Character progress was reset??

[rbdriver25]

**Post edited to comply (I hope - I'm new here)**

Hey guys. I'm currently on version 1.3(b9). So I started a new game and played for a little while (7 days in game time) and when I logged on today and continued my game, most of my progress was reset. I started back out in the field where I originally spawned for the new game and I had the starting inventory (torch, can of chili, bandage, etc). However, I noticed that it was still showing that it was day 7, almost midnight (the time I quite playing last). I opened my map and all of the areas I had uncovered were still showing on the map, including waypoints. All of my skills were reset to level 1. I went back to one of the bases I had built, and it was still set up the way I had it, with all my storage boxes containing everything I had put in them. It's as if my game continued, but my actual character was reset. Is this a bug, or did I do something stupid and erase my character somehow? I know I never clicked "delete character." And it's still showing the same custom character I originally created. What's going on?

I have not done anything that involved starting a completely new game, because I don't want to lose the world progress I have and all my stored items. But I did validate files through Steam. It said "one file failed to validate and will be reacquired, but that doesn't seem to have fixed the issue. Character progress is still gone. It's a single player game with no mods.

I also didn't know if I should post this as an actual bug report, because I'm not sure if it's a bug or if I just screwed something up somehow.

Here is the log file from my most recent game: https://pastebin.com/1Xu5QCBs

And here is the one from the last time I played when everything was normal, before my character was reset: https://pastebin.com/VyscLxPm

 

[SylenThunder]

[No message]

 

[Riamus]

Character resets usually happen because of a crash or incorrectly closing the game (such as Alt-F4).  They can also occur because of some other problem with saving the game, such as incorrectly configured antivirus (see the pinned topic for how to set up antivirus) or low hard drive space.  It is rare for it to happen for other reasons, but it is possible.

The best option to fix your current game is to open the creative menu and click of the icon for dev stuff and then search for dev.  You will find stuff that gives you experience so you can get back to the level you were at before.  You can then use the creative menu to give yourself whatever magazines or books you had already read.  This isn't a perfect option since you likely don't know what level you were or what books and magazines you read, but you can say least get close enough to continue your game.  Note that your game logs do show when you level up, so you could look at the end of the last one to find out what level you used to be.

 

[rbdriver25]

Ok, good to know. Thanks. I'll try that out. And I often do close my game with Alt+F4, but I've never had that issue before. Am I supposed to exit back to the main menu and quit the game from there?

 

[SylenThunder]

Ok, good to know. Thanks. I'll try that out. And I often do close my game with Alt+F4, but I've never had that issue before. Am I supposed to exit back to the main menu and quit the game from there?

Yeah. Alt+F4 was never supposed to be a "normal" way to close anything. I don't know why anyone would think that.  It is a last-case emergency shutdown for a hung program that is only used when everything else fails.

 

[Jugginator]

Ok, good to know. Thanks. I'll try that out. And I often do close my game with Alt+F4, but I've never had that issue before. Am I supposed to exit back to the main menu and quit the game from there?

Alt F4 sends a signal to an application that says, "hey you're going to be killed" and kills it, applications/games to get the signal and do what they can to save what they need to before it happens, but Alt F4 doesn't wait until they're done, it kills it instantly. So, it can work out fine in some cases (especially if you have a fast NVME drive/CPU/Memory) or it may cause an incomplete save and everything corrupts. Don't alt F4 unless you don't care if it damages your save

 

[Riamus]

Ok, good to know. Thanks. I'll try that out. And I often do close my game with Alt+F4, but I've never had that issue before. Am I supposed to exit back to the main menu and quit the game from there?

Yeah, I'll add my agreement to that.  Never use Alt-F4 to close anything unless there's no other way to close it (usually because the program got frozen).  Always close a program the way it is designed to be closed, otherwise you risk having problems.