usually in an otherwise-empty building. I 'create my own store', in essence, because running around finding out what a village has to offer is a tedious task that I'd rather not have to perform more than once per village. I find it hard to imagine that that would mess up the game somehow, but who knows?

Edit: What I don't do is the 2nd part, dropping my OWN stuff, or crafting in a village. I have the perhaps misplaced idea that a villager might lay claim (finders keepers) to something I drop in the village and my stuff stays in my pack (unless it gets magicked out by a trade, anyway) when I'm in or near a village.

I believe these two issues are unrelated.
But that what you do in villages, arranging their stuff so heavily, sounds quite bad for your characters reputation. Don't the villagers notify you constantly to come barter?
It's also not considered that characters would do this kind of village item arranging - which in fact is initiating trades constantly, over and over again - and it's possible that your character pushes some limits that we thought nobody would. For the sake of everything, this tactic isn't advised.

[jonottawa]

Not to worry, just follow the advice given earlier "if it starts to happen again just .zip the character and send it to me again, and I'll adjust some more."

So save your progress as it is now, and send it over and I'll take a look. Pause the playing until you get reply back from me.

I feel like your time is surely better spent working on the next release than repairing my games. I'll send them over, but if you're fairly confident that the next release will fully address the issue, then I'm probably better off just not playing until then. Especially since your last repair only gave me maybe 4 or 5 hours of restored gameplay before the problem reappeared.

I downloaded 7-Zip, it can create a file either with the extension .7z or with .zip. The .7z file seems about 25% smaller. Is that what you'd prefer to receive? I'll just send you the .zip for now since I know you'll be able to work with that one.

[Plotinus]

As long as I drop the items inside a building, the villagers don't come up to me ask about trading, and I can leave the village without them getting upset (because I'm not taking anything with me).

If I drop them on the ground then they do pick them up and take them to their place. I usually put all the items that I want to someday buy in the main house of the village, on the table, and I put some branches just outside the doorstep so I remember which house, if there's more than one.

Usually if I bring an item into the main house, that item will stay in the village forever instead of going away -- so it exempts it from being simulated that somebody else bought it or used it up. Except for salt. If you want a bag of salt to stay in a village you can't pick it up until you're ready to buy it. I actually thought the salt behaviour was the bug, but now I'm learning the salt is the intended behaviour and it's everything else that's bugged.

[Plotinus]

So I guess all this time I've been taking advantage of a bug to ensure future trading possibilities

[jonottawa]

I believe these two issues are unrelated.
But that what you do in villages, arranging their stuff so heavily, sounds quite bad for your characters reputation. Don't the villagers notify you constantly to come barter?
It's also not considered that characters would do this kind of village item arranging - which in fact is initiating trades constantly, over and over again - and it's possible that your character pushes some limits that we thought nobody would. For the sake of everything, this tactic isn't advised.

I tend to pick everything up at once if I can carry it all, so I don't see it as initiating trades constantly. It's just one giant trade that I decided not to finalize. Now if I dilly and dally, then they do the thing where they chase me down and demand I pay, but (mostly for that reason) I don't dilly and dally. They give me the message where they shout at me to come trade with them when I'm finished choosing things. Then I drop it all and when I talk to them they act as though I never picked anything up. Sometimes some of the things I dropped will still say (taken) (even though they're sitting on the floor of a village building) but they don't chase me when I leave town and they don't get grumpy with me the next time I'm in town.

I've only ever had one village get grumpy with me and that's when they were convinced I had a bag of peas of theirs that I'd already dropped. I picked it up and dropped it a few times and that didn't solve the problem. I should have just paid for it, but I took the relationship hit instead by clicking 'take what's yours' (even though it was on the ground, not in my inventory.)

I certainly don't see my behavior as cheesy or exploity. If a stranger wanting to trade rolled into town and said 'Bring me your furs, your weapons and your clothing so that I can see what you have to trade for my knives, my delicious dried cuts and my fine winter reindeer furs,' I think the local populace would have been happy to oblige. Lacking that mechanic, gathering the stuff myself merely prevents hours of repetitive tedium (it's tedious enough to keep track of dozens of village contents even WITH my method.) I understand that there used to be shops in the game, but you got rid of them (I assume due to realism concerns?) But I think my scenario is a reasonably realistic approximation of how things might have played out.

[Sami]

So save your progress as it is now, and send it over and I'll take a look. Pause the playing until you get reply back from me.

I feel like your time is surely better spent working on the next release than repairing my games. I'll send them over, but if you're fairly confident that the next release will fully address the issue, then I'm probably better off just not playing until then. Especially since your last repair only gave me maybe 4 or 5 hours of restored gameplay before the problem reappeared.

I downloaded 7-Zip, it can create a file either with the extension .7z or with .zip. The .7z file seems about 25% smaller. Is that what you'd prefer to receive? I'll just send you the .zip for now since I know you'll be able to work with that one.

