So I noticed there are a handful of exiles out there who have lost thralls to bugs with geometry or spawning issues with no real solutions. I also just lost my pet Greater Crocodile to a weird glitch where it isn’t spawning to its guard station (pour one out for Sheila).
If there was an Admin command to simply place an owned thrall/pet into your inventory from anywhere, that would be great, but that also sounds so niche I can’t imagine it would be implemented.
My suggestion is a hunting/gathering post for owned pets/thralls. I’m imagining a building wherein the owner would be able to select an owned NPC regardless of location and despawn them from their location and after some time would place them in the building with a variety of items depending on what type of NPC they are (level, class, pet, etc.) and maybe their last location. From there, the owner could pick up their NPC and the gathered items into their inventory. For balance, the post might have to be stocked with foods for the NPCs to return, and maybe they might be missing a good chuck of health. If they are out fetching for you and the post you call them to is destroyed they remain lost until you can call them back to a new post.
Might be a little immersion breaking, since the follower would theoretically just poof from their current location, but I think it’s better than having them stuck in objects or become invisible.
This would let you recover thralls that have been lost scouting somewhere or have glitched out to some distant realm. It would also allow for an easy transport system of thralls from one base to another, so there’s no need for the excruciating back-and-forth of singular followers during a move. It would also add a little bit of utility to the thralls that are otherwise just sat guarding by giving them all a station possibility.
Just a nice thought I had while grieving my crocodile. Cheers!