somebody tell me this isn't possible

[ShadeNL]

I was just mfing andy on hell when i wasnt paying attention and got myself killed... well no big deal so i tried to retrieve my body while i was unarmed.

To make it a little bit easier i put on my snowclash which was still in my inv but i was unsuccesfull again. So I exit the game and made a new one. I picked up my body but i didnt get my gear back. All i got was the same before: just a snowclash as equipment and the same inv (that was full for 3/4). But my gear is NOWHERE to be seen

If I make a new game now, my body doesnt spawn. Did I lost my gear forever to some stupid bug? Or is this just a bad joke.

Hope someone can help me out here because I dont want to find ALL my gear again!

[Gorny]

Ow..

I'm sorry for your loss.

The items that are gone are now lost...

This is because the game spawns an additional corpse (up to 16, AFAIK) each time you are killed. And when you get killed so many times that you have more that number of corpses laying around, the oldest one goes bye bye. Also (AFAIK) only one - the most valuable one in terms of ingame gold will follow you from game to game. Sadly high end rune words and very valuable uniques are not so valued when put into gold sell price terms

So if you had multiple corpses on the ground somewheres, only the one that the game valued the most in gold followed you, all the others did not.

[ShadeNL]

that is really ********************************************* and some other words i can't say here but i thnx i wont make the same mistake again

[JME]

As Gorny pointed out, somehow a mere snowclash would sell to a vendor for more than all of the rest of your gear. I'm not sure what the rest of your gear was but that seems a bit strange, even given the weird vendor values of some items.

*Get your body back naked, or don't get it at all.

Sorry for the loss of gear.

Here's the semi-official writeup from Arreat Summit (bolded part is for relevance):
"What Happens When Your Character Dies?
In Diablo II, as in real life, death is something you should strive to avoid. If your Hit Points drop to zero during the game, you have died.

If you are killed, your character will lose a percentage of the total gold both carried and stored in the Stash. This percentage is equal to your character's level but will not exceed 20%. After this 'death penalty' is deducted, the rest of the gold your character was carrying falls to the ground in a pile. If the penalty exceeds the amount of gold you were carrying, the remainder of the penalty is deducted from your Stash. In Single Player, dying will not take away all your gold. No gold is lost from your Stash, and 500 gold per character level is exempt from the death penalty. For example, if a 10th level Single-Player character with 5,000 gold dies, he will lose no gold.

As an additional death penalty, your character will lose some experience if he dies while in Nightmare or Hell difficulties. You will lose 5% of the experience required to attain the next level on Nightmare and 10% on Hell, but you will never drop down to a lower level. In games of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, if you recover your corpse at the location of its demise, you can regain 75% of the experience points you lost. If, however, you choose to 'Save and Exit' out of your current game in order to restart and recover your body in town, you will not regain any of your lost experience. Nightmare and Hell Difficulty players should ask themselves whether they want to risk losing more experience by attempting to recover their body to regain 75% of their experience. If you die several more times you'll end up losing more experience than you gain by recovering your body. Sometimes it is safer to leave the game to recover your corpse giving up the experience you might have regained by recovering your corpse.

Press the Esc key after dying to restart in town. Your corpse will remain in the place where you died. You will have to return to your corpse in order to retrieve your equipment. When you find your corpse, left-click on it to pick up and re-equip your items (hint: when you are near your corpse, it will appear as a purple "X" on your Automap). Make sure you have room in your inventory to pick up all the items on your corpse, though -- if you don't, any items you can't hold will remain on your old corpse. Be sure to collect any gold you might have dropped when you died, too.

If your character has no corpse when he dies, one will be created, and your equipped items will remain on that corpse. If your character already has a corpse, another corpse (up to a maximum of 16) will be created and your most recently equipped items will remain with the new corpse. Be careful about equipping valuable equipment when you already have a corpse out in the field, if you exit a realm game with more than one corpse on the ground, only the corpse having the most valuable equipment (gold equivalent value) will be saved. Also, if you die and you already have 16 corpses, your items will fall to the ground, and anyone can take them. Unequipped items, however, will always remain in your inventory.

When you find your corpse, click on it to take all of its equipped items. Only you (and anyone you permit) can loot your corpse.

After re-equipping your items, you might want to confirm that you are using your weapon of choice, and not your "backup" equipment or some item you accidentally picked up from the area surrounding your corpse.

If you exit a game without retrieving your corpse, one will be placed in town in the next game you create or join."

Arreat Summit (http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/basics/characters.shtml)

[[cK]Extreme]

Wait a second. If I die more then 16 times on battlenet, say a bad tp or something which i spam.. all my items will spill on the ground on my 17th death?

>.>;

How have I never known that hehe, gotta be more careful!

[Gorny]

No, not quite like that.

If you die all of those times the items remain on your new corpse - more to the point, or more accurately I should say, each time you die, the items you were wearing on that specific body will stay on that body's corpse - up to 16.

So lets say that you were wearing only Tals' belt when you died the first time. Tals belt is on your corpse. So you go to get the Tal's belt and you equip Isenhart's Case. You die on the way to your first corpse. NOw you have two corpses out there, one has Tals, the other has Isenharts. Third time you go out to recover your corpses (you now have two) you equip an Enigma. You die. You now have three seperate corpses, containing Tal's, Isenhart's and Enigma respectively. You keep on trying to recover your corpses equipping something diffferent every time you die 13 more times. You now have 16 corpses, all with a different item. The oldest one being the first time you died has Tal's, the second oldest has Isenharts the third oldest has Enigma.

Here's where you will now run into loss of items: If you die one more time, the corpse with the Tals will go bye bye. Die again after that, and the Isenharts is gone. Die again and Enigma goes bye bye. If you keep on dying, each time you die, the oldest corpse poofs.

You might think you can save and exit, but the game will only save whatever is valued the most in gold - according to the price that the vendor will offer you for items. The catch here is that the game does not value stuff like Runeworded items very high, so if you save and exit, your Enigma is gone. Ditto for stuff like Arkaines Valor, etc. You are more likely to be left with a crummy unique rather than an expensive runeword.

[TankerWolf]

What does it mean by "only you (and others you permit ) can loot your body?
Can you give someone permision to loot your body.

[Ce Olba]

What does it mean by "only you (and others you permit ) can loot your body?
Can you give someone permision to loot your body.

Only in Hardcore.