erjoh
5
OK so it sounds like you need a lesson in decay timers and bases since you were solo offline playing prior and not familiar with the differences to online play.
Placeables (crafting benches and stables and other things like that) have a very short time before they decay away UNLESS you have a base pretty close by ( a house structure that you build up. Look for a repair hammer that you can build from you characters crafting section. These can be used to repair damaged buildings and placeables (which are not important in PVE so much until you start doing purges) but also show you what the decay timers are for that structure/bench. The more building you do on one base, the more time you get on the decay timer (also if you upgrade to tier 2 or 3 buildings helps as well) to a maximum of 240 hours (10 full days). You must physically visit any building to reset those timers.
These timers are not based on the time you play but the time the server is active (which is where it’s different between server online play and playing the single player game) so that means yes…you log off, the game is still going on around your sleeping body. You ran into one drawback of online player which is the timers but there is another. The NPCs do not reset after you leave rendering zone and will remain until someone kills them or captures them and then they will reset after that. The advantage of online play is that you can stack your benches to craft tons of WIP materials like bricks or reinforcements or planks that will work even if you aren’t online.
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