do items despawn when you leave the game on your solo world

[Aartyyy]

Do they.

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums! As far as I am aware, yes, any dropped items will currently despawn when you exit the game on a singleplayer world.

[Khornet]

You can easily test that theory by dropping some low-value item yourself and then reloading your world. Most of the multiplayer "world rules" apply to single player as well.

Dropped items are on a 10 minute timer.
They despawn only when the 10 minute timer expires.
The dropped items need to be in a "loaded" chunk (in other words, within a certain proximity to the player) for the timer to tick down.
Saving and leaving (reloading) your world has no effect on your dropped items - the world "remembers" them.

Yes, that means that if you drop your items and then leave the area far enough to unload the chunk (which pauses all entity activity on that chunk), the dropped items will never despawn/expire, since you're playing singleplayer and are the only entity that can "load in" that chunk.
This is IMO a flaw, because you're basically polluting the environment if you find yourself dropping useless items to clear inventory space.

[Maelstrom]

To be fair, either you rarely visit that area and won't see that stuff again anyways, or you visit the area frequently enough that it will despawn.  Either way: out of sight, out of mind.

Edited November 5, 2024 by Maelstrom

[idiomcritter]

the question that wasn't asked directly:

If death visits while out in the world far from spawn (unloaded chunks normally), will my items be there to get back, should a way be found to return to the death point?

to this I say, know your terminus