The Nightmare of Reclaiming missing inventory

I've never had to move since shortly after I began Sl, so I had no idea what would happen when my 6000+ objects on my Island Land, were just returned to my inventory. I should have researched it in advance.

I'm sure that many have gone through this and maybe I was being a bit masochistic, just returning everything the way I did. Some things returned well, but at least half of the things became the dreaded "missing inventory."

So I learned about how items "coalesce," into "bricks."

In a nutshell, for those who do not know, this means that items on your build, will form together into the bricks in your inventory, without any regard for what they are, but instead, based on their proximity. For example, pieces of your castle, house, buildings will combine together with other nearby pieces. in no logical way. So when you then go search for your Bed...or conference table etc, you can't find anything and think they are "missing inventory."

Instead you will have fish and castle wall and various knick knacks, animals, trees, bridges all lumped together in numeorus bricks, with no sensible order.

The only way LL provides to fix this is to go to a sandbox and laboriously rez each brick one are a time and then separating the thousand of pieces. in the process everything gets duplicated. So now your already messy inventory, becomes exponentially more messy.

I spent 8 --12 hours fixing this mess so far and probably have another 8 hours of going through the inventory.

And to make this more fun, while you are in the "no weapon" sandbox, with pieces all over and you are searching for tiny little pieces mixed with skyscraper walls and a jillion other things, with your invisible item highlighting turned on etc., you are having wackos dropping giant prims on your head, getting orbited, being hit on by children, having Massive Poofers dropped on your head all of course filling the sky with red clouds, blocking your objects.

So in closing I should like to thank the morons in the sandboxes, the morons four sims away who didnt like my island skyscraper, which is why I moved to the mainland, and of course LL who so diligently provides us with such a terrible inventory system horribly dumb and incomplete support pages and a return feature that crashes us and makes mincement of our objects and combines them together into nonsensical blocks of Second Life Gumbo.

Conversation in Sandbox after about hour 5

Nameless Male avatar after dumping mega crap on you, then orbits you a few times while the sky is filled with your objects you are sorting through.

ME: Excuse me, can you please leave me alone I am reclaiming inventory."
HIM: "Hi I'm the rular of the universe"
Me: No you are a just a stupid little kid with no brains.
HIM: Yes I am that too.

So is the real goal of the LL Second Life game, just to drive us nuts?

the wonderful world of second life.

Oh, thank you for making me laugh..I needed that..and I really enjoy your story..ROFL

You've obviously got the brick-breaking thing down, but you haven't found the right place to do it.

The secret is to locate the intersection of four sims with moderately tolerant administrative land in all four corners (or only moderately intolerant resident's land on one or more corners). I guess you could use any four parcels, but the conditions have to be right. The magic is that all four spots have to have autoreturn set to at least a few minutes.

I know of an estate recreational location where four sims come together - one set at 15 minutes, the other three at 5 minutes. If you're desperate, IM me for the location.

Anyway, the process is to rez the bundle EXACTLY on the intersection of the four parcels. You can "take" any individual items you see in the time allowed, or just let autoreturn do the work. Because your stuff is scattered over the area in its original positions, Autoreturn will create four smaller bundles for you. Do it again with these smaller bundles, etc. etc. It doesn't take long to get things isolated as individual objects, and if the location is right, you'll not see another avatar for the whole process,

Thank you, that bit of experience may help with the rest of it.

Since LL likes to crash during a return of items, and think "colescing" is a great "feature," the least they can do is provide Sims which quickly autoreturn all the objects inside our bricks, rezzed for this purpose. It would save much time.

I will probably IM you for that location.

Hahaha -- How did you ever figure that out!?!

I did a big move once and I was worried about losing everything if I did it all at once. So I went around and "packed" everything one object at a time. After all it is still a million times easier than a RL move.

I've don't that. I had an art gallery that I sold, and it ended up being sent back to me. In one giant ball of yarn.

I know I should have gone around and picked up items one at a time--at least important items--but I also wanted to see what would happen. Sort of like when I was little and cut the electrical cord on my Barbie lamp with a pair of scissors.

But really I had so many fish and trees and objects, it would have taken days, and I was pissed off about people in the far off distant islands, 4 sims away, in an area where maybe 4-5 people, across distant islands, ever even log on, complaining about my beautiful skyscraper--I just wanted to be away as fast as possible.

Rebecca,

First, thanks for the hilarious post.

2nd, I have 1/3 of a sim that's still in the planning stage. Most of the land is empty right now. You're more than welcome to use it. IM me in world and I'll go turn build on for you if you want it.

3rd, I don't understand how someone could even possibly see something 4 sims away (over 1000 m), at max draw distance (500 m). And with a manageable draw distance, I can't even see everything in my own sim. What's the deal?

