I’ve encountered a persistent bug where deceased villagers are occasionally left lying on the ground indefinitely and are never collected by laborers to be brought to a cemetery or crypt.
Stuck Corpses: Villagers killed by wildlife (such as wolves or boars) in remote areas—for instance, in the far northern part of the map—remain unburied where they fell.
Proximity Issue: Even corpses located relatively close to an active cemetery get ignored and left to rot permanently.
Impact: These bodies never despawn or get processed, creating immersion issues and potential sanitation concerns.
I have attached my savegame where this issue can be observed directly (with uncollected bodies in the north and near the cemetery).
Bodies near to dangerous things won’t be collected until those dangers have been dealt with.
How long was the body near the cemetary waiting? Looks like it’s winter so they may just be in that period when they all shelter before coming out again and starting to do things.
Thanks for the clarification! Regarding the predator dens:
Currently, once a wolf or boar den is destroyed to clear a dangerous area, it is gone forever. This creates a dilemma: if you clear the den to protect laborers or collect a corpse, you permanently lose a steady hunting ground for meat and hides.
Since wildlife dens do not currently respawn naturally anywhere on the map, I’d like to submit a Feature Request for Dynamic Predator Den Spawning :
Proposed Feature:
Wilderness Spawning: Allow new wolf or boar dens to dynamically form over time in remote, undiscovered, or uncolonized wilderness areas (far away from player buildings, roads, and active heat maps).
Realistic Ecosystem: In real life, wild animals repopulate and set up new lairs in undisturbed nature. Having new dens occasionally appear in deep forests/mountains would keep wilderness exploration and late-game hunting dynamic without permanently exhausting wildlife resources.
Safety Buffer: To avoid frustration, new dens should never spawn near existing player infrastructure or active patrol routes, ensuring that secured town perimeters stay safe.
This would solve the issue of accidentally wiping out long-term hunting sources while adding a natural,
You may find predator dens to be a source of meat and hides, but I find them an annoyance. Even with dens eliminated we still get bear attacks, which is fine. There are sufficient other ways to harvest meat and hides without adding re-spawning predator dens IMO.
I definitely see your point that dealing with predator dens can feel like an annoyance! However, I still think a controlled, sparse respawn mechanic in remote areas would be beneficial for a few key reasons:
Higher Yield & Crucial Resources: While deer are nice, wolf and boar dens provide significantly more meat and—most importantly—tallow (fat), which is essential for various production chains in the late game.
Hunter Safety vs. Clearing: It makes total sense that hunters should be able to clear out a nearby den so they can work without constant attacks. Having one den active nearby is manageable, but two can be overwhelming, meaning players should have to destroy them to secure their working areas.
Late-Game Wilderness & Military Training: Once you clear the map, the wilderness becomes completely empty. Having dens occasionally respawn far away in remote, uncolonized regions would keep the map feeling alive. Plus, it gives your standing army a great way to gain combat experience by clearing out newly formed wilderness threats!
So while players shouldn’t be swamped with dens right next to their town, having them slowly regenerate in deep, uninhabited nature would strike a great balance between resource management and exploration.
Wolves do not provide more meat or tallow than deer. It’s 20 meat vs 30 for deer, and 0 tallow. Tallow is also the most over abundant resource that players usually end up having to delete because you produce far more than you can relistically use. Boar are inconvinient to hunt fulltime in late game due to micromanagement. Also if you need more output from hunting, that’s what trapping is for.
They also respawn too slowly to be worth it. It’s a nice bonus to grab a few when you get crossbows for your hunters nearby, but once you clear a den, easier to destroy the den so you can chop trees or harvest nuts/berries in location safely.
I will however, second the idea of dens spawning in areas without human visitors every 5-10 years.
After I manually destroyed the nearby wolf den, the laborers finally came and buried the corpses in the area.
However, what’s strange is that one of the stuck corpses was actually located within the defensive range of a Guard Tower . Even though the tower provided safety and covered that area, the laborers still completely refused to pick up the body until the wolf den itself was fully destroyed.
Takeaway:
It seems the AI pathfinding/priority logic for corpse retrieval gets completely locked out by the mere existence of an active predator den in the broader area—even if the body is actively protected by a Guard Tower or out of direct line of sight of the wolves.
Hopefully, this detail helps narrow down how threat checks affect corpse collection priorities!
The Scene: A villager’s corpse is lying right next to a riverbank/bridge, completely surrounded by a large swarm of wild rats.
The Logic Breakdown:
Laborers refuse to pick up the body.
The area is quite far away from any active predator den (separated by a wall, a lake, and a bridge), so it’s not blocked by a wolf/boar nest.
Curiously, a Rat Catcher assigned nearby reports that “there is nothing to do,” completely ignoring the massive cluster of rats.
Meanwhile, a fisherman is casually sitting right next to the corpse and rats, fishing without issues!
Conclusion / Bug Suspection:
It looks like wild rats swarming outdoors either trigger the same “danger block” that prevents corpse retrieval, or the Rat Catcher AI fails to recognize wild/outdoor rat swarms as valid targets.
I have attached my save file showcasing this exact spot. It would be great if outdoor rat clusters could either be cleared by Rat Catchers or stop blocking laborers from collecting bodies!
