This happened to me a couple of times too. C'mon developers! This is really frustrating since players can do absolutely nothing about it (as oppose of being killed by someone or something) and after you spend a number of hours carefully looting dangerous places (while carefully reducing and taking risks) this really makes you want to rage quit. I know DayZ is still early alpha but at least give this issue some priority so we have at least a little hope for it to get better.

Dear Dev team,
Could you please kindly provide some news about this issue ?
No news since 4 months, some of us are loosing hope to get this bug fixed.
Best regards

I believe I had this happen to me today, issue reported here: http://feedback.dayzgame.com/view.php?id=12460

Hey folks,

we have identified one situation where the game client is unable to retrieve a player's character from the database. We believe that it might be what was causing these unintended character resets. We will need to investigate around this issue a bit more however.

I will provide more information as soon as I'm able.

Thank you very much for your patience in this matter. Your feedback has been greatly appreciated.

This bug again!?
@Accolyte test it yourself. After 5 dc I re-spawned as bambi 3 times on different places in different servers :|

What can i do for getting my char back?. lost him by server change...

Themasterpoo,

there is nothing you can do. Unfortunately you will have to start over. Sorry about that.

Just wanna add my voice to the problem. It definetly seems that something is wrong.

Unfortunatly today I lost a ~25h character [:'(]. I always play on the same server (DayZ (Public/Veteran) [VDK] Team), however once I logged this morning it showed the message where it says "Character was unable to be loaded.." and I immediately exited and tried another server.

The funny thing is, as I was trying another server's to see if I could get my character back(Same hive and game mode) I got "reseted" 3 more times.

I had the same issue in windows 7 x64. I lost my character after i changed the server i was playing.
I lost my character after hours of game. I was in one airfield.

Character wipe due to server restart.

Server restarted (or crashed), reconnected to the SAME SERVER and my character did not exist.

Heard my friends had the same problem on different servers when servers tended to crash and they lost their characters.

This is not hive-specific, it's the public hive servers on Regular that we have experienced this.

My guess is that something client-side is making it unable to load the characters at all from the database.

same is happening to me. default character every time i join.

interesting. now my character saved but i still spawned on the coast.....

hi, i hade multiple char resets on different days. it looks like it had to do with deleting the file serverbrowser_hist.vdf, its lokated in \Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\(your account number)\7\remote. the file deleting should clean my server browser history. after putting the original file back in place i had no char resets so far..

Have had the same problem numerous times, can deal with being killed as it's genearlly my fault but this is really really annoying. Have tried the file deletion method just so will test that over a few servers next time i lay.... (few hours) and report back, hopefully with good results

"unable to connect to the central server"

Why is this even a thing? Why would you let people play on a server with the possibility of it overwriting data?! You shouldn't be allowed to connect to a server that can't connect to the central server unless you expressly give it permission to do so.

Server timed out, character lost.

We got a ViLayer server with the same problem. After every restart/join everyone in the server seems to get a reset.

i dont have this issue when server restarts and im on the server

but when i change servers quicker, this issue comes up sometimes

its weird, most the time the backpack AND shoes are gone Oo

@nerobp: Message deleted. People, please remember that this is a bug tracker and not a forum. The notes section can be used for additional information that pertains to the bugs, not for flaming the devs.

For discussions and such, please use the DayZ forums.

dear JStewart,
if you have to restart each day 2 times from the beginning because the loading-system is not working at all after this update, it is a bug! Remember how many hours player investigate to TEST your system, that we pay for it and your content that you could bring a finished game on the market at the end. Without our tests and feedback you could never bring a finished game out. I think how many bugs we all report.
Go to the Games-Con and ask ANY devs or player and EACH one will tells you: This is a BIG bug-problem and the most importent function of any game: Loading and saving.

And, as long as no one make a new answer after me, why i should use the "edit" function for update the bug-report? Or should i make again and again a new post?

And if the number of wipes is increasing i will tell it to you.

And why i should go to the forum by having a bug? What could we "discussion" what this kind of bug? "Is this a nice or a bad bug"? Its fundamental! Sorry. Think whats your windows would be if you can't save ANYTHINK on it!? I feel like having the "i-love-you-virus" in dayz. Delete it your char when you login (make power on your pc)?

After latest patch 0.48.124737 I get exactly same issue every time that I swap server.

Character starts again as new.

No way to play until this is fixed.

Hello again nerobp,

"if you have to restart each day 2 times from the beginning because the loading-system is not working at all after this update, it is a bug! Remember how many hours player investigate to TEST your system, that we pay for it and your content that you could bring a finished game on the market at the end. Without our tests and feedback you could never bring a finished game out. I think how many bugs we all report.
Go to the Games-Con and ask ANY devs or player and EACH one will tells you: This is a BIG bug-problem and the most importent function of any game: Loading and saving."

