Switch [BUG] Disappearing items

I did an unrelated search and found a whole whack of these... I saw a form moderator reply saying to keep stuff inside and it shouldn't disappear. Yet many of the posts were folks with no game mods who had stuff inside when it disappeared. Could/would the forum moderators provide an answer, if it is some game secret, can they please say "intended" or "unintended"? I'd hate to play a long time, be careful to keep things indoors then suddenly lose some fairly important stuff in some cases (statue of perfection for one player I think I read).

As a new player, it would be very helpful to know if this is something I should worry about. I understand that grass/weeds, and lightning strikes can destroy/disappear items, as can villagers walking through things, hopefully indoors some of these things should be safe, no? I read somewhere that a player's game spouse walking through items inside can disappear certain things too.
 
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Ereo

Helper
Mods have no insight into the game, they are just responsible for moderating the forums.

Things should be safe inside, your spouse won't walk through them (and instead complains about the mess).

What could happen inside is that you accidentally hit something with a tool, and if your inventory is full it will just lie there until it disappears. That's visually noticable though and you get a pop-up that your inventory is full.

Anything else disappearing must be a bug, but I don't think it is a common issue.
 

Crafty Panda

Greenhorn
I play on the Switch and I've just had a workbench, worm bin and my crystalarium randomly disappear overnight. They were placed next to my house just left of the main shipping bin. Really worried about more things disappearing and if I should stop playing for a while until there is a bug fix?
 
Mods have no insight into the game, they are just responsible for moderating the forums.

Things should be safe inside, your spouse won't walk through them (and instead complains about the mess).

What could happen inside is that you accidentally hit something with a tool, and if your inventory is full it will just lie there until it disappears. That's visually noticable though and you get a pop-up that your inventory is full.

Anything else disappearing must be a bug, but I don't think it is a common issue.
Yeah, I just figured mods do see a lot of reports and solutions, since they patrol posts and some are also present on discord, Twitter, and Reddit. I've seen them post added context to topics from elsewhere when there's no forum search "paydirt", so it made me think of that kind of thing.

I play on the Switch and I've just had a workbench, worm bin and my crystalarium randomly disappear overnight. They were placed next to my house just left of the main shipping bin. Really worried about more things disappearing and if I should stop playing for a while until there is a bug fix?
Items placed outside may be a bit of a different story to items going missing inside. Outside item disappearance can happen for added reasons such as lightning strikes or weeds. I recently requested the information about exactly what items weeds can destroy to be added to the wiki's weeds page, since it was formerly unclear (the folks there were kind enough to help dig for the info):

Lightning can also destroy some things (not sure what) if sufficient lightning rods are not placed to absorb strikes, though the details of what items can be destroyed seem a bit unclear (I say that only because I see it has the same general "tiles destroyed' text that the weeds page had prior to adding the further clarification. So I requested clarification in case it has similarly incomplete information). I have no idea if this also destroys machines like approaching weeds can, since I always have a load of lightning rods and I keep my machines inside. Perhaps someone can better answer that question for you who has experience with that outside. I have read some confirmations elsewhere that items placed inside of buildings, as Ereo said, should not be able to just disappear on their own. Though the weeds and lightning things can be a bit of a pain. Perhaps you could try moving your machines inside?

 
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Crafty Panda

Greenhorn
Yeah, I just figured mods do see a lot of reports and solutions, since they patrol posts and some are also present on discord, Twitter, and Reddit. I've seen them post added context to topics from elsewhere when there's no forum search "paydirt", so it made me think of that kind of thing.



Items placed outside may be a bit of a different story to items going missing inside. Outside item disappearance can happen for added reasons such as lightning strikes or weeds. I recently requested the information about exactly what items weeds can destroy to be added to the wiki's weeds page, since it was formerly unclear (the folks there were kind enough to help dig for the info):

Lightning can also destroy some things (not sure what) if sufficient lightning rods are not placed to absorb strikes, though the details of what items can be destroyed seem a bit unclear (I say that only because I see it has the same general "tiles destroyed' text that the weeds page had prior to adding the further clarification. So I requested clarification in case it has similarly incomplete information). I have no idea if this also destroys machines like approaching weeds can, since I always have a load of lightning rods and I keep my machines inside. Perhaps someone can better answer that question for you who has experience with that outside. I have read some confirmations elsewhere that items placed inside of buildings, as Ereo said, should not be able to just disappear on their own. Though the weeds and lightning things can be a bit of a pain. Perhaps you could try moving your machines inside?

Thank you this is very helpful. I have just moved all my workshop items into a shed (which actually looks alot nicer than when i had them outside). I think this will help prevent the cat or npcs walking into them. The strange thing is the items disappeared during winter so I don't think there are any weeds to damage anything? Also I did already have some lighting rods in place but perhaps I need to craft more.
 
You're welcome, and yep, you're right (and good addition), walking paths can also affect things too. That is interesting to disappear in winter, I honestly don't know about that since I just keep stuff indoors. If it helps, I've never had a machine go missing indoors. I have ones related to coop animals in coops, ones related to barn animals in barns, and whatever is needed/left over inside of sheds, plus some random stuff in my house. Myself and a few others here have arrays of lightning rods. I did massive overkill with placing lightning rods (I went completely overboard), I realized it the other day when I finally counted, and saw something ridiculous like 40, lol. I was just having fun drawing shapes with them.

Some other folks have mentioned their counts also (Imnvs mentioned 24 not being quite enough for them), but I have no idea about the ideal number, so some existing conversation around that might be helpful:
 
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