ANNOUNCEMENT: PM Wyrom explains the processes surrounding item replacement, registering items, and the Janitor. Bottom line: Never put anything on the ground. It is not safe. But there’s a lot of details along the way that most players will want to understand:
Text of Discord Post follows:
PM Wyrom
Item Replacement, The Janitor, and Registering
on 05 Feb 2024 1:17 PM
from the Official GemStoneIV Discord
on #general-announcements channel
It came to my attention that there is some confusion on item replacement surrounding the janitor and registering, so I wanted to clear up some confusion there.
When you drop an item on the ground, there is a process.
It stays put for as long as it can.
It is evaluated during a cleanup cycle.
The janitor grabs it.
It is deleted.
If you remain in the room, the item will stick around unless it is considered junk or the game needs resources. Junk is subjective here, but the game has to make some decisions based on item properties. If the game needs to clear up object resources (items or exists), items on the ground are some of the first things that have to go. Stepping out of the room, the game will run the cleanup cycle as soon as it can. If the room has a lot on the ground, it may run the cycle sooner than later.
During the cleanup cycle, the game goes through a ton of checks to evaluate an item for being saved or not by the janitor. I know everyone’s immediate response is just save everything for a little bit. We can’t, just typing up this messaging the game has gone through over 500,000 objects. We’ve bumped our resources over the year, they currently can get over this value (500k), but never beyond 750,000. There would be no way we can keep things around any longer than we do. This is the normal cycle of the game. The more out there, the rougher the game performs. When I started, the number was 100,000 to 250,000, so the game is doing a lot better in terms of performance.
When an item is registered, it doesn’t prove ownership, how it may have been lost, or where it is. It’s a snapshot of the item when you REGISTER the item. It shows us how to rebuild the item if there is no copy in game anymore or helps us track down bugs related to item builds. Registering has nothing to do with the janitor and if a GM is looking at registration logs, that means it isn’t in game anymore in a way that the GM can find it. Maybe another player grabbed it and logged out, maybe it was deleted, we don’t know. Item deletion isn’t logged in a way that crosses paths with registration logs. If an item isn’t with the janitor and it wasn’t registered, there is practically no way for us to rebuild the item in the specific state it was in. Sometimes we offer a one-time replacement if we have a pretty good idea of what the item was, but this is a special circumstance.
Some (not all) common items that are always deleted are things like heavy backpacks (and anything altered from one), items with values 50,000 silver or less, items that are mass-produced in any fashion, foraged items, gems, shells, skins, and specific items that are made a lot with artisan skills. Containers when dropped evaluate the container itself, not the contents, so if you toss your doom axe in a heavy backpack, the backpack will get deleted leaving no sign that your doom axe existed in game. This is why it’s important to NEVER USE THE GROUND to sort items.
Lockers, Premium Homes, OSA ships, special event instances (like the arena) work differently in that the room in cleaned out. Stepping out of a locker with items on the ground delete EVERYTHING. No trace ever of the item existing. Same with Premium Homes. No janitor process can happen there. There are other areas in the game that do this as well that players don’t normally get into, but have, but it just goes back to the GROUND IS NEVER SAFE!
No GM is purposefully holding back items from you. With RECOVER and the Adv Guild, most item loss mechanics are covered these days as well. If there is a pattern of item loss due to leaving things on the ground, we typically stop replacing after a one-time replacement, but we make that clear.
I hope this helps!
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