No one here disagrees that it's an important bug to fix. The bug is in status "Acknowledged" - the team is on the case.

"And, as long as no one make a new answer after me, why i should use the "edit" function for update the bug-report? Or should i make again and again a new post?"

Your note was not deleted because it was an update. It was deleted because the note contained nothing but negative comments regarding the devs, foul language and absolutely nothing constructive that would facilitate the fixing of the bug.

"And if the number of wipes is increasing i will tell it to you."

Please, feel free to do so. That's what the feedback tracker is here for.

"And why i should go to the forum by having a bug? What could we "discussion" what this kind of bug? "Is this a nice or a bad bug"? Its fundamental! Sorry. Think whats your windows would be if you can't save ANYTHINK on it!? I feel like having the "i-love-you-virus" in dayz. Delete it your char when you login (make power on your pc)?"

I wrote: For discussions and such, please use the DayZ forums. Nothing in that sentence implied that you should file bugs on the forums.

"Your note was not deleted because it was an update. It was deleted because the note contained nothing but negative comments regarding the devs, foul language and absolutely nothing constructive that would facilitate the fixing of the bug."

Okay, this is copy and paste. I do never wrote "fuck xyz... The devs are...".

"No one here disagrees that it's an important bug to fix. The bug is in status "Acknowledged" - the team is on the case."

The case is open over 8 month?!!?
And, why i wrote here is, that the number of wipes increased EXTREMLY (like the other unsigned 49 bugs i reported).
Reconnect on the Server before do not help here.

If you write, please let this also answers to. Thats all from me.

"The case is open over 8 month?!!?
And, why i wrote here is, that the number of wipes increased EXTREMLY (like the other unsigned 49 bugs i reported).
Reconnect on the Server before do not help here."

You can always post notes without having to sort to the use of foul language and deliberately submitting duplicate tickets. As mentioned before, please feel free to use the DayZ forums for any and all discussions.

0.48 Stable, had this happen on a lot of servers, Fragnet in particular.

ATL 4-007 Fragnet
ATL 4-022 Fragnet
ATL 4-062 Fragnet

I rejoined a server that had just restarted and spawned in as a new spawn. I was told if you wait 3-5 minutes to rejoin the server you will not spawn in as a new spawn. (Gameservers server). Seems to be occurring frequently. I will test the theory and post results.

It seems that the character reset especially occurs on server restart. Every time the server restarted while we were logged in our character is reset. So for now we disconnect 5min before server restart and reconnect 2-3min after it is up and ready. I think the character reset may occur especially when connecting to freshly restarted server.

That I can confirm. No problem when the server is already running but when you join directly after a restart a wipe is imminent.

Yesterday tryib to relog to a restarted server i lost my character, in-game settings and my .cfg archive changed to default. Haven't had this issue since months...

There is a suggested workaround of logging into a new server and then back to your original server at restart times. This could also be analogous to the timing of server restarts as suggested above. Waiting an additional 5 minutes from when you see the time of day increment could be required at least until this bug is fully resolved.

Last time this happened to my character (10 mins ago) I logged onto the same server I got logged off from as it restarted.

The server showed me the 'Please Wait' black screen.

I pushed 'ESC' whilst 'Please Wait' was showing.

From the static screen that is shown when you do this I could see that my character was exactly where I'd logged off - NWAF.

Then 'Please Wait' disappeared and the game loaded me in - with a NEW character on the coast....

Very strange because the server obviously knew for a moment that my existing character was at NWAF. Another 2 hours wasted :)

This is really serious rightnow. Before it was very seldom, but rightnow you just cannot play as a "Looter".

I lost both of my loved Accounts the last 2 days. Hardcore/FirstPerson and Normal.
In Hardcore I had this bug twice or three times in 2 days.

What happend?

Server disconnected, No message 1,2,3,... 14...
Esc
Leave
Start game
Wait for Host
Loading
Testing 1,2,3...
Back at the Beach

This time I didnt move my mouse and instantly disconnected, but as the last couple of losses, that didnt make it better.

Please fix this!

Dammit, just lost my saved character. Was playing on lastMPServer="85.236.109.72:2502";
lastMPServerName="DayZ NL 1-2 Hosted by MultiplayGameservers.com
By the name of deacon and logged out in the middle of nowhere. Now Tthe server is down and get to start anew on any other server. I though the "stable" branch wasnt supposed to delete characters??

Dammit, just lost my saved character. Was playing on lastMPServer="85.236.109.72:2502";
lastMPServerName="DayZ NL 1-2 Hosted by MultiplayGameservers.com
By the name of deacon and server restarted/crashed the middle of nowhere around 10:30 last night. Now Tthe server is down and get to start anew on any other server. I though the "stable" branch wasnt supposed to delete characters??

yesterday or 2 days ago, I lost 3 characters... hardcore, third person and an experimental...

