Skip to content

Despawn Interrupt Overview

Basic stub

Introduction

Despawn Interrupt refers to interrupting the despawning of an actor. When a piece of equipment despawns, the game sets its state as "dead". By interrupting the process, we get to keep the usable weapon in this "dead" state, which is what is known as a DI'd piece of equipment. This state is really powerful, as it makes the equipment not be affected by D-Pad Lock, as well as giving it infinite durability. On top of that, DI can be propagated to other equipment anywhere easily.

Quick Navigation

Despawn reasons

When a piece of equipment dies, the game provides a reason for the despawning, so that it knows how to handle the despawn (e.g. a fade out for void, a simple actor deletion). For example, death reasons include:

  • FallIntoAbyss for voiding out.
  • Eaten for getting eaten by a frox or a molduga.
  • PickedUp for picking up an item when something else is equipped. Each reason corresponds to a number in an internal enumeration.

The two kinds of despawn we are able to interrupt are FallIntoAbyss and Eaten. This splits DI into two sub-glitches: FallIntoAbyss DI, aka Void Dipping, and Eaten DI. The behavioural changes stem from the way the game handles killing an already dead actor: the death will only go through if the newer death reason number is smaller than the older death reason number. For example, PickedUp has a reason number of 7. FallIntoAbyss's number is 13, so picking up a void dipped item will properly delete it (7 < 13, death goes through). However, Eaten's reason number is 6, and 6 < 7, so picking up a eaten DI'd piece of equipment will not delete it, putting a copy in the inventory but staying alive. This is just an example, other differences emerge depending on which despawn reason was interrupted.

Note that to make writing setups quicker, FallIntoAbyss DI will be referred to as Void Dipping (VD) and Eaten DI simply as DI.

What to expect in each writeup

  • Trigger: how to reproduce (inputs, positions, equipment)
  • Requirements: game version, objects, NPCs, devices
  • Behavior: observable effects and common outcomes
  • Risks & Warnings: save/desync risks and suggested safety steps
  • Notes variations, related techniques, and links to follow-ups