Offline character is gone

9/23 22:27:51.663 [Render/4] [<>:0]: NVSDK_NGX_D3D12_Init failed, error code: - - Pastebin.com

PC - Logged off and low level offline Druid “Brushy” was gone. Luckily didn’t play too long

This was around 8-9pm EST. Can’t remember if I was in town (via portal) or in a cave or something. But I hit Save&Exit, am on PC and this was also an Offline character, with no files existing of a character in my computer.

Lost level 17 offline hardcore necro to this nonsense character deletion. I had just killed Andariel, gone to act2, save and exit. Then he’s not in my character list. I make a level 1 sorc and the 3k gold and wolf head i put in shared stash are still there.
Would not have thought offline play was vulnerable to this. Rip 2 hours

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Just experienced the same issue with a level 14 paladin. Offline play. PC. Fully updated windows 10. Was working my way through level 1 of the catacombs when my PC locked up and I had to restart. Once I logged back in the character was completely gone.

out of the bunch of you reporting your files locally going missing how many of you tried to “hack” your character stats. If none how many of you checked your antivirus quarantine to see if anything is there? Blizzard didn’t go into your pc and delete your files, your operating system did. The logs you provide to Blizzard will only help them tell you what it is that is happening on your machine that is leading to it.

I haven’t tried any character stat hacking. I also do not have an antivirus installed on my system.

I don’t even think the OS is deleting files. I think the game didn’t save it properly. I had two Offline characters that I played a bit with. Only 1 of them disappeared. The other one is just as I left it right before I shut down. If it was a matter of my PC deleting the save files, my other character should have been deleted as well. I don’t understand why one would be there and one wouldn’t.

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That is completely different then. Perhaps while the work-arounds were being conducted one was “corrupted”. I’m sorry to hear that (read), 1 still there and 1 not is definitely not normal. If it was your machine they would both be gone. The game could have simply “malfunctioned” during the “hotfixes” for online play and the code changes could have affected how the game stored the character to your device locally. Unfortunately I don’t think the missing character will be able to be recovered in that case. My condolences.

I would like to add that many of the hotfixes today were targeting game saves. It is quite possible in their attempts to fix online saves they messed up the coding for local saves along the way. Although briefly, some may have been impacted as you are reporting. There would be no way for them to recover that missing information.

As an additional caveat, If it was an ancient d2 save file that was lost, you can simply reexport back into the folder. Likewise any character you have in that folder you can zip and store in another location as back-up, if this continues to be a problem.

tips hat

Really annoyed with this, finished act 1, Level 15 Druid, save and exit to take a break, log back in this morning, character missing.

Nothing in the c:\users%user%\saved games\d2r folder except the shared stash and settings.

How is this okay?

My character i created at release vanished, as stated. I did not tamper with the files. Antivirus hasn’t touched anything, neither has the computer in any way shape or form. There’s an issue with the game not saving correctly. (However i have since the past couple hours moved in a few, as you call it ‘Ancient Characters’ as i recently found out about that, which is great, and has made a backup in the wait of this being fixxed, as it is very off-putting knowing that it can break at any time). Also, from reading things here on the forum, apparently the things you put in shared stash gets saved, so i guess an alternative way of doing backups is to empty your characters items into those before exiting the game. I dunno, hoping for a fix asap ofcourse, instead of having to try to go around the problem.

I have done nothing to try and hack my save, and my antivirus is just Windows Defender.

So far I have rolled 2 chars. A level 10 necro that just up and vanished. The other, a level 6 Paladin, rolled back to level 1 after reloading the game a few times.

Just because you don’t have a problem it doesn’t mean nobody does.

You do realize that in order to create local saves the game has to manipulate your drive?

so you admit it then, the game has to “manipulate your drive” which means it needs permission too. If you have certain features of windows 10 turned on that can very well be blocked.

Exploitation protection and ransomeware protection will halt that in its tracks if you haven’t cleared blizz through it.

Along with anything that tries to install on harddisk0

(warden and other cheat detection engines try to use super powers to elevate over certain system features to track cheats) (which leads to them being blocked by exploit protection by windows)

Why did one char vanish completely and one merely roll back? Obviously the game HAS permission to create files.

Also, the rolled back char didn’t roll back immediately.
I had to restart the game several times before it happened, it loaded fine in between.

rather it did have permission at one point, then they changed the code and windows said nope, that program changed and blocked the new one

viruses do the same thing

if windows is blocking their new builds it isn’t your fault, it is theirs. They changed something that windows wasn’t aware of they didn’t submit anything they just assumed nobody used windows antivirus at that time trying to connect to the game. But we all do, even when it is off it is still running.

The code changed, windows thought it was malicious, no notices were given it was blocked.

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Just checked again this morning to be sure, character still doesn’t show up when I log in. Weird thing is, unlike some of the others that have posted, it looks like my save files are still in the saved games folder. For whatever reason the game just won’t recognize them. This was a character created in Resurrected and not imported in. Honestly didn’t even know where to find the save files before all this happened so I definitely wasn’t trying to edit them before my character went poof.

Also now getting a “Failed to join game” for my other two characters that still exist. Still only trying offline play. The game seems completely broken at this point.

Edit to add: I never created any online characters so my offline character that disappeared did not share a name with any other character.

Second edit to add: After the patch today I’m still having all the same issues. Still haven’t even created an online character but get failed to join when trying to play offline for the two I had already created and played a bit with. My paladin is still completely missing but the files for him are in the save folder. Tried creating brand new offline characters but immediately get the failed to join message. Literally cannot play in any way since last night. Almost at 24 hours of unplayable in any format.

For me the same, but my character is stuck at level 4 on offline mode. Playing on pc. Tried 2 times already, when i play and level up it goes back in time.

This also happened to me. Playing on PC.

I played for around 30min with an online character last night but the servers crashed and rolled me back to fresh so I decided to play offline for now.

I played an offline Amazon from around 9pm-11pm eastern and saved and returned to menu when I was done. When I left my computer last night, I was able to see my level 8 or so Amazon in the character select screen. I woke up this morning and the offline character is gone. My online character is back to the level it was before the server crash and rollback that made me play offline though.