3 times!!! changed server beach... didn't want to start again so I changed hive... then I change server... beach again... 3rd Hive... playing change server... Beach...

So this is an important bug... I don't understand why it's marked for less priority... I don't want to play the game and start all over all the time without any reason?

I lost my character two times yesterday.

I lost my character two times yesterday.

Whelp, thought I'd report and add to the noise already going on in this tracker.

Lost character two days in a row, both when switching from a high-ping server to a low-ping server.

First time, lost my backpack, boots, gloves, and vest. Second time, lost the whole character (fresh spawn).

Both servers were my regular favourites, and neither were hardcore or experimental.

I thought a long time about posting here again after the last behavior from the mod but ok, I will tell you that we tested.
Your Char will be deleted 100% if:
First. Server restarts and you are on it
Then if you reconnect to fast. This means if the server doesn't arrived his finish starting time. Also if the server is hanging at the start time and you connect on it.
For example:
Server restarts. You are in the browser with the server list. The server is 8:00 server time ( not your real time) and you connect. The the server switch to 9:20 and then to for example his finish time 14:00, your char will be deleted. You have to wait until the server arrived the 14:00 and wait addition 10 seconds, then the Char will not be deleted.
Each connect to any server before he arrived his ingame real start time deletes your Char.

Please have this bug. After all, it was not in the earlier updates. Tired already spent hours collecting loot and lose it for a minute.

Uhg, this glitch has resulted in 7 or 8 minor heart attacks on my part. Steps to recreate:

Was playing on my normal server that always works (there is a HUGE number of servers that no one seems to be able to connect to, ever, can always tell because their clocks usually get stuck at the server start times) this morning at 530 a.m. before work, logged off around 6:00 a.m.

Got home at 7:30 p.m. (13.5 hours after last being logged on, I seriously doubt its server hopping related)

Decided to log on to a different server as the server I normally play on was full.

The server I chose was a persistence enabled Vilayer.com hosted los angeles based server.

Got to "Testing 1,2,3" (I pay VERY close attention to the start up messages for this very reason) I received no other warning or statement of any kind. Just that.

Was staring at the beach with no gear.

This issue seems to be MORE (75% of my character wipes) common with me with the Vilayer.com, Fragnet.net, and Gameservers.com, servers with persistence enabled.

I really hope the devs see this message as I think it will help them see where the problem is, it's more than likely related to the persistence system, which would explain why it became as frequent as it did during the same patch that saw implementation of persistence.

ADDED:

Got my character back by exiting the game and restarting after 20 minutes on a different random server (trying to get my stuff back) and my gear was back on my character in the right place.

Exited again because that server had a couple players with pings in the 150 range and that just RUINS the gameplay IMHO.

After waiting 20 more minutes I logged back in again, and was an idiot and tried another Vilayer server, boom, character wiped again.

Really hope it isn't gone for good this time, I just replaced my stuff after a "Hacker" (kid who knew some exploits more than likely) walked through a second floor wall of a house and 1 shot me in the head with an axe because I REFUSED to let him hack spawn me in a glitched M4 (I prefer to just play a game, not cheat, besides I don't really like M4's, too domestic)

Same thing happens to me. In some servers I get the fresh spawn character. Then I change server and my old one (with gear and all) is restored.

I have the problem, too. When a server crashes, i loose all my stuff and my char gets wiped. It's since 0.49.

Confirmed this issue AGAIN.
After getting wiped, I tried server hopping hoping that I get my char back.
This obviously didn't work out, so I continued with my new char.

Very annoying to see this problem again after a loooong while.

I just had this happen to me, then i hopped servers for awhile, and got it back. I DID NOT SEE THE disconnected from hive warning i normally see. Dev's might want to check the server called "Scavenger", this one started the problem for me.

After a while it happened again, i considered if it could be related to backpack-ception. Because i had a bunch of mountain backpacks inside each other, for the extra storage on my heli-loot runs. Have not been able to get my save back this time... will keep trying. :(

This occurred to myself and a friend on a public hive server today... the server crashed (or rebooted, there was no warning either way) and when we reconnected we had new characters. Joining another server (and the same one again) had no effect.

This occurred to myself and a friend on a public hive server today... the server crashed (or rebooted, there was no warning either way) and when we reconnected we had new characters. Joining another server (and the same one again) had no effect.

Continuously happened to me last night. Every time a public hive server rebooted (since most are still set to restart every two hours) me and my friend's characters were deleted. It happened to us on three separate servers over the course of about 5 hours, at which point we decided to just give up. Right now 0.49 (stable) is unplayable because of this bug.

