TLDR:
*Something weird with 1.3 mod stashes on older characters.
*transfer.gst and reagents are wiped.
*Mod folder isn’t changed.
*Renaming transfer.gst to transfer.dst fixes stash.
*Reagents hopelessly broken, no fixes, never saves, always wipes on load. (not read-only)
It’s important to note, while loading characters in the wrong mod wipes mod items and skills, this doesn’t usually wipe stashes entirely, including vanilla items.
Ramble time:
Okay, so I’ve been wrestling with an issue for the past week or so. I updated Grimarillion to be compatible with v1.3, and after fixing a few issues that popped up, I got it ironed out on my end. But some of the people playing 1.3 are having some weird amnesiac stash issues if they use older, now cursed characters. One player sent me his save files and what I could see happening is this:
Save files don’t contain any data for reagents before loading in. I load in with a character and a reagent file is created as expected. I check the stash, full of components, all tabs present and accounted for. Go back to main menu. Pick the same character, or a different one.
As the game is loading in, I’m watching the mod save folder, and I can see the reagent and transfer.gst files wipe, both go to 1kb. Check the transfer stash, all purchased stashes have been refunded, must be purchased again (if you do they’re still empty). Reagent stash is blank, unsurprising.
There are automatic backups, so you’d think you could fix this right? If you leave the game, you could restore it, right? Nope. As soon as the cursed character leaves the game and returns to the main menu, the stash file gets wiped to 1kb as well. I suppose that’s just how the behavior is, it makes a copy of the stash file when you return.
I tried to see what I could do, and one thing that works is changing the transfer.gst to transfer.dst, which seems weird? I got the idea from checking my own stash and that’s what my small test file uses. (I wipe characters frequently, i just test stuff, I don’t really have time to play anything). I tried the filetype swap with reagents too but that “trick” didn’t work.
What is the difference between gst/dst? I see both used in GDStash, but it seems like GST should be the default. When I googled, I got a result that I understood as .dst is like a backup in case gst can’t be found, from another poster here.