First off I want to say hello to everyone.  I first played UO in the late 90's and have spent time on other custom shards over the years but EVO is by far the best I've seen.  I'm extremely impressed by staff and players both for the excellent community in place here and I look forward to becoming a part of it.

As to my question, I by no means want this to come off as a complaint but I'm very confused as to what happened and why.  I was given two pets by a former player and I left them as they were given to me, shrunk inside a secure and locked down container which rests inside my private house.  I never touched them, moved them anywhere or did anything as my taming and lore skills were far too low at the time to handle them.  For some reason when I looked earlier today they were no longer there.

I talked to a veteran player about this and the only possible reason they mentioned was something about a rollback a few days ago.  I see no reason that should have had any consequences as nothing else with my character or in my house was awry at the slightest but I suppose it must be a possibility.

I scoured the wiki and stratics pages for any pertinent information but came up empty.  I paged staff and was asked if the pets were locked down and I'm honestly unsure but either way I don't see how that matters since no one but I has access to the container let alone the house.  I'm either missing a vital piece of knowledge or something quite odd has occurred.  If I made a mistake I want to learn from it, realize what I did wrong and prevent anything like this happening again.  If it was out of my control...stuff happens.  I would just like to know the ins and outs of it as I'm still learning about the expansions I never played and the massive amount of custom content on this shard.

If anyone could shed some light on this for me I would greatly appreciate it. 

   If you own the house, and placed an item into a locked down or secured container, then you should be secure in knowing that the item will always be there later on. 100% sure that this is the case with all items, placed in locked down or secured containers.


  If there was a rolling restart it would have had to roll back to a time prior to the nice person giving you the two pets in question.

  As for unlocking an item in a locked down container, and not locking them down again, this is a possibility. But you said you did not touch them so that should not be the case, here. 

  Since you are new... items that are not locked down, or secured, decay after 2 hours in the game world. A pets happiness decays over time as well, but I believe this is put on pause if you shrink the pets down. (only 90% sure on that one)

  Other then that, I don't think it was in your control, nor do I believe it can be reversed, or replaced. However, I believe there are plenty of players willing to help you get new pets when you are ready, and able, to use them.

  Let me know when that time comes. 

  (my taming is GM, but I can always get it to 120+ should I need to)


    --Sturger--

Thank you for the response.  Never having been able to use them even once is what really bums me.  Of all the things to lose, it would have to be something rare and valuable.  Money, gear, housing...these things can be earned again with time and effort, but the guy that gave them to me said they weren't obtainable in game anymore, if they ever were.  I suppose I can take some small comfort in knowing it wasn't my error and have to accept it as a case of bad luck, which I seem to be having a lot of lately in general, but c'est la vie.

I will have to take you up on your offer in the near future.  I need to start small, with something that isn't a huge loss in case I screw up as my veterinary is rather sub-par at the moment, set up some hot keys for commands and get used to using a pet, etc., before I move onto something bigger and badder.

Thanks again for the info, I really appreciate it.