Death and Decay

[Aldren]

How long do corpses take to decay?

Do items decay on the ground?
(If so - why?)
(If so - how long does it take items to decay?)

The help files are very vague and I would like to know some more definitive answers. At times, PC corpses decayed in under a day, and then were tweaked to last upwards of a week, and most recently my corpse lasted less than 4 RL days and items located thereon moved between rooms and disappeared. I am curious to the aforementioned questions as I am quite disparaged about losing 75% of the items I own on a character and was told "weird things happen". Would anyone please help me understand how these weird things happen and how I can avoid such headaches in the future?

[Anguin]

I'm interested in this subject. Below is a quote from 'help corpse'.

A player's corpse will decay to dust after about 5 real-life days, spilling out all their belongings onto the ground, where they will remain until the game reboots, or someone picks them up.

[Tyeslan]

I thought things on the ground were also safe from reboot these days? Packs, and the like? Is that not true any longer?

[Harroghty]

• - I am not sure exactly how long a corpse survives, but I guess that it is approximately 4.16 days if my math is correct.
  - I am not sure if there are things that speed or slow that timer's countdown.
  - I know that at least some objects decay (this is the reason that high traffic training areas like the bandit holds, Rat Hill, etc. do not fill up with the spoils of the dead mobs), but I am not sure about to which objects that timer applies.
  - Reboots or copyovers do not junk objects. A crash might, but those are extremely rare.

I would like to add, however, that you were not only told "weird things happen". Your case was looked into in some detail, as you were told, and you were given some money and a replacement for the lost object you were concerned with losing. I understand that you are upset by the situation, but it's not as if we were dismissive of your application.

In general, a good rule to follow is to try to retrieve your corpse (or get help retrieving it) as soon as possible.

Late entry: I updated the help file.