Note: You can ignore all my problems below. Recently, my whole hard drive died and had to be replaced with a new hard drive and copy of Windows. That's when the problems below began. I eventually discovered that the new setup was glitched and causing all the problems. So it wasn't the game's fault after all. I can now play it all day with no stopping and still have no game crashes or characters or stash contents disappearing. :-)

Three times in the past month, my T2 character has disappeared after a game crash, and I've had to use its restore file in the modsave folder in order to restore it.

My problem is that the restore file is always quite a bit behind the actual point in time that the character was at when it crashed. And that's even though I commonly save the game a good 20 times each hour.

Here are the time delays of the "restore" files behind the "SVB" files when those 3 crashes occurred:

On 10-17-19: 1 hr. + 54 min.
On 10-29-19: 1 hr. + 52 min.
On 10-30-19: 3 hrs. + 24 min.

That last one is especially frustrating.

1. Why are the restore files so far behind the actual game's point in time? Especially that 3rd one.

2. And is there anything I can do to keep the restore file's point in time closer to the real game's point in time?

P.S. later: And now things are even worse. Having no choice, I used that last character restore file anyway, then spent hours getting the character back to where it was when it had crashed, including redoing 4 or 5 dungeon maps.

Only to then have the shared stash contents disappear. I checked the other character who shares it, and it's empty there, too. And what's even worse is that its restore file is 26 hrs. & 37 minutes behind its "din" file! And like the regular stash, it was filled to the last space with new stuff because I had run out of space in the regular stash.

I was really enjoying this game at first. But now, with all the freakin' crashes & disappearing acts & ancient restore files, I'm starting to get very sick of playing it.

P.S. again, the next day: I've figured out at least part of the problem. The main character & stash files are updated when you save or, lastly, when you exit a play session. On the other hand, the restore character & stash files are only updated when you START a play session.

That still does not account for the restore stash file being over 26 hours behind. I certainly did not play that long before exiting the play session.

So for now, my plan is to exit the game after only short periods of play. And then restart the game so that the restore files get updated...and immediately check the folder to be sure that all of the files got updated. That way, if the game does crash again, at least I'll know that all of the files should be more recent.

P.S. later yet: I've discovered yet another oddity, this time one that can easily account for the delayed updates of the restore stash file. It does not always update the same way that the character's restore file does.

The character restore file will update if you simply exit the play session and then restart it. You do not have to exit the whole game for that update to occur when you start a play session again. The stash restore, on the other hand, will NOT update UNLESS you exit the whole game, then restart a play session.

I've verified all this several times by checking the modsave folder after each individual step. So now I have an answer as to why the stash restore file was over 26 hours behind the creation time of its "bin" file. The "bin" file would have updated when I quit playing. But if I didn't play again for 26 hours, the stash restore file wouldn't get updated until THEN.

So you have 3 possible different file update times: one for the main character & stash files; one for the character restore file; and one for the stash restore file. The only reason I can think of for the different save times is to keep from running out of RAM or cache all at once.

But all that still doesn't answer why my character and saved stash disappeared, even though their files were still in the modsave folder. So in case that happens again, about every half hour I'm saving all 4 files with their times close together, then saving copies of all 4 files in a separate folder.

And if I quit the game for the day, I'll still reenter the game after completely exiting it, just to get that stash restore file updated immediately, too.

It's all a big hassle, but at least I can keep playing and enjoy it without worrying about big disappearance acts.