why did this happen

[Erik K]

Im posting this here, because as i understand the reinbursement policy, there isn t much hope of getting my plat heater shield back.  Never the less at 24k this is a little annoying.  I had left spellguard and was walking with my shield in hand when the message came up that it was dropped because of full inventory.  I had NOT attempted to take it out of the equipement slot that it was in.  There was absolutley no chance to pick the shield up as it vanished immediately.  why did this happen?  its hard enough to equip a character in this game with out having to deal with this kind of thing, especially when its expensive and hard to come by equipement.

[Pseudonym]

G'day mate,

I'm the most ignorant person in this community when it comes to game mechanics issues but i'm going to hazard a guess and say with the amount of information you have provided no-one is going to be able to tell you what happened or the reason for the loss.

Did you take a screen shot? Have you the logs? What were you doing prior? At the time? Was the shield quick keyed? etc, etc

[Crunch]

I have seen instances before where a shield dropped do to change equipment from say a mining pick, which can be wielded with a shield for  a medium sized character, back to a standard sword and shield lineup.   It seems that the game will sometimes, or maybe even always, try to unequip the shield during that transanction.  If your inventory is full, the shield may pop back onto your arm, but still be coded by the cleanup script as dropped.  Then when you cross the next transition, Whammo!!!!, as they say in the comics.....  No more shield.  The painful lesson most sword and shield types learn when mining is never to let your inventory get all the way full.

[Laldiien]

Just as an aside, if you notice you drop something, stop what you are doing, pick up the item, use your Orb to save, and log out right there.

That will force a character save.  If you are traveling with another person, have them pick up the item, save and log out.  Unless I am mistaken, (and I could be) the cleanup scripts fire when a PC crosses a transition, or every X minutes, whichever comes first.

A story from personal experience:
Galen was chatting with a fellow guildmember when she dropped a sword of extraordinary value.  She /OOC me to pick it up, Save, and log out.  I logged out and right back in, the sword was in my inventory.  I gave it back to her, she saved and all was well.

All that being said, if you have a log file saved, you may be able to post a reimbursement request if it just dropped for no reason.  If you don't have a logfile, may not be a bad idea to download an install the Gnomish Log Rotator.  It's handy for quest recaps and can definitely help for this type of issue.

[lonnarin]

It's always a good idea to have a full inventory page open for the following reasons...

1) Confusion spells:  Once hit with them, your character randomly equips items in his inventory and attacking things around him.  This is a big shield/sword poofing culprit.

2) Sometimes a GM looking in your inventory might accidentally click "unequip" or "drop" while trying to examine your gear.  Accidents happen, and since they don't get the "lost item x" message themselves, they can do it without actually noticing.  I did that once by accident and had to reimburse a player back when I was GMing.

3) Also, if you have your inventory sheet open and you try to unequip a sword or shield by dragging it into you inventory physically, you can accidentally drag it on top of a full container in your inventory, which causes your item to drop to the ground.  This happens even when you have plenty of space in your inventory outside of the container.  The coding thinks "oh, container full" and automatically uses the drop action on your inventory item in this scenario.

4) if you try to unequip your item using the right-click radial menu with your mouse in your inventory screen or from the quick-slot options, the drop command and the unequip command are dangerously close together.  I've made that istake more than once.

5) plain old misclicks are a pain.

The best way to offset these disasterous scenerios are, as stated above, to pick up the item ASAP and use the memory orb to save your equipment data and character location.  Before you do this, I suggest also taking a screenshot with printscreen with yourself saying something like "05/13/07: my shield is dropped, alas!" as you do this, for visual documentation of your items for the disputes board.  If you actually have a player log, some pics and a few witnesses around you, the process for reimbursement becomes a million times easier.  It's also a good idea to keep screenshots of your bank chests from time to time with timestamped statements being said by your character when you have them full of particularly valuable/sentimental items.

Still, always keep a full page of your inventory free for misclicks, and document, document, document.  In various lost-item and bankchest reimbursements, documentation will really save your kiester.  They'll usually deny reimbursement requests purely from full-inventory drops per their stated policy in the disputes forum, but are pretty good about reimbursing mishaps from other bugs if you fulfill the burdon of proof.

[Hellblazer]

The clean up script is triggered by anyone leaving the area as I was told once when I dropped a lion bag by mistake and wasn't able to take it back within 3 seconds of dropping it. Else its timer based. unfortunately, like my case, you didn't even have time to pick it up, which I can understand sucking badly.

The burden of proof should tell every one nowadays to get the GLR download, unrar in you nwn folder, follow the instruction on the playerini line to change (only one) and voila your in action when you use the exe provided by the GLR

[Faldred]

I'm not sure exactly why it happens, but it seems to me that every time you go through an AT, the engine essentially un-equips then re-equips your armor and shield (not sure on weapons).  If you do not have open inventory slots of the right size and shape, you will drop the item instead of re-equipping it.  Once dropped, then the clean-up scripts kick in, yada, yada, yada...

I lost a lot of shields (fortunately for me, I could craft replacements) before I figured this out -- now I always try to leave at least half an inventory page empty so it doesn't happen again.  I carry a few extra containers around that are usually empty (so as to not create huge amounts of logout/login lag), but can be used to stuff CNR into temporarily just for these times.