Got the saves, and sent them back already. Any archives, .zip or .7z or many others is fine by me.

And yes, I'm fairly confident the next release addresses this issue. Although if the adjustments still fail for one out of 10,000 players the fairly confident turns into frustration for that individual. That's why it's important to double-check, which just happened with these recent saves. I simply loaded them up in version-in-development and adjusted maintenance routines easily freed maps again now - so it's an indication that the routines can handle these saves.
However, we still can't know the hours of restored gameplay for you after this. It depends. But I don't mind triple-checking if you end up in frequenting maintenance again - it makes only that "fairly confident" even more confident.

[Sami]

[quote author=Plotinus link=topic=5354.msg13132#msg13132 date=1583074596
Usually if I bring an item into the main house, that item will stay in the village forever instead of going away -- so it exempts it from being simulated that somebody else bought it or used it up. Except for salt. If you want a bag of salt to stay in a village you can't pick it up until you're ready to buy it. I actually thought the salt behaviour was the bug, but now I'm learning the salt is the intended behaviour and it's everything else that's bugged.
[/quote]

It shouldn't matter where the village items are, in the mainhouse, or storehouses, or saunas. They are all still prone to village resource usage and circulation and maintenances. For verification I checked this from the code, and also tried it in the game. I brought some village foods and furs to main house, and they were used/gone after visiting the village again three or four months afterwards.

So I guess all this time I've been taking advantage of a bug to ensure future trading possibilities

Hmm. I tried few times, and I'm pretty sure it's not bugged. But if you like try it out a couple of times and report back if it feels bugged. It's best to have many sorts of items in the experiment and also have a reference storehouse with same sort of items. Then compare the circulation after month or two or even three.

[Sami]

But that what you do in villages, arranging their stuff so heavily, sounds quite bad for your characters reputation. Don't the villagers notify you constantly to come barter?
It's also not considered that characters would do this kind of village item arranging - which in fact is initiating trades constantly, over and over again - and it's possible that your character pushes some limits that we thought nobody would. For the sake of everything, this tactic isn't advised.

I tend to pick everything up at once if I can carry it all, so I don't see it as initiating trades constantly.

Okay, if you can do that it's better. But in big villages, especially with abundant farm products, I'd imagine lots of different picking and dropping would be required.

Sometimes some of the things I dropped will still say (taken) (even though they're sitting on the floor of a village building) but they don't chase me when I leave town and they don't get grumpy with me the next time I'm in town.
..
I've only ever had one village get grumpy with me and that's when they were convinced I had a bag of peas of theirs that I'd already dropped. I picked it up and dropped it a few times and that didn't solve the problem. I should have just paid for it, but I took the relationship hit instead by clicking 'take what's yours' (even though it was on the ground, not in my inventory.)

Yep. Difficulty with solving village item related mysteries/issues is that all the actual in-game steps and actions are quite impossible to comprehend afterwards. There may be some little things that were done, or happened, that we miss and they have affected to outcome of things. But I've got your character and I'll try to figure out things from their data and logs.

I certainly don't see my behavior as cheesy or exploity. If a stranger wanting to trade rolled into town and said 'Bring me your furs, your weapons and your clothing so that I can see what you have to trade for my knives, my delicious dried cuts and my fine winter reindeer furs,' I think the local populace would have been happy to oblige. Lacking that mechanic, gathering the stuff myself merely prevents hours of repetitive tedium (it's tedious enough to keep track of dozens of village contents even WITH my method.) I understand that there used to be shops in the game, but you got rid of them (I assume due to realism concerns?) But I think my scenario is a reasonably realistic approximation of how things might have played out.

I'm not saying a thing about your behaviour, but your character's behaviour is something that may lower his reputation among the villagers. They like fair and decisive traders. It's surely tedious to keep track of dozens of village contents, but we haven't imagined somebody would like to do that. Village structure and concept of trading in the game can be a bit hard to digest, we know. It's thought that people don't produce goods or stock stuff mainly to make sales, but to maintain their livelihood. So villages aren't marketplaces. (Although currently they sell all too much.)
Suggestions can be naturally posted at suggestions section, but turning villages consisting of one big Kwik-E-Mart building and maybe a sauna is naturally out of the question.

[Plotinus]

When I visit a village I leave a map marker with a list of the stuff that I care about so that I can come back for it later -- and except for salt I've never noticed it not being there. Usually I'm interested in axes but I also care about clothing, silver, seeds, pots, nets. I leave a small trap near the village so that i can see from the F6 map how long it's been since i've visited that village and i try to leave at least 30 days between visits to a particular village so that they have lots of time for restocking, but sometimes it happens that I go a lot longer without visiting a village or that I visit one a little sooner.

