So - I have seen, periodically, the bug where your combat thrall that is following you DISAPPEARS after going through / completing a dungeon. When you exit the dungeon, the thrall will appear there, sort of.
The thrall appears with just their nameplate and their HP bar. After a moment or two, their nameplate too will phase out. They are still with you. They are still following you, and can take commands. But seemingly they are on another plane. Looks like this:
When this happens, I previously did not think I would be able to see my thrall again until after I logged out for a time (20-30 minutes), and they made their way back to their guard bind point via the RETURNING HOME feature.
However - I just had this same bug affect my thrall at the Silvermine. And when it happened, I had hoped to “expedite” this returning process by logging out right there at the dungeon entrance where he disappeared.
I did not expect to log back in, and find him standing there, SCOUTING, and awaiting me to pick him back up with my horse after relog. But he was there! And I was able to give him the follow command, and he was once again on my heels, doing as bid. Without phasing out into another dimension.
I hope that this is helpful to anyone else that is experiencing this bug. I will tag @Community as well in case this is helpful to them answering other player issues or tickets with this case. I don’t know that it will be a workaround every time - but I have hope.
Please feel free to weigh in, and let me know if this workaround works for you.
When we speak about pve-c or pvp, this is dangerous and your workaround is crucial.
For pve not so, so the server restart will bring your followers back home, so no need for panic here .
this is a bug with the DBNO code. it seems to happen after a thrall has been knocked and revived and you teleport (dungeon, maproom, sorc stone, etc).
It may even happen sometimes from the thrall teleporting to the player to catch up too.
This issue has existed since the game’s early beta stages. One of my first mods in 2019 or early 2020 addressed this by ensuring knocked-out thralls wouldn’t vanish—a common problem caused by how the game manages actor relevancy to the player character to optimize performance.
For example, in Sepermeru, you might observe a dancer and their audience, leave the area until they are no longer rendered, and return to find completely different thralls in their place. Sometimes, during lag, you may even see them “falling from the sky.” This is a workaround in the game’s design to avoid managing persistent actor states, likely for performance reasons, though the reasoning isn’t entirely clear.
This design leads to consistency issues. For modding, it becomes challenging to reliably retrieve data from non-persistent actors. For example, if you knock out a thrall and leave, it may disappear. Returning again might show the same thrall as if nothing happened, or a new thrall spawning while the former is in its place, performing identical animations both.
This inconsistency stems from a lack of conditionals or state management for non-persistent objects, which are only partially linked to persistent systems. Unfortunately, addressing this would require a fundamental change to how non-persistent actors are handled, and there’s no simple fix for this design limitation.
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