Bug regarding dropping/picking up artifacts?

Playing my LA char just now on Sympathy map, and accidentally tossed my tripple. (I have Loaded Art. lvl 2) Someone then "pinched me tripple", but that's not the problem. After a bit, a monster I killed dropped one, but....I couldn't pick it up. I ran over it a few times and nothin.

Played another wave or two, and same story. Whenever another tripple dropped I couldn't pick it up.

That really stunk. The tripple is my bread 'n butter.

Don't know if this problem affects all artifacts or not.

Any ideas as to why this happened? And if this is a recent intended change in the code, let me be the first to say, it ain't a good thing.

I have no idea, but just so everyone knows, it was also mentioned here:

http://disastrousconsequences.com/dcforum/posts/list/2298.page

Oy vay - I need to make sure this is in my FAQ some place if it isn't already.

TheElectrician wrote:

Playing my LA char just now on Sympathy map, and accidentally tossed my tripple. (I have Loaded Art. lvl 2) Someone then "pinched me tripple", but that's not the problem. After a bit, a monster I killed dropped one, but....I couldn't pick it up. I ran over it a few times and nothin.

Played another wave or two, and same story. Whenever another tripple dropped I couldn't pick it up.

That really stunk. The tripple is my bread 'n butter.

Don't know if this problem affects all artifacts or not.

Any ideas as to why this happened? And if this is a recent intended change in the code, let me be the first to say, it ain't a good thing.

Electrician, the reason you can't pick it up is because normally chars are limited to 3 artifacts. There's a bug/trick where you can pick up more than that if the artifact starts to dissapear (what I refer to as "the toilet bowl swirl"). I think dropped artifacts "live" for around 10 seconds before they start swirling. Stand over the artifact and you'll get it. However, if someone swoops in who is not at their artifact capacity, they can grab the artifact pre-swirl, and you're out of luck.

At any rate, this has been in the game for a long time.