My current characters: Pekka's living in owl tribe, where the villagers don't have very much he's interested in but there's some villages in driik that he's marked with his interests. He hasn't been to the driik village in 3 months but I expect the items he cares about will still be there if I take him back. I also have Fretterat, who is also in owl tribe but has some villages in kaumo marked as having seeds. i expect the seeds he's picked up are still there and the ones he hasn't aren't, and Carl who is in islander territory and has some islander villages marked and some driik ones marked. None of them are in a village right now or experiencing the unpaid bug as far as i can remember.

Do you want me to send any of them to you?

[jonottawa]

Got the saves, and sent them back already. Any archives, .zip or .7z or many others is fine by me.

Awesome, Sami, thanks. Last time you emailed me a link. I don't see it in my email (and I checked my spam folder just in case.)

[Sami]

Got the saves, and sent them back already. Any archives, .zip or .7z or many others is fine by me.

Awesome, Sami, thanks. Last time you emailed me a link. I don't see it in my email (and I checked my spam folder just in case.)

Hmm. Checked and the e-mail was sent, but I also just re-sent it.
In case you still can't get it here's the link for character files:
https://we.tl/t-gGBsGpWqie

[jonottawa]

Weird, I got the forwarded email but not the original. Thanks Sami.

[Sami]

When I visit a village I leave a map marker with a list of the stuff that I care about so that I can come back for it later -- and except for salt I've never noticed it not being there. Usually I'm interested in axes but I also care about clothing, silver, seeds, pots, nets. I leave a small trap near the village so that i can see from the F6 map how long it's been since i've visited that village and i try to leave at least 30 days between visits to a particular village so that they have lots of time for restocking, but sometimes it happens that I go a lot longer without visiting a village or that I visit one a little sooner.

My current characters: Pekka's living in owl tribe, where the villagers don't have very much he's interested in but there's some villages in driik that he's marked with his interests. He hasn't been to the driik village in 3 months but I expect the items he cares about will still be there if I take him back. I also have Fretterat, who is also in owl tribe but has some villages in kaumo marked as having seeds. i expect the seeds he's picked up are still there and the ones he hasn't aren't, and Carl who is in islander territory and has some islander villages marked and some driik ones marked. None of them are in a village right now or experiencing the unpaid bug as far as i can remember.

Do you want me to send any of them to you?

In general stuff that isn't a resource or material circulate and get used up relatively slowly, so most of the time you can count on the tools and weapons etc. to keep existing in the village for quite a long time. But it all depends, on the population for example. I tested this again and if the theory/issue is that items picked up or left in the main house (which means they need to picked up first) stay in the village forever (except for salt) at least I can't reproduce it. I'll put test examples below. Also codewise there's no indication why things would behave like that. But out of curiosity and to double check, I could take a look at Pekka.

My tests follow. I tested with both picking stuff up, and not touching a thing.

1. In Driik village I picked the following items and dropped them on the main house table:

shortsword
broad knife
woodsman's axe
14 arrows
fine sickle
hunting bow
fine woollen trousers
winter lynx fur
wooden shovel
birch-bark basket of hemp seeds
birch-bark box of turnip seeds
bag of salt
7 smoked lynx cuts

Then went away for 90 days. And when I returned the things on the table were:

shortsword
broad knife
woodsman's axe
14 arrows
fine sickle
fine woollen trousers
wooden shovel
birch-bark basket of hemp seeds
birch-bark box of turnip seeds
6 smoked lynx cut
fine juniper bow
16 arrows

diff goes like:

- hunting bow
- winter lynx fur
- bag of salt
- 1 smoked lynx cut
+ fine juniper bow
+ 16 arrows

---

2. In another Driik village I searched a storehouse with bag of salt and other products and took a note of its contents. There was:

birch-bark basket of hemp seeds
birch-bark box of turnip seeds
bag of salt
3 birch-bark boxes of turnip seeds
woodsman's axe
bag of peas

Didn't pick up anything, then went away for 90 days. And when I returned the things in the storehouse were:

birch-bark basket of hemp seeds
12 arrows
birch-bark box of turnip seeds
woodsman's axe
3 birch-bark boxes of turnip seeds

Diff goes like:

+ 12 arrows
- bag of salt
+ woodman's axe
- bag of peas

---

This kind of tests are easy to do and give a good idea of actual item circulation.
But I'll do a quick check for Pekka too if you send him.

[Plotinus]

I'll send Pekka, but I think I was probably wrong about this.

My theory now is that I just wouldn't notice if there were 12 arrows when I left and I came back to there being 11 arrows because my map marker just says "arrows", and if I left a basket of hemp seeds and came back to a basket of turnip seeds, I would see my map marker said "seeds" and I wouldn't notice the change. It's possible it's working all right after all. I think I'd notice the hunting bow going missing if it was the reason I visited the village in the first place, but if there were 20 items on that table and I was really coming there for the punt then I might just not pay that much attention to it, even if it was listed on my map marker. The salt probably just stood out to me because of the advanced game course.