Arrow disappears

[wanderer]

Hey! I've been playing your game for quite long time and here's some issue that I find very inconvenient.

when I hit arrow to the animals the arrows disappears. It's very odd because the arrows stays when I miss the shots, while hitting directly to the animals it disappears.

+ arrows don't disappear when an animal instantly dies. it disappears only when an animal is alive though it is shot.
+ I modified this post. I thought small animals are problem, but I changed my thought.

I was very sad when i lost my superior arrow. 

[Euph0ria]

It's quite common that I'll shoot an arrow at a target, and miss, and the arrow continue and go off the immediate screen and will disappear entirely; or I'll hit a target and it will perish but the arrow will disappear as well.  I figured it was part of the game mechanics.  I just figured that arrows get lost, and they have occasional breakage on hit.

[PALU]

If you miss a shot it can be very hard to find it (I've changed the missile .png images to make them stand out: basically painting them orange-red), and they should either be found as undamaged or broken if your search was perfect. However, that is not what wanderer is talking about.

I too have run into wanderer's issue where arrows simply fail to appear either in whole or broken form after hitting a target. I've been subjected to that both with single hit kills (at least with birds falling to the ground: not sure about ground based animals), as well as Njerps. In the latter case I've counted the number of hits and found the number of recovered arrows less than that number. I've seen so apparent logic behind when an arrow vanishes and when it does not (which is the majority of the cases). Again, note that a broken arrow is still an appearing arrow.

[Sami]

Very hard to tell, if there's a bug or something quite normal in question.
To find out, we have to narrow this down to what was originally reported "when I hit arrow to the animals the arrows disappears" - and exclude the missed arrows which indeed can be difficult to find from the distance.

wanderer (and others), I would need to investigate a savegame right after you think you some of the hit arrows had disappeared. I think that might come in your way usually after the animal has brought down and arrows are to be collected. Feel free to send one.

One thing which can cause this sort of confusion though, is that arrows that break are left on the ground at the hit location. In the heat of the hunt you may misplace message information regarding arrow breakage. And if you, for example, notice making 5 hits to the target, but don't notice a message about one arrow breaking, then it may surprise to collect only 4 arrows from the kill.

Also, in the earlier versions broken arrows simply vanished. It was even more easy to get confused if message log wasn't read carefully throughout the hunt.

[PALU]

I'm completely sure I've killed e.g. birds with an arrow and collected only the bird from where it fell (straight down), with no arrow (whole or broken) to be found even when searching, so something is bound to be there.
However, I'll keep my eyes open with my next character (who'll be created with the next UrW version). After all, tracking down oddities is a lot easier when they're reproducible, or at least logged.

[Sami]

I'm completely sure I've killed e.g. birds with an arrow and collected only the bird from where it fell (straight down), with no arrow (whole or broken) to be found even when searching, so something is bound to be there.
However, I'll keep my eyes open with my next character (who'll be created with the next UrW version). After all, tracking down oddities is a lot easier when they're reproducible, or at least logged.

Okay, good, eyes open, and savegames ahead if the oddity seems to strike.
When time allows I might try some bird shooting myself as well.

[PALU]

I wouldn't waste time trying to reproduce the bug unless saves fail to yield any answers, and even then I'd probably rather try additional logging than grinding. It's a fairly rare thing in my experience (less frequent than e.g. fires that fail to leave ashes behind, for instance, although that one is just a minor nuisance).

[JEB Davis]

I've seen arrows disappear routinely when they hit animals such as reindeer. The arrow does not visibly travel past the animal and a wound is announced. Looking at the animal, it will not be carrying the arrow. There is no broken arrow visible.

Some arrows that hit the animal will show as being carried, of course, and can be recovered.

Never thinking this was a "bug" I never mentioned it, assuming the arrow was stuck in the animal and was no longer a useable arrow, so it was simply "gone" and not mentioned in the messages.

Arrows that miss visibly travel past the animal and can be found, either broken or in good condition.

[PALU]

The more I think about it, the more I suspect it's a case of the arrow breaking (without a notification) and disappearing rather than leaving a broken arrow behind (i.e. neither carried nor dropped on the ground), as indicated by JEB Davis.

[Sami]

Yep, checked the code paying attention to the latest pondering here and it's indeed simply so that there's no message when an arrow breaks due to impact of the hit. Arrows occasionally breaking upon it is naturally normal (and I actually can't recall if there ever was a message about it?). If we think it closely an arrow breakage inside target's body is harder to notice than seeing them splinter upon hitting a tree or so. Maybe we should add a message, or maybe we should add broken arrows to be carried by the target. On the other hand, I think my logic with broken arrows never being added to target's inventory was to save inventory slots from useless items.
Anyway, the case solved here, now just considering what to do about it. Low priority.

[PALU]

I'd add the broken arrow since it will remove the confusion of having it disappear (resulting in more bug reports, most likely). The player can chose to dispose of the arrow or just let it lie on the ground as with any "normal" broken arrows, and if a mod allows you to recover the point a broken arrow is valuable if the point is of a high quality.
That, however, is low priority, as Sami said, and he should know