This seems to be a reproducible issue when joining a server before it has completely restarted - but is still allowing connections for whatever reason.

Rejoining the server the moment it hits the list will almost guarantee a wipe of your character.

Making the server inaccessible during this time would be a great work-around at least in the interim.

I am getting reports of this happening on the servers I am renting. So can confirm this issue is very prevalent with patch .50.

It happens something similar to me, but the diferece was that it occurred because the server crashed. It happens in version 0.50

This can be avoided if you join a server and press escape when you get the "waiting for host" if you wait for more then 3 seconds when you see waiting for host, your character will be overwritten due to server unable to read ur character from the database.

TIP: always press escape at "waiting for host" if it takes more then 2-3 secs.

Totally not fixed in 0.51. Ouch.

Still not fixed with 0.52

still not fixed in 0.53 . I was playing in an official server (pers. on) and after 2 restarts i suddenly got session lost .Then when i rejoined i found out my character had been lost. Why the server didnt save a previous spot of my character?

Confirmed in 0.53:

When you try to connect on a server, and the screen only shows "wait for host", DO NOT WAIT staring at this screen! Instead, return to the server browser, wait there a few minutes and then try to reconnect.

If you wait in the "wait for host" screen until it throws you back to server browser/main menu, your character is mostly likely gone. Even if it finally manages to connect to the server, your char may be gone.

This is often happening when a server has just restarted (either because of regular restart schedule, or a crash), so when that happens, be patient and do something else for a while before attempting to reconnect.

Also, it doesn't matter if it's public hive or private shard. It seems that if the game cannot read your character data from the server for whatever reason, it will reset the character.

orangutan is right.
When you join too soon, you get wiped.

When you log on, the screen has to look like this:
Wait for host (max. 2 seconds)
Battle-eye client message in bottom left pops up immediately
Player list pops up on right side
Screen says "Please wait"

If the Wait for host stays longer than 2 seconds, escape immediately!!

also confirmed when getting kick by an admin on any public hive server while being driving in V3S Truck V0.53

as of 0.57
Happened to me quite a few times (4 or 5 maybe)
don't even take a step. (i flipped off to the air a few times while trying to alt+f4, that didn't change anything. important thing is not to do something the server saves, like moving, picking up an object, arrange your inventory)
quickly close the game.
join to another server.
your character is back.
%100 worked for me.

On 10th of October 2015 about 0200-0230 CEST I've experienced possible dupe of item (was trying to store UMP in a barrel). When I wanted to relog my character save was reset to default. Switching servers from my favorite list (same hive) did not fixed the problem. However on different server my character has had a different save file (default but on different spawn place).

[edit1: seems that the save file is the same - I moved away from spawn place and now I seems to have a new save file with the previous save probably gone).

[edit2: on PHX I have different save than on CHG/AB/GGaming and other servers from the same hive. Since yesterday I could normally switch between PHX and CHG, AB, GG and other servers from my favorite list. Have hives been reconfigured somehow? Have servers been moved between hives (lost PHX)?]

I turned off and on the game itself, restarted PC, waited till morning (right now) - still my character save file is broken. Every time I log into a server my old save file is not loading.

Steps To Reproduce This happened to me for the first time. Ive read forum and there was some of that kind of issues reported and after tonight's mishaps there are more players experiencing the situation described here. It may be totally intermittent and connected to the items and events which take place just before logging out and back again.

Additional Information 1) Empty hands, empty back (weapon slot). UMP in Olive High Capacity Vest.

2. Server when the bug occured: [CHG]Chimera-Gaming

3. I tried to put UMP into a barrel. It lagged a lot and did not move into a barrel at all. I tried to put a UMP into my hands - no success.

4. Went 4-5m away from barrels (3 of them, item count about 50 in all 3 barrels) the UMP went into my hands (action made before).

5. Went back to barrels.

6. Saw that there is an UMP in a barrel and in my hands (possible permanent dupe, 100% existing visual dupe).

7. Put UMP from a barrel into my High Capacity Vest (with another UMP in hands) resulted in putting UMP from hands into a vest. Dupe in a barrel still visible.

8. Reloggeed.

9. Character reseted.

10. Restarted to another server - char reseted and in other spawn place (same hive - PHX server).

11. Logged back into Chimera - char still at default, freshly spawned.

12. After few relogs - error - unable to load player profile. Reset the game and contact admin (or sth. similar)

0.59 stable, my geared character was wiped on 12-02-2016 on server "DayZ UK 2-17 (Public/Veteran)". I logged out to answer the call of nature, logged back into the same server a couple of minutes later and suddenly I was a freshspawn. Also my FPS dropped to 4, but that may have been due to the number of zombies in the area where I spawned.

@Geez i think this ticket is obsolete

@Geez hi :)

May be close this ticket like obsolete?