Invalid slot_id specified?

[So_1337]

Yet another error that has been plaguing our server lately =/

A lot of errors are livable, but this one has been causing zone crashes for us during NToV raids lately, and I'm at a loss as to how I can fix it. I'm going to throw out the facts that I have, then propose a bit of theory, and then explain what I've tried so far. Hopefully you guys can offer some suggestions based on those things.

We've recently had a few zone crashes in the middle of our nightly raids, and we've always put it down to what you'd normally expect on an EQ server: There were too many people in the zone, too much lag, someone did something crazy (Arcite tells you, 'Oh fuck, man, I just divided by zero!'), etc. Well, after looking over the error logs for the zone (as only the zone would go down, not the entire server or anyone in zones besides ours).

The error logs more often than not show their final two lines as these:

[06.21. - 19:54:44] Inventory::_PutItem: Invalid slot_id specified (-1)
[06.21. - 19:54:44] Warning: Invalid slot_id for item in inventory: charid=212, item_id=22569, slot_id=-1

Well, let's go down the list. Character ID 212 is 'Tissi', a bard on our server who helps me as a GM. Item ID is a "Small Piece of Velium". Slot ID -1 is... Hrm. Not on the list. I'm guessing that's why the zone is freaking out. I'm having a hard time figuring out where she'd hide a small piece of velium, too, naughty thoughts aside. And let's face it, there's nothing amusing about the thought of a girl who procs Velium Shards from her vagina. At all. But I'll be damned, I can't help but laugh anyway. What I really think is that there was a time where either an item in her inventory bugged (we've gotten some "Bogus item detected! Deleting..." errors lately, which makes things tricky), or she went linkdead with stuff on her cursor and it got all wacky.

So that's the facts and theories part. As for solutions, I've used GeorgeS's Item Manager, with no success. The item is nowhere that I can really see, yet it seems to try and equip itself every once in awhile. She can be logged in for a bit before this error occurs, crashing the zone. To give you an idea of the time-frame, we had time to gather and to kill from Aary to Dagarn without it occuring. Then it crashed the zone, we recovered, and it crashed again a few minutes after she was logged back in.

I believe that that really is the cause, as it seems to be the end of the error logs each time. Or, who knows, it could be a fluke. All I know is that I was able to #movechar her bard to cshome and that she was able to finish the raid out playing only her cleric, and we stomped everything we wanted to, including Vulak without it crashing on us again.

Thanks for any input you can offer as to how to remove an item that doesn't appear anywhere in her inventory. I'm kind of stumped on this one, short of re-making the character.

[Irreverent]

OK, maybe I can be help again. I think what is going on here is that your char is trying to have more than is allowed in their cursor.

I was having this issue because I have custom starting items, and if you have too many they just don't get summoned or they cause a crash. I fixed it by making sure there was 8 or less items on the new person creation. So if this is because of a mob looting/kill/dropping it might be more than the server can handle. Not sure, but maybe its related.

[Irreverent]

And btw, slot-id of -1 means go to the first available general inventory slot(and it does not go to a bag if they're all filled)

[So_1337]

Hrm. And here I thought it had to be... Elsewhere.

I'll have her clear some space in her bags and then camp out and back. We'll see if we can get it sorted out. Thanks for the suggestion =)

[techguy84]

So_1337, another thing you can take a look as it the language of your MySQL server. Make sure that its set to UTF8. Do this by going under the Instance Server Config and Checking the support for Multi-lingulism. I have tons of Item errors when it involved storing them on a character because of this.

Check out the MySQL Install section of my guide for more details and pics of how it should be set up.

[So_1337]

I'm 90% sure that I did that correctly upon installing (though that was months ago and I could certainly be wrong). Is it possible to change it without reinstalling MySQL? I'm not able to find the option anywhere in MySQL Administrator if so.

Also, the character had empty slots in her bags. In the meantime, just to make things playable, I've been transferring her gear over to a new character and setting her level, skills, AA points, etc. Then I'm just going to wipe the original character and change all the character IDs in the necessary tables to point to the new one. I'll rename her when I've done all the rest.

I had to do this once before for a character who turned in their PVP book without knowing what it would do, as I sure couldn't find the value anywhere in the database for PK status. However, that was just after I'd started running the server, so I didn't know I could write a quick NPC quest that could've turned it off. Ah well, it's all about experience.

[So_1337]

Hrm. Now I'm not so sure it fixed the issue. Just had it again, but this time, the error that brought things down was:

"A null Mob object was passed to Client::Attack() for evaluation!"

[ChaosSlayer]

i ocasinaly get this error

just recently i tried to pick up a weapon which was in my primary hand
it POOFED with an error mesage, and an item which I have previously destroyed appeared instead...