just to mention something that may or may not be related (last seen in a17)
I’ve noticed that there are some cases where hearthlings are teleported into stuck places.
I always play stonehearth building stone hearths. One previous design is a fireplace hooked up to a chimney with a real vertical cavity but should be inaccessible to hearthlings since the fireplace hole and the chimney hole is too small. And I’ve explicitly checked that nobody is trapped in that place.
However, every now and then, my hearblist (and for some reason, ONLY my herbalist) will announce a low heath (starving) warning, and I found him trap in the hole. I’ve teleported him out using debug command (along with potions left at the same spot) but after a while, he will be found there again (not sure what caused it in-between. could be reload/restart too.). If this isn’t an alpha game, it would feel really creepy.
This has simply made me change all my building designs to make sure that there are no inaccessible cavities which can fit a hearthling. (e.g. cavity behind fireplace accessible by a ladder from the chimney.) I simply worked around it though, so have no idea whether that problem still exists. Just pointing this out as trapped hearthlings may not be caused “legitimately”.