-Avion

Thanks for the offer. I am kind of burnt out right now so I will go back at it this weekend. But if you set your autoreturn to as fast as possible, that could be very usefull, great thanks.

I always have my draw distance low. Other far off islands are not my business. I did set it to 512 after they complained and the estate owner sent me screen shots....it was a distant skyscraper on the screen shots...what ...does it annoy them when they are using there poseballs? Nevertheless a distant skyscraper wouldn't have bothered me at all. No one is even around enough to be upset. But rather then argue it was just a sign, after a year and a half on that land, to move on.

Huh? If he sets his autoreturn as fast as possible, you'll have to work very fast (like one minute) or all the things will just be returned to you in another great big bundle.

Lessons learned:
1) Try to find a quiet private sandbox. I know it's hard, but they're out there.
2) Whenever you're at a sandbox doing stuff, create a prim and sit on it. That way, you won't be an easy target for griefers. A savvy one will find a way to bug you, but you won't be easy lunch.

I total dislike public sandboxes.
One of features and most annoying things about SL is the inventory.
I hate trying to find things, especially when nothing I want I can find be it lost and found,
specific name search.
What makes it worse I spent literally hours working on project, and it was prim heavy so I thought I labeled it something I could remember....sent it to inventory swosh into the black hole to never be seen again.
Same thing with my textures I have spent hours and sometimes days on.
Poof gone.
I often dont even want to use my inventory for very important things in world I tend to use prim contents to make sure I can find stuff but even then sometimes land settings get boinked and off it goes into lost and found and often I even have problems with that.
I am about ready to get rid of everything in my inventory and put in storage boxes and never buy another no copy item ever again and deleting the ones I have.

Really? So If I rez one brick it would come back as a brick if I dont take it apart? Hmm maybe I need to rethink that then. I was thinking that the stuff would autoreturn separately.

The intersection of sims suggested by Cee sounds like a way round this.

I also have some quiet land which I can let you use as a temporary sandbox if you have room for another group, but you'd need to Take everything individually. I'll be in-world later on today - IM me if you want a LM/invite.

This weekend I will try that intersection approach.

Maybe I should wait and see if LL fixes the current issues in yesterday and todays blog.

about a month ago i sold some land and all my stuff was retuened to me. thought i had lost about 30000l worth of stuff. i carefully followed the instruction and rez every thing in my inventory. never could find my stuff. i had given up hope of ever getting it bsck. replaced some of the items with cheaper things. well friday i was at a sandbox cleaning up some of my inventory and looking for a script. i rez a box called 100 free scripts and guess what it had all my what i thought was lost inventory. this 100 free scripts box was not in my lost and found and it was not rez when i sold the land. just glad to get my thinga backs.

Damn Rebecca, I'm pissed off at you're virtual neighbors more then I am sympathetic to you're Brick issue. Brick issues are annoying yes..But neighbors like that. Makes me want to dress in a Military uniform, declare martial law on my island and set up sam sites to shoot down any annoying People who cross my line of death. Good luck to ye in you're move. And next time, piss on the neighbors.

Don't think of it as taking these bricks apart. You don't have to do any work. The only "work" involved is in finding the right place to make SL do the job automatically.

Think of it like this -- notice the icon in your inventory for that "brick" as you call it: it looks like a ball of very small cubes stuck together. (I called it a bundle) Imagine it is each of your items represented by the cube icon each would have if they weren't "bundled" -- You need to slam that thing down someplace to break it apart. If you rez the bundle in one place, you will have to go through the big task you faced in the sandbox - "take" each item back into inventory individually. If you run out of time or patience, if you've left enough items, whatever you haven't grabbed will be bundled up and returned to you as a new bundle. The determining factor is how many objects there are -- I believe the magic number is ten -- the problem is apparently associated with the decision not to display items being taken into inventory if they a "coming too fast",

If you rez the bundle on four places simultaneously (say where four sims or lots touch), you cut your work to a fraction of the problem. The items in your original bundle will rex in their original positions from the land you sold. That means some items will be in each of the four sims. Even if you did nothing at all to "take" items, some of the four groups of items would be few enough to be returned as individual objects - where there are too many for that, a new, smaller, bundle will be created and returned. You just rez that new bundle on the same spot and it will "shatter" into four new groups, all either smaller, or just individuals.

Remember, all four lplaces have to allow build, all have to be set to autoreturn in a reasonable length of time (5 to 15 minutes is nice(, and the items will be in their original positions. In the case of your skyscraper, that probably means you're going to have to look 'way up high to see individual rezzed items.

It does work. I've done it several times. I discovered it when I sold a house and got back a big bundle. (Fortunately the building itself was a linked object, but the contents were something else.)

Thanks for that good explanation. Clears some things up.