What happens when items are dropped from your inventory?

[tufting 21]

Hi

Just a random thought, do items disappear after a certain time after being dropped?

Or can you hide your own stash of stuff in a random bush?-- gonna guess no, would make tents kinda pointless.

Edited July 30, 2012 by Ridley16

[Burn! 7]

They only despawn during a server restart.

[tarquinbb 28]

i believe they will disappear eventually, otherwise you could effectively 'kill' servers by looting stuff and dropping them all over the place.

i've often stashed my backpack and non-essentials etc in a bush when i want to take a supid risk like the cherno firestation or supermarket, or the tents at stary. the items stay there for at least 40 minutes.

however, i think the servers will delete them if they're under a certain amount of load... i remember reading that somewhere (not sure if it's true).

[SystemiK 366]

It's really random. I've seen items immediately disappear when they dropped (glitch), I set my rifle down on a dirt road last night while I killed a goat with a hatchet. One minute it was there, the next time I looked it was gone. I've been able to set a backpack down many times, occasionally it drops into the ground / dissapears and other times you may not be able to pick it back up again. The best rule of thumb is to never put anything down that you cannot spare losing. If you must, put your item into an existing loot pile (this is a very safe way of dropping items that you plan to pick back up).