I just got 3 pawn returns working in a row and one of them being my own pawn succesfully returned for the first time ever.
What I did was I released the pawn and rested myself, then I told the owner of the pawn to rest immediately.

The first working pawn return I witnessed years ago went just the same way. We were both playing the game at the same time and the owner of the pawn I released rested shortly after and got his rewards.

All of these were done with GoG friends but I doubt that would be relevant.

So if anyone is still playing maybe do some tests yourself and report here if it works or not. Maybe there is a feasible workaround to the pawn return bug.

Interesting. I'd love to hire your Pawn and test this.

BTW Is it just me or is Favorites and Friends filters not working?

My pawn is Sieghardt a Level 200 Warrior.

And as far as I remember Favorites and Friends are the only filters that have been working at all because other filters rely on working pawn return.

If I understand Rift correctly then all online max level Pawns should be in lvl. 199 search results. I can't find your Pawn there - and there's not many Pawn there. Is it Warrior for sure? Or maybe has lower level in the Rift.
It may also use a moniker, but in this case I'd search for user name. And no, there's no Pawn of s.m.langer among search results. Sadly these don't work for me at all. I added few offline Pawns to Favorites, as a test, and the Rift says there's nothing there.

Tell me your pawn details and I'll have a look if I can find yours. I never bothered with offline pawns at all. I dunno if favoriting them even works. But if you don't see those level 200 pawns, there should be quite a lot, I guess there is something wrong with your connection to the server. You sure you set your game to Online in the gameplay settings?

Edit:
I just noticed, thanks to the working Pawn Returns Sieghardt can be found under "Top Ranked This Month" right now.

I don't know if Pawn update works here the same as on Steam, but last time I rested it was level 75 Strider named Lola. I just did a test, that's all. And this filter works for offlines on Steam at least.
Anyway, I was using Favorites on my archived save, maye this was the problem.
And again, didn't have such issues with backup saves on Steam. Yes, I have everything set, I see a bit of level 200s (88 hits is not much) and I can hire online Pawns as well. Just couldn't find your Pawn.

BTW Sieghardt that I summoned from the "Top Ranked This Month" list, and who also mysteriously appeared at the lvl. 199 search results, appears at the Favorites no problem. Maybe it's the online data wipeout I made (fun fact: Saves from Steam version wok with this one no problem) , maybe Favorites works just for onlines, idk. I'll keep researching this issue.

EDIT OK, reserach goes on.
As soon as I left the Rift and re-enterd your Pawn still appears at my Favorites...but as Invalid data. And I cannot summon it. At least it shows up at the Rift by default.

Is it set to be hired by friends only, or maybe you allow No One to hire it?

Also, I have noticed you cannot request friendship via Pawn in this version. Hmm, should I spend my hard earned RCs on a level 200 Pawn ;)

EDIT2 OK, and now, after restarting the game Favorites is inoperable again.

EDIT3 OK, after few restarts and adding few more Pawns Favorites seems to work. I hope it will stay that way.

Weren't you restricted to your own "system" when it comes to pawn pools? like gog with gog, steam with steam, etc?

No I can't find your pawn at all. Also looked through the levels down to 60-something but couldn't find it. heh 88 is a lot compared to the 4 pawns I see at level 198. No use comparing numbers to steam the user base on GoG is already smaller but the bugged state of the game on GoG probably hurts in even more. I always play with Pawn available to "Anyone"
Going by all the trouble you are describing I can't help but think your manual save manipulation might have corrupted your server side data. :D Yes, obviously. I was refering to GoG friends vs other non-friended GoG users.

Yes, but later I wiped out the online data and said filters were working, then they didn't, and now...still work erratically. Eg Fravorites filter got wiped out and I have there only one Pawn now, and it's a no name at the list.

Also, apparently my "Personal Ranking" is 1? And my Pawn wasn't hired yet! Anyway, if my Pawn is indeed no1 in the Pawn ranking try searching there.

EDIT And upon trying again just now Favorites contains more Pawns. What a s#itshow.

Sorry to Necro this post, as DD2 is on the way, I was going to play the original a bit with my brother's pawn, have you guys played recently and can vouch for the method again?

In my test it worked 1 out of 4 times. But only when the other person rested as well. So you'd have to literally synchronise your actions with other person and it'd still fail most of the times. Not worth it.