Missing items?

[SyncroScales]

Hello,

- There might be some missing items in the personal inventories or shared stash. Are there any suggestions to prevent this or what could be the cause?

- I was trying to grab quest items and wanted to try and save one of each of them. They can be placed in the shared stash box or personal stash box. But I noticed these disappeared. Can they be kept? Some quest items reappear or will when you exit and restart a game.

- Is it recommended to exit a game when switching characters or saving your progress or can New Game be ok?

Thanks.

[Wendigo]

1. Overwrite errors (aka "a gremlin") are an unfortunate part of gaming, even to this day. I don't think what you have is quite that (see below) but you should get in the habit of going into Belzebub > Data and making a backup of the whole folder, making sure to stick it somewhere out of the way and safe. That way if you do have something go wrong you don't lose all your progress.
Fixing an overwrite error is as simple as pasting a copy of your backup back into the game folder and choosing to overwrite existing. The forces the game to re-bind to those saves and will kill any errant gremlins.
If it happens often then it's time for the reinstall.

2. I think what's going on in your case though is that quest items will generally only be visible to your character for the difficulty and character they were assigned to. Otherwise you could do silly things like trigger the Black Mushroom quest early. They're still there, in the box, but they're invisible and you can't interact with them; and if you put something else on top of those invisible quest items, then whatever you've put there will also become invisible as well. Going to the appropriate difficulties, with the appropriate character, and moving the quest items to a free slot, then reloading, should fix that problem and your other hidden gear should reappear as well.

3. The game's auto-save feature will force a save state every time you open the menu, so you're perfectly safe just going with New Game.

Hopefully those fixes work for you.

[SyncroScales]

Thanks for the reply.

Overwrite errors or "gremlins" is good to know about. I have made some back-ups for each character. It would be nice to be able to save and leave the game on instead of hoping the electricity does not go out and re-doing levels. If there are power outages does the game potentially save where a user was? Probably not.

The quest items were visible to three characters and a newly made level 0 character. It seems that could be the effect? I am unsure if they were made level 1 and it would have changed it? I will do soem tests or watch if any other gear is eliminated. I did some test runs and was trying to clear the box, so I might have dumped the quest items and picked a couple of finished quest items and salvaged them. I cannot remember. The Map Of The Stars is visible in every character and only works to start the timer with a character that has been in Terror's Domain, but all other characters can view the map. I looked in every single characters box and it seems only the quest items are missing for some reason.

If they were in a private stash, they should not have disappeared. But this seems to be preventing cheating, duping, passing stuff to other players and triggering the quests as you said. It seems similar to not being able to put salvaged materials into the shared box.

I will place some un-needed items in the empty slots and then switch each character.

Thanks for the information.

[Wendigo]

I live in a pretty rural area where we have lots of power outages, and on top of that my roommate is a dumb ass who doesn't understand if you plug a microwave, space heater, and computer into the same line of outlets you'll blow the circuit breaker, so I've done a sort of informal study of the save states in Belzebub. It seems to save constantly in the dungeon, probably every time your experience increases, but in Tristram, as you say, it doesn't seem to save nearly as often. I'm pretty sure it will auto-save every time you talk to a character, change your stats when leveling, or when you move stuff into or out of a box. I've also got a sneaking suspicion it saves whenever the music loop restarts, which is pretty ingenious. Like I said though the best way to guarantee a save state is to just hit ESC and open the menu, which forces one.

I will admit I might be wrong with a good deal of the what you're talking about with the quest items, I haven't done much testing there and all the testing I did do was with the black mushroom (because, come on, it's awesome); hell maybe it was my copy that was fucked up.
I'm very curious if you are able to salvage quest items, though. You shouldn't be able to do that, they should just remain in the salvaging window like when you put a white item in there. You wouldn't happen to know what items it was that you could salvage, would you?

[SyncroScales]

In the saved files folder, the files only changed when the game was exited. Right-click - Properties said original and recent modified time and date for each saved file and the shared box.

When Esc is pressed it also saves? But the file stayed the same size.

It did not seem to work with any Quest items to salvage. Ogdens sign, Shadowfang, Hellforge Hammer, Treasure Map and Map Of The Stars. Ignoring the Map Of the Stars does not start the timer with Diablo until you read it if anyone got to the Terror Domain. But characters who have not got there just can look at the map and it does not change.

Hell Level 16, Vile Stand that holds the Staff of Lazarus seems to reload the staff when you exit the level or Town Portal.

It seems that the shared box needed room. I think the Quest items were thrown away before exiting the game.

[Wendigo]

Couple things:
1. It's not the game's fault for showing you the newest updated information on the save file, it's Windows. Windows has this awful habit of not updating its files in real-time for files that are currently being accessed. You'll need third-party software if you want to access that ability. It is true that the game doesn't dump to the save file constantly and does hold some of the save-state data in the RAM, but outside of a BSOD it will easily have more than enough time to upload the most current changes.
2. The save file's not getting bigger, it's getting changed. The game doesn't, for example, track what you used to be using as a weapon; the only thing the save file will reflect is what you're currently holding in your weapon slot. So when it overwrites the old information there's no log of changes to keep track of that would make the file bigger, it just deletes the old code that's saying you used to be using an ax and replaces it wholesale with the fact that you're now holding a sword.

I hope the above doesn't come across as sounding pedantic. I'm genuinely happy in your curiosity about this sort of stuff (it's nice to have someone else here who's as interested in the minutia of how the system works as I am).

I keep having this awful habit of collecting Shadowfangs. I tend to get stuck and want to grind a lot around level 13, and ol' Fleshdoom drops a sword every single time you kill him. One of my characters had almost a whole screen of the Shadowfangs by the time I'd moved on, lol. I do wish Tremain didn't keep popping back to life, though, that's breaks my immersion pretty bad.

[SyncroScales]

Tremain is gone. When people on this forum talk about grinding, you are not finishing the Quests? I wondered what a level 60 character would do once finishing all of the difficulty levels and has good gear with all the crafting, maxed out spell book, etc. Start another character or different type, but is it necessary?

You are not being pedantic. The information is relevant to how things work and is good to know for dealing with the game. And trying to get everything for the character or another.

[Wendigo]

All of the quest areas are still open after you complete the quest, you just don't get the quest awards for beating it every time. So places like the Lost Treasure cave or the Chamber of Bone will repopulate their chests every time you go in there, making them good places to grind even after you've done their quest.

The only reason the Shadowfang Quest is a bit different is because you have to go down another dungeon level and then take on another massive area (including the Smith, one of the most deadly bosses on Normal) to complete it. So since I like to play in shorter sessions, I'll just dick around for a while when I know I don't have enough time to sit through all that, and usually make a point of killing Your Soul Is Mine guy so I can see 'Splody Tremain again since I love the sprite they chose and the voice acting is amazing. Tremain only stays dead once you've completed the quest. It's just a thing I do, like how I collect brains too.

[SyncroScales]

Thanks.