Am I the only person that has trouble with Absence Notes??

jamesmcd

Firstly, on an alt account that I managed to have perfect record for 2016, I missed the first of january. This was the only account where I missed that particular day and only on one of the toons on the account at that.

So here I am, 2nd of Jan and find my perfect record for 2017 already stuffed.

So, I look through mail and find an absence note, transfer it to the toon that had missed and click fill check. AND NOTHING HAPPENS. Ok this obviously is the wrong time so I try random times for the next 5 days, still nothing.

Did I hear you say to verify? or this or that or the other is the cause of the problem, well last year I did all that. And to no avail.

Last year I hypothesised that an absence note for me only works between 10am and 5pm ( that being between midnight UTC and midnight Server Time) However this no longer appears to be the case. I finally get the absence note to work at around 5:30 pm on the 7th, this being 90 min before server midnight (due to changes in daylight saving between me (southern hemisphere) and Server (northern hemisphere)).

Ok so now I have a perfect record all accounts and all toons for the first 7 days of Jan. There have not been any patches and only a restart between the times I tried and failed to use an absence note, and when it eventually worked.

Story just keeps getting better though. Today I discovered that for some reason one of the toons on my main account missed yesterday's attendance. As far as I recall I logged each toon and did emperor's cruise and did the attendance. No matter. Point is I now need to find and use another absence note.

So at 12:24pm having found and placed an absence note into the appropriate inventory, I clicked 'fill check'.

Surprise Surprise IT DOES NOTHING. I'm pissed by now. So I finish the daily logins, read a book, feed the dogs, etc, all with that account still logged in and a toon sitting in arch.

At around 1:20pm, having done nothing more than going to the main character screen and logging on to various toons, I again log into the one that I missed yesterday.

THIS TIME IT WORKS!!!.

So my question is

WHY?

rieihdius

Could be related with your safety lock. Sometimes if you do check in while your safety lock is active, it will not let you use the absence note.
What I usually do is wait for a minute till the safety lock thing is not active, then I use the note, then I do check in.

obielle

There's something weird about the way PWI's check-in system works, where I guess the calendar isn't updated properly every day. For example you could look at it in February and it'll have 31 days on the calendar when you log in which is obviously not how February works, but later on it'll suddenly update to 28 days. It affects using Absence Notes as well - you can't use them when the calendar is not "up-to-date", and basically have to come back and try again later on in the day and it'll work all of a sudden. Though, I'm not really sure why it works that way.

ebisama

I noticed it only works for me after 18;00 eu time so 9;00am server time till midnight since i am on twilight temple be4 that i can jsut click but it wont fill

heerohex#3018

No I have had problems 2 but never bothered to work it out.

jamesmcd

rieihdius wrote: »

Could be related with your safety lock. Sometimes if you do check in while your safety lock is active, it will not let you use the absence note.
What I usually do is wait for a minute till the safety lock thing is not active, then I use the note, then I do check in.

Are you saying that it wont ever work if I click on it while safety lock is active, until I log out and back in again, or just while the safety lock is active?

Cause I do watch for the error message 'inventory is locked down' and wait for them to stop before I decide if it is going to work or not.

obielle : I think having 3 times to contend with must confuse pwi (utc, local and server)

rieihdius

jamesmcd wrote: »

rieihdius wrote: »

Could be related with your safety lock. Sometimes if you do check in while your safety lock is active, it will not let you use the absence note.
What I usually do is wait for a minute till the safety lock thing is not active, then I use the note, then I do check in.

Are you saying that it wont ever work if I click on it while safety lock is active, until I log out and back in again, or just while the safety lock is active?

Cause I do watch for the error message 'inventory is locked down' and wait for them to stop before I decide if it is going to work or not.

Yes that is what I do when I need to use the notes.
For some reason if you do the check in while the safety lock is active, it wont let you use the absence note, even if the lock is not active anymore.
To be honest I am not sure if they made some changes recently, but this was the case about a year ago.

And talking about this:

jamesmcd wrote: »

At around 1:20pm, having done nothing more than going to the main character screen and logging on to various toons, I again log into the one that I missed yesterday.

THIS TIME IT WORKS!!!.

So my question is

WHY?

The reason why you was able to do the check in after switching between multiple character is most likely due your safety lock not being active anymore during that session.

This is not something I discovered myself. It is actually from another version of the game. However both versions are pretty much the same so it does work.
I can't put link of that version forum due being against the rules.
But I can tell you that what they advised in order to use the notes was:

1. Login to the toon you want to use the note.
2. Wait till safety lock is not active. (this usually takes a minute unless you changed it in the past, thing I would not do btw)
3. Once safety Lock is not active use the absence note to fill your missing day.
4. Do Check In.

If by accident you did check in while safety lock was active you can try to do some daily quest on that character or a BH, and then try to use it. However this was one of the things that I did not test so I can't say if it works the same as in that other version of the game.

kalystconquerer#0876

I've seen this topic pop up every once in a while. Occasionally, if I do things out of the order @rieihdius posted, it won't fill my check (say, for example trying to fill a check while safety lock is active or doing check in first before filling checks in). I'm not quite sure why it does this.

jamesmcd

Sigh!.

Another workaround that may work.

Ill try to remember this the next time I miss a sign in. And then document what happens (and if it actually works for me outside the restricted time I have been able to get an absence note to work).

Not willing to use one of my limited absence notes on an experiment.