Decay for beginners

[Catote]

Today (after the long period of downtime = hotfix) I log in to find
1. One drying rack missing
2. Tons of materials in a my mine building sign-post missing.

A. Is this normal. Does things decay and disappear? They were outside any claim. I.e. how does decay work?
B. If affirmative, how long time does it take for things to decay? Any random factor?

Am aware this could also technically be some stealing going on, or a roll-back. But obviously, now I'm quite motivated to learn about decay :=)
Thanks in advance.

[JohnCarver]

No rollback. If things are not on a claim then they have a random chance to lose a % of their life over time.

[Mereni]

Stuff in signs decays fast. A change in the patch made it so that if it hasn't been 'built' in, stuff in signs decays even faster. The best thing to do if you're building off claim is to put in materials and build them immediately starting with the stuff that is worth the least so that if it does decay a bit, all you lost is some stone or something. Mine entrance will never decay once you finish building it.

Drying racks and things will decay pretty fast. It's random, but a good rule of thumb is that the easier something is to build, the lower its hitpoints and the faster it'll disappear on you. Most of the time, things will take some damage before the disappear entirely and they'll turn redish. When that happens you can use the 'repair' action in your action menu and the appropriate material to repair them. When you try to repair, it'll tell you what you need if you don't know. Be careful with things like Singing Logs that count as logs, they might get used for repair before you know it.

[Catote]

There were good answers. Another question pops up. Which items do NOT decay.
It appears to me containers do not (since I see them in abandoned camps).
It would extremely nice to know, since then I can have containers off-claim, and store common resources...

[Feone]

There were good answers. Another question pops up. Which items do NOT decay.
It appears to me containers do not (since I see them in abandoned camps).
It would extremely nice to know, since then I can have containers off-claim, and store common resources...

Everything should decay. Abandoned camps might just be intact because the area isn't loaded. Decay only hits loaded areas.

[DarkNacht]

There were good answers. Another question pops up. Which items do NOT decay.
It appears to me containers do not (since I see them in abandoned camps).
It would extremely nice to know, since then I can have containers off-claim, and store common resources...

Mines don't decay but thats about it. Container do decay some of them quite quickly. Also anything off claim is likely to get griefed so you should not leave anything you want to keep off your claim.

[Catote]

hrm, that's a shame (everything decay). I'd have liked to store renewable common resources in large quantities, just to make large scale production, and not run around producing only a tiny bit at the time.
How about "old logs" they store 8 items and do not decay, or?

[DarkNacht]

hrm, that's a shame (everything decay). I'd have liked to store renewable common resources in large quantities, just to make large scale production, and not run around producing only a tiny bit at the time.
How about "old logs" they store 8 items and do not decay, or?

Old logs do not decay but I don't think you want to try to set up any sort of large scale storage with them, you are better off just making a claim in the area you want to store things. The other option is to build a house and keep it repaired.

[Thor]

My townie made around 100 bricks for smelters yesterday and put them in construcion signs. Few hours later there was only 20 left. Signs were on vclaim. Weird.

[DarkNacht]

My townie made around 100 bricks for smelters yesterday and put them in construcion signs. Few hours later there was only 20 left. Signs were on vclaim. Weird.

Where they built into the signs?