Items disappeared after death

[NoNamesLeft3]

New player here. I've died a half dozen times so far, but this time when I went back to my death pile, only about half the items were there. Missing 2 of my 4 baskets and some other stuff.

No mods. Item despawn timer was set to 60 minutes in the world settings. I made it back to my death pile in about 3-4 minutes. I'm not very experienced (got about 5 hours playtime). I know the game's still early access, does this just sort of happen occasionally? Are my items maybe trapped underground or something? I tried breaking nearby bushes/trees, but no luck.

[Thorfinn]

Never seen that, but then again, I haven't played anything but permadeath in quite a while.

For the time being, though, why not turn the penalty to keep items? Do the penalty thing when it's to keep you from doing something dumb, but not while you are learning the ropes of the game.

Welcome to the forums, @NoNamesLeft3.

[ThatsAllFolkes]

On 1/11/2025 at 5:37 PM, NoNamesLeft3 said:

New player here. I've died a half dozen times so far, but this time when I went back to my death pile, only about half the items were there. Missing 2 of my 4 baskets and some other stuff.

No mods. Item despawn timer was set to 60 minutes in the world settings. I made it back to my death pile in about 3-4 minutes. I'm not very experienced (got about 5 hours playtime). I know the game's still early access, does this just sort of happen occasionally? Are my items maybe trapped underground or something? I tried breaking nearby bushes/trees, but no luck.

Same thing happened to me, first playthrough, first death, a few thousand blocks from spawn, managed to walk all the way back and lost all the pelts, fats, bones, and some tools i collected in the few hours i had played so far. enough to make me rage quit, i know the item timer didnt trip because i was able to get the other half of my things so why would some items despawn and not all of them? 

[Satarel]

so it is a thing. i lost my bow and arrows and sling. i thought that i forgot to pick them up where i died

[Dilan Rona]

try the player corpse mod. it will keep everything secure till you can get to your point of death.

[Crysta]

Just got this issue too, found some of my items but everything else is nowhere to be found. Also am confused why this is marked as solved if okay.

[GrizzlyTank]

V 1.21.0 (online)

Same issue, somehow recovered only some items (baskets) after death, rest seems to have vanished.

Edited August 30, 2025 by GrizzlyTank

[Mladen Mihajlovic]

Just had this happen to me - v1.21.0 - died outside in a storm - came back to not a single item. Everything gone  (I was not far, nor did I take long to come back)

[RatKing0]

just happened to me, i lost my propick and a couple other tools  i have despawn time set to an hour and made it back within a matter of minutes, and was able to recover the majority of my inventory. i even resorted to digging around the area in case it somehow glitched into the ground, with no luck

Edited September 29, 2025 by RatKing0

[Thorfinn]

This also happened to me in an MP server a month ago or so. What happened in that instance is that my existing inventory, including handbaskets and flint knife and flint and grass was causing a conflict with the dead pile. Rather than leaving it behind, the excess in the dead pile simply vanished. Instead of my 4 leather backpacks, I was left with two handbaskets and two leather backpacks and whatever would fill them. So, of course I had to play around with death for a while and see what's up.

Best plan I figured out by far is to stand on a couple block elevation and throw everything in inventory, including baskets and off-hand where it doesn't get auto-picked-up Yes, even your flint, which should auto-stack because the sum of the two stacks is less than 64, but sometimes does, sometimes does not. Then go pick up your dead pile. Then go into your n00b pile and see what gets picked up. At least the stuff in this one remains intact, and you can choose between the items in your inventory, leaving behind the more damaged of tools, the least fresh of your food, etc.

Edited October 2, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Simothy]

I'm running a small multiplayer server and I've had trouble with this too. I have the death item timer set to 1 hour instead of the default 10 minutes, but I've had very inconsistent results. Sometimes items stay as long as expected, sometimes they despawn in 10 minutes or less, and sometimes I find very old death piles when traversing chunks that haven't been loaded in a while. I wanted to keep this run vanilla, but I've been wondering if the player corpse mod is the best way to go? I am not sure if it is yet compatible with 1.21.4. I'd like my troops to have a good time and I think losing hard earned items is discouraging them.

[LadyWYT]

25 minutes ago, Simothy said:

I wanted to keep this run vanilla, but I've been wondering if the player corpse mod is the best way to go? I am not sure if it is yet compatible with 1.21.4. I'd like my troops to have a good time and I think losing hard earned items is discouraging them.

Welcome to the forums! The mod itself seems to be updated for 1.21, so it should, in theory, work on 1.21.4. However, when in doubt, best to make a backup of the world and/or test in singleplayer to make sure there are no issues.

As for it breaking a vanilla run, this mod doesn't really change much, aside from acting as an option in-between losing items your stuff on death, and just keeping inventory in spite of death. You could keep the server pure vanilla by just turning the "keep inventory" rule on, but that might make the experience easier than what you're looking for, so the mod is probably the way to go.

[Simothy]

Thanks! I'll give it a try

[Simothy]

Player Corpse mod seems to still work fine with playercorpse 1.21.1 and commonlib 1.21.1 running on 1.21.4. Thank you for your help!

[Golden_Fur]

On 2/1/2025 at 7:45 AM, ThatsAllFolkes said:

Same thing happened to me, first playthrough, first death, a few thousand blocks from spawn, managed to walk all the way back and lost all the pelts, fats, bones, and some tools i collected in the few hours i had played so far. enough to make me rage quit, i know the item timer didnt trip because i was able to get the other half of my things so why would some items despawn and not all of them? 

Got the same Issue
New player here, played for quite a few hours after buying the game, almost 10 hours and I'm in autum, I guess.
The first time I lost all the baskets, basically having to start anew.
Second time I lost two baskets with my spare copper tools in it.

I was killed by a bear that camped at my base and lost them then.
What I also noticed, after a few hours of gameplay the game music seems to stop randomly and the entire hotbar gets scrollable, even the basket slots.
I don't know if it correlates, but it could be a lead?

I hope this issue gets resolved so that we don't have to rely on mods to fix everything.
Until then I'll use the corpse mod like another one here proposed.

[LadyWYT]

12 minutes ago, Golden_Fur said:

What I also noticed, after a few hours of gameplay the game music seems to stop randomly and the entire hotbar gets scrollable, even the basket slots.

Welcome to the forums(and the game)! I will note that if you venture too far from natural light or too close to a rift, the game music will stop playing and switch to the appropriate ambience instead. The game music, by default, also does not play all the time, just at certain intervals similar to the music in the other block game. You can change how frequently the music plays in the Settings, however, if you're not hearing any music at all then there's likely an issue somewhere. A fresh install will probably fix it, but make sure to backup your cherished worlds in a separate folder before doing so.

As for the hotbar + backpacks being scrollable, check to see if you are sprinting when this occurs. Holding the sprint key and scrolling essentially "unlocks" the entire hotbar, allowing you to scroll over any slot as long as you are holding the sprint key.

17 minutes ago, Golden_Fur said:

New player here, played for quite a few hours after buying the game, almost 10 hours and I'm in autum, I guess.
The first time I lost all the baskets, basically having to start anew.
Second time I lost two baskets with my spare copper tools in it.

The missing items, I'm not sure. It could be a mod issue, if you are playing with mods, but it could also be a bug in the vanilla code. If you die and aren't playing with the "keep inventory" rule turned on, do make sure that you pick up your items before quitting, as to my knowledge quitting will cause the dropped items to despawn(at least in singleplayer).

You can turn the "keep inventory" rule on at any time after world creation by running the command /worldconfig deathPunishment keep, or off by writing "drop" instead of "keep". You will need to reload the world for the change to take effect.