I did store all my workers in chests before the update. I put some thralls out AFTER the update. Its among these thralls where the vanishings started happening.
Yeah but the whole store in chest thing doesnt make sense if you take them out on day one. To avoid getting funcomedā¢ you need to be more patient and wait at least 5days 
So, just sharing some technical information I worked out.
Disappearing thralls have been showing up in two places: 0,0,0 (G9 Highlands in midair), and at a far out of bounds location: all X Y Z coords = 3.4082346638529e+38.
EDIT: They also seem to get a super far Z-coordinate in some cases, hereās one that was more than 1,000,000 units below 0:
I was not able to confirm that there is any sort of cleanup that occurs when any number of thralls are at a particular coordinate. I tested this for a while with 50+ thralls at 0,0,0 and they never got cleared by the server.
After the thralls disappear to either of these locations, they either remain floating there, or they end up falling to the ground or through the world.
Here are two that went to 0,0,0 and died to wolves after falling, shown here (event type 86, ānonPersistentCauserā: āWildlife_Wolfā:
Other times, they fall through the world and die if theyāre out of bounds. I was able to confirm in our game_events table that there are thralls dying way out there. Example:
Furthermore, their home location is being set out of bounds as well. Here are some example where they are returning home to out there (event type 89)
and the hex blobs where their home points are stored:
This hex value corresponds with the coordinates that the thralls are being sent to. ( 00000000ffff7f7fffff7f7fffff7f7f ) = 3.4082346638529e+38
All of that saidā¦ do what Cauthey said. Donāt place your thralls right now, and consider disabling Living Settlements until Funcom fixes this. I donāt recommend manual database fixes to rescue these thralls, as they can just disappear again and the edits youād need to do can only be done while the server is offline.
omg i wish i knew about this a few hours ago. I started back up a bit before the heroes update and i needed my T4 to make better stuff, i was able to rescue 1, sucks I had to lose the gear i just made for them but whatever and then the other 3/4 just disappeared off my followers list but they are still affecting the cap.
Honestly reading all of thisā¦WHAT IS THIS MESS!!! why testlive exist? why nobody from tencent is coming in and fires dennis and andy INSTA??? I mean watch their livestreams, they are a disgrace for EVERY company! I know there are people like seelagel who are shaking from excitement minutes before stream but everybody with two braincells and healthy testosteron levels should see it as comedy/slapstick. They are spitting in customers faces and some beta idiots asking if its raining instead of roast em!
Hereās some queries that server admins can use to help identify thralls that went missing if they intend to replace them for players:
This will produce a list of all thralls that either died or returned home to a location around 0,0,0 after the patch went live.
select distinct worldTime, x, y, z, objectName, objectId, ownerId, ownerName, ownerGuildId, ownerGuildName, argsMap
from game_events
where worldTime >= 1729166400
and eventType in (86,89) and objectId <> 0
and ( ( z < 5000 and z > -5000 )
and ( x < 1000 or x > -1000 )
and ( y < 1000 and y > -1000 ) )
group by objectId;
This will produce a list of thralls that either died or returned home to the out of bounds location 3.40ā¦e+38 or to somewhere very far below the world:
select distinct worldTime, x, y, z, objectName, objectId, ownerId, ownerName, ownerGuildId, ownerGuildName, argsMap
from game_events
where worldTime >= 1729166400
and eventType in (86,89) and objectId <> 0
and ( z > 1000000000 or z < -500000 )
group by objectId;
Ok, final reply before bed - one additional thing that is happening is server admins did not adjust their thrall population caps to account for the number of new thralls that players would be placing down. If they manage to place more than they are allotted, then the server will clean them up at certain intervals assuming population control is enabled.
Yeah. tell me about it. This issue WAS reported in the testlive forum, and I said on two occasions that Funcom should delay the update until they have fixed the vanishing thrall issue. I suppose they went for a different kind of fix and were satisfied enough to push the update to live; - only that the fix didnt actually fix the issue.
ps. Learuis research about thralls appearing in set locations is however interesting. I smells to me that devs tried to fix the issue by having the thralls appear in a place like that and then moved to where they were supposed to beā¦ Too bad it doesnt work.
Iāve lost about 3 or 4 crafting thralls and it seemed to coincide with their rest period. I had a spare bed in the upper level of a barn (placed it there simply to dress the storage area) and all of my thralls were going there to rest. I deleted the bed and disabled all of the beds in the surrounding area except for some barracks I built with wide beds that sleep two people. I put down six beds for 10 thralls so there is active bedding for everybody plus three of the thralls are located in other areas so there wonāt be a bedding conflict for them.
Iāll monitor their progress of course and if the rate of disappearance happens at about the same rate my active thralls should be depleted in a few days. Fingers crossed of course that making sure I have enough bedding for my thralls solves the issue.
Well i followed wise advice given here in Forums to remove crafters from bench thrall slots BEFORE patch. I forgot only one - Lone Fisherman lady in vanir hearth into my tavern. After patch there is thrall hologram standing as always near hearth but neither there is thrall icon into hearth inventory nor my cook is listed in my followers list. She is gone - poof. I am glad i removed the rest and they are safe for now. Iām not going to place a single thrall into world while this mess isnāt fixedā¦
You catch a new slave and he will leave too. Whatās the point of that?
And that is why nobody should play conan this weekend. I say 99% they will rollback next week bc losing thralls with this terrible t4 spawnrate atm would piss people off big time! Plus maybe this time some funcom or tencent bosses realize you cant win prizes with this dev team as it is rn!
You can start a race with a ferrari, but if it has trabant tires you still will always cros finish line last (thats also from confutius btw)
October 17: The Age Without Thralls
Wellā¦ I was thinking about coming back to the game with this new update. I asked a friend about it and he told me about the bug.
After reading this topic tho, Iāll keep it on ice and spend my money elsewhere. There are games where the devs actually listen to their players and act wisely.
Yeahā¦ I better not even engage
Same as above.
Just like we got back ours thralls when they messed up with the reversing of summer decay timer? A lot of players lost all their thralls, I lost 80 level 20 thralls. Funcom never acknowledged the issue.
We SOL, again.
Thank you for trying though, all this information is interesting.
When you thought that anything was learned from previous patch disasters, Funcom again surprises with utter incompetenceā¦
Will there be a rollback? Maybe, but not before Monday and that would be if anybody at their office cared about their companyās reputation at this point.
Furthermore, that bug was reported on test liveā¦ and no fix was implemented. Imagine this company building cars.
After building a rescue tower and some Wolve-defense at G9/EL I managed to get some thralls back (ārescue" doesnāt work for me). Until they disappear again, of course. Is there a similar location for Siptah? I lost my only Bladesmith 5min ago 
ā¦
Just a short note from my side. Iām running a little server cluster and I added āAmbientLifeEnabled=Falseā to my āServerSettings.iniā file, before I launched them up the first time after the update. Since then I placed my thralls at the benches and they seem to stay where they are. Of course this works only at private servers.
Edit: I just checked my thralls again, no losses since yesterday (except the barkeepers ofc).