Player corpse mechanic

[Trofogol]

The problem is well known (your inventory scatters as dropped items, and then despawned after some time) and gets worse if you have settled far away from the starting chunks, as dropped items despawn faster out there (if I got it correct), and death might occur in quite dangerous zone where you cannot simply rush in right after respawning.

I've lost several inventories trying to reclaim the original one (which has despawned by my second run to it). I know that it might be an intended difficulty, but such things should be customizable more clearly (not via implicit item despawn timer parameter). I certainly don't want to keep my stuff after death, but if I can reclaim it, I want to understand any limitations and conditions to do so (in the guide and in configs).

Having such mod is nice, but the mod will have to be in sync with game version, which adds risk to not have it some time later.

[Dilan Rona]

You can set the despawn timer to an hour max, but in your case I would suggest Player Corpse instead. Works great, and saves the last 10 death inventories in the unlikely event a corpse doesnt get created or somehow got destroyed for some reason (Only lost 2 corpses so far under very unusual circumstances, born out of my own stupidity with regards to commands, and I can guarantee it will always spawn a corpse).

[Thorfinn]

The only real difficult part is if you die to a sawblade or similar, as they will camp your stuff, and have a longer despawn timer than your dropped loot timer. Maybe a bear, though he is easy enough to draw off, or even kill, now that you know where he is. If you have a backup weapon at spawn, even the sawblade isn't that tough, as you can always build a suitable defensive structure and lure him back to it.

[Trofogol]

15 hours ago, Dilan Rona said:

You can set the despawn timer to an hour max, but in your case I would suggest Player Corpse instead. Works great, and saves the last 10 death inventories in the unlikely event a corpse doesnt get created or somehow got destroyed for some reason (Only lost 2 corpses so far under very unusual circumstances, born out of my own stupidity with regards to commands, and I can guarantee it will always spawn a corpse).

Thanks for the advices. Though I know (and use) them, they are still workarounds which any starting user won't be aware until it's too late. For some reason, mob corpses are containers when you open them with a knife, and players are not. My point here is that it's counter intuitive, inconvenient, and the corpse mechanic should be a standard for all entities (players and mobs) of the vanilla game w/o mods.

If inventory is reclaimable, the process should be reliable. If not, the condition should be clearly delivered in some in-game guide to warn players. Perfect option is a config parameter (which is partially there, but with only two options: keep or drop the inventory, not destroy it). Main point is that it should be a part of the base game, not mod.

My current vanilla experience is "you should be able to reclaim your spilled inventory, but it's a gamble, as it can despawn at some time I can't predict, if it's in a distant chunk". There's no ingame guide that explains it

Edited May 29, 2025 by Trofogol

[Thorfinn]

5 hours ago, Trofogol said:

For some reason, mob corpses are containers when you open them with a knife, and players are not. My point here is that it's counter intuitive, inconvenient, and the corpse mechanic should be a standard for all entities (players and mobs) of the vanilla game w/o mods.

That's a good point.

The flip side of it is, of course, you can't pick up all your loot at a dead run unless it's just lying on the ground.

[Dilan Rona]

And the benifit of the corpse mod is that your inven will remain safe till you can reclaim it later on. No timer on it.