Animals disappearing from Guard Placement bug

Game mode: Singleplayer
Problem: Bug
Region: America/US


Animals/Thralls seem to disappear when placed on guard to a certain distance away from the player. I’ve picked up animals and tried to place them on guard on flat ground, and if you move them forward they can sometimes disappear on the placement preview, particularly around objects like trees. Yet you can still place them despite not being visible, and that makes them disappear for good.
I placed a couple of hyenas outside my house on spots where there is no place to preview, and they’re removed from feeding pen
groups despite being in range. How can you fix this?


Steps on how to reproduce issue:

  1. Select Stand and Guard on an animal/thrall.
  2. Move them to a position further away from you where you cannot see a preview.
  3. Press R1.
  4. Watch them disappear into a black hole at the far end of the universe.
1 Like

Hey @Gazdakka

Welcome to our community and thanks for your feedback.
Could you share a video of this issue in action so we can have a better look at it? Thanks again in advance.

Sure thing, just going to tame a couple of expendable animals to make a video.

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I used Thralls for the demonstration, since they train a lot faster. Please hold a moment of silence for their sacrifice.

1 Like

Thanks a lot @Gazdakka
Sending your report to our team so they can look into it.

Oh now I want to try doing the same … looks like an easy way to get rid of our unwanted thralls and pets. Much less time than what many of us have to do now.
On my PC game, (multiplayer) when I move thralls/pets I also see their icon disappear when I lift them far away from me, but I’ve never released them into the guard position when I can no longer see them. I have always brought them back into visible (rendering) range before I try to place them on the ground.
Does your event log ever mention them after they disappear?
Do you ever find them back in the original guard position after you have relogged. I was going to say server restart, but then I checked and you are reporting from a single player game.

Nope, they’ve never returned to the guard position once this happens, and restarting the game will take them off any feeding pot list they weren’t removed from before.

About a month ago, I died with a Dancer escort and used my Hyena to get back to where they were. I moved them most of the way back by putting one on Follow and repeatedly Guard placing the second, but suddenly the Dancer disappeared and I didn’t know how at the time.

Cue a couple of days ago when the exact same thing happened where my Greater Hyena loaded with stuff disappeared the same way. :frowning:

I’ve usually only experienced this bug when I dragged and dropped over larger distances. Usually.

This is the most saddening bug I’ve encountered. I’ve had a caravan rhino loaded with building materials to build a new base and greater pets, just loaded with stacks and stacks of t3 materials, and then encountered this bug.

Made me sad. Made me sad indeed.

Just encountered this on PS4. Trying to control thrall placement distance is a matter of millimetres on the analog stick… So my “following” Thralls ALWAYS block door entrances and it was night and a sandstorm was coming, so I quickly used “stand guard” but didn’t quite see where I put my t4 thrall. When the storm passed, I went out to where I thought he should be, but no thrall. Hunted around to see if he’d sunk into the ground (another bug) or was trapped in geometry up the rocky cliff face, but no thrall.

BTW my thralls stop in door entrances so often that I just automatically create two doors even in tiny structures to get around the annoyance.

Edit: just used the admin panel to respawn him, yay (lost his loot, but that’s easier to get than to wait for another t4 sherpa to randomly spawn in a camp.

I experience the same bug; but at PC.