Summary:
I don’t know if this is a bug or not, but when my hearthlings die away from my settlement, they will drop their loot. But because these items were already mine, other hearthlings will try to go and pick these items, and I can’t stop them from doing this, leading to gamebreaking situations. For instance, some of my footman went to a goblin camp and died, dropping all their items. The new footman and the worker hearthlings keep trying to go and get these items back, getting into the goblin camp and dying on the process.
Steps to reproduce:
Let a soldier or hearthling with loot die
The hearthlings will automatically try to get the items
Since the items are not marked as loot you can’t stop them
Hey there @fesoliveira, welcome to the Discourse! I have encountered this before as well, and see how it can be an issue. I’ve moved the post into #suggestions as it isn’t a bug - just an annoying side affect of the game running. We need some way to tell Hearthlings not to pickup something even if we own it. Maybe @Brackhar has some ideas on what could be done here!
Maybe verify how close to an enemy the drops are, and if inside a certain threshold make it turn into enemy items. So if you want them back, you would need to request your town to loot those.
That could work - but what if an enemy comes into your town, like the goblin thieves. How do you prevent half your stockpile becoming enemy items just because an enemy came by?
By having a footman stab the goblins in the eye. Town defense mode would also work if the stockpile is near the rally point, because the non-combat types will still whack away at random mobs with their tools. Assuming you’re not using a one-time toggle for ownership, which I’m sure you wouldn’t, the items would revert back once there were no enemies nearby.
I should add that it seems like ownership of items could be streamlined a lot by dividing items in the world into three main groups - player items, AI items, and unclaimed. Since there’s already a concept of space ownership which prevents mobs from spawning inside player towns, anything in that claimed space could be player items; anything within the camp limits of monsters could be AI items, and everything else could be unclaimed until moved into those areas. If unclaimed items were not by default interesting to gather, then there would be an awful lot less of the Line of Suicide that bored hearthlings otherwise do
Why dont u simply have the dead hearthlings lose their ownership over items? It belongs to the enemy now. Its the same as when u kill goblins. Their items are lootable too…
Summary:
One of my footmen died in a failed attack on the goblin chieftain’s camp, and his items were left there. After that, all my hearthlings with the “haul” option enabled refused to do anything other than run into the camp and get themselves killed. Steps to reproduce:
Refuse the goblin chieftain’s offer for peace
Send an incredible underpowered army (like 2 footmen) into the chieftain’s camp
Attempt to resume normal gameplay
Observe that all HLs with “Haul” enabled run into the camp and are killed
Expected Results:
HLs accept their losses, return to normal life Actual Results:
HLs run into goblin camp to recover items, and are instantly killed Notes:
-Might not be a “bug”, but once the items are stuck in the camp, there is no way to advance my town. I can turn Hauling off for all my HLs, but this causes them to just leave all their items lying around, and makes it impossible for them to build anything
Hey again @ihatelag2012, moved your post here, as this was reported previously. Fortunately, @Brackhar, the new game design expert on the team has acknowledged that this is an issue - but no formal solution has been announced. Here’s his post from above:
